“They aren’t supposed to be political players, they’re supposed to be objective reporters of the news and I think many of them have morphed into frustrated politicians themselves ... I think regardless of what Tony Abbott does, Fairfax will say it’s bad. I think regardless of what Joe Hockey or the Abbott government does, Fairfax will say it’s bad.”

When the interviewer noted that journalists were being helped by government members who were leaking and backgrounding, Dutton added: “They’re being helped by the ABC as well, there’s no question about that, some elements of the ABC.”

Dutton made even stronger remarks in an interview with Sky News. “There is a bit of a jihad being conducted by Fairfax at the moment,” he said.

The Labor leader, Bill Shorten, said the Abbott government was “becoming a giant blame factory”.

read more: http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/sep/01/peter-dutton-fairfax-media-trying-to-bring-the-government-down

As I have said before, Heydon is pushing the barrow of crap... If he really believe the judgement he made on himself, he would not have stopped himself from going to the Liberal Function. End of story...

Writing a 64 pages ruling on the matter is like writing a book of excuses...

Whether or not you agree with him, Dutton did us all a favour in so bluntly querying the impartiality of some political coverage. He said what many feel. But if the line between reporting and opinion is becoming too blurred - and that includes the ABC as much as other news outlets - that's also a reflection on how we want our news as much as how we get it. Whether that's a wholly good thing is itself debateable.

Terry Barnes is a policy consultant and former Howard government adviser. Twitter: @TerryBarnes5

read more: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-09-02/barnes-does-dutton-have-a-point-about-media-bias/6742332

---------------

Here, Terry Barnes, former advisor to the Rattus Government (Liberal [CONservative]), writes 1,037 words about the media being biased against Turdy, BUT NOT ONCE, as far as I could see, did he mentioned any of the Murdoch Press, which to say the least control 70 per cent of the media's opinions in this country.

And where are those Murdoch opinions opinionated towards? Towards religiously and fanatically supporting Tony Abbott and his team of cockups doers, of fucups engineers and of SNAFU generals.

The Murdoch Media promotes the lies, the porkies and the dishonesty of this Abbott government as if all this was paradise on a stick. It's not.

Abbott lies and is completely useless.

So what else does the other media has to say about Abbott. Most of other media actually straight reports what the government is doing which is on average a full blown stuff-up every ten minutes. So all the Government stuff ups appear in the "other" media, stuff ups which are swept under the carpet by Uncle Rupe's stables, not because the other media is looking for these stuffups (it is looking for them nonetheless) but BECAUSE THE GOVERNMENT IS GOOFING UP big time, all the time. Simple...

For some in the greying commentariat, social media and the progressive journalists who harness it represent an inconvenient intrusion into the discourse rather than a new, unbreakable order, writes JR Hennessy.

The Australian's daily editorial page, which imagines itself as the pulse of the nation, is looking mighty sluggish these days.

Today's editorial, which swipes at the "green, anti-establishment and progressive" views of young journalists, alleges that, beholden to the slings and arrows of social media, the credibility of a publication erodes without a strong editorial hand to stave off leftist flights of fancy.

The entire thing smacks of a rapidly stagnating media establishment both unwilling to apprehend its own myriad biases and completely unprepared for the challenges of a changed media landscape.

The uncredited writer (my bet is on Chris Kenny, but I'm open to debate) points to Friday's absurd Border Force debacle as proof that Australia's media lacks quality control, merely acting as a loudspeaker for the hysterical progressivism of Twitter.

This is contrasted with The Australian, of course, which benefits from the staid hand of "journalists and editors who have spent decades amassing knowledge and insight in their chosen fields". Bah humbug. To the author, social media and the progressive journos who harness it represent an inconvenient intrusion into the discourse rather than a new, unbreakable order.

First things first: it is baffling that The Oz dedicates so much of its time to sledging Twitter, which maintains a comparatively miniscule slice of Australian users, many of whom rarely tweet. The real source of this angst appears to be columnists like Kenny, who spends more time sparring on Twitter than the progressive journalists he decries. That the mosh pit of Facebook might actually be more representative of the way Australia engages with politics is anathema to this profoundly odd narrative of social elites and their Twitter country club.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-09-02/hennessy-anti-twitter-editorials/6743480

I bet on the editor at large, Paul Kelly...

Join my ‘jihad’ against this rotten Australian government

Posted by John, September 1st, 2015 - under Abbott government, ABC,Fairfax, Media, Murdoch, Neoliberalism, Social Democracy, Social services.

Another day, another idiot Minister. On Tuesday it was the turn of Peter Dutton, the Immigration Minister in charge of torturing children, women and men on Nauru and Manus Island.

As an aside do Ministers have a competition going to see who can stuff things up the best each day? After the border farce that was operation fartitude, I would have thought Dutton was the Brownlow medal favourite for the year. There was no need for him to go for a second attempt. But he did.

Dutton said in an interview: “The reality is that there is a bit of a jihad being conducted by Fairfax at the moment, [it’s] hard to get a good story up in Fairfax, [they’re] publishing stories without checking with my office, stories that are factually incorrect.” Poor diddums.

Not only that but the ABC and Fairfax media were in some grand conspiracy to ‘bring the government down.’

The only collaboration I can see between Fairfax and the ABC is in exposing the criminals from 7-Eleven who have ripped off vulnerable students and other workers by paying them about half the proper rate. It is so bad that, as one of their employees told ABC, “The business is very proud of itself and the achievements and the money it’s made and the success it’s had, but the reality is it’s built on something not much different from slavery.”

Maybe that is why Dutton is upset. The ABC and Fairfax have exposed the secretly desired future industrial relations agenda of the Abbott government, something that free trade agreements are now attempting by subterfuge to introduce.

If you want real evidence of a media jihad aimed at bringing down a government, then the Murdoch Empire’s attacks on the former Gillard and Rudd Labor governments are a pretty good example.

Here are some of the front pages from Murdoch’s rags.

When Labor complained about these attacks, the response of Abbott, the then Opposition leader, was classic.  ‘If you want better coverage, be a better government.’

Yes, that seems too to be true of this incompetent, authoritarian and thoroughly anti-worker Abbott government. The problem is that ‘good government’ in the age of global recession and falling profit rates requires capitalist governments to be ‘bad’, i.e. to attack workers and their jobs, wages and conditions, to cut public services and to undermine unions as the last bastion able to resist governments of austerity and reaction.

The basic social democratic wishes of workers for a better world, born of the iron law of capitalism that to survive workers have to sell their ability to work,  conflict with the needs of capital for less and less social democratic spending and the return of that surplus value not to the working class via the state but to capital itself.

Some of the anger against Labor and now the Liberals was driven by changes in the economy and the threat this poses to both the middle classes and the working class. Some of it is driven by cuts to public health, public education, public transport and other public goods and support. Some of it too is a reaction against incompetence. Tony Abbott is giving Billy McMahon a run for his money.

All of this means that even if Fairfax and the ABC were running a jihad against the Abbott government, if the Abbott government were actually reducing unemployment, improving public services,  and seeing real living standards improve, it wouldn’t influence voters. They’d still vote for a good government.

Of course they aren’t reducing unemployment, improving public services,  and helping real living standards improve. The crisis of global capitalism, now working its way through the Chinese and Australian economies, means we are doomed to have a cycle of bad governments.

In other countries this has seen a turn to alternative political expression of anti-austerity politics, sometimes built on or at least coming out of social struggles. SYRZA in Greece, Podemos in Spain, the seemingly inexorable rise of Jeremy Corbyn to the leadership of the British Labour Party, the strong position of Sinn Fein in Ireland, the support Bernie Sanders is getting in the US, are a few examples of this social democratic desire coming out.

There is no indication that any such outbreak will occur in Australia through the current major political currents, especially not through the ALP.  Labor  in Australia is in what some British might d call the death grip of Blairism. It might occur through mass struggles, but again none at this stage look like breaking out. The union movement, for example, continues to capitulate to the bosses over most attacks and is responding not with industrial action but once again with a tepid vote Labor campaign.

Until an anti-austerity mass movement and its political expression arise we will continue to have bad government after bad government in Australia. That new formation will I suspect only happen when we decide to take action as the working class against whoever is in power, the Liberals or Labor.

read more: http://enpassant.com.au/2015/09/01/join-my-jihad-against-this-rotten-government/

We did enjoy the Australian’s editorial on Tuesday, lamenting the poor media standards of rivals the Sydney Morning Herald and the Age who allowed “the social media tail to wag their editorial direction”.

In “Bias aside, we do need to discuss quality of debate”, the Oz complained about the “trashing of media standards” and the “devaluing of journalistic experience” which, of course, Rupert Murdoch’s broadsheet avoided at all times with its “strong and experienced editorial guidance”. “At the Australian we know newspapers and media organisations cannot make perfect calls on each and every issue but the general tone, crucial editorial decisions and quality of coverage and analysis will be greatly enhanced, and protected, by the collective wisdom of journalists and editors who have spent decades amassing knowledge and insight in their chosen fields,” the leader in the august organ said on Tuesday. “Crucial elements such as experience, fairness, good taste and social responsibility should not be sacrificed in the pursuit of Twitter-generated clicks or Facebook shares.”

read more: http://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/sep/02/the-weekly-beast-the-australian-shows-its-a-class-act-with-added-good-taste

The Murdoch media is pissing into the wind, of change... Not a good idea. One needs to be a sailor to know this. But then the Murdoch media has supported Turdy and his bad smells, his cock ups, his SNAFUs, his fucups, his incompetence and his dishonesty, because it suits the master.

The master did not want anything remotely looking an NBN appearing on your door step.

The master did not want anything done about global warming... So Turdy is fiddling all the figures he can to give the impression that something is done about it while nothing is done about global warming by his government. To the contrary, the Turdy government's idiots are demonising windmills and solar panels as much as they can, while they try to dig more and more coal out of the ground — even if this is completely uneconomical.

The master (uncle Rupe) does not like any forms of social gains. He wants the buyers of his DT to be as dumb as they come and he supplies his written opium to the buyers of his Oz to keep them as enraged and rabid right as possible. Nothing new. Idiots...