Media Inquiry? Inconvenient facts go down the memory hole (part 2)

Do you remember the Independent Media Inquiry?

You might vaguely recall the Finkelstein inquiry…yes, rings a faint bell?

It’s OK, I wouldn’t be surprised if you’d forgotten most of the details.

What do you remember?

Oh yes. Finkelstein, isn’t he the guy who wants to throw the champions of the fourth estate in jail for telling the truth about the nasty and unloved Ju-Liar government?

That’s right, that’s exactly right. Here’s a free online subscription to the Heart of the Nation.

According to many ‘exclusive’ stories in The Australian newspaper, the sole aim of the Independent Media Inquiry was to impose heavy sanctions on the news media because the Gillard government doesn’t handle criticism very well.

Take this story from media commentator Mark Day on 26 April 2012. It is so important it got top of page 1 treatment;

A new regulatory body, funded by government and with powers to impose fines and sanctions on news outlets is a key proposal of the long-awaited Convergence Review of the emedia sector.

Unfortunately, this story was wrong, wrong wrong.

The Convergence Review rejected any idea that there should be any such government-funded organisation with anything like the powers suggested in this breathless lead par.

However, since this story was published it has become standard operating procedure to continue the lie.

It is only possible to conclude one of four things:

a) the budget is so tight at News Limited that as many words as possible have to be recycled on a daily basis which means that key phrases are used over and over again to save money

b) the koolaid in the LimitedNews bunkers is real tasty and no one’s yet cottoned on that it is the source of the medicine that results in obligatory groupthink

c) there is a deliberate mis-information campaign going on designed to fool Australians into demanding Stephen Conroy’s head on a platter.

d) we are being fed a bowl of chump bait with fear-causing additives so we don’t see what’s really going on.

It’s probably a combination of all four.

If we’re stirred up about bloody attacks on ‘our’ freedom of speech and we can be made to think that only The Australian and the Institute of Public Affairs stands between us and a Stalino-Fascist dictatorship of ‘befuddled’ Greens from the ‘tofu belt’ aided and abetted by the ‘soft-Left media’ then maybe we’ll be goaded into action.

Seriously, you couldn’t make this stuff up even if you called yourself Chris Mitchell and spent your days dreaming of a world in which you could wield the absolute power that corrupts absolutely.

Janet Albrechtsen – why are you still here?

I was alerted to this piece on The Orstrahyun blog by an item in Crikey today.
I’ve long maintained that Janet Albrecthsen, a senior columnist on Rupert Murdoch’s Australian, was a neo-con. She’s even said so herself. But her shamelss spruiking and her close ties to the Howard government are now there for all to see. By her own hand is she damned.

Thanks to Daryl Mason of The Ostrahyun for this:

A columnist for The Australian newspaper – the supposedly “balanced” and “not biased at all” flagship of the Australian Murdoch media empire – has been outed as not only a rabid supporter of prime minister John Howard, but also one that lets the prime minister know, days in advance, when she is writing an op-ed that may reflect badly on him.

Who’s doing what now?

Yes. Janet Albrechtsen, a columnist for The Australian, rang John Howard’s office before she had even written her column about why it was time for him to step down, to let him know what she was planning to write.

She called other ministers as well, allowing them the opportunity to try and talk her out of writing the ‘Time To Go” column that supposedly “rocked the Howard government” when it appeared in The Australian on September 7.

The one thing that’s missing from the Orstrahyun blog is any mention of Janet’s other contentious hat. She’s a faithful Howard-appointed a member of the ABC Board.

I have said before that I think this is a dreadful conflict of interest and I’ve suggested she should resign that position. She is a staunch critic of public broadcasting and her stablemates at the Murdoch Limited News press are vicious witch-hunters of any one vaguely left-leaning at the national broadcaster. Rupert’s commercial interests in the Australian media are diametrically opposed to the vibrant health of the ABC. It would be in Rupert’s long-term interests for the ABC to be shut down.

Janet, why are you still here?

media ethics, journalism