The Weekend Australia 25-8-12

Ok, what have we got today?  Surprise, there are several rabid anti-government “get Gillard” right wing attack pieces.  Let’s have a look.

The Inquirer, page 14, on the AWU Workplace Reform Association.

A long puff piece by a certain Hedley Thomas ostensibly about the media being tamed and silenced by Julia Gillard.  No really.  Also that the media has self-censored over just this particular issue.  Yeah, seriously.

There’s a whole lot of heavy language in the piece but there does not appear to be a story.  The headline is “Media’s shameful silence”, and the sub-heading is “The response to new information about Julia Gillard was a disgrace” (I think he means that the Prime Ministers  magnificent 1.3 hour smack down of Headley and his type on Friday was too much for him to bear).

He is factually false in this piece.  He does know better but a lawyer who is instructed to prepare documents to establish an entity is not the promoter or “creator” of that entity.  The then lawyer, Julia Gillard, did not “create” the entity in question.  Mentioning that the promoter or creator was her then boyfriend is proper journalism, but that fact of course does not make her guilty of anything, especially as his union was a client of her firm and he an office holder of the union.  Taking instructions from him to do legal work, therefore, would not appear to be unreasonable.  

Being a “Labor law firm” undertaking legal work for many unions, of whom the ALP is the political arm, there is as everybody knows less of a separation between the firm, its union clients and the ALP than would exist in normal circumstances between a law firm and its clients, except with the “Liberal/business law firms” on the other side of politics.  So she can hardly be crucified for knowing that these entities were typically set up as re-election funds.  

But she cannot be associated with any subsequent wrongdoing by others who were in control of the entity in question without evidence, of which there does not appear to be any, and none has been unearthed during the 17 years that many have been trying.

Hedley actually goes on in the article criticising all journalists who have not joined him and The Australian is his howling daily hate campaign against Julia Gillard.  He is angry about this so calls it “shameful silence” and “a disgrace”.  Maybe all the other senior journalists in Australia are just more professional and don’t see themselves as a branch of the Liberal Party’s media unit.

Headley’s whole excitable investigative hunt on this one has seemed to have fizzled.  I get the feeling that Headley has fizzled before, a long time ago, and that he has found security of tenure in shock jockery at News Limited, a known refuge for many of the lesser lights of journalism.

We also have a front page piece by David Crowe that is really quite strange.  The whole article is just a rehash of the soap operatic script being run by The Australian.

It starts with an odd and contradictory, indeed confusing, series of sentences:  “Julian Gillard didn’t need Artem Naumov’s help on Thursday but it certainly came in handy”.  What?  This guy had nothing to do with anything, he just wandered in past security.

But look at the internal dynamics of the sentence: Julia Gillard didn’t  need the help of a random nobody.  Well no, but Crowe is presumably saying this because she didn’t need his (the intruder’s) help.  Yeah, no, the prime Minister didn’t need the help of a stray guy who wandered in.  Hmmm.  “…but it certainly came in handy”.  Hmmm, yeah.  No.

Paragraph 2: “If Labor loyalists are lucky, the affair might one day be remembered only for the odd intruder…”.  If I was a lucky Labor Loyalist I would rather remember that the Prime Minister put to rest the campaign against her by The Australian on this matter.  But hey!

Then this in the next paragraph, “…the security breach became an unexpected bonus for a Labor team…”.  Jesus!  For fucks sake!  This is the front page of our only national newspaper.   The Australian runs an attack campaign against the Prime Minister and she is forced to give a press conference at which she brilliantly smacks down these hateful bastards, and the front page is written by a nutter who insists on talking about a guy who walked in past security. But worse: he is projecting that others have this as their main concern as well!!  He is telling the public what the “Labor team” and “Labor loyalists” are thinking!  What is he claire voyant?  This newspaper is a pathetic.

Another article, on page 18 of The Inquirer, by Brendon O’Neill, about Julian Assange.

This article is just plain stupid.

“…it is not the war on WikiLeaks that is damaging the free exchange of ideas and the health of our societies; it is wikiLeaks itself”.  Really?

WikiLeaks and its supporters “need to grow up”.  Gosh.  It is a myth that WikiLeaks exposed the “dirty laundry” of the powerful.  By “dirty laundry” I guess he means the war crime of purposefully murdering a whole bunch of innocent journalists and others from a helicopter gunship?  Glad he’s downgraded it to dirty laundry.

O’Neill talks about “…the bizarre ideals of transparency…”.   He then actually says this: “WikiLeaks is…the [result] of officialdoms own inability to keep a lid on info…”.  Ok, ok….no, I don’t know what to say about that.

Later in the piece: “…WikiLeaks makes a virtue of modern institutional decay…glorifying it as “whistleblowing” [his italics]”.  No Brendon, they don’t have any policies on the promotion of “institutional decay”, they do say that they want to strengthen institutions by exposing them when they abuse their power.  It is you who thinks whistleblowing causes what you call institutional decay.  The actual fact is that societies that lack transparency are more likely to be corrupt, and suffer from “institutional decay”, if you like.   So it’s that exact oppose of what you say.

He conflates whistleblowing with leaking.  He argues that whistleblowing makes politicians “less honest”.  He says that “transparency begets suspicion”.  He says that, “Even the Vatican…is being rocked by a leaking scandal…”.  Shock horror!

I don’t know if the editor of The Australian really had the time to look at this one but it sounds like fascist rantings.  But perhaps he did?

Then we got another climate denier article.  Yep, they’re still at it.

Joanne Nova, Inquirer, page 15.  The whole article is rubbish.  Here’s a good bit:

“Sure, the opinion of a climate scientist is worth more than the opinion of a physicist, but is each climate scientist worth more than 420 other scientist’s ?  Who knows?  The answer to that is that it’s a stupid question”.   What can I say,  I agree!

Now to the EDITORIAL.  Yes, the opinion of the editors of our only national newspaper.

On the weeks Julia Gillard issue.  The editor first castigates other journalists for not doing their job and preaches to them about how they are letting down democracy.  I just coughed up my lozenge.

The editorial then describes a series of innocuous events: “…she had established a union…fund” [correction, she did not “establish anything, she was the lawyer who did the paperwork], “…she resigned…”, etc, but then says that, “This is all particularly controversial because…” other people did bad things.  But you see, it’s an article about Julia Gillard and the word “controversial” has been used close to her name.  Get it?

Then this: “We do not know what other action she took, if any, to alert authorities”.  Why was this sentence written?  We do not know what other action…anything about anything.  We do not know.  Not we know do.  Know not we do.  Why?  What?  Again, a subtle slur.  What is she hiding?

The editorial ends with another call to arms to other journalists to get on board the hate train.  It castigates again those who it sees as tardy and even names them, as does Headley Thomas in his piece.  Barry Cassidy: bad, Michelle Grattan: bad, etc. 

What News Limited is got going here is both a business model and a partisan political campaign.  Putting some balanced and left wing articles in the paper does not justify incendiary rubbish in the majority attack articles.  The small number of balanced articles are obviously put there to create deniability, a defence in the face of exposure of abject bias.

News Limited is abusing the privilege of having a licence to publish newspapers.  It has a very important position in our political system and in society.  It is playing cynically, selfishly and loose with the Forth Estate.  They just love the rotten stuff that they produce, belittling the national conversation for financial and political gain.   

Headley Thomas boo hooed the description of News as the evil empire.  But it is actually an evil empire, it really is.  It is a colossal criminal corporation who trashed all decency in their practices in the UK and has destroyed decent journalism in the US.  It has contributed to the decline of civil society in the US.  Thank God the British system was able to rise to the challenge and bring it to account, at least for the time being.   It is also dragging down decent debate and dialogue in Australia.