Another day in the Murdoch coal mine with the minions of Rupert ...

(Above: another day inside The Australian's coverage. Screen cap, no active links).

Captain's Star log this fateful day: the evil empire controlled by Zurg has begun its relentless fight back, using two favourite tactics:

One is known as the Sergeant Schultz "I know nothing" defence, which can be expanded into the wider ranging ploy "I see nothing. I was not here. I did not even get up this morning!"

Certain keepers of galactic arcane wisdom insist that it should be known as the Manuel "I know nothing" defence, but these tend to be British, and with a fawlty understanding of the world.

If faithfully followed, there is nothing in this defence to impede an attacking manoeuvre: "And since I know nothing, and even though some insist perhaps it was my job to know something, I'm perfectly placed to fix up the mess."

The second, the Bart 'bunker down' feint - "I didn't do it, no one saw me do it, there's no way you can prove anything!" - is a fiendish ploy, and is claimed by some as the reason the Maginot Line crumbled.

Naturally there are fellow travellers and sympathisers ready to help Zurg's empire, and you can find them in the oddest places. The pond was moved, touched to the heart, by Mark Fletcher trolling for trade at New Matilda with Has News Ltd Actually Done Anything Wrong?

Apropos the current fuss, Fletcher scribbles a most moving cultural reference:

It’s like watching the hyenas maul Scar at the end of The Lion King. Sure, Scar wasn’t exactly the hero of the story, but did he deserve to be torn to shreds?

By the end of the piece Fletcher has convinced himself that a code of ethics for journalists isn't really desirable or necessary, and so we look forward to his ongoing campaign to remove the bible from the world, since surely such a long and tedious exposition of a code of ethics for humanity isn't really desirable or necessary.

Oh and Fletcher also wins an award for deploring the words "righteousness" and "Schadenfreude" as the closer to his piece. What a whacky, zany spoil sport.

Of course in other contexts, this would be understood as Stockholm syndrome, and be seen as providing convincing evidence as to why those who call themselves 'progressives' are easy prey for the likes of Scar on a daily basis. Fie fi fo fum, I smell the blood of a cardigan wearer ...

Meanwhile, big Mal has stepped up to the plate, and caused much excitement about climate change, except in the Murdoch press.

Big Mal was delivering the inaugural Virginia Chadwick Memorial Lecture, for a coral reef hugging foundation, which I guess is a tad different to the usual tree huggers.

Big Mal said many pious and unexceptional things, including denying he was an incipient Bolshevist (you can catch coverage of Turnbull in Turnbull defends climate change at Lateline, here).

Presumably big Mal was disturbed by the notion of Tony Abbott rabbiting on about the Chinese yet again:

Mr Abbott said recently that Australia's emissions reduction target, backed by both sides of politics, was "crazy" because it would be overwhelmed pollution increases in China.

But Mr Turnbull said Chinese emissions were one-fifth of Australia's and India's were less than one-tenth.

"Our regular references to their [India and China's] emissions and 'Why should we do anything until the Chinese and the Indians do something' - they find those references incredibly galling," he said.

"How incredibly embarrassing statements like that are when you actually confront representatives of those countries." (here)

Okay, so it's just another step in the big Mal v Tony the lycra-clad lout Abbott phoney war, and perhaps it's not as amusing as the Abbott quote contained in Barry Jones' plea Intelligent discussion all but extinct, who starts his piece thusly:

An article by The Age's Michael Gordon titled 'He says She says' last week, included a disturbing paragraph in which he quoted Tony Abbott, in South Dandenong, answering a question about how CO2 emissions are calculated: ''It's actually pretty hard to do this because carbon dioxide is invisible and it's weightless (my emphasis) and you can't smell it.'' (you can catch Gordon's piece here He says, she says in a faux election campaign).

Weightless? Well Jones gives that a good shellacking, but along with scientific stupidity, Abbott did the old Orwellian routine:

He (Abbott) went on to paint a vivid and troubling word picture, raising the spectre of an ''army'' of ''carbon policemen'' rampaging around the country with clipboards, attempting to measure something that was ''neither easy nor accessible'', and making life difficult for business.

And weightless too! How difficult it will be to stop it floating into the stratosphere!

Where's the flagship, The Australian, the so-called dead heart of the nation, in all this?

Well, they did pick up an AAP in relation to Turnbull, and ran it under the header Libs support science on climate says Malcolm Turnbull.

But on the digital front page - dear absent lord, you don't actually buy the rag, do you? - as featured above in the screen cap, big Mal doesn't make the cut, not when there's room for Bjorn Lomborg doing his usual comedy stylings in Bootleggers hijack climate change debate (and as a skilled hijacker of debates, Lomborg surely knows what he's talking about), a cherry-picking piece by Brendan O'Keefe seeking to sow FUD with 'Man-made pollution reflects sun', the UN surprisingly refusing to act as part of a giant conspiracy involving black helicopters, UN snubs pleas on climate change, the states maintaining a bolshie rage in States step up carbon tax compo fight, and the jewel in the crown, Sea-level rises are slowing, tidal gauge records show.

The one expert quoted in relation to that report regarding sea levels was a Dr. Howard Brady at Macquarie University.

Uh huh. So I immediately went in search of Dr. Brady, but someone else beat me to it, and here's the result. He's a former Catholic priest, a retired seventy year old scientist who did a lot of work in Antarctica, and he used to be chief of Mosaic Oil. And he's ready to play his part in The Australian's attitude to science, by throwing around adjectives like "ridiculous" and delivering puns about how the CSIRO's predictions were already dead in the water, with no sound basis in probability.

Big Mal does make the cut in relation to the NBN, with John Durie's piece Malcolm Turnbull lays down alternative blueprint to the NBN, but if you read that piece, please make sure you also read the piece in IT News, Analysts cast doubt on Turnbull's NBN.

I guess a bit of soft soap about big Mal is only fair - praise the NBN plan, bury the climate change dissident - seeing as how big Mal likes to take Rupert Murdoch at his word, and sees no reason to do anything about anything in relation to the cosy duopoly controlling the print media in Australia (Turnbull takes Murdoch 'at his word').

Oh and there's also room on the front page for a bit of fear mongering in relation to Internode revealing a proposed pricing plan (NBN fees to start at $60 a month).

We're looking forward to startling, shock horror revelations regarding Internode's current offering of 1 TB a month for $150 a month using ADSL ...

All up, the two issues - bagging the NBN, dissing climate change science - and their editorial placement, and the treatment in the coverage offered up in today's edition, suggest that The Australian will go on being the unfair, unbalanced, and in some cases, outrightly dissembling and deceptive rag it's been for many a year ...

Reading it truly is an experience in weightlessness, and it brings us back Mark Fletcher's question Has News Ltd Actually Done Anything Wrong?

Could we modestly suggest an alternative header for his next piece?

How about Does News Ltd Actually Ever Do Anything Right?

Perhaps if Fletcher wants to give it a go, how about starting with The Guardian's editorial News Corp and phone hacking: Wiful blindness at the very top.

Or perhaps we could just settle for a piece titled News Corp, climate change and the NBN: wilful misreporting starts at the very top.

(Below: the Murdoch empire, a fit subject for satire this last decade. Here's Doonesbury doing it in 2004. Click to enlarge).