Graham Lloyd, The Australian, and sssh, your paranoia or perhaps your slip is showing ...

(Above: Glenn Beck doing his thing, and Tom Tomorrow in despair. Did I mention Beck is a Mormon, and that you can find more TT here?)

Here's a tip.

Your day won't be complete without a read of Graham Lloyd's Climate debate no place for hotheads in The Australian.

It's a continuation of the "Posetti tapes" affair, and it reveals The Australian as a hotbed of paranoia, simmering and seething resentment, and a desire for moat-building and fortification which would make a medieval castle-builder gasp in admiration.

Normally here at the pond we'd spend some time dissecting the thoughts in a piece, but that would ruin some splendid fun.

Still it's worth recording Lloyd equating discussion of climate change science and implementation of tactics with totalitarianism and the tactics of Mao and Lenin. When in doubt always seize on thoughts out there in the ether which allow you to invoke either (a) Hitler (b) Mao (c) Lenin (d) Stalin (e) Fascism or (f) Communism. That's the way to sustain a moderate debate.

Oh and did I mention that The Australian has been at the forefront, in the vanguard, taking point consistently in jungle patrols in an extremely moderate, reasonable and rational way, in the matter of climate science?

Of course everything is uncertain and unsettled, and nothing firm has been established, so it's important for rags to publish every thought of every passing whack job, in much the same way as any discussion of the theory of evolution can't be complete if it ignores intelligent design and the way the world kicked into gear in 4004BC (or was that 4006? Golly the science is never easy, and memory plays such funny tricks, so no wonder nothing's ever settled).

Never mind, if you want an exemplary example of extraordinary defensiveness, at quite extraordinary length, look no further than Lloyd.

By the way while you're at it - no, we're trying to avoid the tone of a school teacher setting reading for the weekend - why not drop in on Jonathan Holmes Editor's letter makes for a bizarre Posettigate twist.

Posettigate? Well it's true that language is never settled, but we prefer the term "the Posetti tapes affair", redolent as it is of the Nixon tapes, and the downfall of western civilisation as we know it. We're still waiting for news of who might have erased precious moments from the tapes, thereby seriously affecting any legal action that might be taken ...

Never mind. Holmes tells a truly bizarre story, involving Caroline Overington, a letter, and a bizarre offer by The Australian, which is a worthy coda to Lloyd's desperate scribble.

No spoilers about all of that, but at the end of his piece, Holmes did offer these thoughts, which perhaps explains why the stung Lloyd sprang into action - of course we make no suggestion that this was in any way at the behest of editor in chief Chris Mitchell, as we've never been offered a chance to see the editorial activities in The Australian, though we have by the eternal grace of the absent lord, often witnessed the bullying ways of editors harassing hapless minions around an editorial table:

... Chris Mitchell's threat to sue Posetti, and all that has happened since, has had one effect that's been of considerable benefit to The Australian. It's distracted attention from the central allegation made by Asa Wahlquist, which is this:

I think my basic problem was that I always wanted to approach (the climate change issue) as a science story and I was in a context where it was seen as a political story instead, and as a journalist, as a news journalist, you've got no power in those situations.

Chris Mitchell rejects the charge. He claims that "for several years (The Australian) has accepted man-made climate change as fact. It has supported market mechanisms to reduce carbon output for the best part of a decade. What people do not like is that I publish people such as Bjorn Lomborg."

Actually more to the point than Lomborg, who has recently tried to change half his spots to sell his latest book, The Australian was all over the likes of Christopher Monckton and others of a similar hue. At one point if you were a dissident and a denier that seemed enough to get you a piece on the opinion pages ...

When Monckton did his antipodean tour the lizard Oz was in rapture - publishing Monckton's wise thoughts - try Mr Rudd, your misguided warming policies are killing millions for a taster - and celebrating his insights - try Janet Albrechtsen scribbling heatedly, and adding at least a degree to global warming, Heated moments mar Monckton.

It is of course the business of The Australian as to what columnists it employs, but it's also astonishing at the wailing and the grieving and the sulking and the wounding when someone notices that on any given day its opinion pages are full of chattering conservative members of the commentariat always willing to bash climate science ... in much the same way as the Oz has been bashing the NBN, and sundry other matters, until either exhaustion or reader impatience suggests they might be better off displaying a range of opinions.

The notion that the Oz is an exemplary, impeccable, moderate, intelligent and rational supporter of sensible discussion of climate change is one such moment in time - surreal, bizarre and amusing to anyone who likes to don the cilice, and get down and dirty with the Oz on a daily basis.

Back to Holmes, who makes the point regarding the opinion pages, but earlier on Media Watch had also identified the way the editorial skew found its way into so called 'news reporting', in much the same way as The Australian sullied its reporting of the NBN by confusing it with a front page political campaign:

No Chris. What many serious climate change scientists object to is that while your editorials give mealy-mouthed and qualified support to climate change science and a carbon price, your opinion pages give far more space to sceptics like Lomborg and Plimer than they do to well-qualified supporters of 'conventional' climate change science; and far more space to those calling for the Government to make haste slowly on a carbon price - or not to move at all - than to those who consider it a matter of urgency.

Well, a newspaper is entitled to editorial bias in its opinion pages. Much more serious, regular readers of the paper can't fail to notice that on its news pages The Australian gives more prominence to stories that appear to weaken the evidence for climate change than to findings that confirm it; and indeed on occasion - as in this example - its reporters have used scientific findings to cast doubt on climate change in ways which the scientists concerned completely rejected.

Now one of the newspaper's most respected journalists has come out and publicly claimed that there is indeed a slanting of the news agenda, as a result of a deliberate policy laid down by the editor-in-chief.

Chris Mitchell may deny it, but that is the issue, and nothing that Julie Posetti discovers after two days of watching the editorial process at The Australian is going to change it.

Yep indoody. And nothing changes the fact that Posetti was reporting what another said, and if Mitchell had any complaint, he should have gone after the original source, said in public so we could have had a nice old fashioned discussion of the laws of slander.

But what, you ask, has Posetti watching the editorial process at The Australian got to do with the recent tapes affair, that Posetti-gate molehill, or with climate change, or with Graham Lloyd or with anything?

Well that's the teaser which should send you off to Holmes and Lloyd for the rest of the read.

As for the pond, we're now so far down the surreal rabbit hole, that we're ready to drink a little liquid, shrink down to size to do a toke with a caterpillar, and then hare off to the Mad Hatter's tea party to have a sensible discussion about climate change with the dormouse ...

And you know what, the dormouse is starting to make more sense than The Australian ...

(Below: by the way, a few people have asked me how to dress for success as they try to climb the greasy pole of power in News Corp. Here's a few role models. Oh and it helps to remember that nothing is ever settled).