Editor
of the Guardian, Lenore Taylor, has written a superb piece on the craft of
journalism1, part of which I have quoted elsewhere on this blog2.
This quote in part encapsulates her thesis, that journalists should be most
concerned about facts and that when politicians make a statement, journalists should
assess those claims and not simply transcribe them; i.e. not be a stenographer2.
Something similar has been stated previously, often
You may have noticed
in recent years that the use of the epithet ‘unelected experts’ is becoming more
common among the covid-19 deniers and climate change deniers. The apotheosis of
the unelected non-expert, Gina Rinehart’s Institute of Public Affairs (IPA) has
tried to spin a Pew Research Centre survey, which showed that 88% of
Australians believe representative democracy is good, into something supporting
John Kehoe is a senior writer for the
Australian Financial Review and writes on economics, politics and business, and
surprisingly, epidemiology. I say surprisingly in the latter case, because he
has pontificated on epidemiology in a tweet in reply to Nobel Laureate Peter
Doherty. Doherty tweeted:
Among all the vegetables in the crisper
drawer of Sky After Dark (SAD), Paul Murray has a regular spot, I believe; and like
all the other people there, he is a right wing nutter. However, he has just
come out with something so astonishing and hilarious that it makes you wonder whether
he is in control of his faculties, or what level he reached in his education. Like
many in the Liberal Party, he is foaming at the mouth to try to damage Victorian
The appalling Paul
Kelly, who writes for Rupert Murdoch’s The Australian, and who has railed
against almost anything progressive in Australia. Indeed, he railed against the
setting up of the Royal Commission into Institutional
Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, asserting that it was because of the “dismal,
populist” governance of Australia. It is likely that he believed it was all
Ever since being dumped from the Prime
Ministership, Tony Abbott initially harboured a desire to become prime minister
again, but only had to be satisfied with the demise of the prime ministership
of Malcolm Turnbull. Losing his seat of Warringah at the last election seems to
have made him realise that the prime ministership is forever out of his grasp.
As a consequence of that and the demise of his marriage, he seems to be