Christian Kerr over at The Oz has started a stoush between bloggers and ‘real’ journalists, the basis for the latter’s self designation being content generation. Larvatus Prodeo beautifully explodes his rantings here.

Yes that’s right folks, every year the Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association awards the JN Pierce Award for media excellence in favourable coverage of the oil industry and its views. This year’s winner of this highly prestigious award is the Chairman’s own Chris Mitchell, editor-in-chief of The Australian. He’s taken out the award for leading his august paper’s coverage of climate change policy. Well done young Chris, the Chairman smiles on you, service rendered gets its due reward.

Occasionally, very occasionally, you get a thoughtful piece in the Murdoch press, one that actually tries to connect the dots and look below the surface at what might be going on in a story that has been fodder for those who love scandals on all sides. In his article, Ross Fitzgerald asks whether there could be a connection between the level of religiosity of the born-again Christian variety in a team and the sexual repression it fosters on the one hand and the group sex scandal doing the rounds in the media on the other; insightful reading and a question well worth asking. Especially in light of calls from some for consensual group sex to be criminalised. Also of note on the subject of religious hypocrisy is this piece in today’s Sydney Morning Herald telling us that either 40% or 80% of Catholic priests have broken their vows of celibacy, depending on whose numbers you go on.

It’d be quite interesting to see more discussion about what sort of role sexual repression fostered by many religions is playing in how their followers act out in ways others would not. One thing is indisputable and that is the link between self-righteousness, self-delusion and hypocrisy.

One of the features of the internet is that anyone with the inclination to do so can set up a website that enables people of like minds to find each other, all well and good except when you get websites that purport to be one thing whilst actually being quite another. Take Mercatornet, a site I happened across a while back and which seems to glory in posting articles that are either pointless and dull or bigoted in the extreme and (generally) attract comments in keeping with the author's prejudices and which seem to vie with each other for the level of absurdness and extremity contained in them. It also routinely censors reader's comments that don't conform to its editorial line. It claims to be neither conservative nor liberal, strictly speaking this accurate, it's reactionary in its views on modern society and comes out of a hardline Catholic perspective that is alien to most Catholics; apparently its editor is a member of Opus Dei. Though it is based in Australia, practically none of its content is related to Australia.

There's a rather good write up on more about the site and its contributors here.

Billionaire industrialist Richard Pratt died late yesterday after a bout of prostate cancer and long succession of the rich and powerful coming to his bed (in the house formerly owned by Archbishop Mannix). As with Kerry Packer, the Australian media (both corporate and to a lesser extent the ABC & SBS) are out lionising him. I find it interesting how when one of these guys dies (I’ll be fascinated to see what paeans are lavished on Chairman Rupert when he goes) they get portrayed as some sort of national hero, even more strangely, a hero for the common man. This goes far beyond simply not mentioning the less savoury parts of their lives, but exults them into gracious gentlemen whilst misdealings simply fade to black.

Just as Kerry Packer’s very dodgy tax dealings dug up by the Costigan Royal Commission didn't stop the most appalling sycophancy from the media when he died (particularly from his very own Channel 9); so too Richard Pratt – a man convicted of price fixing (and whose company copped the biggest ever fine in Australian corporate history) and charged with perjury, a charge that was only dropped because of his impending death and a charge which Commonwealth Prosecutor Mark Dean SC told the Federal Court that the CDPP believed would have succeeded if it had been pursued. We were also treated to former Victorian Premier Jeff Kennett telling us

“Stress and anxiety when you're crook are not good partners. It's hardly a benefit. He genuinely thought in making the admission he did (that he was guilty of price fixing), in the interest of his family and his business, that that was the end of it; they'd come to an arrangement. And all of a sudden, they fired a second arrow into the air, and that has hurt him.”

Yes the nerve of the ACCC, charging a man with perjury when he admitted lying to the Federal Court. Who do they think they are?

He also fathered a child with a woman he had an affair with and yet we saw the family man on the media reports.

Notwithstanding that people usually say nice things about someone who’s just died, the media could do better than just putting him up there as just a gentleman philanthropist, whose death really matters to people worried about losing their jobs and their homes.

For some reason watching this story play out on the news over the past few days reminded me of the death of Lord Marchmain in Brideshead Revisited. A rich old man dying in his grand house – reading the book and watching Lawrence Olivier in the TV series, I found I just couldn’t care, given that the rest of Britain was in the grip of the depression at the time. The parallel is rather apposite come to think of it.

Yesterday was the deadline for Americans to file their tax returns. Conservatives have been trying to organise a mass protest that would supposedly be reminiscent of the Boston Tea Party, the idea was to hold small get togethers over a cuppa and then send the used tea bags in the mail to members of Congress. The idea has been heavily promoted in an astro turfing campaign by right wing media outlets, especially by the Chairman’s Fox ‘News’. Being the clever people that they are, they decided to call the protest ‘teabagging’, seemingly unaware that word already had a completely different meaning that wasn’t quite what they had in mind. Aside from being a spectacular flop like all astro turfing campaigns are (because no one actually supports them) the failed campaign has provided much mirth for the rest of the American media, as can be seen here:

Let's see if the 'teabaggers' put their money where their mouths are (nothing like a good double entendre) and refuse to lodge their tax returns.

Incidentally, here's what a real protest about a real issue looks like. Massive respect for these brave women standing up for their rights against oppressive sexist laws enacted in the name of Islam.

Chairman Rupert's underlings are attacking the scourge of the well researched, even handed reporting we're accustomed to in his stable of media outlets. Just what is the source of these threats? The humble news aggregator. Apparently the Chairman reckons Google News and the like are putting him out of business and he wants them to pay, and while we’re at it we’ll have another go at flogging bulky technology nobody wanted in the first place. Bloggers are just an echo chamber (the irony of one Murdoch paper referencing the editor of another to attack echo chambers) we’re told, but of course ‘churnalism’ is unheard of at News Limited

Next thing you he’ll be demanding search engines pay to put links to their searches.

Sometimes someone else puts it better than you can.

P.S. A friend tells me the Chairman is not alone in not liking news aggregators.

One of the more positive consequences of the economic woes of late. The media conglomerate has been forced to take an US$8.4 billion write-down on its TV and newspaper assets. Not something you're likely to hear about from Chairman Rupert's many media outlets. It couldn't happen to a more deserving man.