Geoff Elliott, The Australian and bugger all signs of intelligent life on earth ...

(Above: Crikey Bias-o-meter: The newspapers, 26 June, 2007. So what's changed? Well the tiger says it has no spots, the leopard has no spots, and loon pond has no loons. See below).

Here at the pond we're always late to the scene of the crime.

But that's because we have a strict rule about not paying to see Australian films in the cinema, unless they've been vetted and vouched for by a dozen people of impeccable taste. So it was only lately that we caught up with Accidents Happen, which was released in April, thanks to a friend giving us a copy of dubious provenance.

It turns out that this is a movie set in America, told with American accents, and with an American narrator, telling an American story by an American writer, who settled in Australia, starring Geena Davis, funded by Australian taxpayers, as part of their ongoing endeavours to sustain a national voice telling national Australian stories.

It's rare that we pay any attention to David Stratton, the Phillip Adams of film reviewers, as he went on a rant here:

DAVID: Well, it's bizarre because it's an Australian film masquerading as an American film and, when you think about it when we were trying to get an Australian film industry going in this country, the reason is to tell Australian stories. Why else would the government want to fund an Australian film industry if not to tell Australian stories? But here is a government-funded Australian film...

MARGARET: Ah...

DAVID: Hang on, let me ... which is telling not an Australian story but an American story, and it has a cast of mostly - I think there are a couple of Kiwis in there somewhere, but mostly Australian actors pretending to be Americans, in Australian settings that are pretending to be American. I don't get it and therefore I just don't relate to the whole thing.

Of course the short straw in the reviewing team didn't get his concerns, but surely there's a case for the entire board of Screen Australia to resign or be sacked? Well of course nothing's happened and it's months later, but here at the pond, we believe the arm of the law should be long, and justice delayed still shouldn't prevent the administration of justice.

Well at least I checked it out for free. Reminds me of the time I went to pick up a dvd of The Sentimental Bloke and the NFSA wanted forty seven bucks retail for their restoration job with booklet. I didn't have to disturb the red back spider cannily installed in my bag by my partner. Tell them they're dreaming. They're supposed to be spreading Australian screen culture, funded by the Australian taxpayer, and they want an arm and a leg for it?

Enough already, but thank you Australian taxpayers. Ever thought of starting up an American studio?

Speaking of crimes and Australia, that was just an elaborate detour, and now we arrive at the really comical turn of the day, in the comically titled rag The Australian, allegedly the heart of the nation. Golly, if that rag is the heart of the nation, do a Phar's Lap heart job on it, pickle it and stuff it in a museum somewhere.

But for that, we must gird our loins, summon up our spirits, and trudge into the actual swamp known as desolation pond to many, and as The Oz to others, and as three clicks of your heels and pray to god you end up in Kansas to friends of Dorothy.

In the usual way, one Geoff Elliott (Correspondent Geoff Elliot back as editor of Media) takes umbrage and scribbles furiously about the ABC's Media Watch presenter Jonathan Holmes, in Sorry, Aunty, the facts show you're off-target.

If nothing else, Media Watch should exist for the simple sheer perverse fun of watching it get up the noses of Murdoch hacks. But in this case it was Holmes' scribbling Agendas and bias on the media trail that sent the Murdoch hounds into a blood sniffing frenzy.

You see the Murdoch hacks love to fling barbs at all and sundry, but turn out to be remarkably thin skinned when anybody takes a look at them. Everybody knows that The Oz is generally to the right of Gengis Khan - as Crikey noted years ago - and nothing wrong with that, if that's your poison.

Some might prefer rot-gut whisky. To each their own, but the mere mention of this incredibly overt and obvious bias sends the hounds into a baying frenzy.

Holmes made the unremarkable point that The Australian's coverage is biased, and that in the current campaign its bias slip has been showing, and sometimes, to mix the metaphors, has been cranked up to eleven.

It was an understated piece, and unless you happen to be a French relativist philosopher, no more controversial than saying we live on the planet earth, which has a moon and revolves around the sun (Catholics and creationists, feel free to disagree) ...

Geoff Elliott's response?

Holmes declared last week The Australian was running a partisan agenda backing the Coalition for a win with a welter of negative stories about Labor. Perhaps he didn't read the front page of The Australian - a page he describes as a "brutal weapon" - on Thursday when the newspaper ran one of the flattering photos of the PM from The Women's Weekly and a story headed: "At last, we are seeing the real Prime Minister."

He's kidding right? A photo from The Women's Weekly, and it's all sweet, and all is forgiven? He's just teasing because he knows we all like a little pepper to please us with a sneeze?

Elliott mentioned another couple of stories, but it's clear he simply doesn't understand the nature of unrelenting bias. Come to think of it, it helps explain why The Australian doesn't have a clue about climate change either, and can't tell the difference between weather and the statistical implications of changes in climate ... on an almost daily basis ...

The rest of Elliott's piece induces horse laugh after horse laugh. Here's The Australian not having an impact on anyone:

But the Holmes piece was off-pace enough to have The Australian's bemused editor, Paul Whittaker, note that the cabinet leaks to Oakes and Peter Hartcher of The Sydney Morning Herald, along with the ABC's lead story on Kevin Rudd's national security faux pas when it launched ABC News 24, "have been more damaging to the government than what we have published".

Three cheers. Every cheerful Australian who refuses to waste their time paying for the drivel in The Australian must at last be having an affect!

"Our coverage in the first week of the campaign on population led the national debate and was critical of both major parties for their myopic view on immigration and failing to highlight its importance to economic growth," says Whittaker. He notes that "contrary to Holmes's assertions, I would argue The Australian went just as hard after the Howard government during the last few elections".

Argue away. As anyone with half a grain of interest in the media would surely confirm, after reading the ground and pound coverage of Labor, the left, greens, socialists, commies, cardigan wearers, scientist, believers in climate change, red watermelons, and so on and so forth and etc by The Australian, the rag's news pages are just as saturated with prejudice as the commentariat columnists who litter the opinion pages, and who set the tone for the rag.

We'd list them ... Shanahan, Milne, Albrechtsen, Ergas, Pearson ... but we'd run out of time and room, so let's just say once more, so on and so forth and etc.

But in fact the way that the rag has responded to the criticism is a big enough clue in itself. Any other rag thus accused would laugh it off, but the trouble with the truth is that it hurts. It's a bit like sticking a bit of litmus paper in a lemon and discovering it's acidic, and the lemon carrying on saying "what me? You've got the wrong lemon".

Never mind, if you want the full panoply of Elliott's denialism, excuses, and attempts to balance the scales (watch out, the butcher's thumb is on the scales, you'll be paying more for your mince), you can trot over and read the nonsense.

But here's another clue as to why the wretched rag published this pathetic, no, actually tragic, attempt at self-justification:

Says The Australian's editor-in-chief Chris Mitchell: "The problem for the ABC is it just does not have journalists of the quality of those covering major national news for The Australian.

"I can only think of two across the news and current affairs area I would offer a job to: Chris Uhlmann and Leigh Sales. Jonathan has an impish manner but is not serious."

An impish manner but not serious?

Well there's a little flaw in the logic board here. The Australian it seems has regularly missed all the scoops that are currently bedevilling Labor - that's all the fault of Laurie Oakes and the SMH and Aunty - yet The Australian is full of top flight journalists.

Go figure. Or perhaps, if you happen to pay for the rag, Think. Again.

Suddenly I feel the lyrics to a song coming on:

Whenever life get you down, dinkum newspaper reader,

And things seem hard or tough
And people are stupid, obnoxious or daft
And you feel that you've had quite enu-hu-hu-huuuuff

Just remember that you're standing on a planet that's evolving
And revolving at 900 miles an hour
That's orbiting at 19 miles a second, so it's reckoned
A sun that is the source of all our power
The sun and you and me, and all the stars that we can see
Are moving at a million miles a day
In an outer spiral arm, at 40,000 miles an hour
Of the galaxy we call the Milky Way

Our galaxy itself contains 100 billion stars
It's 100,000 light-years side-to-side
It bulges in the middle, 16,000 light-years thick
But out by us it's just 3000 light-years wide
We're 30,000 light-years from galactic central point
We go round every 200 million years
And our galaxy is only one of millions of billions
In this amazing and expanding universe

The universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding
In all of the directions it can whiz
As fast as it can go, at the speed of light you know
Twelve million miles a minute and that's the fastest speed there is
So remember, when you're feeling very small and insecure
How amazingly unlikely is your birth
And pray that there's intelligent life somewhere up in space
Because there's bugger all down here in The Australian ...

(Below: Now this is what I call thought leadership. National advertising campaign for the Atlantic October 2008, and for The Australian in 2009)