Productivity surged, but we’re becoming a low productivity nation? Yesterday, the national accounts released by the ABS showed that we had the fastest productivity growth in over a decade, in the year to the March quarter. You would think that this would give pause to the alarmists who claim that our current industrial relations laws [...]

As predicted, “good economic news” buried by media Entirely predictable: a bad economic news story, such as a fall in house prices, will feature all day as the lead story on the SMH’s online site. Yet arguably the most important domestic economic news in 2012–today’s first quarter ABS GDP data–which more than doubled economist expectations [...]

The ACL’s bizarre obsession with gay people. Overwhelmingly, the ACL was preoccupied with gay people. It’s not quite half of their total output, at 44%, but considering that Jesus had exactly zero to say about homosexuality, it doesn’t look very good, no matter how the ACL might try to rationalise this discrepancy. On the things [...]

Following is an extract from “Media War Junkies Unite”, an essay by Antony Loewenstein from Left Turn: Political essays for the new Left which is edited by Loewenstein and Jeff Sparrow, and which was released last week. The decade since 11 September 2001 has seen a litany of western journalists, editors, writers, opinion makers and [...]

Burying the Lead Much of the discussion around the future of mainstream media journalism is about money. Who’s going to pay the journos’ salaries? What’s a viable business model? Will the revenue generated by the erection of paywalls be sufficient to make up for the loss of audiences? The more interesting question is what happens [...]

Political media, cure thyself – it can’t be that hard …all are steeped in the old media paradigm where it’s more important to get the story first, instead of writing it best; where the journalist decides what’s in the public interest instead of the community making that decision; and where the personal views of celebrity [...]

A Fading Star It’s always amusing when the media’s narrative is thrown into disarray by facts. The conclusion of the investigation into The Star appears to be just that. … The level of build-up suggested that the report, once it was released, would be second only to the FWA report into Craig Thomson. Except, of [...]

Sleazy, nasty, dirty and wrong: Just another day at The Australian In recent days The Australian has launched a vitriolic and highly personal campaign against Margaret Simons the director of the Centre for Advanced Journalism at Melbourne University. The campaign is aimed at discrediting Meg and her colleagues (me included) who teach journalism and who [...]

Uhlmann impertinent, off point The political anchor of the national broadcaster’s principal current affairs program should respect his appointment by establishing the right balance in interviews – between inquiry, engagement and sense of occasion. On Wednesday night, Uhlmann displayed none of these. Keating, at The Drum.

Spinning Wheel A health warning to consumers of the mainstream media: When a news story starts with the words “is expected to”, activate the bullshit detector. And when that news story involves forecasts about economic statistics, shift the detector to warp speed. So it was that Aunty ABC woke me at 6am with the sombre [...]