Tag: Media Bias

Tony Abbott has a private conversation with senior Army Officers in Afghanistan and a low life reporter from Ch 7 trolls through tapes of the conversation hoping to find something to make Abbott look bad. Aha! See here…he says “..shit happens” during a conversation about casualties. Maybe if we edit the tape so the public can’t see the Army Officers agreeing with Abbott then people may think he is talking about a specific death and then we can accuse him of being insensitive. Well, that worked a treat, didn’t it?. Tabloid TV thrives on comments taken out of text so they start leading news items like Abbott accused of being insensitive and setting up polls on websites that asks Do you think Abbott was insensitive? Well, no. I don’t think Abbott is insensitive but I do I think Riley is. He selectively edits a tape of a private conversation taking two words out of context, links it to the death of a digger and then tries to suggest Abbott is insensitive. Riley, or Ch 7, then make it worse by seeking the opinions of parents of deceased diggers by asking if they think Abbott saying the words Shit Happens is insensitive. No context and a suggestion that Abbott is talking about the death of their son brings about the predictable result. The fact that Abbott isn’t talking about their son is not mentioned. Have they no ethics at all? It quickly became obvious that Abbott wasn’t being insensitive, so to try and maintain pressure on him the media changed the line of attack to ‘What he said was OK but now the story is all about Abbott’s reaction to Riley ambushing him” Look at him…stunned mullett…a man who can’t think of a reasonable answer to Riley’s below-the-belt attack can’t possibly be considered for PM. When I watched to interview I was speechless with rage at Riley’s unethical, immoral and biased behavior and I can only imagine Abbott, being the actual target, felt it more so. You can almost see him thinking – what on earth is this scruff on about? Abbott should have just turned and walked away. He didn’t and his reaction, or lack of it, gives the loony left something to salivate over for another day or so. However, I do think you’ll find that the general populace will see Abbott as a victim of poor journalism and Riley as a biased, unethical scruff. At least, that’s how I see it.

As a side issue of the incarceration of Australia Stern Hu by the Chinese government I’ve come across commentators who are somewhat confused. This from Leigh Sales on Lateline

LEIGH SALES: Well Dr Southcott, isn’t it a bit rich for the Coalition to be so exercised about this matter when the Coalition left David Hicks at Guantanamo Bay for two years without charge and for five years without a completed trial?

Excuse me! For the life of me I can’t imagine why Dr Southcott didn’t just mention the fact that Hicks was a terrorist and Hu is a businessman and there is no way known that anyone could draw a parallel between the two cases. Except if you work for the ABC; or write for The Australian for that matter. Jack the insider raises the issue as well. He raises some reasonable points, as he usually does, but also opines that the Libs shouldn’t push Rudd to do something about Hu because they left Hicks languishing in a cell at Guantanamo for almost three years. Hicks should still be in the pokey somewhere but I am not so sure about Hu but either way you’d have to draw a very long bow to connect the two in any shape manner or form.

A JOURNALIST fanatical, biased scribbler hurled two shoes at US President George W. Bush on his farewell visit to Iraq yesterday. Clown! Like David Letterman who seemingly has dozens of clerks searching film archives for Bush’s most inarticulate moments, the journalist misses one of hs trades rules – criticize but don’t ridicule the man – it detracts from the appointment of President and says more about Letterman and unprofessional journalists than about Bush. Still, the media will be all over it as if, some how or other, it makes Bush look bad.

It must be all giggles in The Australian headquarters as Fairfax journalists and staff eat their own entrails. Mike Carlton has just been sacked for not filing his column during a strike by the journalists and other media staff in Sydney and Melbourne. While Fairfax plummets further into obscurity The Australian will surely pick up the slack in circulation and all the better for the country, I might add. The story is replete with strikes, the mandatory strike breakers and a hero although Jaspan could only be a hero in a left-wing rag. I wonder if any are thinking…maybe if we hadn’t drifted so far left in a centrist country…..

Even Kerry O’Brien and Tony Jones have joined ABC staff on strike for more pay.

Management’s offer in July was for a 3.5 per cent annual wage increase, which unions have said does not keep up with inflation running at 4 per cent.

So the collective has demanded 16 % now plus two additional rises of five per cent. 26%….yep, that sure beats inflation. ABC Staff are hinting at a long strike (months even) so maybe management might consider sacking a few extreme left wingers to force some balance into the ABCs reporting with new blood. Just a thought. P.P.McGuiness supports the strike.

But not many people will miss these programs anyway. If Lateline does not go to air on television, for example, who cares? Certainly not any of the politicians who are its usual targets. After all, Lateline plays the role of a radio program of an earlier era which went out at about the same time, as Humphrey McQueen described it, of providing intelligent conversation to a tiny audience by that time too drunk or too stoned to make their own. So let the strikes roll on, with – one can only hope – a lockout not far down the line. And if the ABC’s new chief should surrender, does it matter? The Government doesn’t have to give them more tax dollars to pay for any wage increases. The only effect would be a further decline in quality of programs.

Filling in with BBC programming whilst on strike will only help to underline the ABC’s mediocrity as the Beebs is clearly more stylish in their pursuit of the dreams of the dark side. I note their campaign to undermine western efforts to combat terrorism has entered a new phase as they tell the world the Israelis are training the Kurds. This mornings mail brings this report from Opinion Journal who put the report in perspective.

“The BBC has obtained evidence that Israelis have been giving military training to Kurds in northern Iraq,” according to an online piece by Magdi Abdelhadi, the Beeb’s “Arab affairs analyst”:

A report on the BBC TV programme Newsnight showed Israeli experts in northern Iraq, drilling Kurdish militias in shooting techniques. . . . The revelation is set to cause enormous problems for the Kurds, not only in Iraq but also in the wider region. Israel is seen as an enemy of Arabs and Muslims, both inside Iraq and elsewhere in Arab and Muslim countries. Kurdish politicians will most likely come under pressure to explain what their semi-autonomous government has been up to. . . . The news will most probably increase tension between the Kurds and Iraq’s Arab population, both Sunnis and Shias, reinforcing fears that the Kurds are pursuing a secessionist agenda. This would be a serious blow to efforts for national reconciliation at a time when hundreds of Iraqis are killed every month in inter-communal violence. Iraq’s neighbours, too, will be outraged. Iran and Syria, which have long accused the Kurds of allowing the Israelis to operate on Iraqi territory, will most likely demand an explanation from the government in Baghdad. . . . The BBC report will be like the smoking gun the Arab media has spent years looking for.

The New York Sun’s Daniel Freedman, noting that “BBC reports need often to be taken with a block of salt,” says that even if true, he doesn’t “see what the big deal is. The Kurds have been victimized and betrayed by almost everyone. We’d be happy that Israel is teaching them how to protect themselves.” Here’s the big deal: The BBC is announcing that its reporting “is set to cause serious problems for the Kurds,” will deal “a serious blow to efforts for national reconciliation” in Iraq, and “will be like the smoking gun the Arab media has spent years looking for.” It certainly sounds to us as though the BBC, far from merely reporting the facts, is pandering to Arab anti-Semitism and making an active effort to promote discord in Iraq and retribution against the long-persecuted Kurds. Such despicable behavior doesn’t deserve the label “journalism.” As reader and blogger Cav says, Journalists are the new used car salespersons……

Tram Town always make an interesting read so last week when he linked to an article by Jennifer Marohasy and her post titled Déjà Vu on the ABC: Roger Underwood I duly went off and read it…most illuminating.

Just over a month ago, a Four Corners program on forestry in Tasmania was found by the The Australian Communications and Media Authority to be bias and inaccurate. This prompted Roger Underwood* to remember back 16 years when Four Corners, a program which claims to represent investigative TV journalism at its best, did a job on forestry in Western Australia:

Roger goes on to explain why he never watches Four Corners since his exposure to the bias of the ABC . Go read…it’s worth it.