From the SMH online front page:
Archive for the ‘media’ Category
Where is Hetty?
9 Jul 2008In 2001 and 2002, anti-child-abuse campaigner Hetty Johnston’s shrill denunciations and savvy media manipulation were instrumental in the resignation of Governor General Peter Hollingworth, over claims he covered up and mishandled complaints of sexual abuse in the Anglican Church.
In recent months, Johnston has done the rounds of media interviews and opinion pieces sticking the boot into Bill Henson’s photographs of nude teenagers. She has been all over the media calling for tougher sentencing of kiddie fiddlers and child pornographers.
Last night, Hetty was rabble rousing at a community lynch mob over convicted paedo Dennis Ferguson.
However, since Lateline two nights ago revealed that Catholic Cardinal George Pell covered up and mishandled complaints of sexual abuse in his church (gotta love the timing), Hetty has uttered not a peep on the subject.
Now why would that be?
Enough, fanbois
17 Jun 2008SMH’s story on aspiring model Isobella Jade, who perfected the art of freeloading by coming into the New York Apple store every day for 18 months to check her email, should be headlined:
Apple perfects the art of freeloading off fanboi journos for publicity
Here’s a picture of Isobella Jade topless. I get more hits this way.
And here’s a picture of Ms Jade from Mac Directory magazine, where the SMH stole adapted the story from.
I mean, seriously, the two hottest stories in the Aussie tech media lately are:
I can’t imagine there ever being two stories with a stronger public interest angle.
It’s fine to be a fan of a particular brand or product, sure. But when you let your religious devotion to the Cult of Steve cloud your editorial judgment, you’re doing your readers a disservice and discrediting your publication as a click-chasing whore.
Was it good for you, ladies?
5 Jun 2008As I write this, thousands of women around Australia are in the postorgasmic glow of having seen the breathlessly anticipated SATC movie. The SMH tells us that cinemas have reported being “compeltely overwhelmed” by the demand for tickets, as though the high-quality Aussie meeja hadn’t already given the bloody thing enough free publicity. “We haven’t seen this level of online ticket sales before except for the Harry Potter movie,” enthused Greater Union cinemas promotional manager Melissa Kesby.
Like we needed any further proof society was on the brink of imploding into the vacuum of its own self-obsessed fatuousness.
Shouting at the screen
30 May 2008Contemplating the seeming inevitability of a Tory government after the next UK general election, Charlie Brooker writes:
Clearly some kind of self-defence is in order, which is why I’ve already started mentally withdrawing from the real world. It’s easy: all you have to do is imagine that the whole of life itself is just a low-budget daytime TV show, one you’re watching uninterestedly from the sofa with one eye while reading a magazine with the other.
This aptly describes the way I felt pretty much throughout the Howard years. Occasionally I’d get a bit worked up and shout at the screen - this blog is testament - but most of the time it was numb disengagement and keeping my mind on other things.
Following Australia’s transition to Ruddocracy, right-wing pundits pondered what the chattering classes would have to whinge about without their number-one hate figure. And the relatively infrequent postings on this blog in the past six months demonstrate the terrifying reality…
There just haven’t been that many things to get angry about.But that’s changing.
New South Wales Labor daily grows more arrogant, out of touch and incompetent while the state opposition flounders. Big Kev and pals have very poorly handled the transition from symbolic to practical. Their well-intentioned policy measures have been rife with unintended consequences. They’ve gone to jelly on petrol pricing when most punters accept the government can only tinker at the margins. The federal opposition has gone from ineffectual to unconscionable. The commercial media turns more crass, tabloid and trivial by the hour.
I’ve had a bit of a nap. It was a nice dream, but now it’s over and I’m grumpy as all hell.
For fuck’s sake, enough already
27 May 2008Two stories that just won’t die: petrol taxes and free publicity for a stupid movie.
Has society really sunk so low that the product placements in a movie for Cosmo-reading twits are news?
And well done to Brendan Nelson for keeping the petrol tax non-story alive for so long. Fuck our future for an opinion poll blip, why don’t you? But you have to admire the politics. By promising to do something years into the future, which will have no noticeable effect if it ever happens, he forces the Government to do something, or look like they don’t care about the poor struggling masses.
Petrol taxes are TOO LOW, you moron. Until the price reflects the scarcity of the resource and the environmental damage it causes, people have no incentive to stop using it. But try selling that to the battlers.
A crime of passion after all
27 Feb 2008Indonesian police have paraded before the media a man who has admitted to murdering Heidi Murphy. 23 year old Ahmad Fahrul Rosi was arrested last night in East Java. Police say he had been robbing Murphy’s house when she woke up and made a fuss, whereupon he stabbed her 37 times with a kitchen knife he happened to have brought along.
“Yes I regret it, at first I was going only to steal, I admit what I did,” Rosi told the media.
Not that one could ever cast doubt on the integrity of the Indonesian judicial system.
This gruesome crime netted Rosi a laptop, two mobile phones and about a hundred bucks in cash. He sold them and used the money to buy two rings, a new mobile phone and a watch, which he planned to use as part of a marriage proposal to his girlfriend, police said.
Awww, romantic. No wait, that other thing.
Eat shit and feel ill, celebrities
22 Feb 2008Ordinarily, celebrity stories are meant to make us envious. Tales of glamorous, wealthy people dining on fine foods and quaffing bank-account-draining beverages supposedly make us see the futility and meaninglessness of our lumpen existences, which we seek to fill by purchasing the goods and services our celebrity heroes endorse.
The same must obviously be the case for news that guests at ‘actor’ Ashton Kutcher’s 30th birthday party may have been exposed to hepatitis A at swank West Village bar Socialista. Nothing says Cuban socialism like a $600 bottle of Moët & Chandon Dom Perignon Rosé, an $8 appetiser made of lettuce or a 20% surcharge added to parties of six or more.
Celebrity guests including Mrs Kutcher Demi Moore, Javier Bardem, Roberto Cavalli, Eric Dane (who?), Rebecca Gayheart (zuh?), Salma Hayek, Catherine Keener, Lucy Liu, Madonna, Gwyneth Paltrow, Ivanka Trump and Liv Tyler would no doubt be horrified to discover the most common method of hepatitis A infection is the faecal-oral route.
One can’t help but wonder what kind of cocktails they serve there.
Actually, several hundred people who were not celebrities attended the same bar on the three nights the infected bartender was working, but who cares?
Upon reading this story, ordinary people will no doubt also wish they were inadvertently exposed to a virus that infects the liver, causing jaundice, fatigue, abdominal pain, loss of appetite, nausea, diarrhoea and fever.
New York health authorities have warned said celebrities to get a vaccination quick smart. (It should be noted the health department warned the non-famous patrons as well.) Though to be honest, if they didn’t, you can’t imagine the world would be worse off. Shame hepatitis A is almost never fatal.
Crime of passion?
12 Feb 2008Absent of any facts, speculation rages in the Aussie meeja about the motive for the gruesome murder of Heidi Murphy in Bali. The current odds-on theory is a revenge attack for not paying workers’ wages. If it’s true, it puts the debate on industrial relations laws in this country into sharp relief.
Always striving to out-tabloid the tabloids, the Sydney Morning Herald’s reporter “discovered” a journal of love poems at the crime scene, which the police confiscated. But not before the Herald’s man in Bali managed to jot down a few lines, and then saw fit to publish them.
Stripped naked I am here waiting for you and my eyes can only see you. It’s like we’ve met 1000 times before.
Had it been published in the Sydney Goth Herald, no doubt this poem would have been reported as the author foretelling her own death. But of course with the SMH it’s always about sex.
One has to wonder, of course, about the Bali police allowing a Herald journo to poke around the crime scene. And the ethics of publishing this prurient detail of the dead woman’s private life. And the tenuousness of claiming this poetry as evidence to a crime of passion.
I mean, sure it’s shit poetry, but it’s not that bad.
You know you want to
16 Jan 2008Victoria Police have defended using pepper spray on tennis fans . . . instead of Corey Worthington.
