The Tide Is Turning

Who would ever have imagined that Laura Tingle would be able to say this on tonight's [10/09/10] Lateline?

... Leigh Sales: Laura Tingle in your regular Friday column today you wrote that the Labor minority government is trying to figure out whether to respond to what it sees as a ferocious and continuing campaign against its legitimacy by News Ltd. newspapers. Elaborate on that for us.

Laura Tingle, AFR: Leigh, I think that there has been a long history of tension particularly with the Australian with Kevin Rudd. And it was always seen as an issue with the Australian rather than News Ltd.

The News Ltd. tabloids seem to have escalated their aggression towards the Labor party during the election campaign, but I think it's really been the post campaign push against/ attacks on the credibility of a minority government as an idea, the attacks on the independents and The Greens, which has made people think "this isn't going to go away. We're not quite sure why this is happening, but we've got to decide whether we actually confront this, or whether we just let it go through to the keeper."

I suppose the interesting thing is, I think there are interesting issues here for both News Ltd. and for the government because there are all these commercial decisions, that the government will have to take which will have a direct impact on News.

It's a very big elephant in the room, and I think we don't really know how that's going to play out. And it's also not just Labor, it's the Greens and the independents and we've got Bob Brown now, talking about how he's had enough of the way News Ltd has been behaving and he's not going to cop it anymore.

Leigh Sales: George Megalogenis, I don't want to put you in an awkward position, I'm sorry, but you are a News Ltd. journalist ....

Who wouldn't be "sorry" for anyone who ends up being a News Ltd "journalist"?