Stop The Hysteria, Demands Hysterical Murdoch Media

By Darryl Mason

Across Rupert Murdoch's Australian newspaper and online news empire, panic is taking hold.

After campaigning so hard, so furiously, so absurdly for the Abbott government to win last September's election - to the point where even Liberal voters were saying, "I've had enough of this biased crap" - many of Murdoch's political commentators are now desperately trying to stem the terminal decline of the Abbott government in order to salvage what's left of their own reputations.

There's so many examples to choose from....

First, a quick refresher. After shredding prime ministers Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd for almost 30 straight months on every mistake, misstep and triviality they could find,  or invent, most of Murdoch's newspapers ran front pages like the one below just before polling day:

Considering this front page was also a poster on display outside of hundreds of newspapers, it was more like Liberal Party bunting.

Now, as PM Abbott racks up popularity poll numbers below that of Toronto's crack smoking mayor, Rob Ford (this is actually true), Murdoch political commentators are screeching foul because other journalists are exposing all manner of apparently dodgy dealings and 'thanks for your support' favours and questionable fundraising adventures from the Liberal Party.

And Abbott critics and non-Murdoch media also have the damn hide to republish the endless quotes of Tony Abbott proclaiming variations of 'No New Taxes' and 'No Cuts To Pensions' and every other grinning lie he told to help get himself over the line, and win just that little bit of extra support he needed in a handful of electorates to become prime minister.

How dare they! How bloody dare they hold him to account.

And Murdoch columnists, or Liberal Party support team members, or whatever they're called now days, are plenty outraged that anyone would even think to ask if Tony Abbott's daughters might have somehow benefited from their father's Murdoch media-sponsored rise to The Lodge.

'Don't bring my family into politics,' Tony Abbott responded to claims one daughter may have scored a choice $60,000 design study scholarship, and job, thanks to a key supporter, and friendly donor, of the prime minister.

Do not bring Tony's family into politics.

Only he may he do that. As we saw for countless days during the 2013 election campaign when his daughters became almost permanent fixtures by his side.

All this being held to account stuff, and being asked the tough questions, and trivia-based mockery, has gone too far. Not to mention the Budget 2014 disaster. No, really, don't mention it. A budget bonanza of cruelty and misery so extreme that even Clive Palmer's suggestion to junk the whole thing and start again is looking like a smart move.

All in all, Sunday 'Australia Needs Tony' Telegraph political columnist Samantha Maiden has had just about enough, thank you very much:

image via @NewsAustralia

Let's take a closer look at that 'story':

“The question is, is everyone contributing equally,” Emma Alberici kept asking on ABC Lateline Friday night.

Who says that’s the question?

The budget is not meant to be a utopian wealth redistribution program.

Well, certainly not a conservative party budget anyway.

“Poorest families pay most in budget,” screamed the headlines. “How the budget pain is unfairly shared.” “Abbott budget to make Australia more unequal.”

Never mind how fatuous the idea of a budget of “equality” when the aim is to rescue the economy from a death spiral which includes $1billion a month in interest payments.

A 'Budget Of Equality'. Where the hell did Australians get that stupid idea? Time to come clean:

Admittedly, the equality meme was fuelled by the government’s own claim that its deficit reduction levy on high income earners was an “equity” measure, to “share the pain”.

So it was the Abbott government's fault. Abbott and Hockey talked about equality and equity and sharing the pain. They did it.

It was a threadbare argument, and opened a savage line of attack

OK, so the Abbott government is to blame for Australians thinking the budget would be about equality and 'sharing the pain', plus they're also responsible for 'opening the savage line of attack' they're now drowning in and which Maiden is so outraged by.


What these Murdoch columnists are bleating, in short, is:

LEAVE TONY ABBOTT ALONE!

And we all know that isn't going to happen.

The Murdoch media made its mission to obliterate any remaining respect the general public might have bad for the office of prime minister when Gillard and Rudd were taking turns as PM, and they set the new rules for just how petty and absurd and ridiculous media attacks on a prime minister could be. Just how low they could sink.

Like raising holy hell because Julia Gillard was photographed knitting, for a feature in a women's magazine. That hysteria-tinged knitting coverage in the Murdoch media lasted for days.

Now they want everyone to lay off.

They want the rest of the media to turn down the heat on Abbott and Hockey and their miserable budget.

It's not going to happen.

They know it's not going to happen.

So they'll just whine and plead, presumably, for what remains of Abbott's time as prime minister (gone by August, 2014 perhaps?), and haughtily demand everyone else stop stooping to the levels they did. On a daily basis. For years.


There's a lot of pressure on Murdoch's Sydney Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph these days, let alone the rest of the shuddering empire. Advertisers are jumping ship, and they've been forced to plug all-too-obvious ad gaps in the newspapers with double page spreads advertising their own online news subscription offerings. Not just here and there, almost every single day.

The fact is, many Murdoch columnists, besides the obvious ones like Andrew Bolt, have trashed their reputations barracking openly for Abbott for the past two years. And now they're paying the price. And their newspapers are paying the price, literally. Sales of the Daily Telegraph have plunged by some 60,000 copies a day since they became Abbott's support team.

And now their hero is going down in flames.

This Newspoll box sits on the front page of The Australian's website like a flaming bag of turds.

And tweets like this shocker, showing Labor's Bill Shorten leading Abbott as preferred prime minister....

....are distributed heavily across Twitter and Facebook and other social media. Even people who voted Liberal at the 2013 election share this info with their friends as they rail furiously in Facebook updates against Abbott, laugh bitterly over #MorePopularThanAbbott memes and tweets and sigh, bitterly, about how betrayed by the budget they now feel. The vast majority of Australians clearly feel betrayed:

The Murdoch media can't hide this stuff, they can't write it off as "polling trivia" or make it go away anymore.

It simply won't go away.

They are not "in control of the narrative" anymore.

Facebook and Twitter is. And these forums can't be controlled. Or tamed.
 
Hard times.

I'll leave it at that for now, but I just want to include two more images that billboard just how quickly the Abbott government has self-immolated.

First the 'We Won!' front page from Murdoch's Courier Mail front page after Election Day, Sept 2013.

And this image from today's Murdoch Adelaide Advertiser:

The political Circus Isn't Over after all, it would seem, there's just a bunch of different clowns in control of the careening clown car. For a short while anyway.


Talk of who could replace Tony Abbott as leader of the Liberal Party, and prime minister of Australia, has already begun to filter through the Australian media. Only eight months into his prime ministership. It's hard to think of another prime minister who has fallen so fast and so hard.

Does anyone really believe Tony Abbott will still be prime minister when Federal Election 2016 hurls into view?
 
Didn't think so.

------------

Recently on The Orstrahyun...

Murdoch's Tabloids Exploit Our War Heroes To Demonise The Disabled

Student Protests Erupt: 3 Police Needed To Haul Away One Schoolgirl Protester

 Barnaby Joyce: Tony Abbott Is Like Kennedy, Churchill

Murdoch's Daily Telegraph Exploits War Heroes To Demonise Disabled

By Darryl Mason

So desperate is Rupert Murdoch's Daily Telegraph to distract from the chaos and madness of their beloved Abbott prime ministership, they're now willing to insult thousands of disability support pensioners, and use injured war veterans to do so.

The tactic is old, cliched and dangerous in the extreme: try to turn public anger on the poor and helpless so they have less energy to rage against a government that's already plummeting in the polls.

Here's the disgusting front page of Rupert Murdoch's Daily Telegraph today:

It should be noted that the WW2 image on the right is copyrighted by the Australian War Memorial, so it can't be used in political campaigns or advertising. A more gruesomely foul commercial use of this image (to sell papers) has never been seen in Australia. The image on the left of people queuing is a stock image, and it's of able-bodied Americans, not 'disabled slackers'. The inherent deceit is jaw-dropping.

Incredibly, this 'More Disabled Pensioners Than Veterans Injured In War' bullshit isn't a new story. It's completely recycled from this Daily Telegraph 2011 story:

It also happens to be a complete lie. Of the most disgusting kind. The numbers of people signing onto the disability pension, as a percentage of population is not rising. Proof:

Graph via @TomWestland

Seriously, what kind of fucked-up people use injured war veterans to demonise disabled people? It's incomprehensible.

Also interesting that PM Abbott has defunded the disability discrimination commissioner, allowing the Daily Telegraph to viciously target disabled pensioners with appalling front pages like the above, and face far less retribution or accountability:

Five members of the Australian Human Rights Commission have lashed the government for ripping $1.7 million out of the organisation and defunding the disability discrimination commissioner role.

The commissioners' show of unity came as Opposition Leader Bill Shorten personally intervened in the matter on Tuesday by writing to Prime Minister Tony Abbott urging him to reconsider the decision.

Mr Shorten accused Mr Abbott of distorted priorities for axing the disability discrimination commissioner position after appointing former Liberal Party member Tim Wilson to a new $389,000-a-year ''freedom commissioner'' post last year.

Daily Telegraph editor Paul Whittaker is ultimately responsible for that gruesome and lie-soaked front page. He also happens to be a good friend of PM Abbott. Here they are laughing it up over drinks on the night of the 2014 Budget, which Whittaker's Telegraph has given stunningly-biased levels of support and spin:

Prime Minister Tony Abbott and close friend Paul Whittaker, editor of the Daily Telegraph

The DT's shit-kicking of the poor has been ramping up since Abbott was elected PM last September. This is a recent example of what they think of their readership:

A tweep has today altered the Daily Telegraph's masthead for accuracy purposes:

The Daily Telegraph's ongoing attacks on the poor, 'dole bludgers' and the disabled has come at a great cost. The DT's circulation has plunged by more than 60,000 in just two years. It is losing thousands of readers a week. People are literally abandoning the newspaper, which used to be the second most read in Australia.

They can hardly be blamed for doing so.


And on a personal note, my older sister is on the disability support pension, she's also been employed at a disabled workshop for four decades, working full-time, earning a tiny income to supplement her pension. SHE IS NO SLACKER  She also buys the Daily Telegraph for the train ride to work. Well, she did.

The Daily Telegraph has insulted her and all the disabled people who work so hard alongside her. Plus war veterans! What the hell is wrong with these people. It's just appalling, absolutely appalling.

As a former journalist, and newspaper editor, I can't believe I'm saying this, but I hope it's true that Western Sydney is boycotting the Daily Telegraph and its advertisers. Hopefully the financial punishment will wake them up they will will treat people with respect and stop this vicious, ongoing  demonisation of the poor and disabled of Sydney and NSW.\

UPDATE: That lie-soaked Daily Telegraph front page has been updated on Twitter. Much better, and far more truthful:
 

Image via @KieraGorden

Great job.

Daily Telegraph: "Revolting Ferals" Are Anyone Opposed To Abbott, Apparently

 

 By Darryl Mason
 
I find it absolutely bizarre that the Daily Telegraph would slam March In May protesters in Sydney as "revolting ferals." It's very clear what the headline and image is implying. Protest against PM Abbott, and you're nothing more than a Feral.

Uni students, and 'anarchists', or ferals if you want to go that far, made up a tiny percentage of the 15,000 to 20,000 marchers in Sydney last Sunday. 5 per cent at most, probably less.

I stood near the entrance to Victoria Park at the conclusion of the march and watched more than 10,000 people walk by over an hour. Families, elderly people, disabled people, 'Mosman Mum's', lots of people from western Sydney, it was more like a crowd at the Royal Easter Show than a traditional 'Lefty Students' protest. There were at least 1000 kids, many with signs they'd made themselves. And most of the protest signs I saw were funny, or heartbreaking, very few were insulting to Abbott in any way. Most just asked variations of 'Why Did You Lie To Us? Why Are You Punishing Us? What Did We Do?'

The Daily Telegraph's "Revolting Ferals" front page seems to have pissed off and disgusted many of the families who turned out for March In May. Not surprisingly.

Image via @NewsAustralia

And some more of the "ferals", as claimed by the Daily Telegraph:

Reaction on Facebook and Twitter is absolute disbelief, and disgust, and strong feelings of betrayal, that the Daily Telegraph would brand them as "revolting ferals" simply because they are opposed to Abbott government lies, budget cuts and backflips on very clear election promises. People were carrying copies of the Telegraph under their arm to read in the park. Then they get called "Ferals" on the front page the next day?

Seriously, talk about burning your readership.

Who does the Daily Telegraph think will buy the paper when they trash families from Western Sydney?

Just bizarre. But it does show just how out of touch the Daily Telegraph's editor Paul Whittaker is with his dwindling readership.

Here's Whittaker laughing it up with Tony Abbott on Budget Night, before his newspaper gave Budget 2014 mostly glowing coverage and headlines:

Prime Minister Tony Abbott and Daily Telegraph editor Paul Whittaker, Budget night 2014

Perhaps sucking up to the prime minister is more important to Daily Telegraph editor Paul Whittaker than fairly representing his readership? Or putting into print their overwhelming shock and disgust at the deceptive way Abbott ran his election campaign, and the brutal punishment of families in his first budget.

More At Mumbrella

Daily Telegraph Couldn't Fit Any More Rudd Attack Stories On Front Page

A new record for Rupert Murdoch's Daly Telegraph in its fair and balanced coverage of the 2013 Federal Election.

Four anti-Rudd stories in prime top-of-the-page position on the DT front page online.

The strategy is a simple one. Say almost nothing about opposition leader Tony Abbott, just hammer prime minister Kevin Rudd day after day, with everything and anything, regardless of the facts.

It is true, according to some but not all polls, that Kevin Rudd's popularity is falling in Western Sydney, not quite as fast as the Daily Telgraph''s circulation, but getting there.
 

More to come...

Andrew Bolt - I Don't Know How Twitter Works, But Its Freedom Scares Me

 Oh yes, you do.

(quick backgrounder : Andrew Bolt is Australia's most heavily promoted Rupert Mudoch columnist. While never having used Twitter, it was decided that the #AskBolt Twitter hashtag should be used to stir up and "take on the Twitterati", and almost every Murdoch media held Twitter account began pumping out his challenge to Twitter users worldwide. In short, Bolt picked a fight with Twitter, and then hijacked the Usain Bolt #AskBolt hashtag in order to do so).

He can deny it all he wants. But The Bolt Report is an Andrew Bolt Twitter account. And it's official.

It's all a bit sad to see a once innovative political blogger so utterly lost amongst the trees when it comes to Twitter.

Boo Twitter, even though it's where a good slab of his daily blog traffic comes from these days, thanks to regular spammy-link tweeting by numerous NewsCorp automated Twitter accounts. He even has the 'Tweet Me' button on every blog post, along wth the official account for his TV show. He doesn't seem to know about that, either.

#AskBolt was an idiotic idea to begin with, promoting someone who doesn't use Twitter on Twitter, with 'Come And Get Me!' tweets like "Bolt Takes On The Twitterati!"

#AskBolt was a Fukushima-scale social media disaster.

There's no way around it. Even people who had previously used the #AskBolt hashtag to say hello to the incredible sprinter Usain Bolt joined in when they discovered some idiot from Australia  had hijacked their hero's hashtag.

#AskBolt made Andrew Bolt a Twitter pinnata. People who had never even heard of this goose from down under were weeping with laughter at the constant stream of 98% inane, and more the point, non-abusive, tweets that swept #AskBolt into the Top Trending Topics in a host of countries around the world.

Nobody on Twitter had seen anything like it.

For the love of FailWhale, you don't hijack established hashtags. Particularly when you don't use Twitter in the first place.

Mindblowing. What the hell were they thinking?

But Andrew Bolt knows what's going on.

It was all a big Australian Labor Conspiracy.

Really. Hard Leftists, you see, control the Twitternets.

Bolt also seems completely unaware that the Daily Telegraph tried to promote #AskBolt on Facebook as well. Hundreds of people mocked him in commemts and shares. Whether the Daily Telegraph Facebook moderator was laughing too hard to delete any, or whether nobody actually moderates the page, who knows? But the ridicule came thick and fast there, too.

Andrew Bolt doesn't use Facebook either.

 


Hard Leftists control Facebook, too, presumably.

Here he is having a spit after discovering just how much of a social media disaster, and wider public spectacle, #AskBot was becoming.



This is how he reported on himself in the Herald Sun:



Just fantastic the way the link for tweeting Andrew Bolt's column onto Twitter lines up perfectly with this:

"I took a dip in Twitter this week, and understand even better how Labor got flushed away in a sewer of hate.

"How could Labor - and many journalists - disastrously mistake Twitter for the real world?"

The real world, you see, isn't millions of people in more than 100 hundred countries around the world communicating freely and sharing information, ideas and quality knowledge, without paywalls.

The Raal World, apparently, is Andrew Bolt's BlogWorld, where you have to register to "join in the debate" and where he bans commenters who hit to close the bone.

"(#AskBolt) electrified the Twittersphere. For hours the topic trended as Leftists, many anonymous, competed to ask me - the Great Satan of Conservatism - the worst, silliest or most abusive questions on the #askbolt hashtag.

"Fairfax newspapers thought this was sensational news."

It wasn't sensational, but it was idiotic enough a move to warrant media attention.

After all, Andrew Bolt is constantly demanding the rest of the media and the general Australian public pay attention to him, and exercise their right to free speech.

Clearly Bolt now has his limits, on both

"Gosh, hold the presses. No, wait, they're slowing already at Fairfax and no wonder, if recycling playground taunts by anonymous tweeters now passes for news reporting."

Miaow. Poor Andrew. He doesn't even know Murdoch's newspaper operation has lost more recently than Fairfax.

"In fact, to be attacked on Twitter is no news to a conservative.

"Twitter skews hard to the Left..."

 Twitter refused to take him seriously. 

"Twitter also seems to bring out the worst in users."

 Twitter isn't a bubble.

"Maybe it's the relative youth of tweeters, and the anonymity of many. Maybe it's because hate tends to sell best in the look-at-me Twittersphere."

He has his own TV show. About His Opinions.

"Or maybe it's because Twitter appeals to the impulsive sensation junkies eager to instantly broadcast their most idle thought..."

This a person who has often published more than a dozen blog posts in a single day.

Now onto the Great Australian Labor Twitter Conspiracy.

"But here's the bizarre thing: this is the audience Labor thought could save it.

"This is the crowd Prime Minister Kevin Rudd tried to impress by tweeting a picture of his shaving cut to his 1.4 million followers, thus confusing the magpie attention of tweeters with respect from very real and unimpressed voters.

"But Julia Gillard as prime minister had an even more fatal attraction to Twitter.

"Her infamous misogyny speech last year - falsely branding Abbott a woman-hater - was rightly seen at first by most commentators as a hate-filled rant that would appal many Australians."

What was Bolt saying before about people ranting like arseholes?

"But Gillard's communications director, John McTernan, eventually convinced press gallery journalists it was a success because it had gone viral on social media, including Twitter."

Gillard's speech was viewed by millions across the planet, within days. A political speech. Viewed by millions. That wasn't JFK, Obama or MLK.

That's pretty fucking viral. 

"And so Gillard, convinced by tweets and blog posts, doubled down on her politics of division, pitting women against men, workers against bosses."

Oh Twitter, is there nothing you can't do?

"Stirring hatred may indeed light up the Twittersphere but it makes the world outside your window feel sick."

Eh?

"But it's no surprise if Twitter's culture has spilled out of the internet sewers and now floods media offices.

"No surprise, when Channel 10's Paul Bongiorno retweets Mike Carlton who retweets Rudd's daughter, Jessica, who retweets Channel 10's Charlie Pickering who retweets blogger Mia Freedman who retweets the ABC's Leigh Sales who retweets her boss, Mark Scott, who retweets his presenter, Jonathan Green, who retweets John McTernan who retweets the ABC's Mark Colvin who retweets Marieke Hardy who retweets Mike Carlton who . . .

"And on it flows, a steady stream of hate, flushing the feckless with it. Labor, too."

Andrew Bolt doesn't mention, of course, the numerous automated Twitter accounts operated by NewsCorp retweeting his every blog post intro, around the clock.

You see, mere mortal journalists have to tweet links to their own stories themselves, and try and get people to read their work. Pumping their stories on social media is expected of almost every working journalist today.

But not the Mighty Bolt.

He wouldn't lower himself to using Twitter.

He has others to do it for him.

One of the last of Murdoch's protected species.

 
And just because it's funny, here's Bolt flipping out at others doing what he does almost daily, taking someone's gaffe or misspeak and using it over and over and over again.



He's just so precious.

ENCORE: Andrew Bolt didn't always think Twitter was a sewer. When Rupert Murdoch dived into Twitter, Bolt called it the "coolest new medium."

Daily Telegraph "Staff Writers" Demand Destruction Of Greens - Federal Election Day 11

UPDATE: Print edition of Daily Telegraph says editor Chris Mitchell wrote today's anti-Greens rant. But the online story says it's by "staff writers". So which is it?

After months of telling us Labor lack credibility, that key frontbenchers are complete jokes, American-owned Daily Telegraph now says we must takem seriously, but only when they're bagging out the Greens.

Is Daily Telegraph editor Paul Whittaker too busy these days to go the Greens himself? Is he outsourcing his hatred to "staff writers?"

The whole editorial is a complete giveaway.

 Vote Labor, get Liberals. Vote Liberals, get Labor. Whatevs. Whoever you vote for doesn't appear to really matter to Daly Telegraph "staff writers" as long as the Two Party System is maintained, and third party and independent candidates are marginalised, smeared, destroyed.

The Coalition and the Labor Party share similar aims for Australia. Both of our major parties know that economic growth is the key to our nation's ongoing prosperity and security. Where they differ is in how economic growth should be accomplished and in the ability to achieve this goal.

Yet the goal itself remains a bipartisan vision. Both parties believe in jobs, investment and financial aspiration.

The Greens, however, are another story. Their vision for Australia is more aligned with former communist bloc nations than anything with which mainstream Australia is familiar. The Greens are, to put it simply, a party of far-left clowns.

But don't just take our word for it. Listen to senior Labor identities....

Now that opposition leader Tony Abbott has put Australia first by putting the Greens last in Coalition preferences, Labor is invited to do the same.

The Greens represent a view that is hostile to the nation's interests and to both major parties. A bipartisan solution is needed to fix a bipartisan problem.

 The Greens aren't so hostile to the 21st century or the environment, but hey, money is money money money money.

So Vote Kony Rubbott, the foreign-owned Daily Telegraph demands it.

Murdoch Flogs Nazi-Themed Merch

Sydney's Daily Telegraph reached peak Godwin's Law last week when editor Paul Whittaker dressed  prime minister Kevin Rudd in Nazi regalia on the front page. Such a hoot, they're now selling prints of Rudd dressed as a Nazi for only $70.

Wonder what Hogan's Heroes copyright owners Bing Crosby Productions think about all this?

The above invitation to buy prints of Australian public servants dressed up as Nazis by an American-owned media company originally appeared with this story from Adeaide Now.


RUPERT MURDOCH HAILS THE DEATH OF NEWSPAPERS: "IT'S GOING TO BE GREAT"

NEWS CORP AUSTRALIA CEO QUITS AFTER 'NAZI PM' FRONT PAGE

HOW RUPERT MURDOCH CONNED BRITISH MPS BY PLAYING CONFUSED OLD MAN

WEIRD SCENES INSIDE THE MURDOCH NEWS MINES

Daily Telegraph Depicts PM Rudd As Nazi - Day 4 Of Federal Election Campaign

Rupert Murdoch's The Daily Telegraph couldn't wait even a week into the election campaign before they depicted Prime Minister Kevin Rudd as a Nazi, online and in print.

And front page of the newspaper, of course.

Does aanyone under 40 even know what TV show the Daily Telegraph's editor Paul Whittaker is referencing there?

You have to feel sorry for the good journalists still left at the Daily Telegraph who have nothing to do with the front page. How is this in any way a good thing for a newspaper industry on its knees? What more reason do you need to give for people to give up on the morning paper habit than garbage like this?

Source

Media Madness Of Federal Election 2013 Begins

Rupert Murdoch's Daily Telegraph demands readers do what they say, and officially, foolishly, declare their hand. On Day One:

The afternoon edition, as seen kicking around Twitter:

(oh, and thanks Wikileaks)

From the Daily Telegraph, where it's all but company policy to refer to the Wikileaks US Embassies' Cable Collection as mere "low grade documents", comes this headling blasting story :

US terrorist agencies were told to place 23 Australians on a "no-fly" or "selectee" security list requiring them to be detained at US airports because of suspected links to a Yemeni terrorist group.

Acting on the advice of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation, the names were forwarded from the US Embassy in Canberra in January 2010 to the US State Department in Washington.

That's quite a story. And it's running across the Murdoch media empire. How could it not? Dozens of Muslims living in suburban Australia deemed dangerous enough to go on the US War On Terror's no-fly list....there must have been fucking balloons falling from the ceiling of News Limited's HQ when those cables were publicly leaked by....

Oh, here it is. Wikileaks. They get credited in paragraph six. But only once in the whole story. And the embedded link on the word 'Wikileaks' doesn't lead you to the Wikileaks website, or a place where the cited cables are published in full, which is part of the deal of using Wiileaks released cables for stories like this one, you link to where the cables are published in full so that the reader can check for themselves that the information used in the story is accurate.

It's about the only Wikileaks rule there is, and it costs the publisher nothing.

Even when people like Julian Assange provide free and easy opportunities for the mainstream news media to undergo such basic reforms as linking to source documents, they refuse to do it.

It's their way of saying, "Oh, Julian? Thanks for that great story, but Fuck You."

Just Replace 'Plague Of Blood' With 'Feral Pigs'


According to the Daily Telegraph, this will be NSW in 2011

Okay, I've heard some pretty wild predictions about what the results of rapid climate change might be from the likes of Tim Flannery & ABC's Robyn Williams, but I've never seen even the most apocalyptically-fixated warmitarian fear monger claim the people of New South Wales, in 2011, will suffer "the same fate" as Egypt under the alleged 10 biblical plagues.

The Daily Telegraph, of course :


Fuck! NSW is going to suffer plagues of Blood? Of Frogs? Of Gnats, Wildbeasts, Pestillence, Boils, Hail, Locusts, plagues of Darkness & plagues of Dead Firstborns? All in just one year?

Well, not quite.

The Daily Telegraph has its own version of the plagues detailed in the Book of Exodus :

"Rabbits, mice, feral pigs...snakes. locusts, ticks, cockroaches, sandflies, mosquitoes, bluebottles."

Where it gets really freaky is when you get them crossover plagues, where a few ramp up at the same time, and start mingling.

That's when you get rabbits on feral pigs hurling cockroach encrusted bluebottles at fleeing humans.

It could happen.

Maybe.

However, the story does offer up is this all too real and vomitous reality, for night-time wearers of lip gloss and ice-cream dribblers :

...he issued a special warning for women who wear the flavoured varieties to bed.

"They can smell the flavours and to them it's just food."

Cockroaches like to lick and nibble human lips in the dark of night, depending on what your lips smell like.

Remember, the deeper you sleep, the less likely you are to hear those tiny little lapping noises, coming from just below your nose.

It's probably best not to know.

How About "All They Got Left Is A Bag Of Loose Change And Some Crisps"?

News.com.au has the exclusive on the sorry state of Liberal Party finances :



But the Daily Telegraph must have decided "last $3 million" wasn't dramatic enough, so they improved it :



It's no great drama. Liberal Party leader Tony Abbott can't pull the corporate donors like...well, let's just say Malcolm Turnbull, and when Tony Abbott is replaced as leader by... well, let's just say Malcolm Turnbull, the corporate donors will return in force.

Murdoch Backs Gillard

By Darryl Mason

The Daily Telegraph ramps up the mockery of opposition leader Tony Abbott as the last week of the 2010 Federal Election campaign begins.





Ex-Australian Rupert Murdoch's Sunday tabloids, reaching more than one million Australians, carried front pages and lead editorials endorsing coup prime minister Julia Gillard to be officially elected PM this Saturday.

From The Australian's Media Diary :

Australia’s top-selling newspapers yesterday went for Julia Gillard, with Sydney’s Sunday Telegraph (circulation: 630,000) saying every government since 1931 has been given a second chance, so why shouldn’t the ALP get one, too? Melbourne’s Sunday Herald Sun (circulation: 597,000) said “the best interests of Australians are served by the re-election of Labor”.

Tony Abbott doesn't back a carbon tax, Julia Gillard, like Rupert Murdoch, does.

It's going to be an ugly week for Abbott in most of the Murdoch tabloids.

Unless, of course, Tony Abbott agrees, by Thursday, that a carbon tax "of some kind" may be necessary, after all.

UPDATE, August 18 : Both Tony Abbott and Julia Gillard have denied they plan to introduce a carbon tax in their first term. I'll wait and see on this one, but it's rare that big business doesn't get what it wants. The pressure on Gillard and Abbott to make a carbon tax part of their first term government agenda is not simply localised corporate pressure from those who stand to gain the most from a CT, it is also coming from international banking and investment institutions.

I'll be both pleased and, frankly, amazed if Australia doesn't have a carbon tax by 2013, regardless of who wins on Saturday.

Beer Not Bought

Why would anyone think the Murdoch media are actively, hysterically campaigning against prime minister Kevin Rudd?

From the front page of today's Daily Telegraph online :



Bombshell.

.

Majority 33% Of People Prefer To Read Awesomely Distorted Polls

Bad news for the Gillard Gushers. A new Daily Telegraph polls reveals only 1/3 of Australians favour Julia Gillard as prime minister, while 2/3 prefer Kevin Rudd.

Whoops, how did I get that so wrong? What I meant to say was :


The Daily Telegraph

An infamous Rupert Murdoch memo must have hit the vacuum tubes a few weeks ago : Get Rudd The Fuck Out Of There, or words forming a similar directive.

It seems like only yesterday the young journos of News Limited's head office were laughing it up over games of pool with Kev's Krazee Krew at a Surry Hills pub, having dealt with Howard through a very effective campaign of near daily photos of him looking all old and bent over and alone. Finished.

You'll know it's really on when the photos begin appearing of Kevin Rudd furtively licking his lips, a habit, a temptation, he is unable to resist even when he knows he's being interviewed on TV and his head will appear two metres high in pubs and bars, while jocular drinkers shout "Fuck me, we've got a lizard running the country!" to much laughter.

Bad enough to see on TV, devastating to have staring up at you from the pages of a newspaper.


.

Sydney's Daily Telegraph runs a story about a bar of soap allegedly made from the fat of Holocaust victims :

Historians have dismissed reports that the Nazis mass-produced soap from the remains of Holocaust victims during World War II....

True enough. But WTF is going on with the DT's 'related coverage'?



It'll get worse, the more the Murdoch media outsource their newsrooms.

The Daily Telegraph :



Are there really "respected Australian psychics"?

And if so, why doesn't the Daily Telegraph get rid of their journos and employ psychics instead?

Tomorrow's News Today, literally.


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The Daily Telegraph online, still classy :



Or to put it another way :

4 Out of 5 Modern Women Mostly Trust Their Men With Shared Finances

So how did the Daily Telegraph get that headline and story out the results of a poll that asked :

Do you or do you not "totally trust partner with shared finances"?

Well, you have to consider that the story was written by Joe Hildebrand.

And that the poll cited comes from Westpac's 'Women's Unit' (a PR unit) and the story concludes with the suggestion that partners having separate accounts for business and home finances will lead to less fighting over money issues.

More accounts mean more bank fees, which, coincidentally, now account for the vast majority of Australia's major banks' profits.

Cock Of The Walk

The Daily Telegraph isn't joking, this really is their top story :



The reason why you will never see Kevin Rudd parading down a public road in speedos is because he's hung like Matt Shirvington, and secret polls taken by his PR people have revealed that the majority of Australian males will never vote for a man endowed beyond the national average. One who has to kick, instead of tap.

True story.

Would I lie to you?



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We Stalk Mothers & Their Infants

The Daily Telegraph, now publishing stalker-creepy photo galleries of babies without their parents' permission.



You can find the link yourself, if it interests you so.

More of that "quality journalism" Rupert Murdoch insists people will pay to read online.

At least, that's what he's praying will happen.