Mark Day, and the long suffering world of News Corp ...

(Above: we loved the threat to diversity so much we wanted to preserve it in digital aspic).

There's nothing like re-packaged left overs, a little worn around the edges, perhaps with the first hint of mould, as a way to start the week, and so if you didn't munch on Emma Jane in The Australian on September 17th scribbling away with Internet's side-splittig schadenfreude sometimes lost in translation, why you can line up at the trough at The Punch and cop it as Laughing at misfortune of others a big moral dilemma.

It seems that the subbies at The Punch think their demographic might be put off by having a big foreign word in title, while the cute reference to a Coppola movie might get lost in space.

Hey ho, it's just another recycling day at News Ltd, antipodean branch of News Corp - waste not, want not - but it makes an ironic point up against the rotating banner at the top of the digital Oz, which puts a cheerful, smiling Mark Day up against the header Media inquiry's threat to diversity.

Yep, that's right, the media in Australia is incredibly diverse. Why it's owned and operated by Rupert Murdoch, James Murdoch, and doesn't Elisabeth Murdoch get in there with Shine, notorious for lowering the standard of SBS to the level of the worst game show in television history?

Oh wait, Elisabeth Murdoch received US$214m in cash from the sale of the Shine TV production company to her father's News Corporation, with a few gruntled and unhappy shareholders accusing chairman Rupert of treating his company like a wholly owned family candy store ... (Elisabeth Murdoch made $214m from Shine sale).

We keed, we keed. Of course in the print media, there's always Fairfax, and online there's Crikey, and a lot of noisome pesky bloggers, and there's your diversity right there.

Along with the diversity of opinion you get at News Corp, which is incredibly diverse when you think just how diverse the thoughts of Andrew Bolt, Tim Blair, Janet Albrecthsen, Piers 'Akker Dakker' Akerman, Chris Kenny, Denis Shanahan, Angela Shanahan, Paul Kelly, Michael Stutchbury, Niki Savva, Greg Sheridan, Glenn 'buffo shortus' Milne, and so on and so forth can be ...

Except in the matter of Manne, but really how could anyone be diverse about that fiend?

So much diversity, so little time.

Well if you click on Day's piece, Inquiry already a mine of non sequiturs, you'll find a lot of nervous nelly hand wringing as he manages to get tortured by the prospect of future persecution, government intervention, government interference, government ...

It's in stark contrast to Eric Beecher, over at Crikey, already salivating at the prospect of the inquiry in Beecher: media inquiry has mandate to address problems, and holding out his paw in anticipation.

This allows them to evaluate a whole range of alternative funding and subsidy models, as well as how start-ups and entrepreneurs are encouraged and fostered in all kinds of industries in all kinds of countries, to recommend relevant mechanisms that potentially provide replacement funding for existing quality journalism as its revenue sources erode. And to encourage mechanisms to fund alternative journalism start-ups that would expand the 30% of the market that News Limited doesn’t own.

Yes, subsidy has worked splendidly for the Australian film industry, and there the pond was, thinking that the best news of the week had been the decision of the Group of Eight universities to stop spending 350k annually on the Australian Literary Review supplement thrown away with The Australian, as reported in Australian Literary Review shuts up shop ...

It was more than vaguely indecent that a gaggle of universities could bankroll a company and a newspaper's quest for intellectual respectability, especially when said newspaper routinely bashed elites, academic and otherwise, in its editorials ...

And it got worse when Luke Slattery decided that the subsidy could be used to publish the literary stylings of Michael Costa bashing the Greens (The Australian Literary Review, December 2010) ... as if the long suffering public didn't already cop enough of Costa in the opinion pages of The Australian.

Ah yes, some more of that famous diversity.

But back to the wittering Day, who is simply shocked at the notion of government subsidy:

But does this reference to supporting the activities involved in quality journalism hint at the possibility of government funding? Heaven forbid. We already have a government-funded news gathering organisation called the ABC that costs us about a billion bucks a year. It has seized on technological change to get into the business of opinion websites in direct competition with its privately owned rivals.

Make no mistake, government funds mean government influence or control. Even structures operating independently or at arm's length of government are subject to pressure and the constant threat of the withdrawal of funds if the government of the day is displeased with it.

Indeed. So where was Mr. Day when it came to the funding of that intellectual cloak of respectability, the ALR - a bit like the cloak favoured by Harry Potter?

Well it seems he was a casual contributor to the ALR, but damned if I can find a righteous word from him on the full to overflowing intertubes about the way The Australian lined up, cap in hand, gruel bowl in paw, for subsidy from a bunch of government-funded universities ... when there's a whole bunch of other magazines out there in struggle street who could have done with a bit of help (ironically listed in some detail in the ALR by James Bradley in his review of literary magazines, Growing Content).

But that's the way it goes with behemoths ... on the one hand righteous about unfair competition from the ABC, the other hand pocketing a nice little earner ...

Still, it's always a laugh when you read a line like Day's Democracy flourishes with an informed electorate. Indeed. This however makes the assumption that you can become an informed member of the electorate if you rely on the routine distortions and political campaigns of News Corp, the dominant market player.

That's why it's a healthy and robust aspect of the media in Australia that there is an alternative in the shape of the ABC - which minions of Murdoch spend an inordinate amount of time referencing and abusing - and it'd be a joyful relief if they'd just shut up about aunty for a few years ...

Some may see benefit in putting the government between consumers and the free flow of information and opinion, but I don't. In spite of its imperfections, I prefer a free and unfettered media where its credibility and the influence derived from it is in the hands of individuals, not governments.

Uh huh, well Day might well like to think that the hands of individuals like the Murdoch family are a safe pair of hands for credibility and influence, but the pond has always favoured the slogans Is your news limited? and Is that the truth, or did you read it in the Herald Sun/the Daily Telegraph/The Australian? (insert other Murdoch newspaper of choice).

Still, the pond can agree with Day on one thing. No subsidy should go to Fairfax or to News Corp, and it's pleasing one anomaly to that rule has recently been corrected. And consumer boycotts, along with the laws of the land - defamation and libel - will serve most other purposes.

But here's an idea. Instead of the feeble, pathetic, neo-tragic press council, how about a system whereby the routine distortions and bits of misinformation published by the press are corrected quickly, with the corrections placed in a prominent position, without a fuss? Is that too much to ask? (Instead of the surely truculence shown by rags like the West Australian when caught out in error, here?)

In the old days, quality papers made it a point of pride to have a fact checking department, with corrections published prominently. These days newspapers routinely get things wrong, and only a few indulge in hand wringing or introspection, of the kind you can find with the New York Times brooding about The Acorn Sting Revisited, put another way by the Village Voice in We Got the ACORN Story Wrong, Considering Correction.

That kind of hand wringing probably reached a peak with the NYT's review of its coverage of the Iraq war:

...we have found a number of instances of coverage that was not as rigorous as it should have been. In some cases, information that was controversial then, and seems questionable now, was insufficiently qualified or allowed to stand unchallenged. Looking back, we wish we had been more aggressive in re-examining the claims as new evidence emerged — or failed to emerge. (The Times and Iraq).

Is it possible to imagine that kind of regard for balance (retrospective and useless even though it was), and consideration and concern for facts and reporting in the feral newspapers within the Murdoch fold, and most particularly The Australian, when confronted by the elephant Manne?

Of course not. But it is possible to imagine self-regulation working a little better than the monstrous failure of the Press Complaints Commission in the UK, which in 2009 rolled over when it came to the matter of phone message tapping allegations (and still carries this shame online, with the annotation that they've withdrawn the wretched report).

Even the local toothless Press Council has argued for a little more by way of teeth:

There is a strong case for strengthening the use of our existing powers. For example, the Council is actively considering whether to specify more firmly the way in which our adjudications must be published. Other options could include issuing admonitions or censures, or requiring publication of retractions, apologies or rights of reply. (here)

That's not regulation so much as requiring bullies and thugs to offer a little space when they get things wrong ...

It certainly won't change the knee-capping thuggish ways of the Murdoch press.

Within a couple of days of Robert Manne getting done over on the matter of climate change and other matters, the usual snideries and irrelevancies are on view in The Australian.

Take Cut and Paste as an example - please take Cut and Paste anywhere you like in a post-modern post-ironic world - as it hints that Stephen Conroy doesn't accept climate science, and is at one with Ivan Giaever on the matter ... (Time to proclaim the great social democratic experiment of the past 30 months has failed).

Truth to tell, the Murdoch press is just a giant, relentless threshing machine, without remorse, subtlety, nuance or insight, from the smallest to the largest moments, and the only answer lies in what you buy at the newsagency. Or fail to subscribe to, when the great paywall comes down ...

Meanwhile, if you're at one with Mark Day, please feel free to believe that Rupert Murdoch is the guardian of righteous media in Australia.

Maybe it was so back in the day when the Melbourne Truth set Rupert on the path to News of the World, and Day saw sex as the way forward for Truthers?

Or maybe it doesn't matter if some rags curl up their toes and drop off the twig ...

Well good luck with all that at News Corp, and good luck with the group-wide, cost reduction targets of 15-20% over the next three years ... (Behind the Crikey paywall at Leaked memo: News Ltd to embark on 20% cost cutting - yes Virginia you can believe in Father Claus and pay for media diversity if you find the service useful).

Could it be that media diversity might be enhanced if the boa constrictor like News Corp hold on the print media in Australia was loosened? Even if we lost a little by way of fish and chip wrappings?

Never mind.

On to lighter matters, and as we used the word behemoth above, are you aware that Job 15:24 provides the perfect description of a dinosaur, as opposed to silly notions it might have been a hippopotamus?

Behold now behemoth, which I made with thee; he eateth grass as an ox.
Lo now, his strength [is] in his loins, and his force [is] in the navel of his belly.
He moveth his tail like a cedar: the sinews of his stones are wrapped together. (here).

Good, now you're ready to join Sarah Palin in believing Dinosaurs and People Coexisted.

Good, now you're qualified and ready to join Fox News, in the heart of the Murdoch empire.

Next step? Who knows, perhaps a plum job in The Australian, writing columns about climate science ... but remember funding is limited these days ...

(Below: as leaked to Crikey, but you'll need to go behind the paywall to get the juice).