Leaks, anonymous briefings, gossip, Tony Abbott’s “febrile media culture” that “rewards treachery”: this is political reporting, Canberra style, and it’s existed like this for decades.
Tag: Media
Malcolm Turnbull’s spill against Tony Abbott has made him Australia’s fifth prime minister in five years.
Here’s the story the media refuses to tell you about the refugee crisis rocking Europe.
Source: Read This Before the Media Uses a Drowned Refugee Boy to Start Another War
What with nice Nazis, and the East Coast Twitterati on a jihad to bring down the Government, it’s been a busy week in Australian politics. Managing editor Dave Donovan hyperventilates.
Source: Hey, hysterical East Coast Twitterati — give the Liberals a fair go
A British woman who can’t recall any of the conversations she has had over the past decade will head up the UK arm of one of the world’s largest media organisations.
A spokesperson for the company said Ms Brookes, 47, was the obvious choice for the position. “Apart from the fact that she has absolutely no recollection of what happened at the previous companies she ran, she is the perfect choice for this role,” the spokesperson said.
“She has a knack for a good story, she’s great with people. Sure she couldn’t remember whether the Prime Minister of Great Britain attended her 40th birthday party. But then, who does remember these sorts of finer details?”
The spokesperson said Ms Brookes would run a tight ship as CEO of UK operations. “Although naturally we don’t expect her to have any idea about what’s actually going on at the company”.
Whatever the Daily Telegraph pays Piers Akerman to spread his unique brand of ‘commentary’, it’s not enough. So if you’re reading this Rupert Murdoch, double the man’s salary.Akerman’s column this week attacking the independent Australian documentary, Gayby Baby – and the Tele’s complementary campaign of smearing shit all over itself and then grinning like a five-year-old – has done more than any hard working publicist could ever do to promote a film that every Australian should see.
Source: Gayby Baby: Out Of The Mouths Of Babes, And Piers Akerman | newmatilda.com
LONDON — Rupert Murdoch’s tabloid Sun has spoken, urging voters to back David Cameron’s Conservative Party in Britain’s election — unless they’re in Scotland. There, it says, they should vote for the Scottish National Party.
The differing endorsements raised a few eyebrows Thursday, since the London-based Sun dubbed the pro-Scottish independence nationalists “saboteurs” determined to wreck Britain.
But the Scottish edition — which has a separate editor — said the SNP would “fight harder for Scotland’s interests” and praised leader Nicola Sturgeon as “a phenomenon.” Its front page depicted her as Princess Leia from “Star Wars.”
The SNP is predicted to win most of Scotland’s seats on May 7.
Murdoch’s newspapers were long a powerful force in British politics, but their influence may be waning in the Internet age.
THE CABIN ANTHRAX, MURPHY, N.C. – (CT&P) – Fox News enjoyed a slight increase in number of viewers during prime time last month from 2.5 to 2.63 million, according to the latest Nielson ratings. The increase was just enough to edge Fox viewers into fourth place in current cult standings, according the best available data.
The Fox News apologists edged out the anti-vaxxing crowd for the fourth spot.
Cult ratings are based purely on numbers of followers or believers as can be best determined by polling, membership lists, and other information that can be confirmed using generally acceptable methods.
Far and away the largest cult on the planet continues to be the Climate Change Denier’s Club, consisting of nearly 30% of the population of the United States and a few other idiots from around the world.
Next comes the Mormon Church, followed by the Young Earth Creationists, Fox News Artiodactyls, the Anti-Vaxxer’s Association, and the Insane Conspiracy Theorist’s League. Rounding out the top ten are Glenn Beck’s Confederacy of Dunces, the Ku Klux Klan, Scientologists, and the U.S. House of Representatives.
“We’re really excited about the growth of the cult,” said Sean Hannity, Fox News anchor and well-known asshat.
“We’re always looking for folks who will swallow our garbage hook, line, and sinker. More acolytes means more money for us and that’s always good. It also means we can continue to push our hateful right-wing agenda at the expense of real news. We see this as a win-win for the Republican Party and Fox News as well.”
During a recent interview Times-Picayune reporter Vince Snetterton Lewis asked Professor Toichi Hikita of the Banzai Institute just what the difference was between legitimate organizations and cults. Professor Hikita explained, “It’s sometimes difficult to differentiate because cult members can come from all areas of society and many of these nuts belong to more than one cult. Age, income, and level of education don’t seem to matter with these unhinged individuals.”
“The common denominator seems to be a combination of profound naiveté, an inability of the individual to engage in critical thought, and a desperate desire to have their own batshit ideas confirmed. I mean look at Scientology for example. You read their literature and say to yourself ‘who would believe that shit?’ and yet there are thousands of morons giving those cretins millions of dollars each year.”
“There are otherwise intelligent human beings walking around that deny evolution exists, who think that the moon landings were staged, who believe that George Bush orchestrated 9/11, and think that President Obama is the Antichrist trying to destroy Israel, it’s really depressing if you dwell on it too long.”
“The really alarming thing is that many of these people vote in our elections,” concluded Hikita. “God knows what the future holds for this country.”
Professor Hikita did hold out some hope for America, however. He believes that a series of educational reforms could go a long way in curtailing the growth of wingnut groups and batshit belief systems in the future.
“If we start putting more emphasis on science, keep religious belief systems in churches and out of schools, and concentrate on teaching history as it actually occurred, I think we have a chance. If not, then we are in for a load of shit.”
Diplomatic relations between Venezuela and the U.S. have just taken a big hit, with the government of Nicolas Maduro demanding that the American Embassy in Caracas reduce its staff by 80% and that U.S. visitors apply for visas.
Most symbolically, Venezuela has now barred a number of U.S. officials from visiting, including George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. The backdrop to these political moves is a new crisis within Venezuela that has an old script: right-wing leaders plan a coup, with the U.S. deeply implicated; wealthy protesters take to the streets; and the Western media cover both stories with great sympathy while openly mocking the democratically elected government for attempting to defend itself.
The latest crisis began when authorities acting on Maduro’s orders arrested Caracas Mayor Antonio Ledezma in mid-February. A well-known right-wing opposition figure, Ledezma will face trial for conspiracy against the government in what is now being called the “blue coup.” Among the pieces of evidence the government says it has collected are phone calls made by the mayor to a U.S. phone number, as well as a cache of weapons, including Molotov cocktails, grenade-like explosives and gas masks, found in the office headquarters of the opposition political par
Ledezma is being held in the same facility as another right-wing politician, Leopoldo Lopez, who was arrested last year for overseeing a plan called La Salida, or “the exit,” to overturn the government. Lopez has had dealings with U.S. government figures including Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore. According to Wikileaks, the two apparently “discussed possible media strategies with Lopez, and methods for getting his positive message to audiences in the U.S.” Just before Ledezma’s arrest, he, Lopez and other right-wing opposition leaders, including Maria Corina Machado, had signed a document calling for a “National Transition”—a move the government says was a precursor to a U.S.-backed coup.
The U.S. has long been involved in attempts to destabilize Venezuela’s socialist government. Its role in the 2002 coup against Hugo Chavez is well-documented. Over the years, many organizations, including ones in which right-wing opposition figures are involved, have received funding from the likes of USAID and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), both U.S.-based agencies notorious for fomenting unrest in countries hostile to U.S. interests. For example, Machado headed an organization named Sumate that has received funding from the NED.
U.S. officials have also made no secret about their hostility to Venezuela. Last year the Obama administration imposed sanctions on a number of Venezuelan officials it claims are implicated in human rights abuses and corruption, although it is keeping the list of names secret. In President Obama’s 2015 National Security Strategy, he announced that the U.S. would “stand by the citizens of countries where the full exercise of democracy is at risk, such as Venezuela.”
Despite this documentation of American animosity toward Venezuela, media outlets continue to harbor an inexplicable blind spot on the U.S. role. The New York Times opined last week in what we can consider Exhibit A in the case against media coverage of Venezuela:
Listening to embattled President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela ramble for hours about an international right-wing conspiracy to oust him, it’s clear that he would use any fabricated pretext to jail opposition leaders and crack down on dissent. In recent days, the government’s claims have become outlandish and its repression of critics even more vicious.
Professor Miguel Tinker Salas, one of the few U.S.-based experts on Venezuela, has written a book that will be released May 4 titled “Venezuela: What Everyone Needs to Know.” In an interview on “Uprising,” he responded to the editorial, saying, “We know that there was a historical amnesia on the part of the New York Times that celebrated the 2002 coup against Hugo Chavez.”
Salas was referring to the paper’s mea culpa at initially celebrating that coup and then retracting its words days later when it was overturned. In its new editorial, the paper failed to raise the historical context of U.S. backing for the 2002 coup or its own contradictory stances dismissing Maduro’s concerns.
Exhibit B is The Economist, which went as far as headlining the current crisis in Venezuela “A slow-motion coup.” If by “coup” the magazine means “coup d’état”—which is generally defined as the illegal takeover of a government—then it is unclear what the writers mean, for the article claims the “regime is lurching from authoritarianism to dictatorship.” (Is Maduro’s government organizing a coup against itself?) The magazine also goes on to assert that “Crackpot economic policies have brought food shortages, soaring inflation and rising poverty.”
Salas explained that the writers are irked by the fact that “[s]ixty percent of the government’s budget actually goes to social programs and [the opposition] would rather it go to infrastructure and oil companies so that they can produce more oil and have a larger supply of oil on the world market, and have it be privately owned.”
Thanks to this type of media coverage, the Venezuelan right-wing opposition has been extremely successful at generating sympathy, especially among the U.S. public, and even among American celebrities. Last year’s right-wing protests inspired a shout-out by actor Jared Leto during his Oscar acceptance speech, a supportive blog post by Kevin Spacey and even a social media post by singer Madonna.
What neither the Times nor The Economist nor the supportive celebrities notice are the troubling double standards of criticizing Venezuela when a close U.S. ally such as Mexico suffers from far worse problems of anti-democratic corruption and violence. Salas pointed out the hypocrisy, saying that 43 people were killed in Venezuela last year on both sides of the divide, and still, “The New York Times blames the government for these deaths, and yet they remain silent about the 43 students that were killed in Mexico.” Additionally, Salas pointed out, although Mexico has “100,000 dead and a real humanitarian crisis,” the Times says “almost nothing, while on Venezuela they … mock the government.”
A November 2014 editorial by the Times on Mexico’s 43 missing students expressed not nearly as much vitriol for that country’s clearly corrupt and discredited government as the paper reserves for Venezuela’s Maduro, whom it called “authoritarian,” “erratic” and “maniacal.”
Additionally, The Economist’s mocking of Venezuela’s economic crisis is also hypocritical because, according to Salas, in Mexico, “fifty percent of the population lives in poverty” and yet the country “is portrayed as a model for Western development and neo-liberal economics.” And while media outlets make fun of Venezuela’s toilet paper shortage, Salas counters that in Mexico, which is a U.S. ally, huge numbers of “people don’t even have access to basic services and food
Media coverage of Venezuela is so skewed that even the contentious issue of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict seems to generate fairer coverage these days. Salas attributed the bias to the savvy organizing of right-wing Venezuelan groups, who he says have “learned the lesson very well from Cuban Americans in Miami and South Florida, so they know how to target the media, they know how to create public opinion and they have done that very well.”
But Salas thinks there is another explanation, and that is “the lack of knowledge that existed about Venezuela in the U.S. before Hugo Chavez came to power.” Most of what Americans knew about the country other than that it had abundant oil reserves was the fact that it once won a Miss Universe contest and was home to a few good baseball players. That ignorance has been a perfect blank slate on which the U.S. government, mainstream media and right-wing opposition parties have been able to carve their warped perspectives about Venezuela’s left-wing government.
A vigil for Deah Shaddy Barakat, Yusor Abu-Salha and Razan Abu-Salha on the campus of North Carolina State University.
Stephen Hicks, facing murder charges over deaths of three Muslim students, had two shotguns, seven rifles and four handguns
Search warrants show the suspect in the shooting deaths of three Muslim college students in North Carolina had an arsenal of a dozen firearms in the home he shared with his wife, along with a large stash of ammunition.
Records filed in Durham County superior court on Friday list items recovered by police from the Chapel Hill condominium of Craig Stephen Hicks, the 46-year-old charged with three counts of first-degree murder. The warrants show that three handguns were recovered from the Hicks home, in addition to a pistol the suspect had with him when arrested. Also listed are two shotguns and seven rifles, including a military-style AR-15 carbine. Police also recovered numerous loaded magazines and cases of ammunition. Eight spent shell-casings were found in the neighboring apartment of the young couple killed.
Hicks, who was arraigned on Wednesday morning, is being held without bond until his next hearing, set for 4 March.
![Alton Nolen allegedly beheaded a woman at a foods distribution plant in Oklahoma [EPA]](https://i0.wp.com/www.aljazeera.com/mritems/imagecache/mbdxxlarge/mritems/images/2014/9/29//201492982830638734_20.jpg "Muslim-Americans: Presumed guilty?")
Story highlights….Preamble
Since April 19, 1995, Oklahoma has held a special place in the USA’s terror imagination. For Muslim-Americans, their current state as social pariah number one, holds unpleasant reminders of the post Oklahoma City indictment of Islam. (link – http://articles.latimes.com/1995-04-22/news/mn-57460_1_oklahoma-city-bombing). Almost two decades later, conditions are being replicated following a beheading outside Oklahoma City on September 25th. Alton Nolen, a 30-year old local, severed the head of Colleen Hufford – a former colleague at the food-distribution company that had recently fired him (link – http://www.aljazeera.com/news/americas/2014/09/us-man-shot-after-beheading-colleague-2014926233713271290.html).
Following the gruesome incident, media outlets immediately sought to link this savagery to the man’s recent conversion to Islam. (link – http://docapp065p.doc.state.ok.us/servlet/page?_pageid=394&_dad=portal30&_schema=PORTAL30&doc_num=634241&offender_book_id=391688&imageindex=5) His extensive criminal record was merely a sideshow, skipped over, in order to focus the public attention on the presupposed
Since April 19, 1995, Oklahoma has held a special place in the US terror imagination. For Muslim-Americans, their current state as social pariah number one, holds unpleasant reminders of the post Oklahoma City indictment of Islam. Almost two decades later, conditions are being replicated following a beheading outside Oklahoma City on September 25. Alton Nolen, a 30-year-old local, severed the head of Colleen Hufford – a former colleague at the food-distribution company that had recently fired him.
Following the gruesome incident, media outlets immediately sought to link this savagery to the man’s recent conversion to Islam. His extensive criminal record was merely a sideshow, skipped over, in order to focus the public attention on the presupposed “guilt” of Islamic doctrine.
Naturally the subhuman violence popularised by ISIL, including, but not limited to beheading, allowed pundits with little information of the crime motives, to blithely connect Nolen’s act with a terrorist network. Worse still, for a community already under an aggressive media spotlight – clear efforts were made to seek a connection (however tenuous) between Muslim-Americans and ISIL.
As the media hype about the first workplace beheading in the US reached fever pitch, it became nauseatingly clear that the true motive and the specific personality of the culprit were considered by news desks as something of an irrelevance to the story. Which by now had its own wrong-headed “terror-based” momentum.
But these days, no burden-of-guilt on the Muslim community is complete without a desperately worded and rushed out apology by community leaders and imams for crimes at home or abroad.
Politics of apology
These days, the quintessential hallmark of being Muslim in America is neither faith nor citizenship. Rather, the essence of Muslim-American identity right now is the collective fear which arises during national security crises. It is increasingly these “interim moments, between catastrophe and discovering the real culprits [of terrorism],” which most aptly defines so much of the experience of being Muslim and American today.
Although the overwhelming majority of terrorist attacks are committed by non-Muslims, the prevailing narrative conflating mass violence with Islam trumps statistics, easily shifting the presumption of guilt onto every adherent of the faith, via hyped up news bulletins.
| These days, no burden-of-guilt on the Muslim community is complete without a desperately worded and rushed out apology by community leaders and imams for crimes at home or abroad. |
The immediate search to indict Islam after every atrocious act has, systematically, bred a defensive posture among Muslim-American citizens and our institutions. The practice of assigning instant guilt, combined with the American understanding of Islam as a spiritual, ideological and demographical monolith, has pushed Muslim-Americans into the proverbial corner. Trapped between “supporting terrorism” and a hard place, Muslim-Americans are perpetually burdened with guilt by association of faith.
And we ourselves are not without blame for this sorry state of affairs. Muslim-American leaders (some self-appointed) and too many of our major institutions have largely ceded to intimidation. There are various elements at play.
Being the first to speak out when a new atrocity breaks, can mean a great deal of airtime and publicity for the “Muslim spokesperson”. And it is a long accepted fact that an invitation to White House dinners is on offer to Muslims who are willing to jump on the blame bandwagon. Those who sadly may be putting personal ambitions above long term community strategy, curry favour with government agencies that profile, prosecute, and persecute Muslim-Americans.
An apology is far more than an act of remorse when made to the media by Muslim-Americans. It is an admission of tacit guilt. Let me give you an example: If someone living on my road whom I’ve never met, steals your bike, do I apologise for it? And if I did, wouldn’t you wonder why I was linking myself to the crime?
Eroding stereotypes
Oklahoma, aptly named the “Sooner State” represents the American rush towards judging Islam as responsible for violent atrocities before facts are collected and assessed. This was the case in 1995 with the Oklahoma City bombing and with last week’s workplace beheading.
Now social media activists are seeking to breakaway from the confines of apologia. The Twitter hashtag kicked off by frustrated Muslim youth living in the West #MuslimApologies has brilliantly poked fun at the societal pressure to say sorry continually, nonsensically almost impulsively for all of the worlds ills – if you are Muslim.
Deftly catching the real atmosphere in the Muslim community humour is soothing our community’s soul and giving others an insight into the ludicrous nature of our dilemma.
Assed Baig: “I’m sorry that we keep getting in the way of your drone strikes.” Or how about this from “Raz”: “I’m sorry my beard scares you. It’s hormonal, I swear.”
Choosing to demonstrate that Muslims are diverse, this budding outlook may very well offer the strategic means to move beyond the bleak, dated, sorry state, that grips many organisational gatekeepers, and fails all of us in the US with its vacuousness.
Khaled A Beydoun is an Assistant Professor of Law at the Barry University Dwayne O Andreas School of Law. He is a native of Detroit.
Police believe the triple homicide of a Muslim family in their North Carolina home was due to a parking conflict and was likely not religiously motivated. But the victims’ family disagrees, calling it a “hate crime” and an “execution.”
READ MORE: Chapel Hill shooting: 3 Muslims gunned down in N. Carolina
The three young relatives in the college town of Chapel Hill were gunned down in their home on Tuesday evening. The victims in the triple homicide have been identified as Deah Shaddy Barakat, 23; his wife, Yusor Mohammad Abu-Salha, 21; and her sister, Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha, 19. All three victims were shot in the head.
A 46-year-old man identified by police as Craig Stephen Hicks turned himself in late Tuesday night. He was subsequently arrested on suspicion of three counts of first degree murder. Hicks lived next door to the family in a condominium complex a few miles east of the University of North Carolina’s flagship campus.
The women’s father, psychiatrist Dr. Mohammad Abu-Salha, told the Raleigh News & Observer that, while parking may have been the catalyst for Tuesday’s events, the shooter had an underlying animosity towards his daughters and son-in-law based on their religion and culture.
“It was execution style, a bullet in every head,” Abu-Salha said Wednesday morning. “This was not a dispute over a parking space; this was a hate crime. This man had picked on my daughter and her husband a couple of times before, and he talked with them with his gun in his belt. And they were uncomfortable with him, but they did not know he would go this far.”
The grieving father said that one of his daughters had told the family a week ago that she had a “hateful neighbor.”
“Honest to God, she said, ‘He hates us for what we are and how we look,’” he said. Both women wore hijabs, the traditional Muslim head scarf.
Hicks is a self-described atheist who regularly posted content critical of religion on his Facebook account.
While police noted Wednesday morning that the killings were likely part of an ongoing parking dispute, they added that they have not ruled out the possibility that it was a religiously motivated attack.
“Our investigators are exploring what could have motivated Mr. Hicks to commit such a senseless and tragic act,” Chapel Hill Police Chief Chris Blue said in a statement. “We understand the concerns about the possibility that this was hate-motivated and we will exhaust every lead to determine if that is the case.”
Durham District Attorney Roger Echols also said that law enforcement has not eliminated any motives at this point.
“All motives will be under investigation,” Echols said, according to WRAL.
Hicks’ wife Karen denied that her husband was motivated by Islamophobia, but rather by the parking situation at the condominium complex.
“This incident had nothing to do with religion or the victims’ faiths,” Hicks’s wife told reporters at a news conference Wednesday afternoon.
She added that the shooting came as a “complete shock” and she expressed her “deepest sympathy and condolences” to the victims’ families, WTVD reported.
Hicks’ attorney also stressed that the family does not believe the shooting was a hate crime.
“It has nothing to do with terrorism. It has nothing to do with anything but the mundane issue of this man being frustrated day in and day out and not being able to park where he wanted to park,” said attorney Rob Maitland. “These victims were there at the wrong time and wrong place.”
Both Karen Hicks and Maitland mentioned mental illness as a factor.
Parking was a recurring issue between Hicks and his three victims, but it never escalated to the point of involving law enforcement, Chapel Hill police told WTVD.
“I talked with the brother of Deah Barakat who was shot, and he told me that allegedly this neighbor had gone into this apartment before, over parking, and this was an issue that they had dealt with in the past,” WUNC’s Reema Khrais reported.
On Tuesday evening, one 911 caller heard eight shots; another reported between five and 10 shots after she heard “kids screaming,” according to released recordings of the calls. Neighbors have described the parking situation as “confusing,” WRAL reported.
While many across social media and in the Muslim-American community called on law enforcement to investigate the incident as a hate crime, local officials sought to calm fears of an outbreak of violence against those who practice Islam.
“The events of yesterday are not part of a targeting campaign against Muslims in North Carolina,” US Attorney Ripley Rand told reporters at a news conference Wednesday afternoon, adding that there is “no information this is part of an organized event against Muslims.”
“This appears, at this point, to be an isolated incident,” Rand said.
The Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) called on federal authorities to investigate the slayings and address a “possible bias motive” for them.
READ MORE: #MuslimLivesMatter: Shock and outrage as 3 Muslim students gunned down in N. Carolina
“Based on the brutal nature of this crime, the past anti-religion statements of the alleged perpetrator, the religious attire of two of the victims, and the rising anti-Muslim rhetoric in American society, we urge state and federal law enforcement authorities to quickly address speculation of a possible bias motive in this case,” said CAIR National Executive Director Nihad Awad, according to WTVD.
Currently, federal law authorities are assisting “merely in a monitoring capacity at this point,” Rand said. They are helping process evidence, which is standard in homicide cases, WRAL reported.
Hicks was arraigned Wednesday morning. Durham County Judge Marcia Morey denied bond, and scheduled his next court appearance for March 4. Hicks was originally being kept at the Durham County Jail, but was later moved to the state’s Central Prison. Authorities have not elaborated on why.
Vigils for the victims are planned at UNC and at North Carolina State University, where all three received their undergraduate degrees.
In an effort to switch the nation’s focus from what Andrew Bolt called his “pathetically stupid” decision to knight Prince Philip, Prime Minister Tony Abbott yesterday delivered a press conference to announce his government’s policy on family violence. Family violence – violence committed against women and children and sometimes men by partners, ex-partners and parents – has at last become a political priority, following extended media coverage of horrific murders, including the filicide of 11-year-old Luke Batty by his father in February last year. Luke’s mother, Rosie, was instrumental in having the Victorian government set up a royal commission into family violence.
Unfortunately, Abbott’s press conference became yet another example of what is being increasingly seen as his political mismanagement and hypocrisy. As Dan Harrison observes, the initiatives Abbott announced – a national scheme for domestic violence orders, national standards for intervening against violent perpetrators and improving online safety – were initiatives he’d already announced last June. The conference was a re-announcement. And by emphasising family violence, Abbott gave critics an opportunity to highlight a number of cuts Abbott’s government has made to programs that help victims and prevent violence.
At Daily Life, Jenna Price lists some of the programs that have fallen foul of Abbott’s austerity cuts. A five-year research project in Britain recently found that most violent men who participate in reform programs completely stop physically harming their partners, but the Abbott government has defunded men’s behaviour change programs in Victoria entirely, and has cut $3.5 million from front-line domestic violence support services for Indigenous women on top of millions from community legal centres. As Abbott said during yesterday’s press conference, one woman every week is killed in Australia by her current or former partner. Why, then, has his government de-funded preventive programs?
Russell Marks
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Bill Blum
If the terror attacks in Paris have a silver lining, it is that they have sparked an outpouring of support for freedom of speech across the globe and across the ideological spectrum. According to The Associated Press, even Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, has weighed in on the side of enlightenment, saying “that radicals have done more to disparage the Muslim prophet than journalists who published satirical cartoons mocking Islam.”
Here in the U.S., the outrage has been virtually nonstop, expressed by media outlets, satirists and comedians, and in a marked display of solidarity, by Republican and Democratic party leaders.
As a nation, we are rallying around the First Amendment. To quote Chicago Tribune columnist Steve Chapman from an Op-Ed published Friday:
“We in Western societies almost always defer to the wisdom of Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., who said the basis of the First Amendment is ‘not free thought for those who agree with us but freedom for the thought that we hate.
These are fine and uplifting sentiments, and they clearly distinguish our best political and moral values from the twisted, medieval mindsets of the jihadists who perpetrated the massacres in France. But amid the celebration of our values, a question nags: Just how free is freedom of speech in America?
The uncomfortable truth is that here, as elsewhere around the world, freedom of expression has never come easily and is nearly always threatened in one way or another. From the Salem witch trials of the 1690s to the Red Scares of the mid-20th century and the Pentagon Papers trial of Daniel Ellsberg and Anthony Russo in the early 1970s, we have persecuted and prosecuted those whose ideas we fear. Intolerance and suppression of speech—along with the promotion of views favorable to dominant elites—have been hallmark American traditions.
Today, those traditions continue in at least five critical ways:
1. The Equation of Money and Political Speech: In a series of decisions dating back to the 1976 case of Buckley v. Valeo and continuing through 2010’s ruling in Citizens United and April’s majority opinion in McCutcheon v. FEC, the Supreme Court has held that the expenditure of money on elections is the equivalent of political speech entitled to full First Amendment protections.
The result has been the development of a political system in which candidates from both major parties are increasingly indebted to corporate donors and dare not contest the priorities of their patrons. The messages of third parties are effectively censored.
2. Union Busting: At the same time that the Supreme Court has promoted corporate speech, it has embraced a perverse distortion of the First Amendment when it comes to public employee unions, the last bastion of organized labor in America and a key source of funding for Democratic office seekers.
In two recent cases—Knox v. SEIU and Harris v. Quinn—the court has characterized union dues procedures as coercive, holding that the First Amendment right to freedom of association prohibits the collection of “fair-share” fees from government workers who elect not to join unions that nonetheless negotiate on their behalf. The long-term goal is to neutralize unions as a countervailing political voice.
3. Prosecuting Whistle-Blowers: The prosecution of whistle-blowers did not end with Ellsberg. Indeed, it will continue this month with the trial of former CIA officer Jeffrey Sterling, who is accused under the Espionage Act of leaking information to New York Times reporter James Risen that the CIA provided flawed nuclear weapons data to Iran in 2000. As The Guardian and other publications have noted, “Only ten people in American history have been charged with espionage for leaking classified information, seven of them under Barack Obama.”
Chelsea Manning was convicted under the act in 2013. NSA whistle-blower Edward Snowden awaits a similar fate should he return to the U.S.
4. NSA Spying: The pervasive surveillance apparatus erected by the National Security Agency doesn’t just implicate privacy rights under the Fourth Amendment. Government spying also affects First Amendment rights because of the chilling effect it has on those who wish to join political, social and religious organizations the government deems worthy of monitoring.
First Amendment claims lie at the heart of a federal lawsuit filed against the NSA by the San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation. The case is one of five major legal challenges to the NSA pending across the country. The events in Paris could deal them all a significant setback, as lawmakers and judges alike yield to arguments that more, not less, surveillance is needed to wage the unending war on terror.
5. Silencing Prisoners: The United States is home to 5 percent of the world’s people, but we have 25 percent of the world’s prison population. Yet we don’t just lock up our convicts; we also try to shut them up. Both the federal government and some 40 states have enacted some form of statute patterned after New York’s “Son of Sam” law, named after the moniker used by 1970s serial killer David Berkowitz, to prevent prisoners from profiting from their violent crimes by writing books or selling the rights to their stories.
Although the original Son of Sam law was invalidated by the Supreme Court in 1985, such laws haven’t gone away. The worst of the current crop is Pennsylvania’s “Revictimization Relief Act,” passed in October specifically to silence former Black Panther and journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal, who is serving a life term on charges of killing a police officer in 1982.
Abu-Jamal enraged state authorities after he delivered a pretaped commencement speech in October to the graduates of Vermont’s Goddard College. Under the new law, in terms that would bring smiles to the faces of any jihadist, victims of violent crime who experience “mental anguish” can sue to enjoin prisoners and released convicts from engaging in any “conduct [including uncompensated speech] which perpetuates the continuing effect of the crime on the victim.” Abu-Jamal is trying to overturn the law in federal court, along with four other inmates and the Prison Radio Network, which distributes his political commentaries.
No doubt there are other items—attacks on academic freedom and curbs on street demonstrations and the Occupy movement, for example—that could be included in my top five.
The important thing is not to construct an exhaustive list, but to underscore the point that freedom of speech is not just under assault in Paris by Muslim fanatics. It rests on a tenuous foundation here as well, in the very home of the First Amendment.
Have a look at what some silly sausage posted here. The FURPHY that Ordinary Australians are somehow Communists has been trumpeted by The Conservatives for a Century.
The Filth currently in charge of Australia has succeeded in their plan to create a Divisive Society that is in a perpetual State of Fear, Anxiety, Depression and Anger.
This time they are using Religion and Terror as their ammunition. Back in the 70’s they used “Communism” as an excuse for the Vietnam War.
Oil in Iraq and the ‘Weapons of Mass Destruction’ gave us the ‘Be afraid of Muslims’ campaign that is currently still in vogue. It has been twenty years in the planning and the LNP have pulled it off to perfection.
But they could not have completed their hoodwinking of the Australian people without their greatest ally Rupert Murdoch. He has spread their messages of Fear and Hate brilliantly, ably assisted by John Singleton’s 2GB and Macquarie National News, which is syndicated Australia-Wide. Add to this, Andrew Bolt on Commercial TV, and you have a winning formula.
*** Time to turn off Commercial TV.
*** Time to ditch your Foxtel.
*** Time to stop reading Rupert Rags.
*** Time to stop listening to 2GB and Macquarie National News.
TIME TO WAKE UP!!!
The globally popular Serial podcast asks serious questions about the way justice in done in the US. A similar project would never get off the ground in Australia
Serial is over. The most popular podcast of all time has provoked much debate, consumed many column inches and lost thousands of people too many hours to Reddit. It is likely to spur a whole new kind of audio journalism presented in narrative story arcs.
But in Australia, Serial could probably never have happened. That’s for one very simple reason: how our courts work.
The US court system allows for incredible access to court documents, and the culture of government is generally more open. The release of the redacted CIA torture report and massive tranches of files from the Ferguson grand jury deliberations surrounding the death of Michael Brown show how liberal the US is in providing information to the public.
The program revolved around the 1999 murder of Hae Min Lee, an 18-year-old student from Baltimore, and the imprisonment of her ex-boyfriend, 17-year-old Adnan Syed for the murder. Serial was to a large degree made possible by access to the evidence that lay at the heart of the case against Syed.
The rich portrait that presenter and reporter Sarah Koenig painted would be a far more difficult feat without recordings of police interviews and transcripts of examinations – the primary documents that allow the story to be so compellingly told.
Australian courts can seem relatively backward in comparison. We have local, district, state and federal courts, and most of them make it incredibly difficult to gain access to their records. Our government and courts, taking their cues from the UK, are far more closed off than their US counterparts.
In most courts, no video or audio records can be accessed. Transcripts are almost impossible to get in many courts, with the notable exception of the high court. Evidence from cases can be viewed – with limited rights to take copies of material – for only a small window of time after it has been admitted by a court.
I’ve spent a lot of time in different courts over the past few months following separate cases. In almost every one of them, getting access to basic material about the case has been an extremely frustrating and cumbersome task.
Take the recent dawn terrorism raids in September involving more than 800 police. I wanted to keep a record of all the cases that arose from them, because it felt like a real moment in Australia that brought to the forefront many of the same fears and prejudices people felt after September 11, 2001.
One man was charged during the raids with a firearms offence and had his matter swiftly dealt with by a local court. I requested all the documents involved in the case from Fairfield local court.
Remarkably, in NSW courts do not allow copies of any of the documents or exhibits to be made. You can only physically inspect them and make notes. Even worse, they can only be inspected for up to two working days after the case is finalised. After that point you’re probably going to be out of luck, unless you can show some particularly compelling reason for needing access.
When I asked whether copies could be sent to me, as I wasn’t in the state at the time, a court officer responded:
I gave your latest request to the registrar who has declined to send you copies of the papers. He reiterates that the papers are available for inspection in the registry until tomorrow. If you wish to send an agent (with appropriate media certifications) or contact one of the other media agencies who were here yesterday they may be able to assist you.
You can request transcripts from courts in NSW, but this is also on a highly discretionary basis. In the case of Omarjan Azari, who was also arrested during the September raids and charged with a terrorism offence, I requested access from central local court.
The request was flatly denied. The registrar said:
I wish to advise that based on the information in your application I am not satisfied that there are sufficient grounds to authorise non party access to the transcript.
In the case of Man Haron Monis, the gunmen who took 18 hostages in the Lindt cafe in Martin Place on Monday, a key question has arisen as to why he was granted bail after being charged as an accessory to the murder of his ex-wife and and for over 40 sexual assault charges against seven women.
But there are no easily accessible documents that would reveal the reasoning of the magistrates who granted Monis bail on separate occasions. I’ve lodged requests for the transcripts from all his hearings, but, as with Azari, they may ultimately be refused. And even if the requests are granted, they may take months.
This may seem like an indulgent rant from a journalist about not being given access to documents. And partly it is.
But it’s worth considering for a moment what one of the core purposes of Serial was: to canvass and explore whether there had been a gross miscarriage of justice in the imprisonment of Syed.
It sought to present the facts afresh, to take a step back and to provide an opportunity to deliver a comprehensive portrait of a decision that may have put an innocent man in jail for 15 years.
We know it’s happened before in Australia. Roseanne Beckett was wrongly imprisoned – and spent almost a decade in jail – for a series of offences including assaults, threats to kill, possession of a pistol and spiking her then husband’s milk with lithium. Her sentence was overturned only through the tireless work of investigative journalist Wendy Bacon and others.
The question we should be asking ourselves is this: if we can’t gain access to our courts to find out whether justice has been done, how many more Serial-like stories are out there in Australia that we’ll never know about?
In 2007, Federal Education Minister Julie Bishop accused Deputy Opposition Leader Julia Gillard of behaving like a “fashion model or TV star” rather than a politician.
“I don’t think it’s necessary to get dressed up in designer clothing and borrow clothing and make-up to grace the cover of magazines,” Ms Bishop told The Sunday Times.
“You’re not a celebrity, you’re an elected representative, you’re a member of parliament. You’re not Hollywood and I think that when people overstep that line they miss the whole point of that public role.”
Ms Bishop said The Australian Weekend Magazine shoot, in which Ms Gillard posed in designer clothes and pearls, was “her Cheryl Kernot moment”.
“Why would you go along and do a fashion shoot as Julia Gillard did the other day, with clothes by Carla Zampatti, jewellery by . . . hair by . . .?” Ms Bishop said. “That’s not what it’s all about.”
Ms Bishop said posing for magazine covers was “not my style”.
“Of course, people want to know more about you, but I don’t think you should be courting that celebrity status as if you’re a fashion model or a TV star, because you’re not,” she said.
In response to Julie Bishop’s criticism, Julia Gillard pointed out that The Australian interview was quintessentially about politics.
She said Ms Bishop’s comments were “inaccurate in the impression she’s trying to give of what I’ve done, and inane in that it’s not the sort of thing that matters to Australian voters”.
“They want to know what’s happening with their education system, with their health system, with their industrial relations system. They’re the sort of things that matter to them, not this sort of distraction.”
So imagine my surprise when I see Julie Bishop featuring in fashion magazine Harper’s Bazaar this month.
And how does she use this opportunity?
She reiterates she is not a feminist and tells women they should “stop whingeing and just get on with it.”
“Please do not let it get to you and do not become a victim, because it’s only a downward spiral once you’ve cast yourself as a victim,” Bishop told the fashion magazine.
Right then.
Domestic violence would all go away if we just got a job that pays hundreds of thousands and covers all our costs, and read Harper’s Bazaar for advice.
And there she is again in Who magazine where she “talks fashion, running, and style”.
“FOREIGN Minister Julie Bishop has topped the list of most intriguing people of 2014. Bishop said she was living the dream in her interview for Who’s Best and Worst 2014 issue. Others on the intriguing list include Lara Bingle, The Bachelor Blake Garvey, Jesinta Campbell and Buddy Franklin, Rosie Batty and Ian Thorpe.”
Julia….I miss you
Big coal allegedly buys 500,000 social media followers — then denies it.
This is what News Corp would do and then offer it to the PM’s office to use. Denial is an African River as far as the Fossil Fuel Industry is concerned
Supporters of Darren Wilson and apologists for Ferguson officials are desperate to change the subject. Here’s why
From the very beginning, before St. Louis County prosecuting attorney Robert McCulloch had uttered the first word of his defensive and dissembling speech, the fix was in. The conspiracy this time was not to protect Officer Darren Wilson from standing trial for the killing of Michael Brown, though that was certainly related. This time, the conspiracy was to organize the announcement of Wilson’s exoneration in as provocative a way as possible. The ultimate goal was to manipulate the public and the press into forgetting the real story of Ferguson — of police brutality and racial injustice — and bickering about the morality of rioting instead.
At the very least, that’s the impression I’ve had throughout the Ferguson controversy, especially as the wait for news from the grand jury dragged on, and as the county’s offices began leaking pro-Wilson factoids like a sieve. And after witnessing last night’s spectacle, which was preceded by multiple delays and conspicuous readying of the state’s police forces, I’m no less convinced that the powers that be in Missouri approached the Wilson verdict with little concern for accountability or justice. All they wanted was to improve the Ferguson power structure’s battered images — not by doing good, but by making the protesters look even worse. It’s a tried and tested strategy; as Rick Perlstein has documented, it helped make Richard Nixon president.
A quick look at the nation’s front pages on Tuesday indicates that the plan worked on some, but fewer perhaps than these would-be Pat Buchanans wanted. By maneuvering to incite disorder and polarize public opinion along race lines, these would-be Nixons probably thought they could “cut the … country in half,” as Buchanan recommended, and walk away with “far the larger half.” But while some of the biggest names out there fell for the trick, focusing on the small number of rioters instead of Wilson’s verdict, most editors understood that the controversy in Ferguson remains what it’s always been: A jarring and dispiriting reminder that the Declaration of Independence’s assertion of universal human equality (the “promissory note,” as Martin Luther King Jr. once called it) remains, for millions of Americans, a debt unpaid.
Elias Isquith is a staff writer at Salon, focusing on politics. Follow him on Twitter at @eliasisquith, and email him at eisquith@salon.com.
With Rupert’s rabid tabloids in full McCarthy mode today, it’s almost like the Berlin Wall didn’t come down — 25 years ago this week, writes Dr Martin Hirst.
WHAT A STRANGE BUNCH OF HEADLINES today in Rupert Murdoch’s Australian tabloid newspapers.
It’s almost as if the last 25 years never happened. In the week that the world is celebrating the fall of the Berlin Wall ‒ the most potent symbol of the end of the Cold War ‒ Murdoch’s crazy liquid modern tabloid editors have raised spectre of
THE REDS ARE COMING
You couldn’t make this stuff up, but Murdoch’s minions apparently can and will.
The Russian boats are not even close to Australia’s territorial waters (see below), but the editors ‒ juiced up on Rupert’s kool-aid ‒ cannot resist a good old-fashioned front page
RED FLAG
Without a moment’s hesitation the claxon sounds and it’s all hands on deck as the plucky crew of HMAS NutsandBolts rallies ’round the flag to repel all boarders and
STOP THE BOATS
Yes, even that classic, elastic, all-purpose, sea-going three-word slogan gets another run and is put to a good secondary dog-whistle use.
Who said Mr Abbott wasn’t into recycling?
As if thing aren’t already bad enough in the #CityofFear as it locks down in anticipation of the visigoth horde of visiting G20 dignitaries, the good burghers of Brisbane will have to contend to most of the city’s CBD being closed to ordinary folk, lest they wander into the view of the snout-in-trough great and good.
And, Brisbane’s CuriouS Mell has been reminding THE ENTIRE NATION for months, marauding anarchists are also sneaking into the country to wreak havoc on unsuspecting civilians and to wage jihad on 20,000 heavily armed police mobilised to instil the RULE OF LAW into anyone stupid enough to think about protesting injustice, criminal tax fraud, the fleecing of the world’s poor to fund extravagant global orgies of greed (like the G20) or demanding serious action on climate change, not the weak DIRECT ACTION proposed by TWO PUNCH TONY.
For months, the CuriouS Mell has been warning of anarcho-terror threats to the #CityofFear
Today the CuriouS Mell has been reinforced by the other titles in Murdoch’s stable – THE HUN, THE AGONIZERand THE DAILY TERROR– to remind us JUST HOW VULNERABLE Australia is to maritime attack by a ‘fleet’ of Russian naval vessels which are somewhere well away from us, but possibly heading into international waters ‘somewhere off Queensland’ by
RASH PUTIN
Even the NORMALLY RELIABLE AUSTRALIAN got in on the act. With a news story, an opinion piece by Abbott’s court jester Greg Sheridan and an editorial.
Talk about
OPERATION OVERKILL!
If that doesn’t have the Russian admirals quaking into their seaboots, nothing will.
OPERATION OVERKILL: meaningless graphics, Greg Sheridan and a tub-thumping editorial
So is there a ‘sovereignty’ issue here?
Well the Russian ships are still over 200 nautical miles outside Australia’s extensive Exclusive Economic Zone — so at least 400 nautical miles away. It’s unlikely they’ll come much closer.
If you were Bougainville, you might have reason to worry, but not us.
CALM DOWN! The fleet is not even close.
Territorial Seas
Territorial waters, or a territorial sea, as defined by the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea,[1] is a belt of coastal waters extending at most 12 nautical miles (22.2 km; 13.8 mi) from the baseline (usually the mean low-water mark) of a coastal state. The territorial sea is regarded as the sovereign territory of the state, although foreign ships (both military and civilian) are allowed innocent passage through it; this sovereignty also extends to the airspace over and seabed below. Adjustment of these boundaries is called, in international law, maritime delimitation.
The term “territorial waters” is also sometimes used informally to describe any area of water over which a state has jurisdiction, including internal waters, the contiguous zone, the exclusive economic zone and potentially the continental shelf.
(Yes, this is from Wikipedia.)
So really, what’s the problem?
Well, if Russia wants to sail its ships into our region it is free to do so. It has full rights in all international waters and also the right of ‘innocent passage’ all the way into Australia’s territorial seas. This means they can come within 12 nautical miles of the mean low water mark.
That’s pretty close! But it is unlikely that the Russians will want to do that.
However, it would be very funny if they did. The Murdoch papers would go apeshit and they’d probably want to mount a Dunkirk style flotilla. Maybe Rupert could lead them out one of his superyachts. He could ram the Russian flagship and go down all guns blazing.
No doubt, Abbott would give him a state funeral and he might even get that knighthood that’s eluded him for sixty years.
Shirtfront! This is a shirtfront!
When our Prime Minister threatens to “shirtfront” the leader of another nation it should not be a surprise when that nation then decides to use its far superior naval power to return the gesture.
The alarmist headlines and Cold War rhetoric of the Murdoch papers is just stupid under the circumstances.
It is propaganda aimed at the readers of the Terrorgraph, the Hun, the CuriouS Mell and the Agonizer to keep them worried and alarmed.
It is the generation of what philosopher Zygmunt Bauman calls ‘liquid fear’. The generation of irrational scare tactics in order to hide the true purpose — social and political control of the population.
Given the Murdoch empire’s great love of our own dear leader, it is natural that they would generate a moral panic involving imaginary SOVIET MILITARY HARDWARE and that they would use a ‘hammer and sickle’ motif to illustrate their RED SCARE stories, even though the old Soviet regime has been dead and buried for more than a quarter of a century.
The RED FLAG is way more frightening than the RED, WHITE & BLUE of the Russian Federation and it has the added advantage of associating the approaching Russian fleet with communism and THE LEFT, which is, as we know so well, the real enemy of the News Corpse mercenaries.
ISIL can be defeated
ISIL is not ISLAM
ISIL will be punished
| ISIL is not the only group using the media as a weapon of war, with one anti-ISIL TV station also gaining ground in Iraq.
Al Jazeera’s Charles Stratford reports from northern Iraq. |
A Brisbane man has died of dehydration today after refusing to consume water following the revelation that technically water is halal certified.
Forty two year old Brisbane local Keith Sheen, a noted opponent of what he believes Halal to mean, brazenly refused to consume water or any drink containing water to protest Halal certification. He also vocally expressed his outrage that two-thirds of the planet he inhabited was composed of what he called ‘the Muslim liquid’.
His body succumbed to dehydration earlier this morning.
Mr. Sheen had previously complained about products in his local supermarket containing dietary information such as Halal certification.
“Why should I have to look at that when it doesn’t apply to me,” Mr. Sheen once wrote to his local newspaper. “It’s the same with these peanut allergy warnings. I don’t personally have a peanut allergy so we should get rid of them for everyone. It’s only fair.”
“You know what harm it does me to look at Halal certification? None at all. But what if the answer was ‘some’? That would be unacceptable.”
Sheen insisted that his objection to Halal certification was not on the basis of racism or anti-religious bigotry, claiming he was not personally a racist but just “said racist things and acted in a racist way all the time”.
A statement released by his family praised Sheen’s commitment to his principles.
“Our father was a man of principle and his death is another sign that Sharia Law has gone too far or perhaps not far enough. We are not clear on what Sharia Law is or how far it should go.”
A memorial service will be held for Keith Sheen this Wednesday. The wake has been delayed due to complications in finding non-halal certified food to serve.
Look at this photo of Julia Gillard. Does this look like an innocent person – someone who has just been vindicated by a Judge as having played no part in any criminality in relation to a union slush fund 20 years ago? Or does it look like someone guilty, with questions to answer, being rushed away from cameras, refusing to make eye contact with her accusers? This is the image that the Sydney Morning Herald used to accompany a headline which you would think would be good news for Julia Gillard, and bad news for the media who relentlessly pursed this story to no end:
‘Royal commission on union corruption told Julia Gillard should be cleared of any crime’
The article moved quickly from reporting that The Royal Commission into Union Governance and Corruption found Gillard innocent, to report that her ex-boyfriend, Bruce Wilson, and his colleague Ralph Blewitt should face criminal charges. Kathy Jackson is also recommended for criminal charges. Remember Blewitt and Jackson and their work to bring down the previous Labor government? No? Don’t remember these links? Why am I not surprised?
To the average media consumer, who doesn’t follow independent journalism, who relies on their news from mainstream journalists such as those at Fairfax, you would never know that Ralph Blewitt’s accusations towards Julia Gillard were used relentlessly by right-wing-nut-job-chief Larry Pickering (you know the guy – he likes to draw politicians with huge penises) to push the media to keep saying that Gillard had ‘questions to answer’. You might wonder why the media would follow the lead of the un-hinged Pickering and the word of Blewitt, who was blaming Gillard for something he himself was being accused of doing in a bid for immunity. You might also not realise that Kathy Jackson was the very same Kathy Jackson who ‘blew the whistle’ on Craig Thomson’s misuse of union funds, who is also partner of Tony Abbott’s good friend Michael Lawler and a favourite guest of the right wing extremist HR Nicholls Society, and was misusing union funds herself at many tens of times worse than Craig Thomson. This article quotes the misuse for personal expenses at $660,000. But this link between right wingers and criminality in unions is never mentioned is it? This link to a 2012 article where Tony Abbott is praising Kathy Jackson as heroic is never mentioned. These people with vested interest in bringing down Labor politicians, who are accused of doing the exact same things as they are accusing Labor politicians of doing, who have links to right wing politicians and media identities are never properly investigated because no journalist wants to make the link between stories they’ve been writing, and the obvious campaign by Abbott to not just destabilise Gillard’s minority government, but to smash unions and workers’ rights with them. Remember Ashby versus Slipper, another campaign orchestrated by Abbott’s Opposition to try to bring down the Gillard government? Remember how Michelle Grattan used Craig Thomson and Peter Slipper as reasoning as to why Julia Gillard should resign?
You’ll notice that most of the stories that I’ve linked to in the above paragraph were written by journalists at Fairfax. I use Fairfax in this case purposely. I could have used News Ltd, but no one takes News Ltd seriously as they don’t actually employ journalists and prefer to work at being grubby partisan hacks so there’s no point reminding everyone why we don’t read News Ltd. I could have used the ABC, who went with this very ABC-like headline to report the news of Gillard’s vindication in the slush fund affair:
‘Trade union royal commission submissions question Julia Gillard’s professional conduct but clears her of any crime’
Of course the ‘questions’ had to be right up there front and centre, and the vindication the afterthought, added later. The ABC is terrified of Abbott and people like Chris Kenny who accuse them of left-wing bias so they prefer to let Murdoch set the agenda than to actually do any journalistic work themselves for the good of the public who fund them.
I actually used Fairfax not because they are the worst case of bad, on non-existent journalism in Australia. There is some investigative journalism happening at Fairfax, which the stories about Jackson, and Ashby and Michael Smith prove. But what frustrates me, and should frustrate the public at large, is the apparent inability for these journalists to pull bit-piece stories together to tell a wider story, which no media outlet in the county has had the courage to tell. Simply, the media went after Prime Minister Gillard ferociously over Thomson, Slipper and the AWU slush fund affair. The media mauled Gillard’s leadership over these ‘scandals’, running with a fixed narrative of Labor chaos, Labor dysfunction, Labor failure, Labor leadership tensions. This fixed narrative refused to join the dots between the Thomson, Slipper and AWU affair and the Liberal Opposition – who through Jackson, through Blewitt, through Larry Pickering, through Pyne’s deep involvement in the Ashby plot, were the ones goading the media on to destroy their political opponents. This fixed narrative also seemingly didn’t notice, or chose not to see, that the Gillard government was the most productive government this country has ever had. Where are the facts Fairfax? Buried in a political smear campaign?
In Kate McClymont’s 2014 Andrew Olle Media Lecture on investigative journalism, she said:
‘But as journalists we should have the courage to act for more than the lofty notion of freedom of speech. We have a duty to be the voice of the powerless in our society, to stand up for them.’
Were Fairfax Media journalists standing up for the powerless in our society when they were complicit in a campaign to wrongly accuse Julia Gillard of criminality in relation to the AWU slush fund affair? It’s too late to go back and apologise for this error – the damage to Gillard’s political career and her progressive policy platform is already done. But what about Jackson and Ashby? Are Fairfax journalists standing up for truth, for the powerless voters who knew nothing of what was happening in the Thomson and Slipper affairs when Fairfax journalists refused to join the dots between these Labor ‘scandals’ and a campaign by Abbott’s opposition to destabilise the Labor government? And what about union members, whose working conditions, wages and rights will be damaged by Abbott’s campaign to destroy unions? Where are the journalists speaking truth to power on behalf of the Australian public, instead of on behalf of the Abbott opposition, and now Abbott government?
I note that Fairfax reported, but never mounted media campaigns that culminated in suggesting the Prime Minister resign, stories about Abbott’s rorting of tax-payers funds for private travel, his daughter’s secret $60,000 scholarship, his own involvement in a slush fund to destroy Pauline Hanson’s electoral fortunes (this was much more recent than 20 years ago). Is Fairfax saying that they’re only interested in following stories that can damage Labor governments? And if so, can they please explain how this represents their role of standing up for the powerless in society? I think it’s time that journalists realise that they have their own questions to answer. And until they satisfactorily answer them, the powerless in society should continue to distrust them.
Christie Proves He’s Got What It Takes To Be Republican Nominee
THE CABIN ANTHRAX, MURPHY, N.C. (CT&P) – Most right-wing pundits and political strategists believe that because of his recent actions regarding the Ebola non-crisis in the United States, New Jersey governor and Republican presidential candidate Chris Christie has proven his bona fides and will become the frontrunner in the race for the nomination.
Celebrated Republican strategist Karl Rove told Sean Hannity during an appearance on his show that Christie “proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that he should be the frontrunner.”
“Governor Christie’s ability to deflect blame onto others during Bridgegate was positively Reaganesque, said Rove. “And by locking up that brave Ebola-fighting nurse he showed that he can act recklessly and with complete disregard for science, reason, and the opinions of experts. That’s exactly what we expect out of a Republican president. I think his future is bright indeed.”
Ann Coulter, rabid right wing pundit and concentration camp survivor, also appeared on Hannity’s show.
“Christie’s actions show a real lack of reasoning and restraint, and we’ve sorely missed that erratic and impulsive behavior over the last six years,” said Coulter. “His complete lack of compassion and empathy with health care workers desperately fighting to stop the Ebola epidemic shows that he can be a real prick and a giant horse’s ass, and that really turns me on!”
The nation’s most prominent horse’s ass, Bill O’Reilly, agreed with Rove and Coulter.
O’Reilly told his elderly and weak-minded viewers that “I recognize a fellow horse’s ass when I see one, and Christie is one of the largest I’ve ever come across. Christie is a man who will act first and ask questions later, and that’s the kind of guy we need with his finger on the nuclear trigger.”
“I think Christie will be an articulate representative for our side in the upcoming election,” continued O’Reilly. “He’ll be able to express our policies of demonizing immigrants, gays, and poor black people in way that even the dumbest American will be able to relate to.”
The most recent polls of registered Republicans show that as a result of Christie’s recent hasty and uninformed decision-making, he has passed Texas Governor Rick Perry in popularity. Most of those being polled cited Perry’s low IQ as being a major stumbling block in the upcoming race. However, Perry continues to be the favorite among Tea Partiers and gun nuts.
olddogthoughts 
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