Category: Media

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Albanese should realise not everyone can second-guess his intentions

It is more than a little surprising that Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has got so much blowback for his announcements at the Canberra women’s rally against domestic violence.

Albanese has never made any secret about his goals during his first term: everything would be aimed at getting re-elected and all that he promised to do during the election campaign would be done. He said that on day one.

That’s why he went ahead with his Voice referendum, even though it became patently clear well before the referendum that he would lose and lose badly. The only change he has made to any of his pre-election promises was to tweak the third-stage tax cuts in a way that he was sure would not have any impact on his poll numbers. Continue reading “Albanese should realise not everyone can second-guess his intentions”

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ABC and the AFR begin the rehabilitation of Mike Pezzullo

Many politicians and public servants in Australia enjoy an incestuous relationship with journalists and have long done so.

Such relationships often leave the journalist compromised when some hidden detail about an interview or story is exposed, but those in this category do not mind being outed as long as they get what they deem to be an “exclusive”.

Mike Pezzullo, the former Home Affairs secretary who was terminated last year following 14 breaches of the public service code of conduct, is one person who could never be described as humble, not even by his best mate. Continue reading “ABC and the AFR begin the rehabilitation of Mike Pezzullo”

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Indian media try to blackball ABC reporter in bid to suck up to Modi

Chamchagiri is a Hindi word that refers to the practice of flattering or appeasing a superior or a person in power. It is the best way to describe the manner in which Indian media are prostrating themselves in order to blackball Australian journalist Avani Dias and portray her expulsion from the world’s biggest democracy aka India as being due to every other reason apart from the inability of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to accept a little criticism.

The manner in which journalism in the country has changed since 2014 when Modi first took office is very accurately portrayed in this Al Jazeera video.

Dias was denied a visa after her program Sikhs, Spies and Murder: Investigating India’s alleged hit on foreign soil was aired on the ABC ‘s weekly Foreign Correspondent slot in March.

Continue reading “Indian media try to blackball ABC reporter in bid to suck up to Modi”

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Andrew Probyn is an excellent PR operative. The ABC did well to let him go

There has been much weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth over the recent sacking of Andrew Probyn, the political editor at Australia’s taxpayer-funded broadcaster, the ABC.

Andrew Probyn. Courtesy Sky News/ YouTube
Andrew Probyn. Courtesy Sky News/ YouTube

If one were to believe all the praise gushing forth about this doughty individual, then he was a combination of all that is good about journalism.

But Probyn’s last contribution to the ABC shows that he is much better suited to a role in the public relations industry. That is, if one goes through his documentary Breaking the code, which, to be blunt, is one of the most sickening exhibitions of sucking up to some of Australia’s intelligence operatives. Continue reading “Andrew Probyn is an excellent PR operative. The ABC did well to let him go”

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ABC reduced to running American propaganda on Four Corners

The level to which Australia’s government-funded media corporation, the ABC, has sunk is illustrated by the fact that in a slot reserved for its main investigative stories, it ran an American propaganda documentary from the American publicly-funded outlet PBS on 3 July.

Vladimir Putin.
Vladimir Putin.

Titled “Putin and the Presidents”, the documentary made no effort to disguise itself, conveniently leaving out masses of context in its bid to paint the Russian president as the villain supreme.

It covers Putin’s interactions with American presidents from Bill Clinton onwards, painting the American leaders as trying to get along with the Russian president, while he did everything to spoil relationships.

One can understand the American obsession with Putin; at the moment, he is the administration’s bete noire, standing between Washington and NATO membership for Ukraine. Continue reading “ABC reduced to running American propaganda on Four Corners”

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Lehrmann’s Channel 7 interview does not show him in a good light

Ever since former Liberal Party adviser Brittany Higgins alleged, in an interview with the news.com.au website on 15 February 2021, that she had been raped in Parliament House by a colleague in early 2019, the story has rarely been out of the news. The colleague, who was later revealed to be one Bruce Lehrmann, has always denied the charge.

Image by helen35 from PixabayThe case went to a jury trial in 2022 but a juror was caught in possession of material that compromised his/her status as a jury member and a mistrial was declared. The prosecutor said later that a second trial would not be held as it would be detrimental to Higgins’ mental health.

Since then, there has been a ding-dong battle in the media, with Higgins’ supporters and Lehrmann’s supporters trading barbs. Lehrmann refused to testify in court during the trial, but suddenly decided to give an interview to Channel Seven on 5 June. Continue reading “Lehrmann’s Channel 7 interview does not show him in a good light”

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Liberal Party is still stuck in the white picket-fence era

Last weekend, Australia’s Liberal Party made history by losing a by-election to the government, something that had not happened for more than 100 years.

The seat in question, Aston, in the outer-east of Melbourne, had fallen vacant due to the retirement of the sitting member, Alan Tudge. The two main parties, Labor and Liberal, both put up female candidates.

The Labor candidate, Mary Doyle, obtained 53.62% of the vote, while the loser, Roshena Campbell, won 46.38%. Continue reading “Liberal Party is still stuck in the white picket-fence era”

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Credlin doco indicates Libs growing desperate as Vic election looms

With elections in the state of Victoria just a week away, politicians are in a feverish mood as they try to rustle up support to win their seats.

The rush to push their barrows has been sped up no end after early voting started on 14 November and reports emerged of big numbers voting ahead of the election. More than 2.2 million of the state’s registered 4.4 million voters are expected to cast their votes before election day. The first four days of early voting saw 556,193 people exercise their franchise.

Thus one can understand why badly crafted election propaganda like a Sky News documentary titled The Cult of Dan Andrews are making an appearance. The opposition is desperate to make inroads into the Labor vote, but with a leader like Matthew Guy, who went backwards in the last election, the task ahead is like rolling a huge boulder up a mountain. Continue reading “Credlin doco indicates Libs growing desperate as Vic election looms”

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Conflict of interest: ABC caught changing online story

The ABC has been caught out changing an online news report after iTWire pointed out that the report in question — about Thursday’s Q+A program — contained no mention of the fact that Alastair MacGibbon, the chief technology officer of security shop CyberCX, is currently providing advice to Medibank Group, a company which recently suffered a devastating network attack.

[This story was originally published at itwire.com]

MacGibbon was given a platform to tout his wares on the ABC’s Q+A program on Thursday with only a fleeting mention of the fact that his firm is now advising Medibank how to deal with its ransomware attack and subsequent data leak. Continue reading “Conflict of interest: ABC caught changing online story”

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Bias? Don’t know that word, says The Age editor

Another Saturday, and there’s a fresh dose of wisdom from Gay Alcorn, the venerable editor of The Age, a tabloid that is one of the two main newspapers in Melbourne. Once again, Alcorn’s gem was behind a paywall in the morning but is now free to read.

As with her effort some weeks ago — which was dissected here — Alcorn is again trying to play the balance card even as accusations of bias arise. This time, a federal election campaign is in full swing and thus the shrieks from the gallery are that much louder.

Alcorn claims the newspaper, part of once what was a large stable running under the name Fairfax Media until it was taken over by Nine Entertainment, has not moved to the right.

[I worked for the website of The Age for nearly 17 years, from June 1999 until May 2016.] Continue reading “Bias? Don’t know that word, says The Age editor”