Intellectual dishonesty is pure poison – A Crikey weblog

Monthly Archives: August 2009

Building the wall – very careful work indeed

August 31, 2009 – 2:05 pm

An interesting parallel between David Simon’s model for US newspapers to survive in the Internet age and current events in Australia. Writing in the Columbia Journalism Review, Simon says: Arthur Sulzberger Jr. and Katharine Weymouth, publishers of The New York Times and The Washington Post, are at the helms of two organizations trying to find [...]

By Tobias Ziegler | Posted in Fairfax, News Ltd. | Tagged , , , , | Comments (8)

Theme detected (maybe)

August 31, 2009 – 7:46 am

I’m struggling to work out if there’s a theme to The Australian‘s commentary on the government’s Building the Education Revolution program. Here’s Glenn Milne in today’s edition: In political terms Gillard went too far on Friday. Her sin was to try to pass off a $1.5 billion blowout in her Pyongyang-inspired Building the Education Revolution [...]

By Scott Bridges | Posted in David Burchell, Glenn Milne, The Australian | Comments (20)

Science proved, debate over

August 31, 2009 – 7:39 am

Reader Johnny Come Lately notes the opening paragraph of a story in The Age: SCIENTISTS studying Victoria’s crippling drought have, for the first time, proved the link between rising levels of greenhouse gases and the state’s dramatic decline in rainfall. He says: I think her use of the word “proved” is misleading; instead she should [...]

By Scott Bridges | Posted in Melissa Fyfe | Comments (37)

Open thread 31 August ’09

August 31, 2009 – 7:31 am

We love having you comment here at Pure Poison but it’s a little bit difficult for discussion to continue uninterrupted on specific posts when off-topic comments land in the middle of them. So each day we’ll launch an open thread where you can leave comments that don’t quite fit on one of the other posts. [...]

By Scott Bridges | Posted in Open threads | Comments (2)

Welcome, Dave

August 30, 2009 – 9:56 am

After a couple of excellent guest posts, I’d like to officially welcome Pure Poison‘s fourth contributor: Dave Gaukroger. When speaking in the third person Dave describes himself thusly: Dave Gaukroger lives in rural NSW and began blogging in 2007, after finally deleting his World of Warcraft account. Dave works in the technology sector, which is [...]

By Scott Bridges | Posted in Site news | Comments (13)

Rape in the headlines

August 28, 2009 – 7:26 pm

By sheer serendipity of an unfortunate kind, two blogs I read have picked up on separate news items that follow the same theme – headlines that seem to undermine the seriousness of sexual assault: At The Dawn Chorus, Clem Bastow notes the headline “Wife stands by bike path sex predator” – when one sentence out [...]

By Tobias Ziegler | Posted in The Age | Tagged , | Comments (7)

Weekend talk thread

August 28, 2009 – 6:38 pm

Here’s an open thread for weekend discussion – political TV shows, sports, or whatever else you like. This weekend’s scheduled programming: Lateline (Friday, ABC1 @ 10:30 pm): Scott Morrison vs Jason Clare Insiders (Sunday, ABC1 @ 9:00 am): Interview with Tony Abbott; on the panel – Misha Schubert, Dennis Atkins and Gerard Henderson; on Talking [...]

By Tobias Ziegler | Posted in Open threads | Comments (16)

There must be bias at the ABC – everybody says so

August 28, 2009 – 4:50 pm

You could accuse Gerard Henderson of many things – for instance, of being Australia’s most engaging and scintillating public speaker, or of providing the most even-handed and non-partisan analysis of the Howard legacy – but you can’t accuse him of shying away from irony or hypocrisy. In the latest edition of his Media Watch Dog report (proudly [...]

By Tobias Ziegler | Posted in Gerard Henderson, Peter Costello | Tagged , | Comments (24)

Open thread 28 August ‘09

August 28, 2009 – 6:41 am

We love having you comment here at Pure Poison but it’s a little bit difficult for discussion to continue uninterrupted on specific posts when off-topic comments land in the middle of them. So each day we’ll launch an open thread where you can leave comments that don’t quite fit on one of the other posts. [...]

By Tobias Ziegler | Posted in Open threads | Comments (18)

What’s important enough for accuracy?

August 27, 2009 – 7:29 am

This is a guest post by Dave Gaukroger. __________ Scott’s post asking what journalism is has bought about some interesting responses. I think it might be fair to simply say that journalism is like hard-core pornography, hard to define, but I know it when I see it. However once journalism is defined, there is still [...]

By Scott Bridges | Posted in The Punch | Comments (14)