King Rupert farts out another decree, and Stop Murdoch says "Farewell"!

'The Guardian' report that the emporer has no clothes [21/10/10]:

... Our new world is one of modern mass communication, phone and text, without limit. Democracy will be from the bottom up, not from the top down. Even so, a free society requires an independent press: turbulent …enquiring…bustling…and free.

That's why our journalism is hard-driving and questioning of authority. And so are our journalists. Often, I have cause to celebrate editorial endeavour. Occasionally, I have had cause for regret.

Let me be clear: We will vigorously pursue the truth – and we will not tolerate wrongdoing. ...

We have nothing more to say about the emporer and his wideranging posse of arselickers, apologists, liars, warmongers, free marketeers, racists, anti-intellectuals, religious bigots and sexists - from his readers and advertisers, to his fascist mates in the establishment and our political leaders.

Just remember it's your taxes that pay for the Government who refuse to curtail his monopoly media control, along with the advertising dollars which keeps his crummy propaganda sheets afloat.

We wish you and yours a nice future.

It's only because of people like Drew Hutton and the refugee advocates who handed out flyers to the ugly rednecks at Adelaide Hills last night that this might be possible!

Take care of yourselves.

Stephen Mayne Tries To Stop Murdoch

News Corporation held its annual shareholders meeting in New York on Friday. The 'New York Times' had an interesting piece about it.

On the subject of their increasingly obvious, embarrassing and unhinged bias, Murdoch and the board were unapologetic:

The shareholder also asked Mr. Murdoch and the chairman of the audit committee, Sir. Roderick I. Eddington, if the company “weighed the reputational risk, given that this is a media company and there are very clear concerns about the objectivity of news reporting and the perception that such sizable contributions” would compromise the company’s news gathering activities.

Mr. Eddington said, “donations of this type are also evaluated and reviewed by our general counsel, to make sure they’re appropriate in that context as well.”

Stephen Mayne was there and has posted about his contribution to the shareholder question and answer session. It's worth checking out the whole thing, especially the parts about the phone hacking scandal and Murdoch's attempts to pretend he's never heard of Jon Stewart, Bruce Guthrie, Bruce Dover or any of their writings.

But our favourite laugh was right at the end when Mayne congratulates Murdoch for firing Glenn Milne:

Mayne: ... Well done for firing Glenn Milne, that, ah, journalist of yours who drunkenly pushed me off the stage at the WalkleyAwards in 2006 live on national television. It was a disgrace. You defended him at that last gathering we had. But you fired him since, and I'd like to say congratulations for finally doing that, and thankyou for your time today.

Murdoch: Thankyou, I'm not responsible for firing him, but that's fine. I didn't know anything about it.

Do Mayne and Murdoch know something we don't? Sure Milne has been spending the last few months as a kind of Murdoch Fifth Column spouting his rubbish at their ABC, but is there something we missed?

Do you know if Milne has really been 'fired'?

The Gold Coast Sun Has A Problem With "The Truth"!

"... In publishing this story, the Sun does so without an accompanying image on our front page, mainly because of the emotion fuelling debate on genuine - and not-so-genuine - asylum seekers in detention. ..."

What is the sound of coffee or beer or some other liquid involuntarily coming out of your mouth when you see something astonishing?

Prrphhsssttt...! (cough, gag, cough splutter...)?

So, Murdoch, "Mr Truth", fabricates a non-story (yet again, ho hum) and screams at no-one in particular that HE DEMANDS THE TRUTH!!!

Bizarro World? Parallel Universe? Inverse Reality?

Is there anything that can be done about these people? Who knows, but we're certainly not going to die wondering. We decided to write to the Minister and ask him:

Chris Bowen MP
Minister for Immigration and Citizenship
Parliament House


Dear Minister,

I refer to articles published in this week's 'Gold Coast Sun'.

Appalling journalism and xenophobic fear mongering aside, I think it is the 'Gold Coast Sun' who are not telling the truth.

Could you please confirm if expanded services for refugees are to be placed on the Gold Coast?

Could you also please confirm whether these stories contain any truth at all?

Regards,


Gold Coast citizen.

Maybe you could try it yourself sometime?

Why do academics who claim to be calling for progressive change keep writing for the Murdoch Press?

Today 4ZzZ's 'Anarchy Show' [11/10/10] reported that Professor Ross Fitzgerald wrote something about the Queensland Police force in last weekend's 'Australian'.

Odd.

In any case, no Australian with a brain is reading the Murdoch Press anymore.

Perplexing that academics and other commentators keep writing for it, linking to it (do they know that gives Murdoch money?) and referring to it.

The symptoms are eerily similar to Battered Person Syndrome:

In lay terms, this is a reference to any person who, because of constant and severe domestic violence usually involving physical abuse by a partner, becomes depressed and unable to take any independent action that would allow him or her to escape the abuse. The condition explains why abused people often do not seek assistance from others, fight their abuser, or leave the abusive situation. Sufferers have low self-esteem, and often believe that the abuse is their fault. Such persons usually refuse to press criminal charges against their abuser, and refuse all offers of help, often becoming aggressive or abusive to others who attempt to offer assistance. Often sufferers will even seek out their very abuser for comfort shortly after an incident of abuse.

That seems to be what's going on with these people who, you would think, should know better.

What will it take for Australians to stand up and say "enough is enough"?

'The Age' report [9/10/10]:

Television producer and on-air personality Andrew Denton is on a secret News Limited blacklist of public figures who are not welcome in Rupert Murdoch's national newspaper, The Australian, according to a book being launched this week.

Former Herald Sun editor-in-chief Bruce Guthrie, in his book Man Bites Murdoch, says he first got wind of the Murdoch blacklist when he was editor of the Weekend Australian Magazine in 2005 and Denton was profiled in a regular segment ''Ten things you didn't know about … ''

Guthrie says the deputy editor, Graham Erbacher, approached him and half-whispered: ''You know that Denton is persona non grata around here.'' Guthrie asked why. ''It all goes back to Super League,'' Erbacher replied. ...

In 1999 Denton aired his feelings on the ABC show Australian Story: ''I wish I could take Lachlan Murdoch (and) Ken Cowley by their smug little jowls and sit them down for a while and explain something to them … Tradition in sport is a very, very powerful thing.''

Three weeks after the ''Ten Things'' segment on Denton appeared, the paper's editor-in-chief, Chris Mitchell, phoned Guthrie to ask why he had published it. Guthrie says he replied: ''It was pretty innocuous stuff, Chris. (It) even said nice things about Rupert.''

Mitchell: I've just had Lachlan on the phone from New York and he's not happy. In fact he's very pissed off.

The Age Media Browser column reported in August the existence of a blacklist of Murdoch enemies. In his book, Guthrie says he asked Mitchell who else was on the blacklist. He says Mitchell replied: ''You'll know when it happens.''

A newspaper search of the past two years found 78 stories in The Australian that mentioned Denton, 90 in The Age and 108 in the Herald Sun.

It will be interesting to read the book and see whether it follows the typical style of memoir of ex-Murdoch staff. Hugh Lunn did it with Working For Rupert, and Andrew Neil, who was a senior lieutenant of Murdoch, including as editor of The Sunday Times in London, for 11 years up until 1994, later wrote Full Disclosure. John D’Arcy, who was a senior loyal lieutenant to Murdoch for years before Murdoch cruelly flew him to London at short notice to give him the shaft, wrote Media Mayhem.

There are plenty of others. They all follow the general pattern: "Rupert Murdoch is a cruel, vindictive, shifty, duplicitous despot who rules through fear and anxiety. I knew this and here are some examples. Then, one day he shafted ME! It was so unfair."

If you know any young people who are considering working for Murdoch, force them to read some of these books first. Then challenge them to find a single book about what a terriic and honest bloke Murdoch is. Even his authorised biography by Michael Wolff, The Man Who Owns The News, doesn't manage it.

We already know what type of person he is and what type of organisation he runs. What will it take to stop this?

At least in the U.S. he pays them to kiss his arse

In Australia they do it for free!

Imagine reading a piece like this in any Australian media:

A note to Tea Party activists: This is not the movie you think it is. You probably imagine that you’re starring in “The Birth of a Nation,” but you’re actually just extras in a remake of “Citizen Kane.” ...

As the Republican political analyst David Frum put it, “Republicans originally thought that Fox worked for us, and now we are discovering we work for Fox” — literally, in the case of all those non-Mitt-Romney presidential hopefuls. It was days later, by the way, that Mr. Frum was fired by the American Enterprise Institute. Conservatives criticize Fox at their peril.

So the Ministry of Propaganda has, in effect, seized control of the Politburo. What are the implications?

Perhaps the most important thing to realize is that when billionaires put their might behind “grass roots” right-wing action, it’s not just about ideology: it’s also about business. What the Koch brothers have bought with their huge political outlays is, above all, freedom to pollute. What Mr. Murdoch is acquiring with his expanded political role is the kind of influence that lets his media empire make its own rules.

Thus in Britain, a reporter at one of Mr. Murdoch’s papers, News of the World, was caught hacking into the voice mail of prominent citizens, including members of the royal family. But Scotland Yard showed little interest in getting to the bottom of the story. Now the editor who ran the paper when the hacking was taking place is chief of communications for the Conservative government — and that government is talking about slashing the budget of the BBC, which competes with the News Corporation.

Australia is in deep trouble. Both main parties are willing slaves to the neo-liberal free-market fundamentalism which is rotting our country to its core, and they are willing slaves to the Murdoch propaganda arm of that ideological movement.

If you don't do something to raise your voice against that, you are also playing along.