The reptiles have been in full cry over the Lehrmann/Reynolds matter, with Dame Slap doing her very best to smear and besmirch and belittle, and the pond has been forced to hand out red card after red card ...
But this is Monday, so Major Mitchell was out and about and he fancies himself as a media man - neigh, something of a media expert - so he'd be sure to talk about the big media news that dominated the week ...
How foolish of the pond, but then talking about News Corp in News Corp would be roughly like attempting a negative profile of Adolf in Der Stürmer, so instead the hapless subscribers copped this ...
The pond realises it might have offended strict interpreters of Godwin's Law, but how pathetic is the Major?
What a wimpy, featherless chook. Another standard issue attack on Albo and berating journalists for using a Hawke-Keating analogy and demanding they do homework, when there's a real media story out and about, and doesn't need anything by way of homework to explore ...
Fox News has been exposed like never before.
A trove of newly-released text messages and emails have laid bare how the right-wing media giant operated with little regard for fact in the weeks and months following the 2020 presidential election. The correspondence reveals that the network’s senior-most executives and highest-profile hosts chose not to disclose what they believed to be the truth of the election out of fear that that the facts would alienate Fox News’ audience and throw the highly profitable business into ruin.
But then, if the pond might repeat itself, talking about News Corp in News Corp would be roughly like attempting a negative profile of Adolf in
Der Stürmer, so it's
left to the likes of CNN to celebrate ...
After the election, an incensed Trump had attacked Fox News and encouraged his followers to switch to Newsmax, a smaller right-wing talk channel that was saturating its airwaves with election denialism.
Trump was enraged that Fox News was the first network to call the critical swing state of Arizona for now-president Joe Biden. And he couldn’t stand that the network, rightfully, declared Biden as the winner of the presidential contest.
In the days and weeks after the presidential contest had been called, Fox News’ audience listened to Trump and rebelled against the channel. Fox News shed a chunk of its audience while Newsmax gained significant viewership.
Behind the scenes, Fox News executives and hosts were in panic. Jay Wallace, the Fox News president, described Newsmax’s surge as “troubling” and said the network needed to be “on war footing.”
Rupert Murdoch, the Fox Corporation chairman, emailed Suzanne Scott, the Fox News chief executive, telling her that Newsmax needed to be “watched.” Murdoch said that he didn’t “want to antagonize Trump further” and stressed to her, “everything at stake here.”
The messages underscore that Fox News did not live up to the basic journalistic principle that news organizations are supposed to deliver the news to viewers, without fear or favor. Instead, the right-wing talk channel engineered its coverage to appeal to its audience which was actively being lied to by Trump and his campaign surrogates.
Ah, the principle that news organisations are supposed to deliver the news without fear or favour.
Better get back to the Major then, delivering his usual serve, turning to that old, tired reptile standby, former chairman Rudd, or ordering a new chaff bag for Julia, or even evoking Gough, because the demographic for the reptiles these days is so old that ancient Gough's name is deemed to mean something ...
Oh and also, huzzah for the onion muncher ...
What's easier than all of that? Turning your back on a truly juicy story, but then the Major never did find that Order of Lenin medal, so who could expect him to stumble across this one?
“Our viewers are good people and they believe [the election fraud claims],” Tucker Carlson acknowledged in one message to Laura Ingraham.
A week after the election had been called, Sean Hannity told Carlson and Ingraham, “In one week and one debate they destroyed a brand that took 25 years to build and the damage is incalculable.”
“It’s vandalism,” Carlson responded.
Hannity then discussed the damage a competitor could really do to Fox News, describing it as a potentially “serious problem.”
“That could happen,” Carlson replied.
The hosts were so alarmed by Newsmax’s rise, they were enraged when their colleague, White House correspondent Jacqui Heinrich, tweeted a mere fact check of Trump’s election lies.
“Please get her fired,” Carlson told Hannity. “Seriously What the f**k? I’m actually shocked. It needs to stop immediately, like tonight. It’s measurably hurting the company. The stock price is down. Not a joke.”
Hannity said he had already spoken to Scott about the matter. He then proceeded to criticize two of his other colleagues, Fox News host Neil Cavuto and then-Fox News anchor Chris Wallace, both of whom were critical of Trump.
“I’m 3 strikes,” Hannity said. “Wallace s**t debate[.] Election night a disaster[.] Now this BS? Nope. Not gonna fly. Did I mention Cavuto?”
The fear that Fox News’ audience would abandon it for good also appeared to drive programming decisions. In the days following the election, Alex Pfeiffer, a Carlson producer, told the host, “Many viewers were upset tonight that we didn’t cover election fraud …. It’s all our viewers care about right now.”
Carlson said the decision was a “mistake,” adding, “I just hate this s**t.”
Well yes, the pond hates the Major's shit, yet here we are, and on we go ...
You see, you see! The Major himself invoked the Nazis ... and so the pond can invoke the My Pillow man ...
Executives at Fox were so worried about their audience protesting the channel that Scott, the network chief executive, even made an overture to MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, a prominent Fox News advertiser and election conspiracy theorist.
When Lindell appeared on Newsmax and criticized Fox News, executives at Fox News “exchanged worried emails about alienating him,” the legal filing said. The filing added that Scott then sent him a handwritten note along with a gift.
The pond apologises for the counter-progamming but is unable to send a handwritten note, a gift or even a clunky pillow, and instead offers up a final gobbet of the Major ...
Should the Major have urged the media to talk about the deep corrupting of a country by a deeply corrupt and dysfunctional news organisation?
Pigs will fly sooner than that ...
As for the rest this day, it was a dismal scene ...
Ted Woodley was just recycling a yarn he first spun about Snowy in Renew Economy way back on 12th February, and there was no way the pond was going to fall for the trick of defending Malware - next thing you know the pond would be celebrating the multifunction node - nor was the pond going to fall for the easy talk of anti-Semitism because the next thing you know, the pond could get into trouble for running a cartoon ...
The pond had no alternative but to turn to Killer Creighton, and his letter from America, though the pond knew it had more chance of spotting a white cat in a blizzard than find Faux Noise in Killer's report ... but at least the pond did discover the real cause of the current inflation... the wearing of masks!
Well yes, but perhaps being wildly off the mark, and even worse showing it, isn't a good sign, but we all make mistakes, though some just never get around to admitting it...
An oldie but a goodie, and the pond had jokingly promised Killer would explain how wearing masks had generated the inflationary storm - the pond loves Killer mask jokes - and yet, to be fair, Killer almost gets there ...
Ah, there you go, it's not the pandemic, it's the response to the pandemic, and part of that was the wearing of masks, and so QED ... why it's as easy as passing any kind of test that might be flung out into the world to test the reptile reader demographic ...
Sorry, she said politicians, but it could apply to the reptile readership, and now the pond must stop interrupting because there's a last Killer outburst to go ...
The pond will leave all the economics gibberish to cultists, it reminded the pond of the reptiles on the matter of climate science ...
The pond couldn't but help think it was underweight this day, so it decided to offer up the lizard Oz editorialist offering the dread spectacle of socialism ... in a way that the reptiles hadn't managed since the noughties, the nineties, the eighties and the seventies ...
Gad sir, not the mutton Dutton ... he surely knows how to pick a horse and how to ride it ...
Apropos of nothing, that remind the pond of a couple of other cartoons it had left over ...
But the pond supposes it must finish off the lizard Oz editorialist if only because it provides a buffer to a final cartoon ...
It was hardly worth the effort - that line about narrow interests could easily have produced another joke about Faux Noise ...
Oh it did, it did, and that reminded the pond of another cartoon it had left over ...
Not to worry, for those who've already forgotten every Killer word scribbled by Killer, the immortal Rowe had already shown the pond the canary in the coal mine ...
And to that the pond has only one response ...
Maj. Mitch.: "...prime minister Bob Hawke and treasurer Paul Keating were determined in 1983 that they would prove Labor could be trusted to run an economically sensible government." No more damning assessment of Hawke-Keating can there be than fulsome praise from the reptiles. Even if they never mention Bill Kelty and his good mate - you know, the one who sends helicopters for Albo - Lindsay Fox.
ReplyDeleteBTW, does anybody know whatever happened to Martin Ferguson ? Haven't heard anything from or about that gooney tooney for years.
Otherwise, his complete failure to find any Lenin medals has by now completely deranged Maj. Mitch. Not that he was ever really non-deranged, he just did a better job of pretending in the past.
But anyway, there's this: "The real point of the Hawke-Keating era was to lift national productivity to create 30 years of uninterrupted economic growth." Well apart from that gratuitously candid admission that it wasn't the doing of John Winston, I think we all know that Australia's "30 years" was largely down to the effect on GDP of large-scale immigration.
Everybody knows, don't they, that the more immigrants arrive, the more GDP "grows" because it has to (banks printing money ?). But GDP per capita doesn't and Australia had three GDP per capita recessions in that time. And surely even the Maj. Mitch knows that it's GDP per capita which signifies prosperity.
‘Albanese’s media cheer squad should brush up on Labor history’ saith the Major. Well, actually Majors tend to shout rather than just say, but it seems we are to believe there is some kind of separate history associated with Labor. That is consistent with reptile reasoning (and delightfully reiterated in the brief from Dominion Voting Systems) that history must be differentiated between what the good guys did - which was ever good, and what the bad guys did - which justifies traducing everything about them, for ever and a day.
DeleteSo to history - of a kind from which unnamed journalists ‘need to do some homework.’ What the Major has in mind is that such homework need not extend beyond reading the content of reptile media of the time.
So ‘Whitlam’s (government) had been a shambles economically.’ At the instant when a Queen’s Representative, ambling around in his own delusions of grandeur, acceded to John Fraser’s demand that they, good abiding conservatives, set aside many of the principles of conservatism in the English-speaking world, because of the parlous state of the economy - a state that only John Malcolm Fraser could reset - at that instant, this country had no net debt. A historian consulting actual statistics might offer an interesting comparison of the national net debt from the Whitlam administration, with that of the Muncher-Malware-Morrison period. (Alliteration is tempting, isn’t it?)
Unnamed journalists of our current time need not delve into subsequent reptile publications to learn about the effectiveness of Fraser’s supposed resuscitation of a decidedly non-moribund economy. Remarkably little is to be found there to show success from any of Fraser’s mercantilist brain snaps during his term in office, even though he had been handed dominant positions in both houses of parliament. Oh - economic contributors through 1975-83 gave contorted reasoning why there were very different factors driving inflation during Fraser’s time - which is why it was such a challenge for him - and, otherwise, it was all, you know - different. The real wonder is that the carry-over economy was sufficiently robust not to be put too far off course by Fraser’s mercantilist meddling.
Ah yes, mercantilism ... now that's a word I haven't encountered in quite a while, but indeed it does typify Fraserian pseudo-economics.
DeleteAnd just for Maj. Mitch.:
Delete"In 2019-20, the fossil fuel industry earned $115 billion from selling Australia’s petroleum and coal resources and paid state and federal governments an estimated $7.3 billion in royalties.
One year later (in 2020-21), the industry received more than $10.7 billion in subsidies, according to a report released by The Australia Institute based on state budget papers.
It appears that federal and state governments pay billions of dollars more in subsidies to multinational fossil fuel miners than they pay in royalties to governments."
Fossil Fuel Fiesta: Australia’s coal and gas giants get more in subsidies than they pay in royalties
https://michaelwest.com.au/fossil-fuel-fiesta-australias-coal-and-gas-giants-get-more-in-subsidies-than-they-pay-in-royalties/
GB - continuing with history, as the Major commands us - the article by Callum Foote is much like the report prepared by Tom Fitzgerald, who was at various times economics writer for several of our major (could not resist) newspapers, including Rupert's indulgences. Fitzgerald, as consultant, prepared a report on the nett contribution to the welfare of Australians, in the 70s, from the mining industry. Fitzgerald rates but a brief entry in 'Wiki', and it is difficult to track down a copy of the document. However, as an historic document, we have the speech by the then shadow for minerals and energy - one David Fairbairn, at
Deletehttps://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display.w3p;query=Id:%22media/summary/summary.w3p;query=AuthorId:KDT%7CReporterId:KDT%7CSpeakerId:KDT
- sorry it is such a long link; a pdf is available. It is a useful document to serious historians because it encapsulates the utter guff that the coalition was prepared, not just to swallow, but to proclaim, about all those not readily resolved 'benefits' - good ole Jobson Grouth - that mining gave to this nation, out of the goodness of its collective heart. Almost brings a tear to one's eye. Almost. But mainly it shows what a bunch of mugs we were at the time, and how little we learned.
Sadly, Chad, the only people who seem to have learned anything at all is us Loonpondians, and as usual, the more knowledge you acquire, the less you can do with it.
DeleteWe should just be grateful that the miners let us keep anything of Australia at all.
Oh goodness gracious me, KillerC: "The bad news is there is negligible if any empirical relationship between higher interest rates set by central banks and inflation." Oh, Killer, whence the mighty Volker ? "Monetary policy remains faith-based, and that faith may turn out to be misplaced." May turn out to be misplaced ? May ?
ReplyDeleteTo continue: "Central banks appeared wise and effective until the pandemic, consistently meeting legislated inflation targets more or less ...". But why should having perpetual inflation appear "wise and effective" ? All that means is that costs and prices keep rising year after year and for what reason ? To allow corporations and businesses to make higher profits and pay bigger executive bonuses (some now in the range of hundreds of millions of dollars per year) and higher dividends. Which then requires higher salaries and wages so that wage slaves can still afford to buy as much goods and services as are needed to maintain corporate profitability. So that costs and prices can be raised again so that ... oh, the never-ending story of why a newspaper that once sold for 20¢ now costs $4. Yay !
Oh dear:
DeletePhilip Lowe's long and gradual fall from grace after the many failures of the RBA
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-02-20/philip-lowe-rba-fall-from-grace-interest-rates/101996386
It’s the usual recycled blather from the Major, but I notice that he frequent refers to himself in the third person. Variations on “This column argued….” pop up fairly frequently; I suppose the Major thinks it gives his work a bit more gravitas than “As I’ve scribbled umpteen times previously…”. It’s rather cute - a bit like that early 20th Century provincial Irish newspaper that thundered “As we have warned the Czar….”.
ReplyDeleteOk, Mr Ed: "Rather than pander to the narrow interests of single issue parties like the Greens..." Albo should pander to the narrow interests of single issue parties like the LNP; the single issue being 'more money for me'! "governments must manage the economy for the benefit of everyone." Quite, but I rather thought that meant still having some kind of economy that hasn't been sunk under rising seas or cooked by rising environmental temperatures.
ReplyDeleteI could be wrong though, because of course the reptiles and wingnuts all have direct communication with some imaginary, invisible friend who promised "the fire next time" and seems well on the way to delivering.
Greg Craven’s article on the Voice in today’s Lizard Oz is already receiving some pushback -
ReplyDeletehttps://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/feb/20/greg-craven-criticised-for-comments-about-voice-referendum-working-group
So expect the Reptiles to double-down in the days to come.