I Want To Know, But You Don't Have To Tell Me That

By Darryl Mason

There is sometimes a bit of wisdom to be found amongst the usual anti-Muslim frothing, bizarre Rudd-related conspiracy theories and Howard/Costello worship at The Professional Idiot's.

This from NC :

...the public doesn’t have a right to know and you would be surprised how many don’t want to know. The “public” has no rights over the private lives of individuals, they are just that “PRIVATE”.

The death of a person may be news, the grief of their friends and family is not. Who decided it was news worthy to shove a microphone in the face of a grieving mother and ask ‘How does it feel’, pity the response of “how do you think moron” is edited out.

For too long we in Australia have been fed a steady diet of gossip and been told it is news. The opinions of journalists are reported as news rather than opinion, worse still journalists interviewing journalists about events rather than getting the news from the source. Sloppy, lazy and trashy reporting, too many so called journalists don’t do their homework before interviews and display their ignorance the moment they open their mouths asking inane questions

I don’t care which Hollywood star is sleeping with whom, its not news, neither is asking so jetlagged starlet or sports person, “how do you like Australia” the minute they get off the plane.

It’s not news, it’s not informative - its gossip, but far too often its lead item on the TV news or on the front page.

All of this is exactly why so many Australians are turning away from the dead tree media, soaking up news instead from blogs and alternative news sites.

Rupert Murdoch's Australian media are reeling from the gratuitously tasteless fake photo scandal surrounding Pauline "That's Not My Belly Button" Hanson.

And so they should.

Many of the non-blog Murdoch news sites had to stop accepting comments because the vast majority of commenters were heavily slamming The Daily/Sunday Telegraph and Herald Sun for propagating so much creepy shit, and invading Hanson's privacy in a deeply disturbing way.

Will they learn anything from it?

Only if the damages they have to pay out cost more than the profits made from running the non-story across its front pages and all over its online 'news' sites.

You want to know why corporate tabloid media is dying? This is why. The pap and crap doesn't distract the public like it once did, this is why newspapers like The Sunday Telegraph are so desperate they will pay $15,000 to a dying man, with a very vague memory, for photos that kind of look like Pauline Hanson might have at 20, but are probably from an Eastern Europe porn/dating site.

And on old photos that some may wish have disappeared forever, here's an interesting rumour bouncing back from New York : Murdoch owns MySpace, and every drunken party photo some kid puts up there gets copied, named, tagged and filed away. Why? Just in case that partying kid becomes someone famous and decides to delete their MySpace profile and photos, the Murdoch media will always have copies of those photos that may, one day, cause much regret.

If anyone from the Murdoch media is willing to deny the above, in full, I will be more than happy to update with a correction, or clarification.