Almost everyone pays directly through taxes to be lied to by the ABC and SBS news services (and the British pay with their taxes, for much of the rest of the world as well as themselves, to be misinformed by the BBC news service). Some pay through direct purchaseorsubscription to be misinformed. Few who watch commercial television news services don't pay indirectly to be lied to. They pay additional costs added to the prices of their purchases to pay for advertising.
It's good that Get-up is criticising the absence of diversity of ownership in the Australian press and the tendency of that press to promote the government that it wants.
On 7 March 2013, Kevin Rudd was a lead speaker at a pro-population growth meeting held by the "Urban Development Institute of Australia", which is a property developer body that lobbies continually for higher immigration to grow Australia's population. Now Mr Rudd is our Prime Minister, but he still sounds as if he is working for a bunch of property developers.
"The utterly biased and relentless Murdoch press in Melbourne, Sydney and nationally through The Australian has played a big role in destroying Julia Gillard's standing with the electorate, such that Tony Abbott is well placed to win control of both houses in the coming September 14 Federal election."
News Limited is the main perpetrator of media abuses in Australia, writes Alan Austin, and hence the strongest proof the current self-regulation system is useless. (Article originally published on Independent Australia, from which we republish it with thanks. See end article for details.)
Dick Smith says he has been refused advertising space about his new magazine, Forbidden Ideas, by the Murdoch Press in Adelaide. See inside for link to a film where he speaks his mind on what he perceives to be censorship. This is really a quite funny and very informative speech by an animated Dick Smith.
The problem of policing [irony acknowledged] 'free speech' in Australia is multiple and not just about free speech. It is about restraining the power of capitalism focused in one or two media corporations so that it cannot dominate public perception. Unusually public-spirited rich Australian, Dick Smith, has sent a long letter to Kim Williams, CEO of News Limited, defending the Australian Government's attempts to reform the press. In it he accuses the Murdoch press of cynicism in their opposition to these attempts.
Steven Mayne is a famous independent Australian political and economic reporter, founder of crikey.com and of the Mayne Report. Here he writes to the Australian Media Inquiry. "I was planning to open my submission with a crack at the Inquiry for not getting Rupert in to give evidence whilst he was in town, but there was no opportunity... Former Federal Court judge Ray Finkelstein was very much on the front foot leading the discussion and my session from 2-3pm this afternoon turned into an hour of combat, covering the ins and outs of the Murdoch empire, media regulation, corrections, licensing and media ethics."
The way The Australian writes him up, Tim Flannery, who once wrote so articulately in defense of our land and its ecology and our place in it, now seems reduced to a quasi-apologist for extreme mining technologies. The Australian writes in such an unbalanced way. See also "Fracking Democracy..."
"Julia Gillard, Tony Abbott and Bob Brown are in a position to change the political, social and cultural landscape in Australia once and for all. They find themselves in the unique position of having the community support they need to stop the parliamentary puppet masters dictating parliamentary policy. They find themselves in the position to uproot the few stunted perennials that blight political, social and cultural debate in this community and let a thousand flowers bloom by passing parliamentary legislation that forces media monopolies to limit their media holdings to 10% of the privately owned media outlets in a community.
We are republishing this message because we agree that nothing can go ahead as long as the public messaging system is held hostage by a corporate media monopoly. Avaaz organisation says that, "Prime Minister Gillard may finally be about to order an inquiry into Rupert Murdoch's stranglehold on our media, but insiders say she is wobbling under direct pressure from Murdoch's lobbyists. Let’s flood her cabinet members with calls today and give them the public mandate they need to take a strong stand and hold the PM steady in her decision." See also "Concentrated media ownership: a crisis for democracy" Remember, the Murdoch press wants our population to increase and is against protection of the environment and of workers' rights.
Whilst the Murdoch newsmedia has, in the past, been able to manipulate political, economic and military outcomes in Australia, the US, the UK and across much of the rest of the world with its messages of hate and misinformation, it is no longer able to wield as much influence for harm as it was formerly able to. Much of the work, which was formerly handled by the likes of the Murdoch newsmedia is now handled by the supposed 'alternative' and 'left wing' newsmedia
The latest Joe Toscano anarchist podcast dissects the reasons why the Murdoch empire needs to be toppled. Great listening and fundamental education. Also wraps up the state of democracy in Australia.
The problem with Mr Murdoch's newspaper empire is not just unethical behaviour by his journalists. It goes much deeper. With the alarming concentration of media ownership in Australia and the advent of PR driven journalism, for the sake of democracy, the public must support independent media. David Donovan comments.
When I recently re-read my article Murdoch media contradicts itself on immigration of 18 Feb 09, I found that the articles in the Murdoch Press I had cited and linked to from that article were no longer available on-line. If publishers are not prepared to preserve copies of documents published on the Internet, then why should others be prevented from doing so by the copyright laws?
There is a global movement called Avaaz that wants to unite people to prevent the world's largest media baron from buying nearly half of the British mass media, arguably boosting his power to undermine global efforts on everything from peace to the environment. The group claims that there are only 48 hours to press the UK government to stand up and stop Rupert Murdoch.
Try writing to the daily newspaper, or commenting on a Murdoch News Limited newspaper blog or to a Fairfax newspaper blog, or even on an ABC Radio programme blog.
There, feel better? So what have you gained? Well you have perhaps vented spleen, so gained personal gratification. But another day another paper and reader memories are short. Soon the blog comment section will be 'closed' and inaccessible. So what then have you really gained? Has anyone read it? Will what you've written have any impact, even if people did read it? Will your comments contribute in anyway to an issue?
For the business community and a government keen to dig itself out of debt of its own foolish making, coal mining expansion in Queensland only represents a 'wonderful financial investment opportunity'! Other people wonder how Andrew Fraser and the government can be so blind and lemming-like as to rush to deplete Australia's resources, pollute the planet, and tragically disfigure our most beautiful state, for mere money.
The US-based black activist organisation, Color of Change, has launched a campaign to fight Murdoch TV FoxNews, which it says, "is dividing the country with smears and lies." It is asking people all round the world to join the campaign by signing up for the campaign.
What Paul Kelly ofThe Australian writes about Canada in his article, 'Small thinking in great leap backwards', is a blatant lie, says Canadian Tim Murray. "It's all too reminiscent of What Malcolm Muggeridge wrote about the way British socialists romanticised Stalin's Russia.
Nicolas Howe has been watching how the Fairfax, Murdoch and ABC media are treating alternatives to the population growth scenario of 35m plus. He finds that they are not giving them due representation and therefore biasing the debate. Letters not published. Rights of reply not balanced. His article confirms others on candobetter.org which have found this to be a consistent pattern with Australia's commercial mainstream media. They publish material to normalise population growth. They belong to the growth lobby. They have vested interest in population growth. As for the public media, the ABC - as has been pointed out before, it employs a number of ex-Murdoch journalists and allows professional property developers and other members of the growth lobby to dominate debate.
Many Queenslanders, appalled at their state Government's blatant disregard for their wishes not to sell AU$15billion of worth of publicly owned assets, actually look to Rupert Murdoch's Courier-Mail newspaper to stand up to what has to be amongst the most inept and despotic of state governments in Australia's history. However, the dishonest spin encompassed in the title of the story "Asset Sale Anger on the wane"1, together with the sub-heading "Christmas boost for Bligh", reveals that newspaper's true colours on that issue.
A history of pronatalist policy in Australia from 1945-2000 reveals the seeds of today's push for bigger families. This is an interesting supplement to the drive for high immigration and a huge population in Australia. It also gives an account of the role played by The Movement (B.A. Santamaria) in the Australian Labor Party's long exile from government before Whitlam. Some interesting background on Labor Party figures currently in government or recently in opposition.
The Murdoch press promotion of Paul Kelly's misnamed book The March of Patriots, chronicling the Prime Ministerships of Paul Keating and the early years of John Howard's, has been supplemented, at taxpayers' expense, by Brisbane ABC local radio stations Conversations program.
Pornography is not just about getting naked, or having sex, or even recording, depicting or describing it. It requires an element of commerce. Lots of people think they can get rich from it, and some very big household-name corporations have diversified into this area, including GMH and the Murdoch Press. Perhaps they hope to have a pornography-led recovery from the global financial crisis? Anyway, it seems like just about everyone is involved, whether they like it or not...
Rupert Murdoch never misses an opportunity to loudly preach to his captive Australian audience his message that this country must continue its rapid immigration-driven population growth. However, even his own media outlets have implicitly acknowledged that because governments have followed this very advice in the past, England and even parts of Australia have become intolerably overcrowded.
In an article written in 2007, Tony Ryan of the Tariff Restoration Bloc shows how Australia's formal democratic inititutions, in fact, do not practice government of the people by the people for the people. He shows how effective democracy should work, where effective democracy still operates today and where it has in the past historical times.
Shouldn't the Canberra Times label as advertising the regular piece by the Property Council of Australia's executive director, Catherine Carter? Isn't there some legal requirement to do so? (Article by Mark O'Connor)
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