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IT’S WAR!

Media Watch’s blogger attack has provoked a reality-based response from The Australian. In the same paper, this from Janet Albrechtsen:

The biggest test for the mainstream media comes around each election. Like last October. While most of the media was conducting a love affair with Mark Latham, mainstream Australia spurned him, re-elected John Howard, and handed the Government a Senate majority. Go figure.

Posted by Tim B. on 05/17/2005 at 01:57 PM
  1. Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t reality what actually happens.

    Posted by Achillea on 2005 05 17 at 03:25 PM • permalink

  2. Of course, and “reality-based” is fiction that uses reality as its point of departure.

    Posted by tim maguire on 2005 05 17 at 03:35 PM • permalink

  3. So the Newsweek article was “reality-based” and the number dead in riots caused by it is “fiction-based”?  Don’t see much about it at: http://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/transcripts/

    Posted by -keith in mtn. view on 2005 05 17 at 03:54 PM • permalink

  4. Michael Gawenda in today’s Age on the Newsweek retraction: “only with the benefit of hindsight can it be argued that Newsweek should have known just how explosive this small story would prove to be”.  The Muslim ‘street’ exploding over a phoney atrocity story - gee, who woulda seen that coming?

    Posted by cuckoo on 2005 05 17 at 06:55 PM • permalink

  5. Nice editorial. I especially like the bit where she says Tim Blair is Australia’s best blogger. Good call, Janet.

    Posted by kipwatson on 2005 05 17 at 07:16 PM • permalink

  6. I had no idea that Howard’s party won a majority in the Senate.  You all are much too modest.

    Crow a little.

    Posted by papertiger on 2005 05 17 at 07:30 PM • permalink

  7. gee, who woulda seen that coming?

    Exactly.

    Brought to us by our friendly neighbourhood nuance-mongers.

    Posted by guinsPen on 2005 05 17 at 07:48 PM • permalink

  8. janet, most australians re-elected john howard. they did not re-elect you to be a columnist for the Australian. only an american ex-australian could do that.

    Posted by PlanetIrf on 2005 05 17 at 08:06 PM • permalink

  9. #8.

    ?

    Posted by guinsPen on 2005 05 17 at 08:11 PM • permalink

  10. This is delicious - Bernard Goldberg has been totally vindicated with the NYT’s admission.

    I wonder how long before the climate changers admit they have it wrong too.

    Posted by Louis on 2005 05 17 at 08:22 PM • permalink

  11. The left has all the best chants and ululations, but at the end of the day. the right holds the ground.

    Posted by richard mcenroe on 2005 05 17 at 08:35 PM • permalink

  12. And may I add, no conservative ever played folk music at me in public…

    Posted by richard mcenroe on 2005 05 17 at 08:36 PM • permalink

  13. Janet rocks and Liz sucks.

    Poor old Aunty ABC would be struggling to be regarded as part of the MSM these days anyway. I watched Mediawatch this week for the first (and last) time in years. What a bowl of cold porridge. Laughably amateurish.

    #8. PlanetIrf can be confidently expected back on Irf in a millenium or so.

    Posted by Mick Gill on 2005 05 17 at 08:37 PM • permalink

  14. I voted for Janet in the Senate.  I think she’d do a great job.  Isn’t the oz part of the MSM.  Don’t we hate the MSM. I’m getting confused.

    Posted by WomBatHed on 2005 05 17 at 09:01 PM • permalink

  15. Interesting stuff. It would seem that Janet, Arthur and Tim ably assisted by Old Media Watch have leveraged blogging in Australia. Other sites may sniff but they are not intruding into the world of media as the 2 main blogger/reporters in this story. Am I wrong in feeling that the globally known bloggers in Australia are Tim and Arthur?
    We need a word to encapsulate this emergent form in the new media. Bloggers is more than this aspect of communication. At the same time some parts of blogging don’t reside in or impact on the current affairs and news dissemination and editing of sites such as these 2.
    Tim’s network appears to be both very extensive and cutting across the divide between old and new media. A prominet node in the news etc network. Not many are however, though all are esssential to this new form. So playing on Rosen’s new journalists doesn’t cover it? Roger S’s pajama news as a term doesn’t encapsulate the specificity of the news etc blogs.
    It is a democratic form, anything there, demedialogs? It is a complex adaptive system on the edge of chaos. Emenews? chaoslogs?
    Anyway exciting to be watching the appearance of emergent properties of the world of communication here.

    Posted by Ros on 2005 05 17 at 09:11 PM • permalink

  16. Dogalogs?

    Posted by cuckoo on 2005 05 17 at 09:20 PM • permalink

  17. As much as I think the media is divorced from moderacy, Janet Albrechtsen makes two mistakes in that paragraph:

    1) The Age, The Sunday Times, The Australian, The Adelaide Advertiser and The Daily Telegraph all endorsed Howard. The Financial Review and the Sydney Morning Herald refused to endorse a candidate, and the Canberra Times went for Latham.

    2) The Sydney Morning Herald was too busy textually fellating Bob Brown to give Latham any support.

    Posted by Leigh on 2005 05 17 at 09:28 PM • permalink

  18. Cuckoo,
    thats what Marilyn Shepherd thinks that a group of Philippino’s are speaking

    Posted by Nic on 2005 05 17 at 09:44 PM • permalink

  19. Achillea — But what do we mean when we say “happens?”  Indeed, what do we mean when we say “what do we mean?”...

    Posted by richard mcenroe on 2005 05 17 at 10:05 PM • permalink

  20. #10

    Climate changers

    will admit they are wrong when hell freezes over. Don’t hold your breath!

    Posted by kae on 2005 05 18 at 01:48 AM • permalink

  21. Kae — Has anyone done the environmental impact statement yet on what effect that will have on the native imp and fiend populations? Perhaps we need some sort of transnational accord on this,

    Posted by richard mcenroe on 2005 05 18 at 02:22 AM • permalink

  22. Lee of Right-Thinking from the Left Coast is a popular blogger and an Australian. But he is living in Los Angeles so maybe he doesn’t meet the criteria.
    Still his posts are varied. He was instrumental in taking apart the LATimes, last minute before the election, attack piece on Arnold Schwarzeneggar.
    He is dedicated to excorating Michael Moore.

    Good guy mostly.

    Posted by papertiger on 2005 05 18 at 03:19 AM • permalink

  23. How about that Newsweek story MediaWatch?
    How about the Australian Interrogators in Kuwait?
    How about the recently disproved (by a much better survey) 100,000 casualties in Iraq?
    I could go on.
    When will you stop pretending to have some sort of high ground? Get off!

    Posted by blogstrop on 2005 05 18 at 06:05 AM • permalink

  24. The Age endorsed Howard? Maybe some sub-editor announced this in an editorial before the election, but the general tone of the paper is anti-Howard.

    And the SMH *was* conducting a love affair with Latham.  Alan Ramsey practically prostrated himself at the man’s feet.

    Posted by Blithering Bunny on 2005 05 18 at 07:45 AM • permalink

  25. Richard ...

    What do you mean?

    Posted by Achillea on 2005 05 18 at 03:03 PM • permalink

  26. SMH has been anti Howard for yonks - they specialise in alarming urbanites with political and ecological horror stories of cataclysmic proportions.

    In the good ol’ days it was the Sunday Mirror that used to run sensational headlines like “Vicar Caught in Sex Romp with Organ Player”

    Posted by rog2 on 2005 05 18 at 05:23 PM • permalink

  27. AUSTRALIAN BROADCASTING CORPORATION ACT 1983 - SECT 8
    1)It is the duty of the Board:
    (b) to maintain the independence and integrity of the Corporation;
    (c) to ensure that the gathering and presentation by the Corporation of news and information is accurate and impartial according to the recognized standards of objective journalism

    ABC Code of Practice — 2004

    4.1 Every reasonable effort must be made to ensure that the factual content of news, current affairs and information programs is accurate. Demonstrable errors will be corrected in a timely manner and in a form most suited to the circumstances.

    4.2 Every reasonable effort must be made to ensure that programs are balanced and impartial. The commitment to balance and impartiality requires that editorial staff present a wide range of perspectives and not unduly favour one over the others.

    Independence: the ABC, particularly in news and current affairs, now exists to reflect and pander to the tastes and opinions of leftist urban elites; its staff now acts with effective impunity
    Integrity: questions of truth and falsehood play second fiddle to the political priorities of its dominant culture
    Objective journalism: increasingly shrill and tabloid, arrogantly biased
    Demonstrable errors: are denied or corrected grudgingly or tucked away on another medium; nearly all complaints are contemptuously dismissed
    Balanced and impartial: unbalanced, partial; bled white by PC pieties
    Wide range of perspectives: narrow, hostile to other points of view, wildly out of touch with the community it should speak for

    The Board is not meeting its obligations under the act.  When will it take action against this clique?

    Posted by Inurbanus on 2005 05 19 at 05:03 AM • permalink

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