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.


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Cannibalus Australis

If it's playing near you, and you're looking for a movie to see this weekend, you can't go past Van Deimen's Land, a brilliant Australian movie with plenty of, dare I say it, bite :

Of course, a new debate on the death penalty will not be influenced at all by fevered front pages and panting columnists :

THE killer who escaped the noose in the '60s only to kill again 40 years later has sparked a debate on whether the death penalty should be reintroduced.

A poll conducted in Melbourne, where Leigh Robinson committed his crimes, found 78 per cent of about 3000 respondents voted for the return of capital punishment.

Was it a phone poll, or a read-this-story-and-now-click-vote poll? The story doesn't say. But only one person, Leigh Robinson's stepson, was needed for this headline :



We just can't get out of the 20th century.

Ring Of Fire Unleashes Death And Destruction In Indonesia, Samoa

The reading of the 7.6 magnitude earthquake off Padang

The death toll from two monster tsunami waves that smashed into islands of Western Samoa and American Samoa yesterday is expected to reach more than 200, but so little is still known about the extent of damage in the many villages that dotted coastlines and the dozens of isolated communities across the smaller islands. Whole towns, shopping districts, marketplaces, resorts, hospitals are in ruins. Thousands of homes have been destroyed, key bridges and vital roads washed away.

18 hours after the massive 8.0 magnitude earthquake struck near Samoa, causing the tsunami waves, another huge earthquake erupted 78 kilometres off the coast of Padang, in Indonesia's West Sumatra province.

The 7.6 magnitude quake collapsed hundreds of buildings across the island, and of this 1.20am posting, has killed at least 80 people. Thousands are believed to be trapped or lying dead in the ruins. Landslides are reported to have blocked roads, hampering rescue efforts. Power and phone lines to Padang were cut after the quake, leaving the city of 900,000 in darkness.

An eyewitness report from Joey Cummings, a radio host in American Samoa :

We immediately sent out an earthquake warning on air, to tell everyone to stay away from possible landslide areas. We also asked schools to initiate their tsunami plans to get kids up the mountains.

We sent a tsunami warning 10 minutes later as we saw the first rising water.

We stayed on the air as the water reached three or four feet in the parking lot.

The water stayed at that level for a few minutes, but then it surged to around 15 feet.

All of the staff at the station went outside to the second floor balcony to see what was happening - and the air was filled with screams.

The devastation was complete.

The villagers immediately started looking for trapped survivors. I dedicated myself and my staff to helping those that were hurt, and gathering food and water.

Debris was everywhere. Broken furniture mixed with old tyres and trees. Children's clothing and road signs were crushed under telephone poles.

We screamed for people to run up the mountain but they just ran down the street away from the wave rather than make a sharp left and up the steep mountain just feet away.

We walked down the road only to find that people who weren't trying to help had already begun looting the stores.

School buses full of kids were smiling and waving at all the excitement, while behind them there were pick-up trucks with bodies in them - their feet were hanging out over the tailgate.

Aftershocks from the quakes are still being felt in Padang and Samoa.

I'm not going to tell you what this remarkable story from 2007 is about, because I don't want to spoil the tale as told by Jack Marx, in a brilliant piece of journalism. I will only try to convince you to read the full story, by quoting these two paragraphs :

Patients were booked into the clinic under assumed names - an understandable necessity for privacy - and travelled in Leighton Jones' car from Eraring to Morisset, spending the 30-minute journey in the back seat with the donor monkey as companion.

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Today, the people of Dora Creek know little of what happened all those years ago, and they'll tell you even less. They squint through security doors and murmur that it's "all but forgotten now" or was "a queer thing". Some joke about it, reciting the urban myth all over again. Even the editor of the local paper declares the story of Henry Leighton Jones "nonsense" that belongs in "a mixing bag of about 5000 other local myths".

The truth, as it so often turns out to be, is far more interesting than the myth.

UPDATE : Jack Marx has a new book out called Australian Tragic, a few dozen forgotten tales of our dark history. Haven't read it yet, but there appears to be a follow-up on the story of Henry Leighton Jones in those pages, as well as a whole load of remarkable Australian stories stories I haven't heard about before.

Dust Storms : Caused By But Also A Solution To Climate Change?


A NASA satellite image of the dust storm shrouding the New South Wales coastline

According to the UK Guardian the sort of massive dust storms that blanketed country New South Wales, Queensland and red-skied Sydney and Brisbane are "are spreading lethal epidemics around the world", including "influenza, Sars and foot-and-mouth and....respiratory diseases."

Curiously though, not only are such dust storms apparently the result of drought and climate change, they can also "absorb climate change emissions."

The Sydney storm, which left millions of people choking on some of the worst air pollution in 70 years, was a consequence of the 10-year drought that has turned parts of Australia's interior into a giant dust bowl, providing perfect conditions for high winds to whip loose soil into the air and carry it thousands of miles across the continent.

It followed major dust storms this year in northern China, Iraq and Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, east Africa, Arizona and other arid areas. Most of the storms are also linked to droughts, but are believed to have been exacerbated by deforestation, overgrazing of pastures and climate change.

Sydneysiders were quite excited by the blood-red dawn, and orange skies, on September 23. But on a global comparison scale, the Sydney Red Dust Storm was a junior ranker. Only about 5000 tonnes of soil was dumped across Sydney suburbs. A dust storm coming out of China's Taklimakan desert in 2007, according to this story, lifted up some 800,000 tonnes of dust In 2006, a dust storm deposited 300,000 tonnes on Beijing.

Each year, some 2 to 3 billion tonnes of dust are whipped up by winds from Africa and carried around the world.

Drought, deforestation, land clearing, too many goats chomping every blade of grass they can find, all lead to soil becoming loose enough to lift off, but the apparent good news is that massive dust storms "could be mitigating climate change, both by reflecting sunlight in the atmosphere and fertilising the oceans with nutrients."

So climate change can help cause the dust storms that may help mitigate climate change?

Nature abides.

What Market Is The Murdoch Media Trying To Reach With Fictitious Stories About Children Having Sex?

It was the biggest story for the Australian online Murdoch media yesterday, so does it matter if it was made up?

From news.com.au :

From PerthNow :

They look like a symbol of childhood innocence. But these bracelets are part of an "insidious" game that sees primary school kids perform sex.

And it is feared the craze may soon sweep WA.

The exact same story, under the same byline, appeared in the Courier Mail. With a slight change of emphasis to lock in local interest, and concern :

"...these colourful bracelets are behind an "insidious" craze of primary schoolkids performing sex acts that it is feared will soon sweep through Queensland."

WA, Queensland, where will this insidious made-up craze that doesn't drive children into sex spread next?

PerthNow readers were not so easily fooled :

"this is so obviously made up/an urban legend, nice 'news' story"

"'And it is feared the craze may soon sweep WA' a fine example of yellow journalism."

"Stupidest news report I've ever seen. Parents don't be concerned if see kids wearing them it means nothing. Ridiculous!"

"These harmless fashion statments are not promoting the sexualisation of youth - this ill-informed journalist is!"

"Theseare all over the u.k media as well with almost identical headlines andstories.why would adults honestly think 11 year old kids would behaving sex behind sheds because the right bracelet was broken!!Hysterical adults on one side and pedo dreamers with wild fantasies ofdelusion on the other.Leave the kids alone!"

This near daily focus on the alleged sex lives of children by the mainstream media,where the stories more often than not turn out to be totally false, is disturbing to say the least.

Incredibly, this trash also made it into The Australian.

Is this the kind of "quality journalism" News CEO John Hartigan thinks Australians will pay to read online?

CosmicJester notes the only sources for this 'story' appear to be a Facebook page and UrbanDictionary.

If the"journalist" had bothered to google these evil sex bracelets, theywould have found out that they are nothing new and they are mainly amoral panic/urban legend designed to scare dim witted journalists andparents.

Snopes.com reveals that this panic goes back till at least 2003 and is a slightly updated urban legend from the 1990's.

UPDATE : The bullshit 'shag bands' story did the trick. It became the most read storyon the CourierMail, News.com.au and PerthNow websites :

Interview With A Zombie

(photo source)

By Darryl Mason

Media reports continue to be suppressed about an outbreak of zombie attacks in Sydney, which social networking sites are reporting occurred under the cover of the Red Dust Storm, earlier this morning.

Twitter reports at least 12 confirmed attacks, most are said to have occurred near the north and south pylons of the Harbour Bridge, where hundreds gathered in the deep sepia-toned dawn to photograph the Bridge shrouded in ochre dust.

The Orstrahyun spoke to Zed Immortal from the Post-Life Institute For ReHuman Affairs (PLIRA) and president of the Association of Concerned Undead Citizens (ACUC).

Q : Are your lobbying groups responsible for the media blackout, and the silence from police, who refuse to confirm or deny at least 12 attacks by zombies earlier today at....

A: Let me just stop you there. Firstly, we have no control over the media, or the police. The idea is laughable, and...

Q: But you cannot deny that lobbyists working directly for you are...

A: Let me finish, please. I'll repeat, we have no control over the police or media reporting of these alleged attacks. And right now they are only alleged attacks. This Twitter thing is notorious for false reports of celebrity deaths and events that simply did not occur, and Twitter is the only place where these attacks have been reported. Now, I am not going to deny there was some violence this morning near the Harbour Bridge, but I've been told the violence was limited to a brief physical exchange between one of our association's members, out for a morning lurch, and a photographer, who did not ask permission before taking his photo, and ...

Q: I'm sorry...the smell is just, good Christ, it's so terrible....

A: Open a damned window then.

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"We are a peaceful people who, because of the derision of the general public fueled by the hysterical media and anti-undead politics, keep mostly to ourselves."

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

Q: So you're saying reports of brain-feeding by, as you say, members of your community this morning are false? Are in fact just Twitter gossip? A hoax?

A: Right now, that is exactly what I'm saying. Now, I'm not saying that nothing violent did not occur, but I am saying that if it did, it only involved one or perhaps 50 members of our large Sydney community, and such incidents of violence, which I fully condemn, should not reflect on all members of our community, both locally and nationally. We are a peaceful people who, because of the derision of the general public fueled by the hysterical media and anti-undead politics, keep mostly to ourselves.

Q: Zombie attacks in Sydney have been on the rise in recent months, and there is ample evidence that...

A: I have to stop you again,, I'm sorry. But I and many of my fellow post-lifers find that word terribly offensive, and outdated. We prefer the term post-lifers, rehumans or, if you insist on using the jargon most popular with youth, and the movie and video game saturated public, the undead. .

Q: Excuse me, I didn't mean to offend you.

A: That's quite all right. But it shows how much work our associations and action groups have to do to change the way the public views people like me who are no longer living, but are not yet dead. "Zombie" is a word that should have stayed in the 1970s, along with all those awful, awful George Romero and Italian horror movies denigrating our kind.

Q: It's true, isn't it, that lobbyists from your institute are responsible for the banning of video games where post-lifers are massacred and brutalised?

A: No, it's not true. But I wasn't displeased by the decision of the federal government agency responsible. Now, we really need to wrap this up, I have religious duties to perform this afternoon and...

Q: Could you explain, briefly, some of the tenets of the post-life religion for my readers? The red dust storm that covered Sydney this morning was seen by some as apocalyptic, and related to the End Of Days Christian beliefs, and some are already blaming what they call "the ungodly existence" of post-lifers as being somehow responsible for it.

A: What utter nonsense. We don't control the weather. Today is the most sacred day of our religious year. We will gather around the graves of recently departed loved ones and wish them a speedy return. We believe in the Third Coming of our Messiah. We believe we are currently unliving through the Start of Days, and soon, very soon, our Messiah will descend from the living.

Q: You don't believe your messiah will come from the ranks of the already dead?

A: No, he will be born in a post-life state, he will be rejected by his family and community and will come to unlive amongst us, where he will be treated with respect and honour. The kind of respect and honour we all believe the still living deny us, all these years after the outbreak began.

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

"We will be pushing for the Australian government to include measures to combat vilification of the undead in the new Hate Speech laws."

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

Q: What it is like to be dead?

Z: Well, obviously it has its disadvantages. It's hard to get a decent table at good restuarants for starters. There is the smell factor, which is why we tend to only mix with our own kind. Then you have the moronic people in the street who keep shouting "Brrrraaaaainssss!" while you're trying to go about your business, or take your children to school. I understand why the pre-dead feel the need to mock and denigrate us, after all there are many, many popular movies where the undead are not portrayed in a positive light, at the very least. But we are taking action to rectify this kind of public vilification. We are sending a delegation to the UN in December to lobby for representation on the UN Commission for Human Rights. We will be pushing for the Australian government to include measures to combat vilification of the undead in the new Hate Speech laws.

Q: I'm sorry....I just....it's the smell. Christ, it's like finding a packet of old bacon that fell down behind the fridge two months ago. Can't you do anything about that?

A: We've tried. Nothing can cover our scent, and many of us choose not to try. We do, indeed, find it an attractive smell. Rich, tangy. I actually find the smell of the living quite repulsive.

Q : So are you in a constant state of decay? Are you rotting right now?

A : No. Actually I feel quite good. I haven't had any major repair work done in months. The decay across our community appears to be slowing, which is good news for state and federal health care budgets, and local hospitals.

Q : Isn't true that there are other ways for the undead to halt the physical decrepitude, so you don't have to have so much repair work done quite so often?

A : I know where this question is going. And I don't appreciate it. I made it very clear to you that we were not to discuss this topic.

Q : But it's a topic that very much fascinates people, living people I mean. About your people.

A : Well, that may well be so, but that's their problem, not mine.

Q : It's their problem if your hunger and horror of personal decay becomes so overwhelming that people like you jump on the freshest living human they can find and tear open their skulls and feast on the....

A : You've been watching too many movies. Incidents of...what you describe amongst the undead are very, very rare. As this morning's events, or non-event as it was, will no doubt prove, incidents relating to the old myths that you seem obsessed with are actually few and far between. All but non-existent these days, in fact. The living are far more prone to violence from their own kind, then from ours.

Q : But there's few if any recent accounts of normal people eating the brains of...

A : Normal people? Is that what you said? Right, I'm going to have to stop you there, and end this interview. Thank you very much.

Q : What do human brains' taste like it, sir? Is it true they're delicious?

A : No, that's it. I've had enough of this. You're not only being rude, but utterly offensive.

Q : How many human brains have you eaten, sir? 10? 50? 100?

A: I'm not answering any more questions.


A tense end to an interesting interview.

Reports of zombie attacks in Sydney are still appearing on Twitter, as the last of the red dust storm moves up through New South Wales and into Queensland, but these reports seem to be closer to satire, or blatant hoaxes, than any representation of reality.



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There are so many brilliant photos of the Sydney Dust Storm on Flickr, Twitter and dozens of blogs I haven't got around to seeing much of what the professional photographers of the mainstream media have come up with yet. But for me, it's going to be hard to beat TomHide's Flickr portfollio of incredible, apocalyptic images of the Harbour Bridge and Luna Park.

How Much Will It Cost To Stick Our Cool New Sunglasses On Those Old Digger Statues?

The Australian War Memorial, the Last Post and the Eternal Flame are now brought to you by BHP, Boeing, Qantas, BAE Systems, Rio Tinto, Fosters, the Australian Gas Association, News Limited and some 80 other corporate sponsors.

The Full Story Is Here

I suppose it makes sense that the manufacturers of weapons and bombs kick back something (if only a minuscule amount), from the billions of dollars they've reaped off Australia's century of foreign war fighting, to the memorials that honour the hundreds of thousands of Australians killed and maimed fighting those wars.

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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.

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Rupert Murdoch's UK Sun, where nothing is beyond the pun, even terrorism :

(via Reddit)

He Had Himself Nailed To A Cross For Your Entertainment

John Safran's new eight part series on love beyond your tribe, Race Relations, is only a few weeks away. It looks hilarious, thoughtful and very timely :



More detail from The Age :

John Safran's Race Relations will see the comic examine cross-cultural, interracial and interfaith love in a series that features scenes shot in Israel, Palestine, Togo, Japan, the Philippines, Thailand, the United Kingdom and the USA.
Other crazy stunts will see Safran talk to his dead mother, become a ladyboy and an Elephant man, and even turn black and go undercover in Chicago.

Pilger : The War On Afghanistan "Is A Fraud"

Australian journalist John Pilger was awarded the 2009 Sydney Peace Prize in August :

The jury made the decision on the basis of Pilger's “courage as a foreign and war correspondent in enabling the voices of the powerless to be heard”. It also praised his “commitment to peace with justice by exposing and holding governments to account for human rights abuses and for fearless challenges to censorship in any form”.

On November 4, he will receive the award at a lecture at the Opera House. On November 6, Pilger will speak to some 1500 students at a peace festival hosted by Cabramatta High School.

John Pilger's work is not published in any Australian city daily papers, despite being our most famous, internationally recognised journalist. Nor is Pilger published on supposedly "edgy" comment and opinion sites like The Punch or The National Times.

Why?

This is why :

The Afghan war is a fraud.

It began as an American vendetta for domestic consumption in the wake of the 11 September 2001 attacks, in which not a single Afghan was involved. The Taliban, who are Afghans, had no quarrel with the United States and were dealing secretly with the Clinton administration over a strategic pipeline. They offered to apprehend Osama Bin Laden and hand him over to a clerical court, but this was rejected.

The establishment of a permanent US/NATO presence in a resource-rich, strategic region is the principal reason for the war.

Too Much Truth

Germaine Greer, in the recent documentary on Skippy The Bush Kangaroo, describes seeing the show while living in England in 1968 :

"It was one of those dead moments and I kicked on the television and there was Skippy. And I watched it absolutely hypnotised, because it was very sunny and there was a cobalt blue sky, grey vegetation and ruddy brown rocks, and that was what I was staring at. Just staring at, because I don't think I even realised how homesick I was until I saw those tree shapes. There was all kinds of things about it that were totally unbearable, but the landscape, and the light!"

Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd : "You Can Get Fucked!"

Prime Minister Kevin "Strippers & Booze" Rudd listens to the latest string of complaints from Labor factional bosses, and replies, curtly :

"I don't care what you fuckers think!"

"Don't you fucking understand?"

"You can get fucked!"

Rudd's swearapalooza was unleashed on Labor faction leaders when they apparently kept whining about the slashing of MPs' printing allowances from $100,000 to $75,000 a year.

You can't say Rudd's response was altogether inappropriate.

UPDATE : The story above was reported by Glenn Milne, who Kevin Rudd called "the Liberal Party journalist of choice" when asked about his swearing this morning. Rudd didn't deny he unleashed as quoted, saying :

"I think it's fair to say that consistent with the traditions of the Australian Labor Party, we're given to robust conversations. I made my point of view absolutely clear, and that is these entitlements needed to be cut back, and I make no apologies for either the content of my conversation or the robustness with which I expressed my views."

Fair enough.

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That's Not A Name, It's A Thrash/Speed Metal Trademark

Somewhere in Australia, there is a child legally named Metallica.

However, according to this story, it is illegal to call your child 'Ned Kelly.'

Sir Lady Chief Maximus Duke Seven is also out.

"I've Not Felt This Well For Ages", Then Death

The last meal of legendary British TV chef Keith Floyd, stricken with bowel cancer, was as follows :

A Hix Fix cocktail - "a morello cherry soaked in Somerset apple eau de vie topped up with champagne"

Cigarettes

A glass of white burgundy

A plate of oysters, plus potted Morecambe Bay shrimps.

Red-legged partridge and bread sauce for the main, washed down with a bottle of Côtes du Rhone red

Apple pie and perry jelly

Floyd's personal motto was to enjoy good food and wine to the full. A few hours after the meal, he died in his sleep.

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You Drive Me Insane, In The Nicest Possible Way

Nick Barker's back on the road in October. Always an excellent show, from one of Australia's greatest live performers.

This is his song about his grandmother, who suffered from senile dementia. She came to believe that she lived in two homes, and wanted to know when her family would take her to "the other house". A song from the heart. Sad, but beautiful.

Murdoch Media Reports Murdoch Media Plans Won't Work



It was there on the front page of Rupert Murdoch's news.com.au for a few hours, then it was gone. A story featuring Google CEO, Eric Schmidt, explaining why Murdoch's plans to charge people to read digital news is doomed to fail :

Publishers of general news will find it hard to charge for their content online because too much free content is available, (Eric Schmidt) the chief executive of Google says.

Mr Schmidt was responding to an announcement by News Corporation chairman and CEO Rupert Murdoch that he could start charging for content online.

"In general these models have not worked for general public consumption because there are enough free sources that the marginal value of paying is not justified based on the incremental value of quantity," he said.

The story was open for comments, all of whom agreed with Schmidt. One example :

Gone are the days of people getting all of their news from the one source. People get their news from a variety of sources now. There is absolutely no reason to confine oneself to a singular edition of news on a single web site. I wonder why Murdoch doesn't understand this?

No doubt the automated publication of that news wire story on news.com.au must have caused a few palpitations.