It's here, the booklet I am sure you have all been waiting for. The one which Gigi Foster and Michael Baker slaved over for 10 months . It is also on Kindle . It is dedicated to all the victims of the Panic, in poor countries and rich countries. They include our children, the...

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What do you do as an Australian parliament when a foreign company censors mainstream media content in Australia, undermining free speech ? Do you organise an inquiry to hold those foreign companies to account and to see how you might prevent foreign meddling? Or do you fall in...

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The legislated "bargaining" process between Google and News Corp is unmoored from reality. Its "final offer arbitration" is unsuited to the task. [caption id="attachment_34634" align="alignleft" width="300"] He's loaded the gun. (Photo provided by Eva Rinaldi on Flickr; CC BY-...

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In a week from now, UQ student leader Drew Pavlou will face an internal hearing at the University of Queensland to decide whether or not he will be expelled for having organised rallies against various pro-China organisations on campus and generally being a pain in the *rse of...

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Episode 5 of the final season of Game of Thrones showed us a vengeful fallen angle, Daenerys Targaryen, after whom thousands of children in the real world have been named. Even though her enemies had been defeated and surrendered, she nevertheless used her massive weapon, a fi...

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Let me indulge, purely for entertainment value, in some fan-speculation on what we will see on-screen after the Long Night is over and the final 6 episodes Of Game of Thrones are run in 2019. Let me first talk about the end-game aspects I think the books and the tv-series seem...

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In part 1, I looked at whether it made sense to have random individuals inserted into parliament, or to let policies be decided by juries full of randomly chosen individuals. Both were argued to be unworkable and likely to lead to more corruption, rather than less: policies th...

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I visited Turkey in April last year, traveling through the country, witnessing the troubles of the leadership of the ruling AKP party: it had just lost a general election that left it without a workable majority in parliament and only 40% of the popular vote; it was sucked int...

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Investigative journalism and the secret state are natural enemies. Even with an enlightened government and relatively untroubled times, their relationship will be uneasy at best. Today, they're in a state of undeclared war. Surveillance states and most of their fellow travelle...

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Here's a short note to everyone I know in the print media industry; Please, when you bemoan the state of media today, do not tell me that it's "management" that has got the industry where it is. I hear this all the time, particularly from Fairfax staffers and ex-staffers. If o...

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The graphic below comes from the University of Michigan's Professor Mark Perry, who runs a libertarian and market-oriented blog called Carpe Diem . It shows, essentially, the collapse of the advertising revenue stream in US newspapers. Adjusted for inflation, US newspapers wil...

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In the torrent of words over the job cuts at Fairfax and News Ltd, not many people seem to have noticed that these events also further undermine the already teetering argument of the Finkelstein Review for a new system of media regulation. How's that? Recall that the Finkelste...

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As Ken Parish's post below shows, there is now a widespread view that Gina Rinehart will win control of Fairfax , publisher of the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, and then seek to move their editorial stances well to the right. From people who believe that, you hear both wa...

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"Make the media more accountable for their sins, and worry less about new technologies and freedom of speech". That's a one-line summary of Ray Finkelstein's Independent Media Inquiry . It argues for a new system of media regulation to apply to journalists, commentators and mo...

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Right now Ray Finkelstein and Matthew Ricketson, the two members of the federal government's Independent Media Inquiry , are trying to finish off their report to the government. It's due by 28 February. Writing these reports is frequently difficult, but Finkelstein and Rickets...

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The ABC's Australia Talks program ran a show this week about the troubles of the Australian book industry. Its starting point was that the local bookselling and book publishing industry is in a heap of trouble. Not for the first time, the program did a deal of hand-wringing ab...

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With the Media Inquiry in full swing and the Greens' Bob Brown complaining loudly about News's lack of fairness and accuracy , now might be a good time to travel back in time 20 years. Let's visit another era when a powerful paper was unashamedly boosting one side of politics...

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[Cross-posted to Online Opinion ] I spend my working life running an online media firm - WorkDay Media, publisher of Banking Day - with its owner and editor-in-chief, Ian Rogers. Last month, Ian and I wrote a submission to the federal government’s Independent Media Inquiry. Yo...

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8y-_vaf6iY&feature=player_embedded Current developments in e-books and e-readers may end up having dramatic effects on the mainstream newspaper industry, about whose future I've been musing in recent days . A significant part of the problems bei...

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Troppo's Paul Frijters, too self-effacing to push his work on Troppo, has a new paper on the effect of the internet on quality news content. I discovered it on a newsletter of new papers. Looks interesting, so I'll have to have a closer squiz when I get the time. Is the Intern...

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There is an interesting new boy on the block! Gerard Henderson's Media Watch Dog is sure to be stimulating read because he has a good memory and he knows where a lot of bodies are buried. He has a long and honourable history as a media watcher, starting in 1988 with a print ve...

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Am I the only newspaper reader who expects an opinion column to develop a coherent thread of argumentation, as distinct from a series of provocative comments stuck together precariously with specious howevers and therefores? The editors who approve these pieces evidently think...

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I did not apply to participate in the 20/20 summit but I did submit a 500 word piece on employment policy. Although Club Troppo readers would have heard my views before, the submission is set out below. I also had an interesting disagreement with The Australian editorial write...

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Paddy McGuinness died this morning . He was 69. As a columnist and editor McGuinness thrived on controversy. As Matthew Ricketson wrote , he was "loved and loathed in roughly equal measure, and that is the point -- and the trick -- with such columnists." At Catallaxy, Jason So...

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A sense of gloom settled in as I ploughed through The Weekend Australian yesterday. It felt like February 2003 again, only worse. Then, an optimist could at least excuse the thumping of the drums of war as the triumph of hope over experience. In the light of the last four year...

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Econometricians are often pretty smart at thinking up ways to measure things. I recently attended a seminar by Professor Matthew Gentzkow from University of Chicago Graduate School of Business who is doing research on the vexed issue of media slant. You might think that media...

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He's a funny old fellow ... ? I've never subscribed to my colleague Nicholas Gruen's high opinion of SMH journo and "blogger" Jack Marx . Marx's 2006 article on his dealings with actor Russell Crowe , which so impressed Nicholas, was in my view not only undisciplined writing t...

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A Beautiful Mind? If you've never taken much of a look at Andrew Bolt's columns in the Herald Sun, you may wonder which category of columnist he falls into. Is his the anger of a sharp mind frequently impatient with the foolishness of those around him - Melbourne's own Tom Wol...

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� Mr Rudd by Colin Wicking The media is inevitably full of predictions about the Rudd/Gillard Labour leadership. What follows is the case for flipping straight to the sports pages. Because none of the punditocracy have much of a record of accurate judgment in the week after...

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Would you vote for this woman? Or read her column? Don Arthur did (the latter anyway) ... I wonder why Miranda hasn't lectured Julia Gillard on her hairstyle yet? Why bother with scholarly research when you have television? In a recent study , Amy King and Andrew Leigh found t...

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Andrew Leigh wonders why Labor performs so well in state and territory elections but so poorly in national elections. His favourite theory is one Andrew Norton floated a while ago -- voters think of the nation as a family where Labor is mum and the Coalition is dad . State and...

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Lindsay Tanner says that Australians are anti-intellectual , but has anyone told the Daily Telegraph's Simon Benson ? Today he's casually quoting 19th century German philosophy : OBVIOUSLY, Peter Debnam hasn't read Nietzsche. If he had, he would know that while madness might b...

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Fred Argy has written a letter to the AFR protesting changes to cross-media laws. In it appears, to me at least, the incredible implicit assertion that Fox News is bad for American democracy. Because I think he is an intelligent man and I quite respect his opinion on most subj...

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Why is Christopher Pearson promoting a book by a Derrida scholar and an academic who writes about Indigenous issues ? Well... because it includes an entire chapter on him. Niall Lucy and Steve Mickler's new book, The War on Democracy Conservative Opinion in the Australian Pres...

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In a comment earlier this morning, James Farrell made this peripheral point: It's less than twenty years since a South Australian judge had to resign for saying that some wives needed a bit of rough handling, or whatever it was exactly. The judge James had in mind was Justice...

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Is the childhood obesity epidemic caused by irresponsible fast food chains or by lax parenting and lazy kids ? Is poverty caused by a lack of opportunity or by the behaviour of poor people ? Is global warming caused by suburban energy gluttons or is the sun to blame ? The war...

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One audience member asked Albrechtsen what she thought of the media. She acknowledged the difficulty in speaking frankly due to her position on the ABC board, but thought the last five to ten years had seen steadily improving media, "such as Fox News."

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Phillip Adams - pundit unjustly maligned? The longer I keep blogging, the more I empathise with Phillip Adams. Adams is regularly assailed by assorted RWDB bloggers (notably Professor Bunyip - who seems about to make an overdue comeback to the blogosphere) for journalistic sin...

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The Bush administration has returned to the covert propaganda tactics of the Cold War, says Matt Welch . And In the process they've "forgotten one of their most potent weapons: the truth." In a recent essay for Reason Welch writes: ...the CIA served as what the foreign policy...

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A weekly wrap of what's been happening across the Top End news-wise, which might be handy for former residents who really miss reading about this sort of thing. May contain cane toads and/or crocodiles. DING DONG Darwin military police are hunting for a serial flasher who is t...

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[photopress:Rollins_bomb.jpg,full,pp_empty] Henry Rollins says he was reported to the Australian government's National Security hotline for reading a book about jihad. Is this for real? On Thursday the Daily Telegraph reported that "US rocker and writer Henry Rollins was repor...

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Should op-ed writers be forced to tell readers if they're taking money in return for supporting a cause or interest? The Competitive Enterprise Institute's Iain Murray says no. In an article for the American Spectator , Iain Murray argues that readers should focus on the quali...

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It's not just western cartoons causing protests abroad. In India Hindu activists are protesting against Valentine's Day. According to Asian News International Valentine's Day has become increasingly popular in India in recent years with retailers doing a brisk trade in heart-s...

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I have the right to fart in a crowded lift, or cultivate halitosis by failing to brush my teeth regularly. And, even if my neighbour is a Hindu, I would be entitled (health regulations permitting) to slaughter and barbecue a cow down by her back fence just to give her the shit...

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Like a good humanist and liberal I have always been opposed to censorship, however in the 1980s I stirred up a debate in the Humanist literature, pointing out that there was a newer wave of pornography about and it was very different from the kind of harmless stuff that prompt...

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[photopress:Matt_Welch.jpg,full,pp_empty] I ain't gonna piss in no jar. Them evil peckerheads they done gone too far (Mojo Nixon) It was early 1987 when I touched down in LA. Evidence of the Reagan administration's war on drugs was everywhere -- on the walls, on billboards and...

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[photopress:Stoddard.jpg,full,pp_empty] Political correctness is a kind of covert censorship which silences ideas which are unacceptable to the ruling elite. But if this is true, then the ideas which are being suppressed can't be the ones we're reading in newspapers like the T...

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When two men kiss, is it ideologically offensive? News Limited columnist Paul Gray thinks so : My young family were among the viewers. At Christmas, they all sat down to watch the Spicks and Specks yuletide special, A Very Specky Christmas. Despite my often caustic anti-ABC co...

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Brian Penton (1904-1951) would surely have achieved the status of the most memorable journalist and commentator in postwar Australia but he died in his prime and left too many enemies to achieve the reputation that he deserved. This article by his biographher Patrick Buckridge...

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How come this article by David Marr and Nick O'Malley is in the national news section of the Sydney Morning Herald , and not the opinion section? Compare the nakedly partisan polemic of Marr and O'Malley with the balanced, careful analysis of Nicholas Gruen here at Troppo, or...

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" A long time ago in a far away land reigned the establishment Kingo's Club Chaos, sometimes now referred to as Ye Olde Webdiary ." Back in 2001 Sydney Morning Herald journalist Margo Kingston set up an online diary at the Herald's web site. Margo's Webdiary soon turned into a...

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Which of these is the odd one out? (a) Cargo pants (b) Mudhoney (c) John Howard If you believe the conservative columnists it's 'c'. Only John Howard is still cool in 2005. Cargo pants and grunge bands like Mudhoney are hopelessly '90s. Only decrepit Gen-Xers think it's hip to...

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There's a real feeling in Australian media/literary/intellectual circles that we are somehow lacking in something because we don't have a magazine of the venerable calibre of the New Yorker or the Atlantic Monthly. That's why every so often there's an attempt to remedy the sit...

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In this month's Atlantic Monthly David Foster Wallace has a long article on Los Angeles talk radio host John Ziegler . DFW (as fans like to call him ) spent a month hanging around KFI 's studios. What he finally came up with is... stimulating. Like most talk radio hosts, Ziegl...

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In a classically neo-conservative review for the Public Interest , Kay Hymowitz argues that advertising is corrupting children: The truth is that hundreds of times each day, between television, the Internet, billboards, school vending machines, and curriculums, kids are prodde...

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For American talk radio host Bruce DuMont ideas are just another product traded in the marketplace. And unlike some right wing whiners, he thinks the marketplace is working just fine: Yes, my Classically trained friends, "Praise be to Adam Smith!" It is my position that maybe,...

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Fresh from a coup in snatching the free to air coverage of The Ashes series against England which Channel Nine declined and the ABC dithered over, public broadcaster SBS will tonight show highlights of the Danish Royal Wedding . I'll be watching - I still have Princess Diana's...

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I've been collecting and reading old magazines just as long as I've been collecting and reading old books, ie since at least the age of 16. Though the pleasure each has given me is related, old magazines make for a distinctively different reading experience from old books, bec...

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I've been a regular net user since 1997, and first discovered the thing in 92, when we were delighted to find we could access the Village Voice sitting in the Semper Floreat offices at UQ. A feature in the Fin magazine on Friday made the point that many of the utopian claims m...

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When American academic Stephen Duncombe discovered zines he was awestruck. "Somehow these little smudged pamphlets carried within them the honesty, kindness, anger, the beautiful inarticulate articulateness ... the uncompromising life that I had discovered (and lost) in music,...

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Sunbeam's Personal Groomer ($14.95) removes the unsightly hair that grows from a man's nostrils when he reaches a certain age. It appears along with Remington's Precision Dual-Head Nose , Ear , and Eyebrow trimmer ($22.95) on page 71 of this week's Bulletin . That just about s...

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As part of my work, I regularly read US periodicals such as The Public Interest and Foreign Affairs . The former is home to leading neo-cons, while the latter is more the house journal of the bipartisan foreign policy establishment. Both are enormously influential in setting t...

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Hendo (who may or may not be a Republican, it's hard to tell) thinks Camilla will become the Queen of Australia under Australian constitutional law . In other revelations, Hendo predicts that "Charles will never be Governor-General of Australia". Ho hum. Oh, Hendo would rather...

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"Religious leaders and politicians have a perfect right to discuss abortion, writes Gerard Henderson ..." Well yes, and (unlike some) I'm prepared to accept that Tony Abbott, Ron Boswell and John Anderson are sincere in their interest in pursuing abortion law reform. But what...

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There've been some interesting discussions developing on the thread about Andrew Bolt's demonisation of Desperate Housewives . If I'm reading it correctly, commenters are having difficulty agreeing to a definition of what constitutes "quality" in television, and the issue of t...

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... if Andrew Bolt is really a right wing op/ed columnist or a master of satire? Check out his thoughts on Channel 7's Desperate Housewives or feast yourself on this Bolty appreciation by Jess at Ausculture , and make up your own mind about the mystery of the preacher-teacher...

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(Image reproduced by kind permission of Scribe Publishing) During Julia Gillard's candidacy for the Labor Leadership much ink was spilled about whether Australia was ready for a female Opposition Leader, and whether such a Leader would need to be married with kids. I don't wan...

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Miranda Devine heads her column this week "More Like a Leaking Nuclear Reactor than an Arts Faculty" . The target of her ire is Sydney University's Arts Faculty. I made the point a few days ago in passing that Sydney Uni has seen more than its fair share of disputatious academ...

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As if to prove the point I made in my previous post about the current mission of the Sydney Institute to expose all media types as feckless readers of the signs of the times , Hendo can't resist bagging out other journos for getting it all wrong about Latham . Hendo advances t...

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It's about the horse race, stupid! I recently suggested to The Currency Lad that he visit the wonderful Lifeline Bookfest in order to pick up a copy of that classic 1930s Australian novel The Currency Lass . I've been over the weekend (for non Brisvegans, it happens twice a ye...

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As Rex points out , it's interesting indeed to read the whole of Julia Gillard's remarks then contrast them with how they're played in the media ( SMH story here , The Age and the Murdoch take ). I'll put the whole transcript over the fold . Note the repetitious nature of the...

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For my money, Michael Gordon's piece in The Age is the best op/ed article on the Labor leadership contest published to date. Writing of Beazley, Gordon comments: But others are more sceptical. They see Beazley as a caretaker leader who will see the party through tough times, b...

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Hendo's jumped on the communist t-shirt bandwagon that had the blogosphere rolling last week with posts at Troppo , Catallaxy and Quiggin . Gerry excuses Prince Harry's wardrobe malfunction because the third in line heir to the Australian throne is "ignorant" and asks rhetoric...

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Margo Kingston's back from hols , and appears to be the only journalist still supporting Latho, while doyens of the press gallery such as Michelle Grattan join Jim McGinty and (by implication) Peter Beattie in demanding that he stand down . What's odd about Margo's first post...

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"The fact that the left did not make use of the lash does not stop the right from resorting to the backlash." Tim Dunlop over at Road to Surfdom is steamed up : God, if I click on one more left-leaning blog that has a post about how bloody wonderful it is that Andrew Sullivan...

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I really will have to get moving on that promised post reviewing Julia Baird's book Media Tarts: How The Australian Press Frames Female Politicians . Kerry-Anne Walsh writes this about Julia Gillard : The Victorian MP has been at Mr Latham's elbow for his roller-coaster 12 mon...

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A recent trip to the Myer Centre convinced me that the latter day Leninist sects like the GreenLeft mob are on the wrong track with the protesting (and the infiltration of community groups, etc etc). The quickest and easiest way to destroy capitalism would be to convince teena...

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Dean Philip Jensen, whose views on the Tsunami we've discussed here and here , has been calling talback in the wee hours, according to the SMH . (Thanks to commenter yellowvinyl for drawing this to my attention). The Dean must have felt that he needed to explain why he was cal...

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Compassion isn't a problem, writes Gerard Henderson Click onto the Centre for Independent Studies web site and you'll find a prominent advertisement for Patrick West's book Conspicuous Compassion: Why Sometimes it Really is Cruel to be Kind . West argues that public displays o...

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MsFits wants to know where Mark Latham's been. It's an interesting question - with all that's been happening from the Bhaktiyaris to the Tsunamis, I can't remember hearing a lot of reaction or comment from the Labor Party. A search of Google News tends to suggest MsFits is rig...

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This is becoming a trend. Gerry's talking sense again . ELSEWHERE : Phil at Citystate has more on Hendo .

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Hi-Yo Silver Away! ... to the keyboard "Those educated more at the movies will fancy themselves as the Lone Ranger, or Gary Cooper in High Noon, upholding the right on lawless streets whence all but he had fled. Being individualists, we're vain that way, measuring our courage...

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It's heartening to read that governments like the US and the Japanese are now increasing the amount of aid they are giving to the countries and people affected by the Tsunamis . The stories appearing daily about the human and societal impact are heartbreaking. It was most appr...

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Or, Should Columnists Condemn Puppet Porn? Some denizens of the leftish Oz blogosphere heart conservative columnist Andrew Bolt - in a big way . He's MsFits' "one true love" . Darlene Taylor has a post entitled "A Quickie with Bolt" . Jess at Ausculture addresses Andrew thusly...

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'The Soothsayer', Giovanni Batista Piazetta (1683-1754) Or, The Tiny Hendo Hendo doesn't seem to have taken a break for the Christmas season, turning his talents rather in an increasingly mystical direction . In other media news, I've already complained about the tired trope o...

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Continuing a much loved blogosphere tradition , Saintinastraightjacket and Sedge provide the minimalist deconstruction of Hendo this week ... I note that Hendo has a swing at the "Keating haters" and at "conservative inspired alienation". Maybe he's following the Governator in...

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Julia Baird asks : If God was a DJ, as smooth-bellied songstress Pink has claimed, would the disco version of the national anthem be four-to-the-floor? Would crowds swell and sway on the dance floor to a revved-up Advance Australia Fair, as they did some time ago to the disco...

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I wasn't going to bother with Hendo this week . In any case, Rowen at Sailing Close to the Wind has already posted 'The Smaller Hendo'. The Currency Lad has been on the case , or maybe at the awards ceremony, as well... But basically, Hendo was right about everything and all o...

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Troppo Contest of the Week! Continuing the TV theme , I think I watched the worst ever American reality tv show set in Australia last night. Outback Jack . The host is called J. D. Roberto. The premise is that twelve "uptown girls" think they're going to a mansion to pick a ba...

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I caught SBS' Movie Show last night. I've only occasionally watched it since the departure of David and Margaret to ABC. I was half curious because the distinguished Mr Stratton has attracted some negative press in the right wing corners of the blogosphere of late . But the Da...

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It's almost trite to point out that if you read the Latin poets of classical Rome, one thing you will come across again and again are laments about the moral standards of youth... and any readers of Robert Graves should be equally aware of Augustus' concern that sexual morals...

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Bloggers, of course! Commenter harry wrote a while back , in answer to my question, "To what degree do blogs represent a source of news or commentary on politics for you?": Great source of useful links to news. Good for breaking news but often this is surrounded by a lot of sp...

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Posh and Becks feature in a nativity scene at Madame Tussaud's. Photo: Reuters. Continuing my musings on fame and its contemporary cultural significance, what's going on when our Nic is named UN Citizen of the World alongside Hans Blix and Lakhdar Brahimi, Angelina Jolie saves...

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I agree with Hendo! Well, at least in part! Maybe it's because Hendo is trying to ward Chris Sheil off from a potential move back into the blogosphere by learning from Chris' frequent demolition of his logic to actually supply some, but last week I felt that Hendo made a bit o...

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Peter Beattie pictured in today's Sunday Mail . Taking photos is fun. I've recently bought a new mobile and being a nice boy, unlike some Coogee beach regulars , am avidly asking friends if I can have permission to take their photo. Being a newspaper photographer or an editor...

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Spectator Editor and former Tory Shadow Minister for the Arts, Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson MP (pictured above with unnamed friends), provided the Oz blogosphere with some light entertainment recently with a juicy sex scandal , in the finest traditions of British politic...

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P. J. Harvey sings live... I'd been planning to write on the truly appalling line of questioning NSW Bar Association President and barrister for Tara Anglican School for Girls, Ian Harrison SC, launched during a recent court case where an 18 year old woman alleged that she had...

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According to the US publishers of the Merriam-Webster Dictionary , the most frequently searched word on their online site this year has been "blog" ... It's interesting to note that in an election year, five of the other nine words were political terms (eg "electoral", "sovere...

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Celebrity Capital: Rebecca Loos Writing in the online Fairfax publication Radar , Ben Cubby asks : Is Casey Donovan really Australia's most promising young singer? Possibly. But for every enraptured viewer loosing off votes for Australian Idol there was someone watching the pa...

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There is a good review in the Guardian by Simon Waldman of Dan Gillmor's new book on the impact of blogging on journalism , We The Media . And the Guardian is also raising the profile of the British blogosphere for its readership with a competition for the Best British Blog ....

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As the Sydney Morning Herald reports that a new BBC Channel 4 reality tv series will show footage of couples having sex (in a tasteful way and for educational purposes, of course), news.com.au brings us the tantalising tidbit that Gretel Killeen has dumped Saxon . The wonderfu...

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Sadly, BackPage s is no more , but Gerard Henderson continues to provide fuel for bloggers' illogic spotting impulses . In today's Sydney Morning Herald , Henderson tackles Latho's triangulation dependency . Mark Latham is a long-time proponent of the Blairite 'Third Way', fro...

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The other reading problem According to the Australian's Janet Albrechtsen teachers have been inflicting 'whole language' teaching on kids for more than 30 years and the consequences have been disastrous. If this was the whole story you'd expect to find that Australians who sta...

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I think with Sophie on board we'll have to start a Troppo Literary Award! Stimulated by Sophie's post on Les Murray , I've been pondering the lack of popular or media recognition of some for our excellent emerging and young poets. This is no doubt partly explained by the econo...

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I can remember sitting in an undergrad Political Sociology lecture in 1991 and hearing the acerbic Lecturer authoritatively state "Women in politics are only suited to nurturing roles, like Minister for Families or Social Welfare". I piped up, "What about Joan Kirner and Carme...

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Journalists, academics, and educators in the United States are constantly hounded by right-to-lifers, evangelicals, and creationists demanding that their opinions on scientific topics be given the same weight as those of mainstream researchers. The latest example of this is th...

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It's the quirky news story of the week. Leading Hand Cranmer, 24, a technician on board HMS Cumberland , has been given permission to perform Satanic rituals at sea. According to Warlock Helnock , editor of Rule Satannia magazine: Chris did a piece for issue 5 of Rule Satannia...

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Don Watson has a new book called Watson's Dictionary of Weasel Words, Contemporary Clichés, Cant and Management Jargon . I don't know if it's any good but the image of a weasel sucking out the contents of an egg while leaving the shell intact has always appealed to me. Accordi...

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Writing in today's SMH, someone named Peter Bartlett reckons diversity is overrated when it comes to media ownership. "Synergies" are far more important: To ensure a high standard of media requires high quality people and players, providing resources to investigate and follow...

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Is there a 'counter-cultural conspiracy' to keep conservative Christian opinion out of the media? Political activism is more about mobilizing existing attitudes than it is about cultivating new ones. As a result, one of the best ways to influence public opinion is to keep view...

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I've been watching Fox News today as they have been covering the impact of Hurricane Ivan on the Gulf Coast near Alabama. It is a terrifying storm with winds around 200 kph and driving rain. You can read about the details here But what got me is that there are Fox News reporte...

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I can't help musing about Paul Watson's tacky but amusing take on the Seven Network's newest "reality" TV show Playing it Straight , featuring Darwin barmaid Rebecca Olds trying to pick straight potential suitors from gay ones for a purse of $200,000. I won't be watching this...

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Yes alright, the election is on 9 October. So?* The big news of the day is that Kerry Armstrong has slagged our Kylie and our Nicole: "I truly believe with acting and singing those two have done more damage than anyone I've ever seen," she said. "I really do believe there is a...

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Still procrastinating before the 5pm e-tutorial rush, so I'll whip around the newspapers as well: How long will it take Tim Blair to start slagging Bruce "The Boss" Springsteen following the announcement of a series of anti-Bush concerts with other noteworthies like Pearl Jam,...

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A brief update on my previous brief post about Christopher Hitchens' demolition of the increasingly self-parodying Phillip Adams. Professor Bunyip has skillfully dispatched Adams' ridiculous reply to the Hitchens article over the square leg boundary. A welcome return to top form.

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Given the extensive debate generated by my previous post about the ABC , it's worth highlighting an opinion piece in this morning's Oz by the egregious former Communications Minister Richard Alston's former adviser Andre Stein. Stein advocates a standard neoliberal, total dere...

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This review of Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 by Darlene on Ambit Gambit is well worth reading. I haven't seen the movie yet, but I suspect my reaction is likely to be similar.

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Mea culpa. Mea maxima culpa. Apparently the ABC has finally been cowed and beaten by the Right Wing Death Beasts. And I have to confess I've been a (small) part of the problem by occasionally joining the chorus of criticism of Auntie's evident left-wing bias. Of course, if the...

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I have a confession to make. I've started watching ABC TV Media Watch again, after swearing blind a year or so ago that I'd boycott it because of David Marr's blatant, hypocritical bias. He's no less biased or hypocritical now, but Marr is an amusing, eccentric character in hi...

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This story claims that the Nine Network is about to make drastic personnel changes, especially to its current affairs lineup: Ray Martin and Jana Wendt are among those stars whose positions are under threat, with gardening guru Don Burke also set to be replaced by Jamie Durie....

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Shock! Horror! Mary-Kate has anorexia . But have a look for yourself . I reckon Ashley's even skinnier. I blame that prick Morgan Spurlock . These girls need to get biggest mobs of Maccas into them without delay.

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While idly traversing the blogs just now in a successful attempt to find an excuse (almost any excuse) to escape from exam marking for a while, I came across a post by Steve Edwards fulminating against the depravity of producers of a UK 'reality' TV show called There's Somethi...

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Another Falconio/intrusive media rant that I understand is to be submitted for publication under my name. Actual authorship is another question, but it certainly reflects my views very closely: There is nothing more dangerous than the wrath of the media scorned. So now it's re...

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The Basement website (live Internet radio, jazz/blues concerts etc), beamed out of Sydney's longstanding Basement venue at Reiby Place, Circular Quay, is about to close, according to this story on News Online. It was one of the few Internet music sites that I actually used to...

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The mainstream media leftie thought police are in full cry in pursuit of the scalp of Australian Broadcasting Authority boss Professor David Flint. Media Watch's David Marr revealed a sickeningly sycophantic fan letter written by Flint to talkback radio King/Queen Alan Jones s...

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Robert Corr sums up my attitude to Germaine Greer's latest repugnant attention-seeking effort in the Sydney Morning Herald, about footballers and gang rape. I just chose to ignore the pathetic old cow to avoid gratifying her increasingly pathological desire to be noticed. But...

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Professor Bunyip nails Philip Adams for what appears to be a particularly blatant combination of plagiarism and outright fraudulent journalism in his latest Weekend Oz column . Some of Stanley's previous exposes of "Phatty's" misdeeds have been a tad thin IMO, but this one loo...

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There are few things more certain in blogging than that Tim Blair or Professor Bunyip will post on Margo Kingston's latest Web Diary frolic . Published to mark the second anniversary of the sinking of the asylum seeker vessel SIEV X, one of Margo's favourite obsessions, what i...

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A 24 - 8 win against Argentina first up. Scratchy but promising. A solid performance by the forwards, especially Baxter at prop, David Lyons in place of Toutai Kefu, and David Giffin before the sickening collision of his head with the ground. At least it's apparently only conc...

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Alfred Einstein ? Still it's all relative, I suppose.

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I can live with Right Wing Death Beast Paul Sheehan's dissing of Harry Potter , but stretching a single joke, and an unfunny one at that, to fill an entire column is another thing entirely. Even Phillip Adams doesn't usually sink to that level of uninspired op-ed desperation....

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(Via Tim Blair ) After noting Uncle at ABC Watch's blogging of Andrew Bolt's response to Media Watch's slagging of him last week, I should also record that Crikey.com is hosting the ongoing slanging match , with a response from David Marr and a further riposte from Andrew Bolt...

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The Senate voted to reject the Howard government's media law "reforms", with all 4 Independents as well as Labor, Democrats and Greens voting against. Margo Kingston (link via Tim Dunlop) has an excellent article on the saga. As Margo points out, no other print media are givin...

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According to the Sydney Morning Herald (link via Tim Blair ), Communications Minister Richard Alston is on the verge of clinching a deal with the 4 Independent Senators which would see the effective abolition of Australia's current foreign and cross-media ownership laws, albei...

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It's a shame Tim Blair (blog cactus at present) is still successfully ignoring the amazing Margo Kingston. Yesterday's Web Diary piece was a monumental achievement in journalistic vacuity even by her stellar standards. Someone apparently gave Margo one of those "can do" Americ...

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Why does the ABC insist on showing a never-ending stream of Pommie "celebrity" chef shows, when English cuisine (as it's laughingly called) is among the world's worst? Is this the last bastion of the great Australian cultural cringe? Is there really a huge audience for the see...

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One of Australia's leading newspapers was today condemned by an eccentric Scottish tourist and media campaigner for "blatantly sensationalist tabloid journalism". "The Sydney Morning Herald featured a 'crocodile shock' story on the front page of its Internet edition earlier ye...

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Remarkable! A moderate, sensible, even balanced column about Muslims from Miranda Devine. No it's not an oxymoron, and I haven't been ingesting hallucinogenic substances. Read it for yourself .

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Emma Tom is in Darwin. Who else could visit Crocodylus Park and then write a column about croc penises (and croc sex in general)?

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