I know, I know, I shouldn’t read the Oz, and I certainly shouldn’t read Glenn Milne. But, as with the whole emailgate mess, it’s hard to look away from a trainwreck like this. And you do get the occasional gem, such as Milne’s (non-ironic) description of News Limited’s reporting on the Rudd government as “fair and accurate” and “balanced”.
I report, you decide.
More from Mark Bahnisch
John Quiggin 
OK, I’ve decided.
Look away from the train wreck and stop feeding the MSM trolls. They benefit, we do not.
C’mon, I read the SMH so I don’t see why you should not tolerate the Oz even if it disagrees with you.
Actually, I think the Oz does a better job – not perfect, but better – of separating reporting and comment that SMH or The Age.
And that means you can ignore the opinion writers you find boring or unenlightening (in my case, Albrechtsen, Milne and Adams) and be left with not a bad paper.
The Guardian, whose editorial line is well to the left of any Australian paper and has some quite strange columnists such a Monbiot, does an excellent job of separating news from opinion.
One example of the SMH’s very lame reporting is this story today http://www.smh.com.au/national/mps-attempt-to-claw-back-some-of-their-super-perks-20090705-d98k.html which tries to equate the entirely reasonable practice of salary sacrifice with expense fiddling. This is not politically biased just very bad journalism.
Ive decided. “Fair and accurate” “balanced”?? Come on. Cant even fool the readers anymore. Only on the 27th June and still pushing the “Rudd gave special help to a mate” garbage.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25695194-32542,00.html
Just a very quick browses of the headlines for todays opinion writers in the Oz..we have a selection.
Mark Day says “bloggers are out of touch”
Tony Blair highlighted as saying “measures other than emissions trading can clean up the planet”
Glen Milne says “the PM is showing signs of megalomania”
Janet pays homage to Frank Devine (Miranda’s father) as being the loss of a great conservative writer.
May as well rename Oz “The Constralian”.
Oh come on, NWB. It’s not just their pathetic opinion columns; far worse is the selectivity of their front-page news – what they consider news and what they don’t.
As Chomsky points out, all “serious” journalism shapes worldviews by doing this. But the Australian does it blatantly and, worst of all, consciously. Personally I think it’s deliberate (if badly flawed) commercial tactics rather than just following the Evil Emperor’s orders, but the effect is the same.
It’s as fair and balanced as Die Sturmer was.
Alice, opinion writers don’t bother me. They are clearly labelled and can be ignored. Though the Oz’s editorial position is clearly leaning towards the right, I think they give room to a wider spectrum of opinion writers than the Fairfax papers.
Sorry, derrida derider, I do not agree about selectivity of front page news in the Oz. Today, for instance the G8 story on AGW is pretty straight reporting. The boxed Blair comment is not one that all Oz columnists would agree with and is contrary to its common editorial line.. I don’t believe the Fairfax papers would publish a piece so different from their editorial position.
I am surprised that anyone is surprised by the offerings by News et al especially anything with a Glenn Milne byline attached. Derrida point isn’t (as Chomsky himself observed) that newspapers misrepresent the truth, rather they are conservative in their reporting by virtue of their structure. A wide range of opinions looks impressive but if the prevailing editorial point of view as determined by volume and frequency is all slanted in one direction then the variety is merely window dressing.
What I particularly like about this is that in his opening paragraphs he attributes Rudd’s rise and Turnbull’s fall not to their own actions at all, but to media filtration and the coverage that both parties received.
This substantially undermines his “just the facts ma’am” style disingeniousness later in the piece, as if the News Limited journalistic apparatus in general, and Milne don’t see themselves as serious political players with their own agenda to implement.
It also reflects Milne’s self-image as a maker and breaker of important people, not as some sort of humble public servant out there against the odds to deliver the goods.
Funny and also a sad reflection on Milne’s self deception.
Whoops! Forgot I’m just an idle (electronic) mouth commenting on some poor News Ltd flack’s hard yakka. I’ll go ritually flagellate myself for the next few hours in compensation. Sorry Harto! Sorry Harto!
DD,
I have to call Godwin’s Law in on your comment. The Oz, while not being my paper of choice (that is the AFR while in Australia) is hardly as unfair or unbalanced as a Nazi propaganda sheet.
I have found the slide of the Oz quite sad, but it is in journalistic standards across the board (except for the Weekend insert reading) not just Milne and politics. There was a time under Paul Kelly and Alan Wood that it was a pretty good read on many things. But those days are gone. I shudder to think how many fewer journalists it must employ now compared to ten years ago.
As for Milne, and The Insiders, I never even click on his site. We all have to face the unfortunate fact that we will decline mentally as well as physically as we age, unless we keep mentally alert and trying new challenges. Lifestyle can be a factor in that too. I don’t think Milne or Ackerman now are the writers they once were.
when did this so called decline at the Oz begin?
its been one sided propagandist drivel as long as i have been reading it which would be about fifteen years
Andrew (10)”not as unfair as a nazi propaganda sheet” except when Miranda and Janet are screeching like a pair of white cockatoos with the same annoyance level.
Godwin’s law is now Grech’s law and the Murdered News is probably as bad as that…
At least we dont quite get endless re-runs of Howards speeches (maybe because they just didnt sell papers?)
Socrates/smiths/Alice – Strange, if you ignore columnists and opinion writers (and I agree Milne is not worth reading. At least with Adams I read the first and last para before dropping the Oz magazine) I believe that the Oz has got better and the SMH worse. I don’t know the figures but suspect SMH has shed more journalists as the classified rivers of gold become a dribble. The Oz has never been highly profitable. It has been kept for the reason it was set up – to give Murdoch a quality daily in this country. So it had a less desperate need to cut costs. Perhaps also as more content of all papers comes from news services and syndication, the Oz has more to draw on from The Times and WSJ.
Look at the SMH World pages – sometimes one or two stories from Fairfax correspondents but otherwise stuff from AFR, The Guardian, AAP and NY Times.
I agree re the classified rivers of gold drying up NWK – and with it we get more “regular” sensationalist politico talking heads and less real journalism.
I think Smiths is right. The Australian has always been “one sided propagandist drivel” for as long as I have been reading it too, which would be a lot more than 15 years. I can remember their “Tax Revolt” campaign of the 70s, their whole-hearted support for “Joh for PM” of the 80s, their support for flooding the Franklin (also the 80s). I remember commentator Des Keagan (whatever happened to him?) who wrote the most portentous, turgid, far-right drivel imaginable, and on it goes.
Just because they said they were a quality publication doesn’t mean that they were. What has happened is that with the rise of the blog it has become clear that the emperor is stark naked. They have been exposed as third rate partisan hacks and, in my opinion, twas ever thus.
The Oz has been anti-Rudd (as opposed to just being centre-right) since they were burned with that article about how Rudd had to explain to George Bush what the G20 was. It seems that everyone in Canberra believed that Rudd was behind that story and it could explain why the Oz dislikes him so much.
Broadly Australia suffers from poor quality journalism. There is not the critical mass of readers to be able to offer the quality and quantity of papers like in the US or UK. All papers except for The Oz tend to be corporatist with the SMH swinging behind Labor right and The Age acting more like a Labor left broadsheet and the Tele and other Murdoch papers being populist conservative (with a small ‘c’).
There are no liberal papers, no breadth like in the UK where you have the populist right wing with the Daily Mail, the middle class right with the Telegraph, the hard-left unionist with the Mirror or the middle class socialist with the Guardian or the metropolitan liberal with the Independent. If Australia had that breadth then politicians would be held to account more often and national debate will be better for it.
The papers are getting skinnier and skinnier as well as the same old nodding dogs in them. Almost not worth buying.
Why buy? Go online and get it for free!
And papers wonder why they are dying out…
It will be fascinating to watch. All the publishers are afraid and no-one has any idea of how to survive. Most, like Hartigan, are whistling in the dark.
I believe there will be one survivor, possibly national so possibly the Oz or AFR plus quite a few ultra locals, mostly giveaway.
Put simply, it means we don’t need the presses or the trucks so we won’t pay for them. We will probably pay somehow for valuable content online though no-one has figured out how to do that yet. We will probably get factual news from news agencies (as in fact we do now) and comment through blogs and other online services. There is better comment, covering a wider range of opinions, in the logs than in the MSM now. I would much rather read Becker-Posner than any of the NY Times opinion writers because they stimulate me to think in a way that Krugman, Fish and Friedman do not. And none of the Australian columnists are even on the scale.
Wait a minute..If papers die out – there goes the newsagents. Why do we need newspapers really?….JQ keeps us all interested.
I remember the Oz being referred some 20 years ago to as the “Winchester Club”. If you remember the old ABC show Minder, you will recall the Winchester Club being the home of all sorts of shady characters and spivs. I remember one episode, where the local coppers had to petition the courts to keep the Winchester Club open so that they knew where all the crooks and shonks were! The similarities are getting awfully strong….
I always thought the Fox News slogan was fairly unbalanced. It seemed to fit the content 🙂
LOL Donald
The speech by John Hartigan saying that newspapers aren’t dead, closely followed by this article of Glen Milne’s (which I couldn’t read all the way through) are talking to the converted or to those they would like to convert. John Hartigan is optimistic about the future of the Australian because circulation is up – what he fails to mention is that circulation is up because of the numerous giveaways in office blocks around the country.
With content like Milne’s it is hard to even give away.
I agree with SeanG that the papers in Australia are not much chop. The Age is so consistently pro-Labor that I have stopped buying it – I am reacting in the same tribalist way as John although from the opposite conservative perspective. The Australian has a pretty good business section.
i am a bit sick of people talking about the death of newspapers,
exaggerated like the proverbial …
newspapers are an excellent medium of disseminating information,
huge numbers of people want good investigative journalism and good information about whats going on in the country and the world,
and are prepared to pay for it
i think most of the current batch will die, and a new breed will come out of the ashes
personally i hope the Oz is first to go,
then a number of their writers should be tried for instigating war crimes and crimes against society
Well, we’ve never had show trials of beaten opponents in this country. Not even Fraser thought of that after 1975. Still, we are told that the world has changed following the GFC so I guess anything is possible.
OK, I’ll concede my comparison to die Sturmer was too strong. But I still can’t see how people can possibly think that News’ “news” is not highly selective. The rot extends well beyond their opinion pages.
IMO far the best paper in the country is the AFR. Its editorial stance is broad conservative, in keeping with its readership, but they know what the terms “quality” and “integrity” mean. The other Fairfax papers are too low-budget, and in the case of the Age too predictably trendy-left, to count.
the reason the AFR is the best within its narrow news range, is that you dont want to be fed bullshit when you are making decisions about large scale financial investment,
key decision makers in the economic sphere want realistic information about what is occurring in a region or country, and the AFR aims at them,
if you dont think you are getting that you simply stop using it as a source,
if for instance you were interested in investing in Pakistan, you dont want the US/Anglo/Australian censored version which the The Australian newspaper gives for domestic propaganda purposes because you cant make sound long term decisions based on it
the problem is that for the average person the AFR is full of business relatedfluff that is not worth paying for
Pr Q says:
The Oz has blotted its copybook with reporting and opining on Climate War, Class War and the “Civilizational” Clash. But it has been an indispensable source of enlightenment and encouragement in covering the Culture War, specifically the long series of atrocities that liberalism has left in its wake in indigenous and ethnic affairs.
The Oz sounded the warning on remote indigenous communities appalling collapse in individual culture and social structure long before this appeared on Fairfax’s radar screen. Thanks partly to the work of Paul Toohey and Nicholas Rothwell alot of Aboriginal children can sleep alot more soundly.
This is in stark contrast to the culture of denial that the, predominantly Left-liberal, media-academia-bureaucrat complex have constructed to cover up their follies, failings and infamies in this area. The Op-Ed pages of the SMH and Age – a constant source of delusionism, denialism on basic anthropology – were particularly contemptible in this respect.
dd: Agreed on AFR but I still reckon the Oz does news better than anything else.
Also, the FT is, in my judgment, just about the best paper in the world, rivaled only by NYT.
Of course, then there is China Daily…
yes but again NWK, just like the AFR its range is narrowed and so i dont see how the FT can be the best paper in the world, unless Finance is all there is now …
and the New York Times?
its been wrong about every major news story of the last decade,
some of you might scoff at the left leaning Guardian and Independent, but they have been more accurate and correct on their reporting of major news events than any other papers in the world
prove me wrong please
they had no ‘curveball’ feeding them manure
smiths: Have a look at the FT – it’s now printed here – in particular the weekend edition. It’s much more than a financial paper.
I agree The Guardian does a reasonable job in its news sections. Except for Ben Goldacre it’s selection of columnists is not to my taste.
I guess what it boils down to is that we (including JQ who started this) feel more comfortable reading papers of magazines whose line we agree with.
A pity, in a way, because we (well, most of us) need to have our ideas and beliefs challenged. Even if we don’t change them they get sharpened by challenges. Thinking, I suppose it’s called.
Jack,
As pointed out under “the fabrication of australian vaporware”, the evidence is against your claims of remote indigenous communities being some kind of hellhole.
As the Australian Crime Commission recently found, there is no evidence of organised pedophilia rings in remote aboriginal communities, despite the claims of the Howard-Murdoch Axis. http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/national/nt-pedophile-ring-claims-unfounded-20090705-d8nb.html
This is not to say that there is no child abuse in remote communities, but there is no evidence that it is more prevalent there than elsewhere, and some evidence suggesting that it is less prevalent than in urban communities.
i dont agree with that NWK,
i want to read a paper that is striving internally to gather and print the closest to accurate information possible,
i want a paper that is not part of the pentagon full spectrum dominance plan,
i want a paper that admits when it was wrong,
we have all been duped into a false paradigm where truth is relative, all events have ‘two sides’, there is always some kind of ‘debate’, all these things somehow split neatly down left and right lines, people all choose information that reinforces thier own bias’,
i think this is rubbish that is purposely promoted to increase division and ignorance so as people find it harder to take a clear stand on important issues,
thats how we end up with muppets like steve fielding talking about the tw sides of the global warming debate,
its not a debate, its a physical phenomena that needs urgent action,
but the world is stuck in a metaphorical mire and cannot move,
media is overwhelmingly manipulated,
just look at the recent #iranelection, it was managed for the western media in a preplanned, well-funded, well co-ordinated way,
now a bush advisor proposes a nobel prize for twitter,
by the time everyone is tweeting to each other there will be no language and no thought and no resistance,
a boot softly stamping on out collective heads forever
longenoughtobehidden @ 16, the last time the Oz held a reasonably sensible political opinion was in the late 60s when (if memory serves me) they opposed the Great Military Adventure in Vietnam.
It’s been all downhill since then …
Glenn Milne misjudged badly in quoting the first principle of the journalistic Code of Ethics in his article “Settling old scores” in The Australian on Monday, 6 July. His article breaches the Code repeatedly.
Milne correctly states the Code’s first principle as being: “Report and interpret honestly, striving for accuracy, fairness and disclosure of all essential facts. Do not suppress relevant available facts, or give distorting emphasis. Do your utmost to give a fair opportunity for reply.”
He did not refer to the Code’s preamble which says: “Respect for truth and the public’s right to information are fundamental principles of journalism. Journalists describe society to itself. They convey information, ideas and opinions, a privileged role. They search, disclose, record, question, entertain, suggest and remember. They inform citizens and animate democracy. They give a practical form to freedom of expression. Many journalists work in private enterprise, but all have these public responsibilities. They scrutinise power, but also exercise it, and should be accountable. Accountability engenders trust. Without trust, journalists do not fulfil their public responsibilities. Alliance members engaged in journalism commit themselves to
Honesty
Fairness
Independence
Respect for Others.”
It’s interesting to examine Milne’s article against the preamble and the principle he quoted.
First: Milne writes that the substance of Rudd’s complaints against News Ltd newspapers rests on two substantial pillars – the first of which was “the sworn testimony of a senior Treasury official, Godwin Grech, earlier that afternoon (Friday, 19 June) before a Senate committee. Grech swore, on balance, that an email existed.”
The proof transcript of the Senate hearing of Friday, 19 June does not show any of the seven witnesses, including Godwin Grech, being sworn in. Senator Annette Hurley, the committee chair, is quoted in the proof transcript as saying: “I remind all witnesses that, in giving evidence to the committee, they are protected by parliamentary privilege. It is unlawful for anyone to threaten or disadvantage a witness on account of evidence given to a committee, and such action may be treated by the Senate as a contempt. It is also a contempt to give false or misleading evidence to a committee.” That last sentence reinforces the views by a number of those commenting on the false impression in Milne’s article of “the sworn testimony” of Grech. On this aspect, Milne did not strive very hard for accuracy. He prefers to use the words of Malcolm Turnbull who justified his calling for Rudd’s resignation on the “sworn testimony” of Grech. Milne apparently would not consider checking when Turnbull asserts that it was “sworn testimony” by Grech.
Milne’s claim that Grech “swore, on balance, that an email existed” cannot be construed as interpreting honestly. Here is the relevant answer in the transcript proof: “Mr Grech: My recollection may well be totally false or faulty, but my recollection – and it is a big qualification – but my recollection is that there was a short email from the PMO to me which very simply alerted me to the case of John Grant, but I do not have the email.” Interpreting this as Grech “swore, on balance, that an email existed” is dishonest, particularly as Grech said he did not have the email.
Second: The second pillar claimed by Milne is “the genuinely held belief – buttressed by extensive checks – by senior Canberra press gallery journalist Steve Lewis that he was in possession of the wording of the email”. One is immediately struck by Milne’s strange wording. For Lewis to be “in possession of the wording of the email” he should have seen the email or a copy of it. If the “extensive checks” by Lewis did not include demanding to see the email (or at the very least a copy) then all one can conclude that he (lewis} allowed himself to be a dupe of those seeking to discredit Rudd.
The Prime Minister called a press conference to deny the existence of the email around 7.30 p.m. on 19 June. The News Ltd papers did publish Rudd’s denial on the Saturday and a number also did continue to publish the wording of the email, providing a ”distorting emphasis” that the Lewis claim on the email was verified. This is because continuing to publish the email could only be justified if, in the light of Rudd’s denial, the editors had checked thoroughly with Lewis and satisfied themselves that he had seen the email. That is what all readers had the right to assume.
The fact is that News Ltd papers did continue to publish a purported email, despite the Prime Minister denying such an email existed. The AFP have declared the email was a concoction and was not sent from the Prime Minister’s office. Have those News Ltd papers, or “the senior Canberra press gallery journalist Steve Lewis” published a retraction?
Third: Milne, the purveyor of countless stories about the likelihood of a Costello challenge to Turnbull then descends into high farce when he suggests “perhaps Rudd would care to live up to his own standards and apologise and correct the facts for all those times he alleged in the parliament that Peter Costello was plotting to take Turnbull’s job. Don’t hold your breath”. What Rudd is guilty of here is taking seriously something written repeatedly by Milne.
There are other examples in Milne’s article, including the reference to Rudd as: “the same man who kinda, maybe and finally was found to have been the main speaking attraction at a cosy dinner hosted by disgraced WA Labor lobbyist Brian Burke”. A relevant fact suppressed is that Rudd did not attend the dinner.
Still another example is Milne’s rewriting of history about the Scores affair where he says: “.. . the man who kinda, maybe, did nothing wrong at the New York Scores strip club but rang his wife the next morning to apologise for his behaviour. Just in case.”
The source of Milne’s original article claiming that Rudd was warned by Scores management against “touching the dancers” was an unidentified Australian diplomat who was not at the nightclub. Milne reported this despite having a quote from Rudd’s host at the nightclub – Col Allan, editor of the News Ltd-owned New York Post, who described Rudd as behaving “like a perfect gentleman”. Milne’s original article did not mention trying to get a quote from the nightclub, which contradicted the unidentified diplomat’s claim when contacted by the ABC. Milne does not mention in his 6 July article that Col Allan and the nightclub disputed the main claims in his original story. These omissions could hardly be described as “striving for accuracy, fairness and disclosure of all essential facts.” They could be seen as ignoring the stricture: “Do not suppress relevant available facts, or give distorting emphasis.”
Jack refers to
“the long series of atrocities that liberalism has left in its wake in indigenous and ethnic affairs.”
I rather thought for a minute there Jack (just one minute), you were referring to Howards ten year underinvestment in Aboriginal housing and his jackboot intervention…alas not so, “Aboriginal atrocities” has suddenly become a failure of “liberalism.” (meaning in your US style lingo “left wing liberalism” – not to be mistaken with “neo liberalism” which most of us associate with these failures of empathy and lack of social conscience)…
Rubbish Jack – utter rubbish. Since when was JH fond of helping aboriginies (or any on welfare) unless he got political kudos in the media from it? A most miserly unsympathetic man towards any welfare recipients most of the time. Its in the ideology. Redistribution not needed. Let the undeserving poor work harder while we hand tax cuts back to Howards middle class “battlers” (battlers my eye…and tax cuts NOT needed).
Jack – you need to take the bias specs off.