Sky News: where facts don’t seem to matter
At the risk of arousing my natural bias toward the truth, I have of late taken to reading Sky News. I have done so during the events surrounding Labor’s decision to change the settings for the stage three tax changes.
In doing so, I found a collection of half-truths, lies by omission and misrepresentation. I had to ask myself if we have reached the point in politics where truth is something that politicians have persuaded us to believe, “like alternative facts” rather than truth based on factual evidence, argument, and assertions.
I am convinced Peter Dutton and others of his ilk, including his supporters in the media, believe that the effect of lying diminishes over time, and they forget that they leave behind a residue of broken trust.
Take this piece by Caroline Di Russo, Sky News, 3 February 2024. At the foot of her piece, she runs out of words to condemn Labor for breaking a promise. She concludes:
“… Labor has opted for its tried and tested “class warfare” approach to politics.
The only change is a studious avoidance of the phrase “big end of town”, presumably because that didn’t work out so well for them during the 2019 campaign.
The politics of envy is the same though; it’s just a quieter version.
And I doubt we have seen the last of it.
During the Prime Minister’s National Press Club speech last week he refused to rule out changes to negative gearing.
Either it’s already on the cards, or the Prime Minister knew no one would believe him if he denied it so he just didn’t bother. Meanwhile, Treasurer Chalmers has since tried to reject such changes are on the cards.
Labor need to find more avenues to tax because they refuse to cut government spending – the true source of our domestic inflation.
Despite promising to go through the budget “line by line” to reduce government spending, Labor’s last budget included $185 billion in new spending commitments.
So instead of cutting spending to curb inflation, Labor will redistribute from the “top end of town” to pretend it is providing relief for lower- and middle-income earners.
The issue for voters is this: it’s not what Labor is giving with one hand today, it’s what they will take with the other tomorrow.”
Every time Labor tries to bring some counterbalance of fairness over Australian economics, the conservative response is always to shout at the top of their lungs, “class warfare”. When it is so evident that the wealthy and privileged enjoy wealth concessions way over that of the average citizen, why on earth do the conservatives not just admit it?
The country would be better off if politicians did change their minds when categorically demanded for the common good.
Why not just admit that the revised tax cuts are popular with up to 66% of the population and back them?
In my piece Money Money Money. It’s a Rich Man World I quoted research by the Australian Institute that is but one truth of how well the rich are looked after.
Last year, before legislation to fix the problem, their research showed that:
“… the cost to the federal budget of generous superannuation tax concessions was on par with the cost of the entire aged pension and more significant than the total cost of the NDIS as a whole in 2022-2023.”
My piece goes on to explain in detail just how advantaged the wealthy and privileged really are, so it’s a bit rich for Caroline Di Russo to cry “class warfare” every time Labor tries to make society a little fairer. But then it was that British lady with lousy hair who said, “There is no such thing as society, only individuals making their way.”
“Class warfare” is a terrible and disgusting term, and if anyone is carrying it out, it is the conservatives. They are doing all the complaining.
Labor need to find more avenues to tax because they refuse to cut government spending – the true source of our domestic inflation.
This statement by Caroline Di Russo is either an outright lie or a misrepresentation of the facts. One only has to do a search asking if Labor has made an effort to wind back Government spending, and you will find ample evidence that they have.
Shane Wright in the Sydney Morning Herald also noted:
“Almost $10 billion in federal spending will be either cut or pumped into other priorities in this week’s budget update as all levels of government come under pressure to reduce expenditure and ease inflation.”
And in another article for the same paper acknowledged that:
“In the space of 18 months, Treasurer Jim Chalmers has found the best part of $100 billion down the back of the budget lounge.”
Even way back in October 2022 it looked as though some in the Murdoch media were enthusiastic about Labor’s budget:
“Labor to slash $21 billion of government spending after audit of departments.”
And Ellen Ransey reported in the Great Southern Herald that Jim Chalmers and Katy Gallaher were to reveal $17.8 in savings in the 2023 budget.
There are other examples, but these make my point.
Returning to Caroline Di Russo’s article, her assertion that there were increases in spending is correct, but they were investments designed to start productivity and drive growth. Therefore, there is a return on investment. There are deficits, but they are designed to decline in dollar terms as a percentage of the economy yearly.
To assert as she has done that cutting government spending is the cause of high inflation is absurd. It is a far more significant problem and more complex than her analysis.
My thought for the day
When drafting a budget for the common good what should your priorities be?
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18 comments
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Frank -
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Zathras
Return to home pageIve come to the conclusion in this country,it does not matter who you vote for,your not going to get any good outcome,for finding out what is really going on,the last place to look is Australia multi national broadcasters,Ive just recently started to listen and reading articles put out by Michael West Media,he is a very good investigator journalist and uncovers what our low life politicians are really up to,and its mind blowing how much they are keeping us the sucker public in the dark,i suggest you head over there and take a look for yourselves,it is eye opening
Frank,
I’d caution against indulging in too much “they’re all the same” ism regarding ‘legacy media (or political operatives).
Our public broadcasters, although tainted in tone by political/corporate influences, operate under a charter of principle that sets basic course.
The main bulk of commercial media operate purely under the policy of inflame anxiety with decontextualised sensationalism, soothe with a dose of paparazzi pablum, then recommend some urgent retail therapy.
SKY news will encourage you you drink some mine-pond tailings, place a bet on a cockfight, then go throw rocks at your neighbours.
I console myself that that the main demographic consuming SKY-afterdark are habitualised drunks perched precariously on barstools.
Re Michael West, yeah, he does some good old-fashioned dogged investigative journalism, although he does have a tendency towards verbal overreach.
Perhaps the media these days has calculated that the average local I Q is low, quite low, and the people read badly, listen poorly, see without focus, think without much proper effort. Commercial media is full of strident shit to stir up profit and division. The ABC has gone very low also. The Sydney Morning Harvey is dogshit and irresponsible. I try, perhaps you do, to get sources in double figures sometimes, just for deeper investigation. STY appeals to sty dwellers who can get foxed…Commercial T V has foreign old shit and repeats that endlessly. Advertisements are brainlessly intrusive, lying and exaggerating, repetitive, sickening. Oh Dear.
” .. government spending – the true source of our domestic inflation.”
Nothing to do with CoVID, the Ukraine invasion, Gaza and obscene corporate profiteering, then? Damn, I seem to lost my basic grasp of economics and events.
Scat News: the live action version of Spewscrap with more added bile and cesspit infotainment.
Commercial conditions rule the media with sex, violence and controversy selling ads. The LNP thrives on feeding labor controversy to the media who lap it up without question and anti-left is another ad attracter. When the ABC does ask for an explanation my rabbottians scream ‘BIAS’.
Our paper often contains more pages of adverts than news and is always larger than the front news or the back sport.
Common good is to manage the individual losers and to get elected in order to achieve the ;common good’.. Those without the latter can grab their headline, without compunction. Anyone doing a juliar on negative gearing???
ps or plant boxes??
I have said it before and will say it again.
Don’t fight the rip and don’t tread in the Murdoch sewer
Have yourself a full on cast iron set in re-enforced concrete black ban on all things Murdoch.
The sun will shine, the birds will sing, food will taste better, your outlook on life will improve and you will feel much, much better for it.
JL.
The spud, and the media who back the spud and the rest of the vegetables on that extreme of sociopolitics haven’t forgotten about the trail of mistrust left behind.
They just don’t care.
Dutton clocked in at SKY last night ready to roll with Labor has lost control of the country’s borders. He followed up with a message to people smugglers that Albanese was weak on boat people all of which was relished by the SKY talking heads.
Whether you like him or not, David Speers when he was with SKY would have done what any good journalist would do and ask for evidence and proof from Dutton.
The scary thing about SKY NEWS is not so much that they don’t fact-check but that they are all speaking from the one script and they know that what they are saying is misleading at best and maliciously deceptive at worst.
There are endless online sources of Oz and OS news, form Blogs, to corporatized to co-ops etc. It takes a while to sift through to who provides the best grist, versus the chaff, but 90% are better than the msm. Although it pays to cop a bit of msm to see what sensational dross they’re hurling around.
Even then, one really has to do the hard yards of research to get below the snow. It all takes a few hours a day.
As for Sky / Mudrock, it’s utter pig swill, and be very very carefull of Stokes’ Seven West Media. The ABC and Nein are simply la la land.
That dirty dickhead Dutton, the unterfuhrer for mega depatments about coercion and torturing, has come out to admit his monumental creation at huge expense, has not worked. The border force duds are asleep, are they? Pezzullo’s blackshirt creativity is a complete failure, isn’t it? Stokes’s channel 7 endless border force cartoons, created to sooth his aching and yearning for pre-1945 standards in foul regimes, is a complete dud, isn’t it? Where were these Duttonites when some desperate unfortunates came here quietly, seeking mercy they will never find in the foulskulled fraud Dutton. Can Australia under this changed and better government do a little of the right thing? Dickpolishing Dutton’s failed setup of an automatic hostile vicious border force is a border farce, another thing with which the Queazy Queensland excopper has smeared us all
A act of public decency.
Newscorp scatsheets (Telegraph-Sun-Mail) are often mass-dumped ‘free’ to junk food franchises and workplace tearooms, where they silently bray their bilious propoganda at unsuspecting passersby.
Now removing them could technically be construed as theft, but there is a perfectly legal way to dilute their passive damage.
Take each Murdoch rag and turn to the classified ads; there will be a section for Social Escorts / Adult Services, full of large glossy photos.
Return the paper to where it was, but now lying open on the pages pimping acts of prostitution.
In my experimental observation, very few people will look for very long, let alone pick up the paper to peruse.
” It’s always been about class warfare and now we have won” quote by Warren Buffett
It seems to increasingly be a-buck-and-a-byline ‘journalism’ out there — motivated more by a regular paycheck and frequently published name/face with stories or opinions — rather than a genuine strive to challenge the powers-that-be: To truly comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable in an increasingly unjust global existence.
Mainstream journalism’s traditional function may be quietly changing. The adage-description of journalism’s fundamental function can remain the same, but revision of terminological representation is definitely in order. While it remains “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable,” there may be an alteration to what/who constitutes an “afflicted” and “the comfortable”.
For example, an “afflicted” of our contemporary news-media times needing comforting may be an owner of a multi-million-dollar home that’s worth too much, thus taxed higher, and he/she therefore desires tax respite. Or, the new “afflicted” requiring news-media comforting may be the IDF, when in the past it may have rightly been the Palestinians; as the latter resist gradually having their ancestral lands annexed and being cleansed from it [ironically, the figurative David fighting the Israeli Goliath].
The new “afflicted” may also mean news-media comfort, for example, an already very profitable fossil-fuel-producing corporation ‘needing’ more taxpayer-funded subsidies, not to mention our convenient complacency as it multiplies many-fold its environmental threats for the sake of even greater profit.
On the matter of public expression, also troubling is that mainstream news-outlet websites, including The Washington Post’s, are increasingly converting to pay-to-say formats, where the reader is allowed to consume the article without charge but must buy a subscription in order to comment on the article.
Meantime, there still are reporters and editors who will reply to accusations of subjective journalism with, ‘Who, me? I’m just the messenger.’ Whatever the news media may be, they’re not ‘just the messenger’; nor are they but a reflection of the community in which they circulate.
As one who has consumed the news regularly since the late 1980s, I’d say the field of journalism has problematically become overly corporatized thus more readily externally manipulated and compromised.
Shortly after WW2 Albert Einstein said” soon the rich will own and control all of the media and then it will be impossible for the people to make informed decisions”
Jack Sprat,
Here’s what happened to my old local newspaper; https://www.theguardian.com/media/2021/apr/29/news-corp-australia-merges-more-than-20-regional-newspapers-with-capital-city-mastheads
Almost as sophisticated as an old episode of Romper Room.
“Class Warfare” and “The Politics of Envy” are the terms always trotted out when the wealthy feel their advantages are under threat or may be diminished.
They need to maintain that separation that divides them from the rest.