Good for what Ailes you So the ABC and The Australian are going at it over the role Fox News played in perpetuating the “big lie” that former US president Donald Trump actually won last November’s election, and the whole debate has become a giant horseshoe.
Four Corners argues Fox had better journalistic standards under Roger Ailes — the former media adviser to every Republican president between Richard Nixon and George Bush Sr, the man who wrote to George W Bush days after 9/11 to encourage him to use the “harshest possible measures“, and who left the network after a series of allegations of sexual harassment in 2016. The Australian counters with the observations that Ailes was “notoriously hardline” and “forced out in 2016”.
A separate shout-out to Chris Kenny for employing whatever keyboard shortcut gives us his column to attack the ABC for following the “same old script“, which is probably the funniest thing he’s managed since that time he did a Sky News segment and wrote a column claiming ABC presenters Kate Evans and Cassie McCullagh joked on air about “murdering conservatives”, when in fact it was a joke about art “conservators” as part of a murder mystery they were reviewing.
Come fly with me We aren’t the first to observe this, but for a guy whose detractors dub “Scotty from marketing”, our prime minister sure seems kind of bad at, you know, marketing. Qantas’s latest tear-jerker of an ad is yet another example of how every good ad we’ve seen concerning the pandemic has come from other countries or loathsome creative types. When the federal government has a crack, it’s forgettable stuff like July’s “arm yourself” campaign.
Beyond the simple aim of encouraging vaccination during a global pandemic, the government really ought to take a cue from Qantas for another reason: distraction. Qantas, after all, wants Australia vaxxed so it can get back to belching a metric tonne of pollution across the skies and employing every brutal negotiating tactic in the book against its workforce. But who remembers all that? That lovely couple need to get to Singapore for their wedding!
Trading blows Cricket legend, baron, David Brent’s hero and now trade envoy to Australia Ian Botham. Australia’s high commissioner to the UK George Brandis has greeted the news with the tweet equivalent of over-eagerly attempting to join a conversation and killing it dead. It will be interesting to see if Botham’s traditional dynamic with Australians continues.
Not content with bludgeoning Australians on the cricket field, Botham has famously had a series of scraps with Ian Chappell and was charged with assault in Perth after an altercation with a plane passenger which allegedly included a “clip round the ear” and the line “eyes to the front or you’re next” (Botham, for his part recalls it thus: “I put my hands on his shoulders, redirected his gaze to the front and told him to mind his own business.”)
is that Prince Andrew…… sweating?
Botham as trade envoy??
A tad worrisome given that his nickname was Bungalo – because there was nothing upstairs.
Like Abbott.
Damn, those loathsome creative types make a good ad. Who would have guessed? Made me want to go out and get another, but I’m already done.
We provided them a retired political cyclist – they are just returning the favour with a retired, and probably political, cricketer. With heritages like that what could possibly go wrong with such a trade (no pun intended) – it brings to mind images of similar exchanges on the Glienicker Brücke at the height of the Cold War. Both sides saw benefit in sending by then useless apparatchiks to each other – the truest expression of mutual regard and respect that can be accorded in international relations.
Why can’t the Australian have a go at 4 Corners over it’s premise that “this all started with Trump”?
FFS this bias was going on way before that.
For Carlson to say “Fox was always a conservative alternative to CNN but that its motto, “fair and balanced”, was upheld for many years before the Trump era.” is risible in the face of all the recorded evidence (how did Carlson “report” on Obama and his administration?) : except to the cast and crew of this 4 Corners report, or much of the rest of the media?
This “First rule of Media Club is don’t talk about Media Club” BS?
This “bias” did not “start with Trump”
Murdoch embedded his FUX News up to his Ritz crackers to do the propaganda for the Coalition of the Willing’s invasion of Iraq.
They were against Clinton and “anything Obama”.
Where was Grechen Carlson and her pals during all that?
If The Australian wanted to revert to anything factual it could have taken that line : instead of this, it’s usual “The Australian Business As Usual BS Root”.