(Above: a sampling of tremendous News Corp journalism. Take that Crikey, that's the way you do it, and get your chicks for free).
Mark Day's as mad as hell and he's not going to take it anymore.
First a little history, Day style:
Crikey burst on to the media scene a decade ago when Stephen Mayne, a highly opinionated business reporter of remarkable vigour, launched it as a paid website with a daily email of news and comment.
Mayne admitted he was too busy as a one-man-band to bother with small niceties such as checking his facts, but boasted he was never wrong for long. As soon as he was told he was wrong, he put up a correction.
This kind of outlandish bad-boy disregard for the truth was nevertheless offset by a kind of fascination: we watched the quixotic Mayne’s antics as we would a car crash. We wanted to know what he would say, or do, next.
Mayne sold Crikey for $1 million a few years ago to Eric Beecher, a former editor of The Sydney Morning Herald and the Melbourne Herald before its merger with The Sun.
Beecher moved quickly to lift Crikey’s game in terms of factual reporting, but in so doing he robbed the daily email of its most enticing quality - its unpredictability.
And The Australian poached their lead writer Christian Kerr and turned him into a neutered shadow of himself. Hey ho, so it goes, and on we go:
“Crikey (public duty and all that) complained to the Press Council (as) the sole regulatory voice for print journalism,” the email said. “We thought that a national newspaper group publishing cheesy nudes purporting to be images of a public figure lacked any connection to the public interest and also raised privacy concerns ... not to mention simple issues of morality and tact.”
The Press Council decided against action because the editor had apologised, legal processes had been undertaken and resolved, and the matter was therefore beyond the council’s remit.
Yes, it's all done and dusted. And if real Pauline Hanson photos came along they'd run them quicker than a flash. Forget all this rubbish about the right to privacy. What about the right to slobber over nude pictures?
Well at least he's not going to take Kyle Sandilands and Crikey anymore.
Meet the pests, he announces, and while it's easy enough to understand a rant about bubble head Kyle, what's the holier-than-thou Crikey done to get up his nose?
Is it because it's a website and daily email, tweaking the beard of a media giant?
Crikey burst on to the media scene a decade ago when Stephen Mayne, a highly opinionated business reporter of remarkable vigour, launched it as a paid website with a daily email of news and comment.
Mayne admitted he was too busy as a one-man-band to bother with small niceties such as checking his facts, but boasted he was never wrong for long. As soon as he was told he was wrong, he put up a correction.
This kind of outlandish bad-boy disregard for the truth was nevertheless offset by a kind of fascination: we watched the quixotic Mayne’s antics as we would a car crash. We wanted to know what he would say, or do, next.
Mayne sold Crikey for $1 million a few years ago to Eric Beecher, a former editor of The Sydney Morning Herald and the Melbourne Herald before its merger with The Sun.
Beecher moved quickly to lift Crikey’s game in terms of factual reporting, but in so doing he robbed the daily email of its most enticing quality - its unpredictability.
And The Australian poached their lead writer Christian Kerr and turned him into a neutered shadow of himself. Hey ho, so it goes, and on we go:
Crikey has become a bore; a daily platform for fixated characters who appear to share an obsession with little more than the goings-on at The Australian and within the global media business of the Murdoch family.
Key writers Bernard Keane (Australian politics) Guy Rundle (can anybody understand what he’s on about?) and Glenn Dyer (media and business) seem to spend most of their energies bad-mouthing The Oz, its editors and anyone named Murdoch, who they accuse (among other things) of using his media clout to further his business interests.
Key writers Bernard Keane (Australian politics) Guy Rundle (can anybody understand what he’s on about?) and Glenn Dyer (media and business) seem to spend most of their energies bad-mouthing The Oz, its editors and anyone named Murdoch, who they accuse (among other things) of using his media clout to further his business interests.
Extraordinary. Especially when the likes of Janet Albrechtsen, Tim Blair and Andrew Bolt spread such calming oil upon the turbulent waters of life. And as for the Murdochs, who would dare accuse them of using their media clout to further their business interests?
What an astonishing claim. Why James Murdoch's attack on the Beeb (and The Australian's attack on the ABC) were just calm, meditative contemplations of the current media scene, making the considered point that the public media simply had to go. They were getting in the road of Chairman Rupert's profits, and as we all know, profit is the only way to serve democracy. Any news not driven by the profit motive is patently false.
Damn you Crikey, with your calumnies, libels, slurs and slanders against the noble empire of Chairman Rupert. Stop it at once, or else you'll go blind. Now what else have you been up to:
It’s “pot calling the kettle black” hypocrisy, evidenced by a constant Crikey commentary on the imminent death of newspapers and the dazzling future of the web.
Ahah, I knew it, you've been getting poor old Mark frazzled with all this doomsaying naysaying about his one true love, the printer's ink still blackening the underside of his hardened fingernails. Enough already with this talk of the imminent death of the newspaper. How would you like reading stories about the death of your mistress on the full to overflowing intertubes every day, or worse getting them emailed to you. Along with blather about the 'for make benefit glorious' of cultural leanings of nerds and geeks!
Stop it you heaar, you're boring us. And now you think you're some kind of media activist:
Last Thursday, in its email editorial, Crikey reported that it had taken upon itself to lodge an official complaint to the Australian Press Council about The Sunday Telegraph’s use of fake Pauline Hanson pictures last March.
Last Thursday, in its email editorial, Crikey reported that it had taken upon itself to lodge an official complaint to the Australian Press Council about The Sunday Telegraph’s use of fake Pauline Hanson pictures last March.
Hang on. In their email editorial? Does that make Day a subscriber? Or at least an intimate of a leaking subscriber? Et tu Day, fellow traveling with these shallow prattling fools? Or is it just old news dressed up so Day can have a temper tantrum?
As if publishing a few fake nude photos of a notorious celebrity and above average amateur dancer is any kind of problem for an empire that fancies itself as being in the business of such niceties as checking their facts. After all, they can boast they're never wrong for long. Once they're told they're wrong, they put up a correction and all is well.
“Crikey (public duty and all that) complained to the Press Council (as) the sole regulatory voice for print journalism,” the email said. “We thought that a national newspaper group publishing cheesy nudes purporting to be images of a public figure lacked any connection to the public interest and also raised privacy concerns ... not to mention simple issues of morality and tact.”
The Press Council decided against action because the editor had apologised, legal processes had been undertaken and resolved, and the matter was therefore beyond the council’s remit.
Yes, it's all done and dusted. And if real Pauline Hanson photos came along they'd run them quicker than a flash. Forget all this rubbish about the right to privacy. What about the right to slobber over nude pictures?
Sure the fake photos are now all over the intertubes, but that's no one's fault. That's just the way it is in this new fangled world of web sites and emails and twits a-twittering. No harm done, unless of course you google for Pauline Hanson fake photos in the images section, and see the hand crafted work of the Daily Telegraph still out there and preserved in digital databanks for posterity.
As for that bit of business about the News of the World tapping phones and paying out to stop whingers? Just enthusiasts going about the business of keeping the public informed.
I don’t mind Crikey, or any other person or entity, having an opinion and fearlessly expressing in any form - print, broadcast or online. But spare me the hypocrisy of a media outlet as flawed as Crikey seeking regulatory judgment against another.
Well you know I don't mind any person or entity - even Mark Day - fearlessly having an opinion and expressing it in any form, even in this newfangled thing known as the interweb. But spare me the hypocrisy of defending a tabloid as flawed as the Daily Telegraph, or peddling the notion that somehow Chairman Rupert and his minions are afraid to peddle their power and influence to achieve greater power and influence ... and dare we whisper it, to try to nobble public broadcasters like the BBC ...
Meantime, I'm still trying to work out why Day bothered to lash out at a gadfly like Crikey. By golly are the plans to start charging for content causing consternation and heartburn within the empire? It seems Crikey has become the enemy along with the ABC, with Kyle just thrown in as a make weight.
Tragic really, and all the more compelling when we see what comes out of the Murdoch bunker as they try to emulate the 'pay to read' Crikey model ,which sees the ratbag lads operating at a smell of an oil rag level just above abject poverty ... because if you can't imagine paying for Crikey, imagine paying for The Punch ...
Well there is one solution for Mark Day. If he doesn't like it, stop reading it, instead of preaching from the pulpit about hypocrisy. Golly, that's brave, coming from a flawed house of glass with so many stones out the front you could build a zen garden from them ...
Meantime, over at Crikey, poor old Margaret Simons takes it all very seriously, with a solemn response in Back to Blogging, Mark Day and Stale News.
When by any measure calling Crikey a crushing insufferable bore is so over the top it's almost in hootersville. By their fear and hysteria shall ye know them. Say hello to The Australian some day, and watch the panic and loathing in action, but if you're like me, never give them a cent ...
And finally for a bit of light hearted fun, it's already done the rounds all over the place, but the story of Glenn Beck suing an allegedly defamatory website is still a hoot and well worth a read. Story here with all the relevant links for your entertainment. Funny really, when you think about it, Mark Day having a go at Crikey, when really he's just a workplace colleague of Glenn Beck's, antipodean newspaper division ...
You slay me...
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