May, 2012

Surely an honest mistake at the Daily Telegraph: Mr Abbott addressed his own party room, with polls showing his satisfaction level had hit a low of 60 per cent. Because according to The Australian: Mr Abbott’s personal support is now at its lowest level since he became Opposition Leader in 2009, with dissatisfaction hitting a [...]

Andrew Bolt tries to make his readers feel SMART for believing that humans can pump whatever we like into the atmosphere with NO EFFECTS WHATSOEVER because MAGIC. “Slowly, the smart people are winning”, he declares, linking to a Fox News story yesterday about a survey they assert shows “that people who are not that worried [...]

“This is not the sort of show where some autocue-reading pretty boy sits at a desk and feeds you pablum and tells you what to think. If you want that, you go and watch Q&A.” – Sean Micallef, Mad as Hell. Every Monday night, the ABC broadcasts a discussion and debate program known as Q&A [...]

When the two big old political parties work together to try to silence a newspaper for reporting what they’ve been up to with voters’ information, that’s when you should be concerned: Yesterday the Victorian Parliamentary Electoral Matters Committee, chaired by Liberal MP Bernie Finn, handed in its report on the 2010 election. In doing so, [...]

I don’t know about you, but I’ve got a feeling that this will be the week that the national media turn it around. That they show us what a fine Fourth Estate they really can be. That political journalists start focusing on policy, that the newspapers foster a real debate between experts on all sides [...]

David “Five Star” Penberthy, editor of News Ltd’s The Punch and former editor of the Daily Telegraph, finally notices some of the deranged paranoid hysteria out there amongst sections of the public: The question is whether the level and nature of the abuse is the same as it has always been, or whether there is [...]

Despite the malign intent of Jeremy’s new modem, the frailty of Skype and the multilayered levels of frustration we both experienced, we have a new episode for you. This week we briefly revive the cut and paste trophy and have a long overdue LOLBolt section, along with the stories of the week. You can download [...]

Bernard Keane in Friday’s Crikey daily email, calling bullsh*t on more contrary-to-the-facts business lobby whinging about every difficulty they face being the fault of the government: We need a name for this — we’re calling it Whinger Whack-A-Mole. Business leader after business leader sticks their head up to blame Julia Gillard for all their own [...]

Task for the day: spot the inclusion of a single dissenting opinion in the Australian’s coverage of ABC “groupthink”. — Stephen Spencer (@sspencer_63) May 26, 2012

I just love journalists running Tony Abbott’s new faux concern schtick as if it were something other than a transparent demand to be appointed PM: This morning Mr Abbott, who has been leading the political assault on Mr Thomson, shifted the emphasis of his calls on him to quit. He called on Prime Minister Julia [...]