Just get more marshmallows
Fires? Are there fires?
The Australian, Rupert Murdoch’s flagship newspaper, has defended itself against criticism it downplayed unprecedented bushfires by failing to put a picture of the disaster on the front page of an edition, even as newspapers across the world featured the harrowing scenes.
Many of the world’s leading mastheads featured pictures of the devastation of the Australian bushfires on page one on Thursday. But the Australian’s first edition ran an upbeat picture story about the New Year’s Day picnic races at Hanging Rock.
Um…Fake News? It may have looked like an upbeat picture story about the New Year’s Day picnic races at Hanging Rock, but actually it was in-depth coverage of the fires.
The national broadsheet’s lead story on Thursday was about a secret proposal by police to ban alcohol in Indigenous communities in Western Australia – a story deemed more important than the bushfire report, which said eight people were dead and mass evacuations were underway.
Maybe Murdoch just doesn’t like sensationalism.
The Australian has been consistent on one front. Throughout the bushfire season it has kept up its coverage of climate denialism.
Before Christmas, the Australian attempted to smear Greg Mullins and his Emergency Leaders for Climate Action group as “largely a vehicle for Tim Flannery”. Flannery is a leading environmentalist and chief counsellor at the Climate Council.
The former fire and emergency chiefs from multiple states and territories say Australia is unprepared for worsening natural disasters from climate change and governments are putting lives at risk.
The Australian says they are a front for Flannery who is an “alarmist” for urging that coal-fired power stations be shut down.
Indeed; what on earth is there to be alarmed about? The fact that the planet is becoming hostile to life is no big deal – people can just stay inside for a few hundred years until things go back to normal.
I see what you did there…
*smirk*
I sometimes wonder if Murdoch created Fox News, or if Fox News created Murdoch.
The Australian was once the outstanding daily paper in the country, probably one of the best in the world. It carried in-depth coverage of national issues, had access to global news sources and featured the very best in columnists. It was impossible to agree with all the columnists as there was a variety of opinion on offer, not the echo chamber it has become today.
It was a paper that was unafraid to nail its colours to the mast, but also willing to change those colours in the light of new information. I was a subscriber, and I devoured every issue.
Then, around the same time that Murdoch acquired US citizenship, it began its slow decline. Some of the better columnists left, others, seeing the way their master was turning (Yes, Paul Kelly, I am looking at you) simply began rewriting their old articles with an opposite slant.
For the last 6 years, I have been a newsagent. Each day I would glance at the front page, and on a slow day, would spend 5 minutes skim/hate reading it. I was not surprised as regular buyers dropped away, not because they drifted online, but because the paper had moved too far away from the readers. The columnists simply kept regurgitating the same old ideas – neo-liberal economics, hatred for renewable energy, thinly coated racism, the lie that only right-wing parties can manage an economy, support for foreign wars, etc.
I guess it grew up, left home, married, divorced and became a cantankerous old man feeling the world had passed him by.
Roj, I don’t know what the international distribution is for the movie Bombshell, but I think it sort of touches on that, looking at Roger Ailes, and the role he played in creating the monster that is Fox News – and showing Murdoch how to make money in the US (but apparently destroying his value in Australia? Or is he still profitable in spite? The American market for conservative nastiness may be bigger than the Australian market for quality news and diverse views.) I do recommend it, though I do resent having to feel sympathy for Gretchen Carlson and Megyn Kelly.
iknklast, haven’t heard of that one but will keep an eye out.
And you can be assured that the Australian market for conservative nastiness is doing quite nicely.
I think Malcolm McDowell was born to play Rupert. :-)