Tuesday, January 02, 2007
MEDIA WATCHER “CAN’T REMEMBER”
Newly-appointed Media Watch executive producer Tim Palmer has a short memory:
Palmer, writing on a left-wing website, cited anti-Israel journalist Robert Fisk as a model of journalistic objectivity while accusing prominent Australian Jewish leaders of attempting to silence debate on the root causes of terrorism.
“I can’t remember saying anything like that,” he said yesterday.
Can’t remember? It’s right here, mate.
UPDATE. Something else Mr Palmer may not recall—a note he sent to Professor Bunyip back in 2002:
Dear Stanley
Time was when tedious right wing crackpots would shuffle off to a cabin in Montana, form a militia and (mercifully) barricade the rest of the world outside.
Now they set up the grownup’s version of the lemonade stand - a weblog.
I never thought I’d side with Mr Sheridan on anything but your piece on the virtues of colonialism has achieved that.
I haven’t laughed so hard since I read Paul Johnson’s Modern Times (obviously a seminal text for you) with its dunderheaded central issues like “who was the better President, Nixon or Reagan?”.
So how did I get to your Sargasso Sea of ideas - via Crikey of course. But don’t be too encouraged by Mayne’s reference, I, and I suspect most others, won’t be back.
You write about Margo Kingston’s log “It’s like watching some poor unfortunate have an almost-daily seizure. You should turn away, and you know it. But it’s impossible to drag your eyes off the spectacle”.
Unfortunately the same can’t be said of your site. It’s more like watching someone die of prostate cancer. It’s tedious, the viewer may die of something else in the meantime and in the long run you just don’t want to know about it anyway.
regards
Tim Palmer