92% Of Australians Don't Enjoy The Trailor Park Boys And Bacon Dipped In Chocolate

The Daily Telegraph :



"Demon weed"?

This sort of thing was done so much better in the 1940s :

Why ABC Boss Mark Scott Should Tell The Daily Telegraph To Fuck Off

By Darryl Mason

After only one episode, Hungry Beast looks like a lock to replace The Chaser as the supplier of easy n free content for our tabloid media of Perpetual MoralOutrage! :

Netball Australia has condemned an ABC Television skit featuring a fake interview with a man claiming to have been sexually assaulted by the national team.

The skit, a clear reference to May's Four Corners interview with the woman at the centre of the Cronulla group sex scandal, is due to air on ABC's new current affairs/comedy crossover show, Hungry Beast next Wednesday.

A promo for the skit aired on Wednesday night.

Err, yeah. It was pretty obvious the short segment that aired was the skit in full, and not a promo for a longer segment next week. How fucking dim do you have to be to not get that?

And how ironic then that Hungry Beast's first show also featured a segment testing the gullibility of Australia's media.

I liked Hungry Beast. I thought the mix of skit comedy, serious interviews, media japery and WTF? statistics was very interesting. The jump from jokes to a shattering segment on the wife and mother of an Australian soldier killed in Afghanistan was jarring, but not wrong. And one seriously bizarre haircut from a host was not enough to turn me off.

Here's producer Andrew Denton talking about his latest creation :



UPDATE : The Daily Telegraph is crowing now about how it's manufactured MoralOutrage! beat up got the Man Gang Raped By Australian Netball Team skit pulled from repeats of Hungry Beast.



Gee, what a victory for good taste. Society has been saved, yet again, from laughing by the Daily Telegraph, backers of kid-killing wars and co-distributors of made-up stories about children having sex because of coloured wristbands.

You won't see the the skit on ABC TV again, but, curiously enough, the Daily Telegraph is running the 'banned' video on its website, with no adult content warning, generating revenue from taxpayer-funded TV clips, for which they paid nothing to use, as number-one-story-of-the-day content.



Most of the people who bothered to comment on the story at the Daily Telegraph website see it as anything but yet another pathetic MoralOutrage! beat up, and a further denigration of Australia's once infamous reputation for being able to have a good laugh at themselves.

"I feel sorry for my 8 year old son, because when he grows up Comedy will be illegal."

"Oh My GOD! Its official, we are now just like the YANKS. Consumed with political correctness and afraid to laugh at ourselves. WE ARE AUSTRALIAN PEOPLE."

It's an interesting conjob the Daily Telegraph has been running, from the days of The Chaser. Record a clip from an ABC-TV show, whip up some MoralOutrage! the next day, try and get the clip banned from further repeats on the ABC, while running the clip on your own news site, while also pointing out that the fact the 'controversial skit' has now been censored, leaving most readers little choice but to watch the clip at the Daily Telegraph website.

When will ABC managing director Mark Scott stop caving in and finally tell The Daily Telegraph to go and get fucked?

Join Twitter and ask him yourself right here.

Liz Ellis, by the way, doesn't have a problem with the skit at all :

"She knows it was a joke and can see the funny side of it — she doesn't feel defamed at all," Ellis' spokesperson Jessica Ball told ninemsn.

"She is out on the golf course playing a round right now, which shows how concerned she is about this,"

And thanks to the Daily Telegraph, the words "Liz Ellis Group Sex" now has a permanent listing in Google search.

No doubt Liz Ellis would probably find that funny, too.


.

Just Blame A Typing Cat

Hold the presses, associate editor of The Daily Telegraph, and hilarious failed litigant, Tim Blair, finds a spelling mistake on Twitter!

Deep thinking from Antony Loewenstein:

The thought of telling Israel what to do is plesant and necessary

Antony Loewenstein failed to insert the letter 'a' into the word 'pleasant'. Yes, isn't that exciting?

In part due to the very restrictive 140 character limit per post, Twitter is often a correct spelling, good grammar and even basic punctuation free zone. The information, the link, the joke, the snark, the insight, the trivial detail, the content of the brief comment, is all that matters, as all the established rules of the English language can be, and most often are, casually cast aside so as to fit the comment inside that tight character limit. Finding spelling mistakes on Twitter is piss easy. Too easy.  

Almost as easy as finding a spelling mistake on the Daily Telegraph website.

So while Tim Blair was busy stalk-trawling Antony Loewenstein for inconsequential spelling mistakes on Twitter (where Blair doesn't have an active account, at least not one under his own name) this doozy appeared in the first line of the first story on the front page of The Daily Telegraph, where Blair is, of course, an editor :

The Hurt of being "knocked bledding to the ground", you'd have to imagine, would be Immeasurable.

.

Daily Telegraph Falls For Michael Jackson Misinformation Experiment

On August 26, the Sydney Daily Telegraph ran the following piece of clickbait :



The original video and story was faked by German broadcaster RTL as "an experiment aimed at showing how quickly misinformation and conspiracy theories can race across the planet," according to the Sydney Morning Herald.

RTL ran the fake Michael Jackson video on YouTube for only 24 hours, and thank to clickbait media junkies like the Daily Telegraph, amassed more than 880,000 views before they pulled it down.

"We wanted to show how easily users can be manipulated on the internet with hoax videos," spokeswoman Heike Schultz of Cologne-based RTL told The Associated Press.

"Therefore, we created this video of Michael Jackson being alive, even though everybody knows by now that he is dead - and the response was breathtaking."

The Daily Telegraph story remains online, with no correction or updates explaining it had been suckered into a "misinformation experiment."

This is exactly the kind of celebrity story twaddle that Rupert Murdoch is expecting people to pay to read online by this time next year.

More Here

UPDATE : Looks like 'Hoax Or Real?' is going to become a standard Daily Telegraph clickbait feature.

Today's effort :



Pravda has plenty of these type of stories, but I get the feeling Daily Telegraph editors already know that.

UPDATE : Half a day as a feature story on the front page of the Daily Telegraph site (is nothing else happening in Sydney, or the world?), and the 'alien baby' story has only pulled a thin 4 comments. Didn't turn out to be quite the clickbait, or commentbait, it was expected to be, not even making the Daily Telegraph's Top Ten Stories list.

.

It's Not Making Up The News If You Find It On The Internet

Rupert Murdoch :

"Quality journalism is not cheap...."

No, it's not. So thank fuck for made-up stories about celebrities :

"When we have a celebrity scoop, the number of hits we get now are astronomical."

And so today, the Sydney Daily Telegraph dips a toe into a future celebrity scoop 'news'
fountain :



For now, you can read about and speculate on how Michael Jackson may have faked his own death, for free at the Daily Telegraph. But what about in six months?

Will people pay to read about Michael Jackson sightings when Murdoch launches his massive gated 'News' portal in the new year?

Probably.

Enough may.

The motivation then is not to even bother to find out if some obvious hoax has a remote strand of credibility before running it as news. They don't bother now. The Daily Telegraph story asks 'Hoax Or Real Deal?' The newspaper's editors know the video isn't real. That's not the point. It's click bait, and so it must run.

Next year, if a Michael Jackson sighting, or a particularly thrilling piece of daylight UFO vid, is vastly popular across the global Murdoch online NewsOTainment empire, and people are paying for it, millions of them, then the motivation, the profit motivation, is not to report news that happens, but create the News(OTainment) user stats show people are paying to read.

If paying readers want Michael Jackson sighting stories, they'll get Michael Jackson sighting stories. If they want to believe that there are motherships hiding behind the Moon and that a global invasion by Saturnians is imminent (or may have already begun), then this is the reality Murdoch subscribers will be delivered.

'Aliens Already Among Us Video : Hoax Or Real Deal?'

Lucky then, that Murdoch owns television and movie studios.

It's the future of news. You don't have to embrace it, or believe it, just enjoy it, like the smell of toast or the sound of steady rain on a tin roof.


.

Exposed : Just Another Murdoch Media Conspiracy

The Daily Telegraph And MasterChef Conspire To Fake A TV Show 'Reality' And Sell A Lot Of Cookbooks

By Darryl Mason

Okay, it's not a world-shattering conspiracy, but it's a real one, involving one of Australia's highest selling newspapers, the Daily Telegraph, and Masterchef, the highest rating show on TV.

Here are two headlines on the 'winner' of Channel Ten's MasterChef competitive cooking show published online at the Daily Telegraph site last night, less than an hour apart :





In the reality of a few million Australiian TV viewers last night, Julie Goodwin did 'win' MasterChef, if you happen to give a shit.

But the Daily Telegraph first published, and then quickly deleted, a story filling out a reality where the other finalist, Poh Ling Yeow, won the show, and $100,000 cash, and an inevitable best-seller cookbook deal.

Bizzarely enough, it wasn't just a headline, or an intro, that said Ling Yeow was declared the 'winner'. The now deleted Daily Telegraph story actually contained quotes from Julie Goodwin congratulating Ling 'Poh' Yeow for 'winning' Australia's highest-rating 'reality' TV competition :

Disappointed but humble, (Julie) Goodwin praised her feisty opponent for her success.

"Poh's a very deserving winner," she said. "I'm proud of her, she's a good friend and I wish her every success in the world."

And here's Ling 'Poh' Yeow celebrating her 'victory' :

Ling Yeow was stunned with the verdict but happy to embrace it.

"This is really a surreal feeling," the 35-year-old, who hails from Norwood in South Australia told The Daily Telegraph.

Yeah, it must be extremely surreal to have to tell a Daily Telegraph journalist that, not having actually 'won'.

The now deleted Daily Telegraph story was obviously prepared before the 'winner' was announced at the end of MasterChef last night, but unless the quotes from Goodwin and Yeow are also fake, then the contestants willingly joined the producers and the Daily Telegraph in this monumental Fakerama.

Here's the start of the Daily Telegraph's second pre-prepared 'news story' on the Julie Goodwin 'victory' :

A majority of Australia's culinary experts didn't back her, but MasterChef Australia contestant Julie Goodwin went from underdog to winner last night.

In a shock victory...

Well, not so shocking to some of the editorial staff of the Daily Telegraph and the producers of Masterchef, who conspired beforehand to fake at least two realities :

(Julie Goodwin was) stunned with the verdict after battling through three challenges during the 90-minute finale of the reality program.

But how stunned was Julie Goodwin really? Perhaps very stunned, considering she gave quotes to the Daily Telegraph pretending, or believing, she had actually lost.

Now here she is now playing the role of the 'winner' :

"I am the most blessed person in the world," said Goodwin...

Goodwin said she was embracing the victory with both hands especially after sacrificing her most important role as mother and wife to participate in the competition.

A competition that turns out to be a whole load of Fake Fake Fake Fake. As fake as the Daily Telegraph news story announcing 'Poh Wins MasterChef' they tried to disappear from the internet.

Now, in the alternative reality of that deleted Daily Telegraph story, Ling Yeow is celebrating her 'victory' today and making new plans for her new life as Australia's first MasterChef, with a promising TV career and best-selling cookbook author to look foward to. And all that money :

After pocking the $100,000 cash prize and a cookbook deal Ling Yeow says she's excited about launching her book Food From Mars.

With a heavy Asian influence, the MasterChef winner believes Australians have been waiting for a cookbook which explores her roots.

Oh well, at least she can save, print and frame the following screengrab from Club Wah :

"But Poh, you didn't win MasterChef."

"Yes, I did. The Daily Telegraph said so!"


There will be a whole load of heavy comment censorship across Murdoch media sites today, as they try to stifle discussion on just how fake some of their 'news stories' actually are, and attempt to dampen public criticism of the obviously devious, fraudulent relationship between the producers of high-rating TV shows and the Murdoch tabloid media that both ceaselessly promotes them, and profitably feeds off them.

I should note this story broke on Twitter, and Australian bloggers were all over it, very, very
quickly.

No wonder Murdoch's Australian CEO, John Hartigan, hates bloggers so much.

Bloggers keep exposing Murdoch media fakery and conspiracy.

If Only Kevin Rudd Was Carrying A Plastic Turkey

No journo at the Daily Telegraph was willing to put their name in the byline of this asinine fluff :

The sideways glance can speak a thousand words.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has had a trying few days as he and Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull have engaged in an ugly political scrap resulting in both calling for the other's resignation.

Therese Rein is a woman clearly committed to her husband's long-term success. But did her composure slip for a few seconds on Sunday as she left her Canberra church? Did we glimpse an expression that said she was stressed, weary and unimpressed? Is Utegate - the issue of whether or not her husband helped out an Ipswich car dealer - wearing a little thin on her?

The Daily Telegraph 'story' doesn't bother to answer any of those questions.

Here's a couple of more pertinent questions :

Was that absurd guff from the Daily Telegraph some kind of hopeless attempt to ferment speculation that 'Utegate'-related pressure is causing problems in the prime minister's marriage?

Is the Telegraph really that desperate to try and distract from the fact that its promotion of fake e-mailery has helped to further destabilise and will probably, ultimately, lead to the destruction of Malcolm Turnbull's leadership of the Opposition?

A sideways glance may "speak a thousand words", but even with copious fluffing, Therese Rein's bored look at her husband was only worth 165 words to the Daily Telegraph.

Who Can We Ban Next?

You can imagine the NSW government will be very happy with the first headline from this Daily Telegraph graphic. The bottom line? Not so much.



If the NSW government, as this story claims, really does end up spending $4 billion or so on local businesses for government contracts that would have previously ended up overseas, then it's obviously good news.

But do you think they really had a choice?

The NSW Liberals and independents, along with the unions, would have been hammering Labor all the way to the next election if they still allowed police and fireys uniforms to be made overseas while local clothing manufacturing is hitting the skids.

As for NSW Bans China, well, what a surprise, the story itself says no such thing at all. Not even close.

But the Daily Telegraph gets to serve up its daily dose of xenophobia, along with a nice big Fuck You to China on behalf of the boss, who is still smarting over his failed efforts to grab a major slice of Chinese media action, a business experiment that cost him more than $1.4 billion.

Exclusive? We Got Nothing

By Darryl Mason

Sydney's Daily Telegraph, Melbourne's Herald Sun, the Courier Mail, the Adelaide Advertiser, proclaims a Mad Max 4 "EXCLUSIVE" today :



MTV had a story with far more detail back in early March, including the fact that director George Miller has already stated the fourth Max Mad movie is going to be animated, not live action, meaning there will be no "shooting" in Sydney :

“We’ll probably go a different route,” Miller told MTV News about the potential talent voicing the lead role. The plot would be partly lifted from the script of the fourth “Max” film, which was set to shoot in 2003 until financing collapsed in the wake of the Iraq War.

Now Miller is resurrecting the idea as an R-rated, stereoscopic anime flick for theatrical release. It’s a curious undertaking, to be sure, but one made all the more certain to happen after the runaway success in 2006 of his computer-animated “Happy Feet”—not that the newest, ever-violent “Max” film will have much in common with that kid-friendly penguin party.

“I see myself as someone who is very curious about storytelling and all its various media,” Miller said. “I’ve always loved anime, in particular the Japanese sensibility. It’s something I’ve always wanted to do.”

The Orstrahyun covered this story back on March 8 :

Max Mad 4 Is Coming, Animated And Mel Gibson Free

So what's the big Exclusive all these Rupert Murdoch daily newspapers have nabbed?

Nothing :

The Daily Telegraph could not confirm casting intentions because nobody at Kennedy Miller was available for comment.

Nor could we confirm whether Miller intended to direct Mad Max 4 himself. And if he did, whether he intended to direct it simultaneously with Happy Feet 2, which is currently in production in Sydney.

Nothing about Mad Max 4 as anime, or the extensive video game that will see release before the fourth Mad Max movie, nothing about Miller's already announced plans for the movie, nothing about the old Mad Max 4 script, 'Fury Road', that has been kicking around for years and will likely supply at least the basic plot of the new movie :

The new film is set two centuries on from where we last left Max, wandering the wastelands at the end of third instalment, Beyond Thunderdome.

While the first two films saw women and gasoline as being the most precious resources left to be plundered by biker road armies, and water became a plot catalyst in Beyond Thunderdome, this time around the unpolluted DNA of human 'pure breeds' will be the treasure all seek to possess.

Gibson's Max is expected to show up in the new film in flashbacks, to reveal what happened to him in the last years of his life, before the new Max, a 'son' derived from his DNA, takes over the story.

The new Max's mission will be to act as a 'protector' and escort a group of non-mutants across the wastelands with their precious stock of unpolluted DNA. This pure DNA stock is desired by the mutant hordes, as it can be used to clean up their genes, and make them resistant to the radioactivity that still infects the land.

How hard is to fluff out an "Exclusive" with some actual information from a Google search, seeing as the Daily Telegraph couldn't get an interview with George Miller, or find out any hard detail from anyone connected with the project?

The MTV story quoted above, with Miller's quotes, is the third story listed when you Google 'Mad Max 4.'

Rupert Murdoch thinks that people will soon pay him to access this kind of non-event "Exclusive" content online.

Good Luck with that.

Here's an old trailer for the original Mad Max, the American trailer with, akk! American voices dubbed over all those excellent, characteristic, funny Australian ones. How wrong is this?

Getting Nostalgic For A Post-Apocalyptic Aftermath

You Sick Bastards, Stop Being Fascinated By The Stuff We Fill Our Newspapers With

By Darryl Mason

The Daily Telegraph is into its third day of mad rantings about the "sick" people who gather at scenes of car accidents, emergencies and other assorted human tragedies. As people do, as they have always done.

Some recent headlines :

Sick Sydney Thrilled By Violent Crash Deaths

Sick Sydney Gore Porn

Inhale the stench of hypocrisy :

The tragic late-night deaths of a young mother and a truck driver in Sydney had one thing in common - both victims spent their final moments as macabre suburban entertainment.

And yet The Daily Telegraph publishes photographs of the crash scene, ensuring the horror moves from "suburban entertainment" into mainstream entertainment.

They died as mothers in pyjamas and dressing gowns watched on with dozy toddlers.

They jostled to find a clearer view. They laughed, maybe at a private joke, and took photographs.

The bodies were still in view. Gore porn.

And here's a photograph of one of the crash scenes discussed, run in the Daily Telegraph, on the same story where it berates its readers for taking photographs at car accident scenes :



The stunning moralising continues :

Crash victims too often die, not only in excruciating pain but as a public spectacle.

The final screams of a dying man, the last breath of a dying woman, in front of a thrilled audience murmuring at the horror of it all, yet sipping from a mug of hot coffee as they move closer to the action.

Most of the rubberneckers who stopped to see the carnage just watch.

...one could give the crash victims the dignity of dying without spectators, their children in tow, treating crime scenes as movie theatres with snacks and drinks.

And the first thing the family of fatal crash victim usually sees is journalists showing up on their doorstep asking for photographs of the deceased, and interviews with the family members.

So where did all these people get the idea it was acceptable to take photographs at the scenes of car accidents?

Maybe they've just seen the media in action, close up, or perhaps they read The Daily Telegraph which actively encourages the "gawking public" to take photos of news events and send them in for publication :



However, they won't pay you for your photos, and they may not even give you a credit for your free news gathering :

1. You acknowledge that News may use all intellectual property rights in your content throughout the world, in perpetuity, without restriction and without making payment to you, including publication of that material in hard copy publications or in electronic media, using your content in advertising and promotional material for News and permitting others to do any of these, including when News and others receive payment for this.
   
2. You waive all moral rights in your content and consent to anything which News (or any person permitted to do so by News) may do in relation to your content which would otherwise be in breach of your moral rights. This includes that News may use your content without attributing you as the source of your content.

If you don't want people to take photos of crash scenes, don't ask them to take photos of local news events and send them into your newspaper.

As for the behaviour of locals at a car crash scene, anyone who has been unfortunate enough to live near an accident blackout knows that car accidents have always drawn people from their homes, even late at night. It's usually that startling sound of screaming tyres and the horrific crunch of metal that does it. Neighbours gather, those who can help usually will, and some kids act like idiots, but it's insane to berate the public for being morbidly fascinated by car accidents when you're a newspaper that regularly fills its pages with exactly this kind of news fodder. And photographs.

Rupert Murdoch Doesn't Back Climate Change Fear Mongering, Except When He Does

I asked Daily Telegraph opinionist Piers Akerman why he shreds Labor and professors and Al Gore and the ABC over climate change fear mongering, while continuing to give a free pass to his own boss, Rupert Murdoch, now the most prolific and influential promoter of climate change reality in the world :

Your boss backs the fear mongering as well, Piers. Why don’t you get in his ear?

Akerman denies that his boss uses his media to spread fear and unease about the effects of climate change :

"I don’t think he backs fear mongering, I believe he makes decisions on the best available evidence and is not afraid of admitting his mistakes when he’s been wrong..."

I stand corrected. Rupert Murdoch and his media, like the Daily Telegraph, do not back the fear mongering promotion of climate change reality, apparently. Which is why stories and headlines like this never appear in The Daily Telegraph, except when they do, which is often :


Akerman also claims that "Murdoch’s editors are responsible for their own decisions," meaning that Murdoch has no influence over editorial decisions made by his newspapers. Except, of course, when Murdoch openly admits that he does indeed tell his newspaper editors what to publish :

Rupert Murdoch has admitted to a parliamentary inquiry (in the UK) that he has "editorial control" over which party The Sun and News of the World back in a general election and what line the papers take on Europe.

The minute stated: "For The Sun and News of the World he explained that he is a 'traditional proprietor'. He exercises editorial control on major issues..."

He also helped "shape" the pro-Iraq War message across his worldwide media empire, and admits it here.

Embracing Corporate Greenism has proven very profitable for Rupert Murdoch, and his media, as energy giants flood his newspapers and websites with advertising promoting their new Green Consciousness.

The blogs of former Murdoch 'global warming deniers' now 'climate change realists', like Akerman, Tim Blair and Andrew Bolt are where you will now most often see such Corporate Greenism advertising.

If there's money in it, Rupert's always a true believer.

Aliens Mutilated Their Vaginas?

I'm not quite sure what thousand words the picture attached to this story is supposed to be worth. A mistake, presumably, or someone at Murdoch's Daily Telegraph has a staggering lack of compassion :

Daily Telegraph Brands Kevin Rudd 'Gay'

12 Hours Later, Dirty Tricks Headline Wiped From Website
A few days ago, we mentioned that we were getting e-mail tips that the Sydney Daily Telegraph had a big 'scoop' on Kevin Rudd planned for its Friday front page. The rumours ran that Liberal dirt units had uncovered something allegedly dodgy about the way Kevin Rudd came to purchase his current home in 1994.

So here it is, Friday, and what's the big 'scoop' in the Daily Telegraph?

All we could find in the online edition at 1.20am was this incredible headline :




Kevin Rudd, John Howard's election rival, is 'gay'?

If true, it would certainly be a scoop indeed.

Trouble is, the story under that headline mentions nothing about Howard's election rival being 'gay'. It doesn't mention the word 'gay' at all.

Instead it's a story on John Howard and Julia Gillard waffling on about Howard's Monty Python-esque explanation of how saying "sorry" for rising interest rates is not the same as giving an apology for rising interest rates.

So what's going on here?

Is this a dirty tricks attempt by the Murdoch media to plant a thought-seed in peoples' minds that Kevin Rudd might be 'gay'?

What other explanation could there be for such a bizarre and unsubstantiated headline on a news site visited by tens of thousands of people this morning? A headline that has now been indexed on GoogleNews?

The headline is not a typo. The intention and headline is clear, despite what editors will later claim. And the accusation is all over the Daily Telegraph site. Here's how it appears on the 'National News' page :




Here's how it appears in the 'Also in News' listing on the main Daily Telegraph site (its second appearance on the main page) :



The aim of such a headline is clear : to spark speculation about Kevin Rudd's sexuality, and force him into a position where he has to issue denials.

This is very similar to the 'make him deny it' media campaign against Mark Latham in the 2004 election, where the Labor leader was forced to repeatedly deny that there was a saucy video tape of his bachelor party doing the rounds.

The Daily Telegraph and its sister Melbourne paper The Herald Sun were all over that one as well. There was no video tape, but Latham spent days in the final weeks of the election campaign denying it existed, or that his bachelor party was anything less than respectable. It didn't matter that the allegation was utter fiction, it planted seeds of doubt in voters' minds.

Clearly, the intention of the Daily Telegraph here is to plant a few seeds of doubt about Rudd.

The last two weeks of the election campaign, as far as some branches of the media is concerned and if this odious effort from the Daily Telegraph is anything to go by, is going to get extremely nasty.

UPDATE : The PM Not Sorry, Election Rival 'Gay' headline was removed from the front page of the online Daily Telegraph site around 11am today. It's still running, without explanation, on the National News page and the DT's Election 2007 page.

UPDATE II : The PM Not Sorry, Election Rival 'Gay' headline is now gone from all Daily Telegraph online pages. The complete x-ing of that headline happened at around 1pm. Same story, but brand new headline :



END

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Tim Blair's Bush-Mandela 'Gaffe' Gaffe

Tim Blair, of Sydney's The Daily Telegraph, loves to point out how evil, deluded Lefties consistently misconstrue the words of the wise and poetic President Bush :

'Nuance Missed'...read a lefty who apparently thinks Bush was literally referring to Nelson Mandela.

Pity Tim Blair of the Daily Telegraph didn't bother to notice that the Daily Telegraph is also misconstruing the words of President Bush :

By Staff Writers

Nelson Mandela is still very much alive despite a gaffe by US President George W. Bush, who alluded to the former South African leader's death in a speech yesterday.

Another Tim Blair triumph of Lefty-bashing, while ignoring the increasing tide of Bush vilification in his own newspaper.

Blair became one of the most popular bloggers in Australia in 2003-2004, mostly due to his occasionally funny work in shredding the hypocrisy and hysteria of the mainstream media.

Now Tim Blair is about as corporate mainstream media as you can get in Australia, with his gig as opinion editor and columnist with the Daily Telegraph, he's become one of the corporate media hypocrites he once so devotedly despised.

He'll enthusiastically wet lily-bash some blogger hyping global warming, who gets a few hundred visitors a day, while totally ignoring the climate change fear-mongering now so prevalent in his own newspaper. The same newspaper which is read by hundreds of thousands of people per day, and which helped to push climate change into the top three of the most important issues and voter concerns in the coming federal election.

The biggest promoter of the threat of global warming in the world today is not Al Gore, it's Rupert Murdoch, Blair's boss.

Rupert Murdoch : "climate change poses clear, catastrophic threats."

Murdoch also said he would take the fight against global warming and :

...weave this issue into our content-- make it dramatic, make it vivid, even sometimes make it fun.

"We need to do what our company does best: make this issue exciting. Tell the story in a new way.

"...we can change the way the public thinks about these issues..."

Witness the Daily Telegraph's sudden, total embracing of the fight against global warming as a prime example of Murdoch's promise in action.

But will you see Blair shredding Murdoch for succumbing to - as fellow Murdoch media professional hypocrite Andrew Bolt put it - "the most superstitious pagan faith of all."

Of course you won't.

There are some things more important than pointing out the delusions and hypocrisy of the mainstream media. And for Blair that is making sure he stays a part of it.

Akerman Blog : YouTube Sucks And Blogs Are Written By "Hate Filled Obsessives"

Our favourite old media dinosaur worthy of regular mockery, Piers Akerman, was one of the last of the News Limited stable of opinionists to allow his columns to go online in blog form.

He resisted, we were told, because he didn't want to have to engage with readers, or to allow his work to be publicly criticised.Akerman lost that battle, as New Limited boss Rupert Murdoch made it clear that all his opinionists would eventually have to become bloggers, because blogs were the future of News Limited and a source of online ad revenue.

Of course, now that Akerman's Daily Telegraph columns go up on the website in blog form, nearly every paragraph he writes results in readers enthusiastically criticising his fawning, ceaseless pro-John Howard bias and correcting his many, sometimes purposeful, errors of fact and distortions of history.

Considering that prime minister John Howard has now posted a short, two minute spiel on YouTube about how he has been fighting climate change for 17 years (he doesn't even blink), and all the headlines his dipping into new media politics generated, it was time for "One of the nation’s most respected journalists" (as his own website calls TheAk) to take a closer look at this whole Tubing phenomenon.

Because The Ak is "One of the nation's most respected journalists", he naturally spent a great deal of time studying the rich and varied content ofYouTube and divining its worth and impact as a medium of discourse and information and a potential tool and forum for political debate and impact.

The Ak summed up YouTube as being :

hardly the platform for a person of any stature or maturity to deliver messages of any substance...a site for sad and sick eyes.

The Ak knows this because of his deep, probing investigation of all that YouTube has to offer :

Take the videos which were listed as most viewed yesterday.

He doesn't appear to have looked beyond the front page of the YouTube site. Now that's research.

Had The Ak looked a little closer, he would have seen the YouTube search engine, where people with even his limited online research skills can find messages of substance from a century of filmed andvideod speeches and lectures.

Here's what we found in just five minutes of entering the names of people expected to have delivered messages of substance into the search box :

Martin Luther King on 'I Have A Dream'

Robert Menzies on 'Why I Had To Retire'

Michael Crichton on Global Warming

Carl Sagan on the Library Of Alexandria

Stephen Hawking on The Origin Of The Universe

Winston Churchill on 'Their Finest Hour'

Niall Ferguson on The Wall Street Crash


Every time The Ak writes about the internet, and the growing range of tools - like YouTube - that are already becoming indispensable to writers, researchers, historians and journalists, he makes an idiot of himself. It's like reading a non-driver writing about cars.

What's worse, The Ak doesn't seem to comprehend that he is now a blogger, or blog writer.

Witness his latest screed against the new media tool that his own boss, Rupert Murdoch, believes is the future of news, and News Limited :

...the now ubiquitous blogs with their legions of ill-informed, hate-filled obsessives.

Fantastic. The Ak clearly isn't aware that he is referring to himself.

It's interesting to note that since we last wrote about Akerman's all but non-existent interaction with readers on his Daily Telegraph blog, he has suddenly become more engaged, replying to more than half a dozen reader comments in a recent rant about why John Howard is still mega (something about where he buys his suits).

But it's clear from his tone and words that it is not something The Ak enjoys doing.

Like many of the fatted cows of his aged generation of opinion writers, Akerman pines for the days when his columns in the printed newspapers were the last word. There'd be letters to the editor about what he'd written the week or day before, but he could always laugh as he screwed them up and aimed them at the bin.

Not anymore.

Now The Ak has been reduced to having to defend his opinions, his facts and his bias almost every time a new column goes up on his blog.

No wonder he hates YouTube so much. Too much like real freedom of speech, right of reply and active democracy.

The Last Online Stand Of Piers Akerman