(Above: Click to enlarge. David Rowe, winner of the 2011 Walkley cartoon award. More Rowe here).
There's sour grapes and then there's sore losers ...
And then there's petulant, whining children, never letting up week after week ...
And then there's Andrew Bolt and News Corp, at it again today ...
It's hard to imagine a more pitiful whining, whingeing moaning spectacle than that provided by the Bolter in Walkleys feed foul-mouthed beasts of the left...
The logic's pretty hard to fathom too. He detests and distrusts journalists handing prizes to journalists because it leads to no good.
So why should he care that the Walkleys are all about feeding foul-mouthed beasts of the left? Why not let the beasts have their meaningless fun, and walk on by in dignified silence?
And what on earth does he make of the Murdochians in house awards?
Oops, seems that's the time for dignified silence.
The Bolter has lathered himself up into a righteous indignation about the Walkleys a number of times, and in particular the presenters, including Benjamin Law and Clementine Ford, and now he's included Karla Grant in the abuse, because she's part of the pattern - she's from the SBS Living Black show, and the one thing we can't have is uppity blacks getting into the Walkley spotlight ...
To a paranoid everything is a conspiracy, so naturally the Fairfaxians are part of this grand conspiracy, as bad as the foul-mouthed twittering hosts:
Surprised at the grossness? Don't be. It's quite the thing at Fairfax. Just the other day The Age promoted T shirts produced by Ford with the slogan "F ... Abbott", spelled out.
The Walkleys audience would be familiar with the sexualised denigration of Abbott by Walkleys presenters - a denigration which the same presenters would damn if done to, say, Julia Gillard.
It turns out, of course, that Gillard has been done over before - back in 2010, Amanda Bishop had a go at all sorts of people, including Laurie Oakes for being leaked on, as part of her Julia Gillard impersonation for the Walkleys.
It's called humour, and the one think you can rely on is that the Bolter absolutely has no sensa huma. Just a lot of huffing and puffing and frothing and foaming in a paranoid frenzy.
No doubt the news Emma Alberici is hosting the awards - making the ABC part of the conspiracy - will send the Bolter right off the deep end. (here)
So what's behind it all? The incessant whining ...
Well you don't have to look far.
Fairfax Media’s revenues may be tumbling and its share price stagnant, but the company has routed arch-nemesis News Corporation Australia in this year’s Walkley Award nominations for journalistic excellence.
That's Routed with a capital "R". Please don't mispronounce it and say Rooted, that would get the Bolter terribly upset.
Fairfax has received 27 nominations, ahead of the ABC on 18 and News Corp on 13 (see the full list here). Channel Nine’s A Current Affair — regularly pinged by Media Watch and the Australian Communications and Media Authority for shoddy reporting — is up for two awards. As well as Tracy Grimshaw’s bruising interview with the royal prank DJs, ACA scored a nomination for “Drug granny” — an expose of an Aussie grandmother running a suburban drug supermarket from her front door. Who said the Walkleys are anti-tabloid? (here)
The Herald Sun picked up a couple of nominations, the Daily Terror picked up a nomination for its peptides coverage, but really News Corp punched way underweight, especially relative to its market dominance, as this Crikey breakdown shows:
Organisation/Nominations
Fairfax 27
ABC 18
News Corp Australia 13
Getty Images 5
SBS 4
Nine Network 3
The Guardian 2
The Global Mail 2
Seven Network 2
Ten Network 2
The Griffith Review 2
NITV 2
The West Australian 1
Sky News 1
There you go, that's the price of confusing ideology with news and stories.
The real travesty, the real awards folly isn't given a mention by the Bolter, and that's the in-house awards organised by News Corp for its staffers - a kind of petulant finger up to the world, and about as meaningless as an "award of excellence" template:
Why the pond gives itself one of those once a week, just to feel happy.
Of course others do it - the pond was astonished to discover that Australian film producers had decided to arrange their own set of awards - you can find the nominees here - because apparently they're not satisfied with the AACTA Awards, and then they didn't get around to nominating anyone for the Pissing Australian Taxpayers' Against the Wall by Making a Dramatised Doc to Put Behind the Foxtel Paywall Award ... which results in two thirds of taxpayers missing out on a painful re-enactment, or paying up to subscribe to Foxtel so they can pay double to watch a painful re-enactment...
Never mind, the point is that News Corp has form as poor losers and whingers and whiners and moaners.
It was pathetic, painful and embarrassing to read, as you can note in News Corp criticises The Age's crowning, lacking the style and class even a Hollywood actor can muster when a no hoper steps up to collect his gong. Instead of remember to smile and wave it was all snark and bile in PANPA award sparks outrage and accusations of bias from rival editors:
The presentation of the PANPA Newspaper of the Year Award to Fairfax Media's newspaper The Age has led to a backlash from publishing executives and editors amid accusations of bias against the awards' organisers.
Actually the only mob who indulged in a public wailing, and gnashing of teeth and sackcloth and ashes was News Ltd:
Chris Mitchell, editor-in-chief of The Australian (also published by News Corp), questioned the decision given the dominance of The Age's rival tabloid, the Herald Sun. "From where I sit, the deterioration of The Age against the Herald Sun is remarkable," Mitchell said.
"And that is not subjective because the numbers show it.
"I do not know any editor outside The Age who would agree this was a reasonable choice.
"As a tabloid, The Age just has not made the transition from broadsheet.
"Unless it was a totally political choice from someone at The Guardian or journalism academia," he said.
News Corp editorial director Campbell Reid agreed with him. "I, like a huge number of my colleagues, am bewildered as to how The Age could be named newspaper of the year," he said.
Pathetic. As was the rest of it, carrying about the judges and academics and Guardian types and all the rest of the usual right-wing conspiracy theories.
Done with all the grace and style of a custard tart with lemon topping.
Yet not so long ago, after they copped the gong, the reptiles at the lizard Oz thought so much of the bias of the judges that they stuck the gong in their masthead.
Look, there it is, up in the top left hand corner, PANPA newspaper of the year:
The moral?
Well the next time you see an adult at a children's game of football petulant and sulking and shrieking about the result - some do it week after week, making what should be a pleasure a weekend of misery - ask them what they read.
What's the chances it will be the Bolter and News Corp rags, like them, poor losers and spoil sports, and blaming the result all on leftists, and yammering on about it week after week and never letting it go?
Tell 'em to bugger off and set up their own pathetic feeble competition, and they can give themselves all the prizes they like.
After all, it's what News Corp did ...
(Below: click to enlarge, First Dog's Walkley winner for 2012. More about First Dog here)
Poor little sulker Bolter couldn't get a Walkley if he wrote for a thousand years. Never mind Andrew, it has never been presented for stupidity and bile.
ReplyDeletePersonally,Dorothy, I think you should get a Walkley for the preservation of literary intelligence and shining a light on the loonacy that masquerades as journalism in this country.
By the way,did anyone else enjoy the sight of some IPA spanner on last night's Drum, causing a rare "full panel sychronised eye roll", when stating that all the chatter about political trough wallowers was just the idle musings of bored journalists too lazy to do proper story research? Priceless. Cheers.