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Last updated on March 6th, 2018 at 12:31 am
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
- That apparent memory leak when it comes to inconvenient leftoid statements should make him eminently qualified for Media Watch.Posted by PW on 2007 01 02 at 10:18 AM • permalink
- what’s that sound tim p? oh just my brains dripping out my ears
OT apropos of the hotted up hippie van, i prefer the stretch version
- I don’t care to remember saying anything like that. Blogging doesn’t count, anyway. So, nahhhh.Posted by boxofmatches on 2007 01 02 at 10:56 AM • permalink
“I can’t remember saying anything like that,”
Ahhhh yes, the favorite dodge for those under oath that could be charged with perjury OR are just plain stupid.
Tim Palmer, you were not under oath. So the assumption is stupidity. While not a crime as such, stupidity IS embedded in the bone marrow. What you did say and now deny OR “can’t remember”, is and has been quoted and in print.
I’m not sure which is more serious, stupidity or being a liar. My guess is, they are equal.
- OT
Watching the dignified and respectful ceremony in President Ford’s final goodbye to Washington D.C. and the nations final goodbye to President Ford.
I can’t help wondering how Mother Earth protector and once Washington D.C. insider Al Gore would have handled this, had he had something to handle.
All the gas guzzling limousines, SUV’s, and vehicles in the procession, all the jet fuel back and forth on the Presidential plane, emitting nasties into the air…stabbing Mother Earth.
I think Al would have opted for dropping the body of President Ford into a UPS (R-circled) or FedEx (R-circled) drop box.
Not so much that you are cheap, Al…but a stupid, very chunky bastard.
- Hmm well the proof of the pudding is in the eating. So no doubt “we’ll” see what happens.
However Palmer saying “We’re going to look for egregious examples of malpractice … wherever they lie” is a double negative.
Egregious is an adjective meaning outstandingly bad; shocking; or [archaic] remarkably good. So outstandingly bad or shocking examples of malpractice? Or maybe he just means archaically remarkably good examples of malpractice. But maybe he means none of these … I give up….
Methinks in this context egregious is an inappropriate adjective to use. But maybe I’m just picky.
- #13 – What the Hell was the point of kicking the lefties off the Board if nothing was going to change?
Here is some psychobable from the Xmas edition of The Economist that might help. In part, it explains how happiness can come from doing good work:
“In some fields of endeavour, such as genetic research … good work was rewarded with professional success; but in others, professional pride and corporate profit seemed to tug in opposite directions. Journalism, apparently, is a ‘prototypically misalinged profession’, staffed by reporters who want to investigate great affairs of state but read by a public more interested in stories that are scandalou, sensational, superficial.”
The ABC, being a publicly supported body, will always be staffed by those that feel that they are doing “great works of public importance”. That used to mean celebrating Australia’s achievements, but now it means tearing down “old fashioned” institutions and remaking a “modern” Australia.
I doubt that will ever change. Remaking the Board is just tinkering around the edges.
Posted by mr creosote on 2007 01 02 at 05:22 PM • permalink
- Janet Albrechtson in The Australian today on the one-sided perspective of political cartooning in Australia (and her remarks would apply equally to the US): Conservatism is no laughing matter
Cartoonists, no doubt, sincerely believe in their causes. The explanation lies not in some cartoonists’ conspiracy, but in the cartoonist’s cast of mind. There is a natural leftist habitat for the cartooning kind.
So I’ll leave you with a larger but somewhat cheeky hypothesis. Left-wing politics is essentially an emotional, instinctive Utopian kind of world peopled by romantics and dreamers. Conservatism is, on the other hand, more rational, analytical and pragmatic. That is why creative types tend to come from the Left. Right-wingers, by contrast, have real jobs.
Posted by walterplinge on 2007 01 02 at 05:46 PM • permalink
- Oh, the exquisite snarkiness of Palmer’s letter to Professor Bunyip! The side-splitting analogy to prostrate cancer, the water balloon tossed at Paul Johnson (whose I.Q. is probably only 100 or so points higher than Palmer’s), the crushing finality of his threat never to visit the Professor’s blog again. It is one thing to get up on your high horse; it is quite another to fall off in full gallop with your foot stuck in the stirrup and to be dragged over a few dozen acres of prickly-pear cactus. Hi yo, Palmer! Yoicks and away!
- #17 – I’m not sure I’m comfortable with anyone saying that the Left don’t have real jobs – if somebody values your labour enough to pay you a wage, then that’s a real job. Whether it’s creative or not is irrelevant.
If the government is paying, however, then it’s debatable whether somebody actually values your labour.
- A recent editorial in The Australian described the new Media Watch as being like “a breath of stale air”.Posted by Sensible Swim on 2007 01 02 at 06:46 PM • permalink
- The Australia/Israel and Jewish Affairs Council has previously discussed the fine work of Mr Palmer here (see the sentence beginning promisingly about half way down):
Tim Palmer was perhaps the most trenchant and obtuse of the ABC correspondents on this matter.
However, Mr Palmer has been comprehensively cleared of bias by this highly respected tv programme
Posted by Margos Maid on 2007 01 02 at 07:11 PM • permalink
- Further background about the work of Palmer here.Posted by Margos Maid on 2007 01 02 at 07:20 PM • permalink
- To be fair, the actions of Mr Palmer have been linked to improvements in Australia’s radio coverage of Israel (see bottom page 563) thus:
The radio coverage improved slightly toward the end of the year when correspondent Tim Palmer was reassigned to Indonesia.
Posted by Margos Maid on 2007 01 02 at 07:43 PM • permalink
- #24 – 25 Margos Maid. I bet these references were infact attached to Mr Palmers application for the job and undoubtedly went along way to getting him the gig.Posted by curious george on 2007 01 02 at 07:45 PM • permalink
- I’m still having trouble getting past this oxymoron:
Robert Fisk as a model of journalistic objectivity…
Does Fisk even pretend to be objective?
BTW, I live only about 5 miles from St. Andrea’s Fault, so please don’t antagonize her.
Posted by Spiny Norman on 2007 01 02 at 08:36 PM • permalink
- There is nothing wrong with creativity and Janet A is not doing us any favours with a glib dichotomy of creative types versus conservatives. Maybe it would help to have more of the context but some of us are not wild about being called conservatives without some qualifications about what it is that we want to conserve.
Bring back the eight ball over.
- #25: MM – Thank you for that link. In taking this fellow Palmer as a mere piece of scenery in the tedious melodrama of lefty journalism, I seem to have underrated him. He is obviously a swine of the first chop, with a well-known walk-on role as the quintessential Islamophile dupe to his credit. Puffed up little toad.
- It’s nonsense, and an insult to infer that we heartless patricians of the right are not creative types, some of the greatest works of fiction have come from conservatives, my tax returns being classic examples of the genre.
(A chum of mine managed to create a stunning Pavement Pollock on sunday evening, but as he’s a bit of a pinko it doesn’t really prove anything much. I did however offer some constructive criticism on the effort, and could appreciate the style, texture and nuances of the work).
- Aha! This is obviously the Tim Lambert Guide to Respecting Diversity, Dissent and All Those Other D-Words So freelY Flung About in the Disordered Snottiness of a Left-Winger’s Ego.Posted by carpefraise on 2007 01 02 at 09:24 PM • permalink
- Damn it! they’re giving both socialism and writing a bad name!
It’s just about sharing and love – what’s so hard about it?
Does give me a certain morbid curiosity about what Media Watch will be up to this year. No doubt pursuing more perfidy from irrelevant regional publications…
Posted by carpefraise on 2007 01 02 at 09:26 PM • permalink
- #37 – I tend to agree. Just because someone comes from a similar ideological perspective it’s easy to overlook the fact that they aren’t, in fact, very good.
I see better better constructed, more relevant “cheeky hypotheses” here every day.
Over here in Perth about the only thing worth reading in “The WorstWest” are Alston’s cartoons, which do a decent job of skewering the State Labor government.
The Oz should sack Janet, cut-and-paste Tim’s comments, and pay the fee into a collective tip jar to fund this blog’s future mead-fuelled orgies (of interlec-chewal debate, I mean).
- How does a nobody like Tim Palmer score a job at Media Watch?
Oh, I forgot, the only credential required is leftwing cretinism, which Palmer seems to possess in spades.These lefties never cease to amaze do they?
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.
What an absolutely appalling analogy to draw. When Mr Plmer contracts prostate cancer we will all go around and watch, yawning with tedium the whole time. That should cheer him up.The ABC never, but never, fail to amaze with the slime and bile that masquerades as journalism and current affairs on it’s airwaves.
- #32 Rafe C
Yes, weird take from Albrechtson – left equals creative, right equals boring. Strange.
I build websites for a living in a very competitive environment (creative), yet consider myself cradle to grave conservative (must make me boring). What I think she is rather clumsily saying, is that conservative cartoonists can’t be hired in the MSM simply because they are conservative. I find Bill Leak at The Oz very insightful, yet I know he’s a true-blue lefty to the core. Luenig and Spooner at The Age and Moir at the SMH I find about as amusing as a broken leg. Warren in the Daily Tele also has his moments but is probably more right than left.
- I agree Bonmot, although if you were to stereotype creative types, you would pigeon hole them as leftys. Think almost anyone in Australian TV (well, let’s apply ‘creative’ loosely, too). Almost everyone in the graphics community is lefty (just look at the orange sofa postings in the forums (fora?) at http://www.mactalk.com.auand you will see what I mean. As a web designer I am sure you would find yourself in a minority.
I put such a world view down to an expectation that their ‘art’ does not get the recognition it deserves, and the market must therefore be adjusted to meet this reality. Hence a preference for big, nanny states.
- #46 entropy
Nice insight entropy.
Many of my associates in the industry are even more conseravtive than I am. I think they can be pigeonholed into upwardly aspirational/arrived, or wouldabeens, therefore chip on shoulder (lefty).Successful people tend not to begrudge other successful people their success – so his Audi cost more than my BMW – let’s aspire to his Audi, not try to tear it of him.
Wealthy lefty’s (Phillip Adams, Mike Carlton spring to mind), all made their fortunes out of Satan’s tools – advertising and media – before they found the moral purity of the left. Make your pile, then preach. Always get it in the right order.
- What I think she is rather clumsily saying, is that conservative cartoonists can’t be hired in the MSM simply because they are conservative.Spot on, Bonmot. I can’t believe that there are no talented conservative cartoonists out there. I can believe that they are not being hired. There are lots of great conservative cartoonists in the USA, contrary to a comment above.
- Maybe Mr Palmer is Spanish?
Until recently, to cover the wounds of the Civil War, everyone in Spain apparently kept to an unwritten agreement known as the pact of forgetting. Mere mention of hte civil war has been kept out of everything, from politics to dinner-party conversations. (The Economist).
The pact of forgetting. I like that. Must be a secret lefty club of some sort.
The first rule of pact of forgetting….. I forget.
Posted by mr creosote on 2007 01 03 at 05:55 AM • permalink
Tim is also the winner of a UN Media Peace Prize.
Well, that pretty much says it all, doesn’t it. Glad to see your media watchdogs have such an able leader. What an insufferable twit.
Posted by Kyda Sylvester on 2007 01 03 at 10:35 AM • permalink
- A tenuous link at best, and several independent scientific reviews could find no reason for it; just another statistical anomaly, which resulted in the ABC bailing to new premises at great cost. Odd that a starving, slowly stranulating organisation can come up with the ackers at the drop of a hat to satisfy the paranoid delusions of staff with too much time on their hands (although the Toowong property would be worth a poultice).
Odd also that the fact that most females working for the ABC would fit the demographic of late (if ever) breeding, early consumption of the cotraceptive pill etc which increases risk of breast cancer exponetially, irrespective of environment.BTW, my old man dies of prostate cancer, and it was far from lingering. If I ever run into Mr Palmer, I shall give him one square on his elevated proboscis.
- Habib – Odd also that the fact that most females working for the ABC would fit the demographic of late (if ever) breeding, early consumption of the cotraceptive pill etc which increases risk of breast cancer exponetially, irrespective of environment.
You nailed it in one. If there were such a thing as environmental causes for breast cancer, why not for prostate, liver, throat and all the other cancers. If anyone had bothered to case study the women involved, they would have discovered exactly what Dr Habib found.
- the ultra top secret breast cancer device was perfected in underground israeli laboratories by devious zionist scientists,funded by halliburton.
the device emits a form of radiation that induces breast cancer exclusively in leftards and was smuggled into the abc’s toowong studios under his jacket by john howard
a similar testicular cancer device was also secreted into the building but has unaccountably failed to produce any results.
Posted by eeniemeenie on 2007 01 03 at 08:24 PM • permalink
- LOL eenie. Your explanation is the only one I have seen that makes any sense.
In all the many reports I saw on the Toowong studios, not one included any theory for what would be causing the diseases.
For some reason, I was reminded of that mass hysterical reaction to a mystery non-existent gas at Melbourne Airport.
I have no real hope, but it would be nice if the ABC staffers learn something about balanced reporting while they are working out of the commercial channel studios.
- Now, i for am one against irrational fearmongering against suppossed cancer risks, and my own views would tend towards the demographic factors, but I only think it fair to point out that int he case of the toowong studio it is more than just a statistical anomaly, but significantly different (in a statistical sense). Something weird was happening there (although rather than the studio, my hypothesis is that it could in fact be caused by a critical mass of shrewish moonbattery).
- RMIT had another similar gerbil-wormening type outbreak of blind hysteria over a microwave transmission-caused cluster of brain tumours, which also proved to be bollocks.
A nasty cynic might suggest that the harbouring of leftist dogma is proven to cause cereberal atrophy, so why not metatsis? Has there been no research into the prevalence of breast cancer among the vinegar-titted?
- #35, sorry, Palmer…Posted by carpefraise on 2007 01 04 at 08:59 AM • permalink
- I think Janet A is on the right track re creative types being lefties, but a more comprehensive analysis of the situation is to be found in Robert Nozick’s “Why Do Intellectuals Oppose Capitalism”. Basically the so-called intellectuals ruled the schoolyard, so when they get into the real world and find that other people make more money than them, well it must be a failure of the (capitalist) system, hence they become socialists….Posted by Secret Squirrel on 2007 01 05 at 01:20 AM • permalink
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