Friday, November 6, 2009

Thank goodness for Google Reader

All I can say is - "Thank goodness for Google reader, quality newsfeeds and personal blogs" - because parts of the Australian mainstream media have definately lost the plot.

I have been regularly reading "The Australian" on a daily basis - almost since it was first published. Sometimes not very frequently and sometimes it has been difficult to get copies - but for more than 30 years it has been my newspaper of choice.

Even in the latter half of the first decade of the 21st Century when many commentators have criticised Rupert's baby as *the Fox News* of the Australian media - I still remained loyal.

Even as Janet Albrechtsen continued with her personal poison - attacking anything and everything vaguely normal and promoting the most god-awful right wing rubbish - just because it aligns with her seriously warped sense of the world - I still remained loyal and pretended that she was just an abberation.

Even as the right wing and ratbag commentariat, the religious nutters and the seriously dumb and just plain silly used and abused their pages of editorial space to attack anything and everything intellectual or science based - I assumed it was just a phase that would pass - like a teenager growing up.

Even as Chris Mitchell took the paper downmarket and tried to use it as a vehicle to play his personal political games with important issues like *climate change* - I still scanned the stories - with the hope that there were a few gems of quality hidden away - somewhere.

But I have to confess that they have won - after 30+ years I am beaten.

Today I decided that it is all too hard - the collection of *Bumpf and BS* that is packaged as our national newspaper is now of such a standard and quality that I am no longer interested in reading it.

I am particularly distressed to observe the way it attacks our government - apparently just because they are of the *red* persuasion as opposed to Rupert's version of the right colour - which is obviously *blue* or more likely *black*.

"The Australian" no longer represents the nation - it should rename itself. My suggestion is "Rupert's Rightwing Ratbag Rag".

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