Some quality Osama Bin Laden-related journalism from the Channel 7 News website. Or Headline ClickBait as it's more commonly known :




Paragraph three of the 'story' :

"The notebook was not a diary and did not include personal or emotional details, the official said."

The Sydney Morning Herald couldn't resist either. Now it's 'diaries' :

Andrew Bolt's Reality Meltdown

By Darryl Mason


Screengrab from The Australian online front page in the days following the March 11 Japanese earthquake and tsunami

How many times can pro-nuclear wacko and alleged journalist Andrew Bolt show himself to be grotesquely ignorant, wrong and ill-informed in the space of just one week? Five times? Ten times? More?

Following the March 11 earthquake in Japan, a 15 metre high tsunami wave slammed into a nuclear plant in Fukushima. The earthquake and tsunami killed more than 28,000 people.

For obvious reasons there was widespread concern in Japan, and around the world, about how good a job the Japanese government and the nuclear plant's operators were doing in containing radiation leaking from the smashed plant.

As a sign of just how confident the US government was that the Japanese government could contain radiation from the Fukushima plant, they began preparations for the evacuation of thousands of US military families within hours of the US government learning just how huge and potentially deadly the unfolding disaster actually was.

And, not unexpectedly, news media leaped on the 'Nuclear Crisis' story and ran with it hard, voicing arguments both for and against nuclear power.

This gave Andrew Bolt the opportunity to blame The Greens for nuclear "scaremongering" and to attack "the media" (of which he is one of Australia's most prominent and highly paid) for their coverage.

Well, attack some media.

Attack, primarily, the main newspaper competition to the newspapers owned by ex-Australian Rupert Murdoch that publish Andrew Bolt's often incoherent and poorly researched swill.

Bolt began his ill-fated campaign to bludgeon his ideological and political enemies for "fear-mongering" over Fukushima on March 14 :

"...the offensive media fear-mongering..."

"...the media coverage of some papers obsesses instead about trouble at some nuclear reactors..."

This was the only time Bolt linked to Australian newspapers he claimed were over-hyping the radioactive threat posed by the rapidly failing Fukushima nuclear plant. He didn't link to anything published in the newspapers he writes for, of course, because that would have proven what a deceitful idiot he is.

The stories from The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald Bolt did link to were, in fact, mild and quite low on undue hype and "fear-mongering", in stark contrast, that is, to the newspapers Andrew Bolt works for.






Here's the online front pages from the Bolt-publishing Daily Telegraph & Herald Sun the day before those Age & SMH stories were published.





Even more bizarrely, Andrew Bolt ran this headline on his blog...



....the day after his Herald Sun newspaper ran this front page :



Which proves Bolt doesn't even read the front pages of the main newspaper he writes for, because nowhere, in a week of blog postings, did he acknowledge it was the actually the Herald Sun shouting 'Meltdown'.

Here's more excerpts from Andrew Bolt's blogs & columns in the 10 days following the start of the Fukushima nuclear disaster, interspersed with online & print front pages from the Daily Telegraph, the Herald Sun and other Murdoch news media, including The Australian, published during the same period.

Bolt neither linked to nor mentioned any of these in any of his columns or blog posts.

March 15 :

The great green scaremongering gets worse.

March 16 :

No, there won’t be a nuclear explosion, “China syndrome” or “another Chernobyl”. The situation today is better than yesterday, and as each day goes by the chances of a big accident lesson. The nuclear fuel remains contained.

This scaremongering over the crippled Fukushima nuclear complex is extraordinary.

Isn't it though?



March 18 :

We will need to make some people accountable for this monstrous scaremongering once the truth becomes undeniable

March 19 :

The fear of Fukushima is deadlier than the fallout

Utter madness. The journalists who have whipped this up should be ashamed of themselves.

These journalists?



March 20 :

The wild reporting of Japan’s Fukushima nuclear emergency continues, with lurid claims of radioactive plumes, poisoned milk and more. The fact remains, though, that no one has been killed and probably never will.

March 21 :

no one in the towns around the plant is in any danger whatsoever from the radiation.

...the screaming, braying, lying, hyperventilating, fabricating, panicking media coverage is probably likely to kill you first instead.

March 21 :

It’s time to hold the scaremongers to account.

These "scaremongers?"



Andrew Bolt, March 22 :

Why worry only about the reactor that has killed no one?

Yes, why worry about a mostly destroyed, exploding, radioactive water spewing nuclear plant when you can, if you read Murdoch news media, worry instead about whether or not Mother Nature is now purposely trying to kill humans?



Her cruelty, eh?

March 11 wasn't, you see, another one of the hundreds of mega-earthquakes and tsunamis that have rocked, smashed and swept across the fault-line islands we now call Japan in the past few dozen million years.....it was instead a Terror Attack on humans by 'cruel' Mother Nature, at least according to the Gold Coast Bulletin :



None of the above headlines or front pages were criticised, or even mentioned, by Andrew Bolt is his 10 day campaign to blame "fear-mongering" over the deadly serious, ongoing nuclear disaster in Japan on "the greens" and non-Murdoch news media.

Not one.

And since it has been confirmed that explosions at Fukushima did indeed claim lives, that vast farming areas of Japan are so polluted with radiation they can't grow essential crops like rice, perhaps for years, or decades, and that radioactive water gushing into the Pacific Ocean from the nuclear plant has destroyed lifeblood fishing industries and clouds of radiation have even reached milk and food supplies in the United States, what has Andrew Bolt said?

Nothing.

As soon as Andrew Bolt realised facts and reality had proven him wrong, deceitfully wrong, about Fukushima, over and over again, he simply dropped the story.

Completely.

Like a petulant child who, once told he is wrong, runs to his room and slams the door on the reality of his mistakes.

Bolt has said nothing, not even an update or a correction, about the true scale of the Fukushima nuclear disaster in weeks.

Meanwhile, in the real world, the Fukushima disaster has been upgraded to a Level 7 nuclear emergency, the same rating as Chernobyl, the highest rating possible.

Quality journalism indeed.

There Is No Good Outcome For Fukushima Disaster

Your New Reality - Mother Nature : The Ultimate Terrorist



Darryl Mason is the author of the free, online novel ED Day : Dead Sydney. You can read it here


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Veteran journalist Andrew Dodd on the shaping of 'quality journalism' at Rupert Murdoch's national newspaper :

I know the culture at The Australian. I worked there for five years. Occasionally, as a reporter you get leant-on to chase things. You can be pushed into prodding a certain side in a certain way in line with the paper's campaign of the day. I know how uncomfortable this is, particularly when the paper is not a disinterested player.

The Australian, owned by a non-Australian, who voluntarily gave up his citizenship to make more money. You can't more un-Australian than that.

What Market Is The Murdoch Media Trying To Reach With Fictitious Stories About Children Having Sex?

It was the biggest story for the Australian online Murdoch media yesterday, so does it matter if it was made up?

From news.com.au :

From PerthNow :

They look like a symbol of childhood innocence. But these bracelets are part of an "insidious" game that sees primary school kids perform sex.

And it is feared the craze may soon sweep WA.

The exact same story, under the same byline, appeared in the Courier Mail. With a slight change of emphasis to lock in local interest, and concern :

"...these colourful bracelets are behind an "insidious" craze of primary schoolkids performing sex acts that it is feared will soon sweep through Queensland."

WA, Queensland, where will this insidious made-up craze that doesn't drive children into sex spread next?

PerthNow readers were not so easily fooled :

"this is so obviously made up/an urban legend, nice 'news' story"

"'And it is feared the craze may soon sweep WA' a fine example of yellow journalism."

"Stupidest news report I've ever seen. Parents don't be concerned if see kids wearing them it means nothing. Ridiculous!"

"These harmless fashion statments are not promoting the sexualisation of youth - this ill-informed journalist is!"

"Theseare all over the u.k media as well with almost identical headlines andstories.why would adults honestly think 11 year old kids would behaving sex behind sheds because the right bracelet was broken!!Hysterical adults on one side and pedo dreamers with wild fantasies ofdelusion on the other.Leave the kids alone!"

This near daily focus on the alleged sex lives of children by the mainstream media,where the stories more often than not turn out to be totally false, is disturbing to say the least.

Incredibly, this trash also made it into The Australian.

Is this the kind of "quality journalism" News CEO John Hartigan thinks Australians will pay to read online?

CosmicJester notes the only sources for this 'story' appear to be a Facebook page and UrbanDictionary.

If the"journalist" had bothered to google these evil sex bracelets, theywould have found out that they are nothing new and they are mainly amoral panic/urban legend designed to scare dim witted journalists andparents.

Snopes.com reveals that this panic goes back till at least 2003 and is a slightly updated urban legend from the 1990's.

UPDATE : The bullshit 'shag bands' story did the trick. It became the most read storyon the CourierMail, News.com.au and PerthNow websites :

It's Only Biased Reporting If You're A Rotten Lefty Blogger

Dennis Shanahan at The Australian reports on the latest poll results :

Kevin Rudd's personal popularity has lifted to a six-month high....

Followed by the standard dose of Shanahan lemon-sucking :

....despite problems with the economic stimulus spending, rising unemployment and fears of interest rate rises.

Every news story hand-crafted to fit the tastes of the majority of The Australian's readers.

But Shanahan doesn't go far enough in listing the problems Rudd still faces. I would have added, "(and fears of interest rates) and soaring pet care costs and the eating of nearby star systems by the Adromeda Galaxy...."

Shanahan's up to his old poll massaging tricks of 2007, yet again.


(click to enlarge)

The federal election will be held in the first quarter of 2010. Perhaps it takes a good six months for Shanahan to get back up to speed?

The only surprising thing is that Shanahan hasn't started talking up a Churchillian return from John Howard.

(via@timdunlop)

November 2007 : On Eve Of Shattering Howard Election Defeat, Shanahan Declares 'Our Polls Must Be Wrong!'


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