The pond was shocked and appalled.
The Riddster was doing some of his very best science for the IPA, Culture Wars On The Great Barrier Reef – IPA Academy - yes, they have a splendid Academy, and the Riddster was academising as recently as February this year, and everything's fine, the reef's never been in better shape, think of that change of colour as the vanity of a woman wanting to go a little blonde, the reef just loves a warm bath, a bit like a sauna really, amazingly invigorating.
Meanwhile, over at The Conversation, the woke alarmists are reading scallywags like John Turnbull et al, More than coral: the unseen casualties of record-breaking heat on the Great Barrier Reef.
The site's a hotbed of alarmism, with Geary et al furiously scribbling about a fiery future in Gone in a puff of smoke: 52,000 sq km of ‘long unburnt’ Australian habitat has vanished in 40 years when any devoted Caterist knows it isn't climate change, it's those bloody renewables.
Why hasn't the lizard Oz stepped in and called up the Riddster to sort out the scallywags?
In other news, Dame Slap featured in Media Watch in Lehrmann matter and suddenly the pond felt righteous at avoiding all she'd written on the Lehrmann matter:
...remarkably The Oz decreed that Ten’s The Project and Lisa Wilkinson were worth equal billing in the headline and the picture gallery:
Rapist and a dodgy Project
HIGGINS’ AND TEN’S CLAIM OF POLITICAL CONSPIRACY WAS BOGUS, DID ‘MUCH DAMAGE’ - The Australian, 16 April, 2024
Which is amazing, given that the ‘dodgy Project’ helped bring the rapist down.
But perhaps it’s not surprising, given The Australian has spent years finding fault in Brittany, attacking Lisa, and bolstering Bruce.
So, did The Oz acknowledge it had backed a liar and a loser? Certainly not.
Least of all its Lehrmann correspondent, Janet Albrechtsen, who before the judgment damned everyone’s morals — except her own — rebuked campaigning journalists — except herself — and pronounced:
When curiosity went out the door, the biggest loser was the search for the truth. - The Weekend Australian, 13-14 April, 2024
Nor was there any self-reflection in Albrechtsen’s summary of the judgment, headlined:
Justice Michael Lee puts all parties in their place - The Australian, 16 April, 2024
Which, once again, did not extend to The Australian’s columnist.
But, as media critic Margaret Simons suspected in The Guardian, this was:
… only because her conduct was not relevant to the matters he had to decide. - The Guardian, 17 April, 2024
And what was that conduct? According to Simons:
Janet Albrechtsen became a player, rather than a mere reporter.- The Guardian, 17 April, 2024
And it’s hard to argue with that. Because since The Project’s interview with Higgins in 2021, Albrechtsen has filed countless stories for ‘Team Man’, as the ABC’s Annabel Crabb so aptly puts it, arguing that Higgins should never have gone to the media, suggesting Lehrmann was not given a fair go, and that Higgins may have not told the truth, dismissing Higgins claims of a political cover up, and condemning the media and Lisa Wilkinson for their role in it all.
Some of these were comment pieces. Some were news. Some were decent stories.
But the key problem with the coverage was it was relentlessly one-eyed, casting Lehrmann as the victim and his accusers as the villains:
The proper thing to do would be for Lisa Wilkinson to hand back her Logie - The Australian, 7 June, 2023
With Albrechtsen so keen to platform Lehrmann and attack his critics she even lauded Seven’s Spotlight for its quote ‘impressive journalism’, adding:
… the Spotlight team explored a story of national significance, explaining it, probing it, asking hard questions. - The Australian, 7 June, 2023
That comment has not aged well.
But it was just one of scores of stories that Albrechtsen produced, with the vast majority pushing Lehrmann’s barrow or criticising his accusers.
And few, if any, favouring the victim.
Many of these were exclusives, and appear to rely on confidential documents subpoenaed for the criminal trial, like these three that followed the Spotlight interview:
Wilkinson and Higgins war-gamed which ‘friendlies’ to fire up - The Australian, 5 June, 2023
Brittany’s angry letter to Project host - The Australian, 6 June, 2023
Higgins, politics, plots: ‘feed everything to Katy’ - The Australian, 8 June, 2023
And while Justice Lee had nothing to say about The Australian using this material — because he wasn’t asked — he did find Bruce Lehrmann had leaked confidential court documents to Spotlight in breach of implied undertakings to the criminal court, with this photo of Brittany Higgins text messages on Bruce Lehrmann’s laptop reflecting the face of Spotlight’s EP Mark Llewellyn.
Leading Lee in his judgment to reach the quote ‘inescapable conclusion’:
… that Mr Lehrmann provided access to Mr Llewellyn to take the Relevant Photographs, and thus wrongly provided him with access to the information … - Lehrmann v Network Ten Pty Limited (Trial Judgment), Federal Court of Australia, 15 April 2024
Tellingly, Llewellyn had posted photos of himself and Lehrmann at Randwick Races, with this pointer:
Some low profile bloke in the background … - Instagram, @archiebombora, 15 April, 2023 (via news.com.au)
Lehrmann’s leak of these and other documents could place him and any recipients of the material in contempt of court and theoretically attract fines or even jail.
So did The Australian also get the drop? Albrechtsen has refused to answer that question, protesting:
These journalists want us to reveal our sources. Seriously? - The Weekend Australian, 13-14 April, 2024
So we don’t know if The Australian was a party to Lehrmann’s leaks or not.
The pond relished it all so much it couldn't resist quoting at length, and there's no point carrying on with the lizard Oz denials.
They're relentlessly, comprehensively shameless and as for the knowing or not, begging Media Watch's pardon, only those caught in a snowstorm in the Antarctic could miss the bleeding obvious, because Dame Slap has been at it again ... scheming, contriving and dining ...
And the pond hadn't even caught up on that other goss ...
...After his north-of-the-harbour exodus, he was spotted coming and going from a harbourside mansion in Point Piper owned by Lady Penelope Street, the widowed second wife of former NSW chief justice and lieutenant governor Sir Laurence Street, of the storied Sydney judicial dynasty.
The exclusive residence, designed by Walter Burley Griffin, architect of Canberra, is just across the beach from the home of Malcolm Turnbull, coincidentally a mentee of Sir Laurence. By the time Federal Court justice Michael Lee rejected Lehrmann’s defamation claim against Network Ten and Lisa Wilkinson on Thursday afternoon, he had left.
But what on earth was he doing there in the first place? Lady Penelope denied Lehrmann had stayed with her in Point Piper. When we asked her why eyewitnesses had seen him on the premises, and why his car was parked on the street, she didn’t respond.
But we hear she has become rather close with another friend of Lehrmann’s, Bettina Arndt, the men’s rights activist set to host the former staffer at a conference on the justice system in June.
Whatever becomes of Lehrmann after Monday’s judgment, it looks like he still has a few friends in high places.
What else before proceeding with the day's reptile offerings?
Well the pond would have liked to have delivered this smackdown (paywall):
“It’s my absolute honor to be in Congress, but I serve with some real scumbags,” Gonzales said. “Matt Gaetz, he paid minors to have sex with him at drug parties. Rep. Bob Good (R-VA) endorsed my opponent, a known neo-Nazi. These people used to walk around in white hoods at night. Now they’re walking around with white hoods in the daytime.”
And what about Stewart Lee's takedown, Andrew Neil needs to be more Vorderman, less Voldemort?
That might sound like he's at one with the transphobia woman, but he uses a classical reference our Henry would love, not to mention that old Shaksperian rag ...
...Andrew Neil is not alone in his denials of the depths to which we have sunk, and the tide of Tufton Street turds, corrupt politicians and client journalists engulfing British life has a fabular precedent. The fifth of Hercules’s legendary 12 labours required him to sluice 30 years of manure from the stables where the immortal horses of King Augeas had deposited endless dung. This Hercules did by diverting the rivers Alpheus and Peneus, the twin responsibilities of water supply provision and waste management solutions combining so much more simply in the pre-privatisation era.
(It is fortunate for Hercules that his task took place in ancient Europe rather than in Brexit Britain, as the use of any modern British river to clean a filthy stable would now only contaminate it further. Had Hercules been required to investigate a complex series of shell companies designed to filter British bill payers’ money, and profits extracted by the water companies at the expense of infrastructure maintenance and safe sewage dispersal, into the pockets of shareholders and the coffers of foreign pension funds, the labour of the Augean stables would have been a far less enduring tale. Though doubtless the Sunaks would have read it approvingly to their kids as an example of clever business practice.)
As Britain’s ecosystem chokes in human filth, we see the Shakespearean idea that a mortal “body natural” is wedded to an abstract “body politic” made too too sullied flesh. Every tributary of the infosystem is clogged with sewage. Angela Rayner is hounded for peanuts by a billionaires’ media loyally providing covering fire for the perpetrators of Tory thefts of millions, siphoned from the public purse to Tory donors and friends via dodgy lobbying and unchallenged public contracts; while we listen to the debating-society digs of a prime minister whose non-dom wife may have avoided up to £20m in tax while he was chancellor; while Tory MP Mark Menzies allegedly rang an elderly local party volunteer at 3.15am to help raise £6,500 (or “four Angela Rayners”, as Vorderman would put it) to pay off “bad people” detaining him in a flat, an episode of Yes Minister directed by Quentin Tarantino.
And while the pond is at it, more reasons to hold the NY Times in contempt, courtesy Jeremy Scahill and Ryan Grim at The Intercept: Leaked NYT Gaza Memo Tells Journalists to Avoid Words “Genocide,” “Ethnic Cleansing,” and “Occupied Territory” Amid the internal battle over the New York Times’s coverage of Israel’s war, top editors handed down a set of directives.
The New York Times instructed journalists covering Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip to restrict the use of the terms “genocide” and “ethnic cleansing” and to “avoid” using the phrase “occupied territory” when describing Palestinian land, according to a copy of an internal memo obtained by The Intercept.
The memo also instructs reporters not to use the word Palestine “except in very rare cases” and to steer clear of the term “refugee camps” to describe areas of Gaza historically settled by displaced Palestinians expelled from other parts of Palestine during previous Israeli–Arab wars. The areas are recognized by the United Nations as refugee camps and house hundreds of thousands of registered refugees.
The memo — written by Times standards editor Susan Wessling, international editor Philip Pan, and their deputies — “offers guidance about some terms and other issues we have grappled with since the start of the conflict in October.”
While the document is presented as an outline for maintaining objective journalistic principles in reporting on the Gaza war, several Times staffers told The Intercept that some of its contents show evidence of the paper’s deference to Israeli narratives.
“It’s the kind of thing that looks professional and logical if you have no knowledge of the historical context of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.”
“I think it’s the kind of thing that looks professional and logical if you have no knowledge of the historical context of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict,” said a Times newsroom source, who requested anonymity for fear of reprisal, of the Gaza memo. “But if you do know, it will be clear how apologetic it is to Israel.”
First distributed to Times journalists in November, the guidance — which collected and expanded on past style directives about the Israeli–Palestinian conflict — has been regularly updated over the ensuing months. It presents an internal window into the thinking of Times international editors as they have faced upheaval within the newsroom surrounding the paper’s Gaza war coverage.
“Issuing guidance like this to ensure accuracy, consistency and nuance in how we cover the news is standard practice,” said Charlie Stadtlander, a Times spokesperson. “Across all our reporting, including complex events like this, we take care to ensure our language choices are sensitive, current and clear to our audiences.”
Issues over style guidance have been among a bevy of internal rifts at the Times over its Gaza coverage. In January, The Intercept reported on disputes in the Times newsroom over issues with an investigative story on systematic sexual violence on October 7. The leak gave rise to a highly unusual internal probe. The company faced harsh criticism for allegedly targeting Times workers of Middle East and North African descent, which Times brass denied. On Monday, executive editor Joe Kahn told staff that the leak investigation had been concluded unsuccessfully.
Another sample:
“Words Like ‘Slaughter’”
The Times memo outlines guidance on a range of phrases and terms. “The nature of the conflict has led to inflammatory language and incendiary accusations on all sides. We should be very cautious about using such language, even in quotations. Our goal is to provide clear, accurate information, and heated language can often obscure rather than clarify the fact,” the memo says.
“Words like ‘slaughter,’ ‘massacre’ and ‘carnage’ often convey more emotion than information. Think hard before using them in our own voice,” according to the memo. “Can we articulate why we are applying those words to one particular situation and not another? As always, we should focus on clarity and precision — describe what happened rather than using a label.”
Despite the memo’s framing as an effort to not employ incendiary language to describe killings “on all sides,” in the Times reporting on the Gaza war, such language has been used repeatedly to describe attacks against Israelis by Palestinians and almost never in the case of Israel’s large-scale killing of Palestinians.
In January, The Intercept published an analysis of New York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times coverage of the war from October 7 through November 24 — a period mostly before the new Times guidance was issued. The Intercept analysis showed that the major newspapers reserved terms like “slaughter,” “massacre,” and “horrific” almost exclusively for Israeli civilians killed by Palestinians, rather than for Palestinian civilians killed in Israeli attacks.
The analysis found that, as of November 24, the New York Times had described Israeli deaths as a “massacre” on 53 occasions and those of Palestinians just once. The ratio for the use of “slaughter” was 22 to 1, even as the documented number of Palestinians killed climbed to around 15,000.
The latest Palestinian death toll estimate stands at more than 33,000, including at least 15,000 children — likely undercounts due to Gaza’s collapsed health infrastructure and missing persons, many of whom are believed to have died in the rubble left by Israel’s attacks over the past six months.
Meanwhile, the genocide continues, and the pond hears they dug up 200 bodies the other day ... and they're untimely snatching babies from dead wombs...
Sorry, why did the pond hare off in all directions this day?
Well as can be seen, this day is just bashing disabled people day with Dame Groan, not a pleasant task or a pretty picture ...
There she was, like a baleful raven, astride the pond's door, croaking "never more" from the preferred top extreme far right position at the top of the digital edition ...
Incidentally that loaded story the reptiles chambered - 'tis the season for the dirty digger's minions to run out tales of diggers with scare quotes around emotive words like 'betrayal' was 42 minutes old last night when the pond dropped in to check on the reptiles and waddya kno, 7 hours later, it's still only 42 minutes old ...
Why do they always lie about the little things, is it a way keeping in shape for the bigger lies?
The pond really needed a vodka for breakfast, Russian style, to tackle the groaning, and thus far has done much delaying and avoiding, and so wondered if there might be other distractions below the fold ...
By golly that's a lot of lizard Oz editorials doing hard yards for reptile slackers, likely taking time off to polish their war medals, and the pond couldn't help but note that the lesser member of the Kelly gang was also on hand apparently bemused at why we needed to be independent in terms of manufacturing, apparently unaware that when the bromancer bungs on his war with China by Xmas, the last of the one dollar stores will have to go out of business ...
Sorry, lesser Kelly gang member, what's the point of the reptiles? What's the point of the bromancer? Oh wait, the warrior bromancer himself is also out and about, so there's the order of business, but first a treat, the caroling Carroll singing a song of vulgar youff ...
The fush and chup folk are at risk of turning into a Third World country? C
learly the caroling Carroll hasn't been reading the lizard Oz in recent years. By the pond's calculation, krazed Kiwis became residents of a third world country at precisely the midnight hour on exactly 26th October 2017 when that wicked witch cast a spell on the land ...
Not to worry, the real problem is vulgar youff generally, and the caroling Carroll is just the man to sort them out ...
Indeed, indeed, it's why you could fit Shakspere's plays into a couple of tweets, he simply didn't have the inner discipline to sit still and concentrate, let alone write those five acts for King John.
And the rabble in the pit were completely unlike modern folk in the stalls, concentrating on devouring their salted, smelly popcorn, washed down with fizz, and using their phones at modest one minute intervals...
Sorry, the pond shouldn't have interrupted, there's a "further" ...
This is splendid stuff, and at some point, when the mad uncle has come down from the attic, in the pond's experience, what they'd usually shout is "what you need is a bloody good haircut", and "why don't they bring back conscription? That'd sort you out." Or: "that pink hair and tatt makes you look like the classy slut your boyfriend deserves."
The most excellent caroling Carroll is way beyond any of that.
Send vulgar youff off to sweat flogging junk food, so that they might harden the fuck up, not to mentioning the arteries of the country also hardening the fuck up ... as we choke on those emasculated sesame seed buns ...
That almost did the trick. You don't get a splendid prof emeritus piece like that every day of the week, and the pond was almost up to handling the groaning, and the pond's only regret is the failure of the ranting prof to celebrate the letter X ...
Moving along, how could the pond do a groaning without paying proper attention to the bromancer?
Sure these days he repeats himself endlessly and quotes himself in the way that narcissist sociopaths are wont to do, but we wouldn't be able to defend the country without him organising everything...
The pond should have warned that this is going to be yet another attempt by the bro to match "Ned" with an Everest climb ... and there were some huge snaps too ...
Couldn't they at least have borrowed from their New York chums?
The bromancer is feeling his nyet oats. Swept from memory are all the times that the Faux Noise folk have celebrated the isolationists, preached the border wall, urged the election of the tangerine tyrant and forsaken Ukraine.
At times their fawning over their orange Jesus was demented and grotesque, but all is forgiven and forgotten, and now the warrior is back in business ...
Yep, it's still the case, but don't expect the bromancer to remember Faux Noise and the deeds of his US kissing cousins, he's off down memory lane with the Falklands queen and Ronnie Raygun ...
Naturally the reptiles couldn't resist inserting a huge snap of the bro's heroes...
The pond prefers to remember Ronnie Raygun as he was in his last movie role, a corrupt crook deservedly taken out by Lee Marvin (who did actually serve in a war and had his bum shot up to prove it) ...
But there's no time for
The Killers, the bro is still blathering away ...
At this point the pond realised that Albo and his mob had missed a trick. Why on earth hadn't they sprung for the bromancer, an airfare and accommodation so that he could take the Ukrainians in hand and show them how to thrash Vlad the sociopath and his minions?
For their sins, these wretches were lined up in a snap (bring your own tomatoes) ...
Then it was on to the final bro gobbet, and not before time, because his ranting gets wearying, especially when he takes to quoting himself ...
Here's a thought for this Major Bloodnok. The pond is using a Ukrainian coder to work on a pond site, not just because he's good, but because it's a gesture.
Why hasn't the bromancer announced his own fund to help Ukraine? Why doesn't each column end with a request for a donation from the reptile readership?
Why haven't the reptiles shown the way? Why isn't the fund raiser on the front page every day? Why must it always be left to government, so that the reptiles can strut and parade and rant about the uselessness of government, as a way of avoiding the obvious question ... is there anything more morally objectionable and vile than the bromancer in full warrior strut, all wind and noise, and worse than the sound of the banging of a tree branch on a dunny roof?
And so to wrap things up with the groaning of the day, because why not bash people with disabilities?
Dame Groan experts will realise this is just a feather display. The old chook is just strutting her stuff, showing she can still hit the licks, before getting down to business, you know, bashing disabled folk, while offering mealy-mouthed pieties about their needs ...
At this point the reptiles began their usual run of huge distracting snaps ...
But as Dame Groan had mentioned Covid, the pond thought the infallible Pope of the day might be a better distraction ...
Now on to bashing the disabled, what fun, what sport ...
And there's the mealy-mouthed piety ... "a sustainable programs that meets the needs of people", in short, why give the bludgers any of Dame Groan's lazy winnings?
It's true, and it reminded the pond of a bee it has in its bonnet. Far too much money has been dropped on people with mental issues.
By far the best way to treat these matters is to send them out on the streets to manage as best they can. It's the humane way, they can always shack up under the bridge down the fish market way, at least until they get moved on ...
Oh, and enjoy your shopping at Bondi Junction. Have not a care in the world. You've just organised a sustainable program that meets the needs of people...
And so to the last gobbet of caring groaning ...
So easy to palm off people when you're a self-satisfied, complacent, self-regarding old chook ... but to be fair, she and all the rest of the reptiles are right at home in this brave new world, where misery and death are grist to the mill of the angertainment business ...
