This Is Not Journalism or How A 165 Year Old Australian Masthead Finally Lost Its Good Name

The Age newspaper has been read in Melbourne since October 1854.

Over the years it grew in circulation until it was read across the state of Victoria and elsewhere in Australia.

It has survived the vagaries of the print newspaper business, until the Fairfax-Nine Entertainment merger when it became part of a media group whose chairman was a former Liberal MP and onetime Australian federal treasurer Peter Costello and its CEO began courting the Liberal Party by hosting a $10,000 dollar a head party fundraiser at its headquarters in 2019 raising at least $700,000 for the party.

It is no secret that the current Federal Liberal-Nationals Coalition Government dislikes the Victorian Labor Government and is out to criticize and undermine it at every opportunity.

So when this front page headline appeared in The Age on 5 June 2020, "Activists 'planning trouble' at protest: Exclusive", under the bylines of the newspaper's State Political Editor and a general news journalist, it came as no surprise.

The opening paragraphs ran thus:

Activists have threatened police with spitting, inflammatory chanting and other forms of physical abuse during tomorrow's "Black Lives Matter" protest in Melbourne in an attempt to provoke use-of-force responses from officers. 

A senior government source told The Age police were preparing for tactics from some protesters tomorrow designed to provoke physical confrontation and produce images of police brutality. [my yellow highlighting]

The newspaper amplified this message on social media:

The online copy of the original article in question has since been removed. With the current online article now having a different headline and and text much altered from the original.

The apology issued by The Age and published on 6 June on the second page of the print newspaper, contains a meas culpa for its lapse in "editorial standards and values". However, this creates another issue surrounding these values.

It completely omitted mention of the "senior government source". Instead the apology states "one unnamed source".

The Age, 6 June 2020, p.2:

Apology 

On June 5, The Age published a story headlined: "Activists 'planning trouble' at Protest". 

This story reported concerns within the Victorian government about the potential for physical confrontation during planned protests. 

The story fell short of The Age's editorial values and standards and caused understandable offence to many members of the community. 

The claim that activists had threatened police with spitting and abuse was not backed up beyond one unnamed source. 

The story put undue emphasis on these claims. The main organisers of the rally, the Warriors of the Aboriginal Resistance, clearly stated that they had no knowledge of any threats to police. The Age apologises. [my yellow highlighting]

It certainly differed from the "clarification" displayed under the current online article posted at 11:45pm the night before:

One has to wonder if, between the publication of that original inflammatory article and the final print apology, management began to hedge its bets because the "source" cited appeared highly suspect and may not have been a source in government or even close to government and that there was a possibility that The Age's journalists had been played.

The Daily Examiner makes unforgivable factual error

The myriad of typos over the years one can laugh at – after all who doesn’t suffer from fat thumb from time to time.

However, errors of fact are a different matter.

In both its print and online version of the newspaper The Daily Examiner asserted this on 24 February 2015:

[my bolding]

This is sloppy reporting at best and at worst a deliberate distortion of fact. Quite frankly I’m hoping is was some off-site subbing which caused this blunder.

It was only two days before that The Daily Telegraph, not known to favour Labor, reported:

The indexation change was announced in the May budget. Welfare groups and Labor argue it will cut pensions by $80 a week within 10 years. According to the Parliamentary Budget Office, this amounts to a $23 billion cut to the cost of the age pension by 2023. [my red bolding]

A leading seniors advocate COTA Australia issued a media release on 21 August 2014 which stated:

“If only the CPI had been used since 2009 the Pension would already be $30 per week or $1,560 per year less, and that gap grows to over $80 per week / $4,160 per year in 10 years, and keeps growing. That’s a huge amount for Pensioners who already often have to make choices between heating, decent food, medications and a basic gift for their grandchild’s birthday. “This measure is extremely harsh and goes beyond even that which was recommended by the Commission of Audit….” [my red bolding]

On 22 May 2014 The Guardian reported:

The report, A Budget that Divides a Nation, says pensioners on aged and disability support payments would lose about $80 a week by 2024 after having their payments indexed to CPI. [my red bolding]

The Daily Examiner is telling its readers that pensioners will only lose $8 dollars a year when in fact the change in indexation reduces the value of the aged pension by an est. $416 in 2017 when the change come into effect and, this increases to an est. $4,160 per year by 2025.

Lapse in taste by News Corp

Hot on the heels of News Corp founder Rupert Murdoch's December 2014 callous tweet comes The Guardian 9 January 2015 report of this exercise in bad taste:  

News Corp Australia’s most popular magazine insert has advertised for fashion interns by using a photo of a young woman dressed in underwear on all fours on a bed.

STOP THE PRESS: Yamba has an airport!

This is what happens when a regional newspaper fails to keep its journalists moving around the the area it circulates and, becomes locked into a city focus.

Its deputy-editor apparently decides that the relatively small coastal village of Yamba, bounded on three sides by ocean and river with one road into town, has an airport.

the people won't come when they can drive a relatively short distance to either Yamba or Coffs Harbour and get competitively priced flights with more convenient flight times. [The Daily Examiner, 5 April 2014, p. 11]

* Hat tip to the eagle-eyed Clarrie Rivers who spotted this blooper gem. 

Hitler was a time traveller!

News.com.au commits an historic blooper on 6 December 2013:

This military hospital was built in 1989 to house tuberculosis patients, and Adolf Hitler recovered there after being injured in the 1916 Battle of the Somme. It was a busy hospital in the 1920s but after WWII the soviets took control of Beelitz-Heilstätten and used it to treat Soviet soldiers stationed in the area. Once they withdrew in 1994 it was left empty.

Where is Dr. Who when you need an infamous war criminal safely contained within the correct time stream? Obviously somewhere Rupert Murdoch could find him, because when I checked later that same day the paragraph had been emended by 91 years.

Today's APN reading competition

A court report appearing in an APN newspaper today makes one wonder what was deleted from the report. Readers who work out the answer might forward it to the editor of The Northern Star The Daily Examiner.

NCV suspects the editor probably has some prizes for readers who provide the correct answer. (Hint: find ****)

NCV apologises to The Northern Star for having previously stated that it carried the blooper. Having seen its print edition NCV acknowledges that the Star doesn't carry the blooper; however, the piece which was written by a Star journalist appears in the Examiner (see below) with the colourful language.

Image credit: APN

Go halfway round the world and do well in an international triathlon - come home and the local media can't decide on your surname.

One can only guess how Ray Hunt of Yamba must have felt when he opened his morning paper yesterday.......

The Daily Examiner 25 September 2013:

VETERAN Yamba triathlete Ray Jones battled oversized wetsuits and freezing temperatures to pick up a silver and a bronze medal at the London International Triathlon World Championships.

Competing in the 70-74 age group, Hunt picked up silver in the aquathlon (1km swim and 5km run) and backed it up with a bronze the next day in the sprint distance triathlon (750m swim, 20km bike ride, 5km run).

He rounded off his efforts with the Olympic Distance Triathlon (750m swim, 40km ride, 10km run) with a 5th placing.

Read the rest of the article here.

The Northern Star contracts a case of the jimmy britts

The Northern Star is taken down in more ways than one...

The Northern Star  4 May 2013

Urban Dictionary:

1.	jimmy britts
	Australian version of British rhyming slang 'tom tits' for diarrhea/the shits.

* Hat tip to Clarrie Rivers for pointing out the rhyming slang

CNN withdraws online article which suggests a woman's vote is ruled by her hormones

 

Right in the middle of the final half of the 2012 US Presidential Election CNN committed an editorial blunder by apparently giving serious consideration to the concept of biological determinism as a political reality.

http://thechart.blogs.cnn.com/2012/10/24/do-hormones-drive-womens-votes/

 

Unfortunately CNN didn’t tell Fox2 Now in St. Loius which went to press with the very same article five minutes later.

 

It is reproduced here as part of the historical record of the U.S. political landscape in October 2012:

Study Links Women’s Voting Choices With Ovulation

Posted on: 8:20 pm, October 24, 2012, by Staff Writer
 

(CNN) — While the campaigns eagerly pursue female voters, there’s something that may raise the chances for both presidential candidates that’s totally out of their control: women’s ovulation cycles.

You read that right. New research suggest that hormones may influence female voting choices differently, depending on whether a woman is single or in a committed relationship.

Please continue reading with caution. Although the study will be published in the peer-reviewed journal Psychological Science, several political scientists who read the study have expressed skepticism about its conclusions.

A bit of background: Women are more likely to vote than men, other studies have found. Current data suggest married women favor Gov. Mitt Romney, in a 19% difference, over President Barack Obama, while Obama commands the votes of single women by a 33% margin, according to the study. And previous studies have shown that political and religious attitudes may be influenced by reproductive goals.

In the new study’s first experiment, Kristina Durante of the University of Texas, San Antonio and colleagues conducted an internet survey of 275 women who were not taking hormonal contraception and had regular menstrual cycles. About 55% were in committed relationships, including marriage.

They found that women at their most fertile times of the month were less likely to be religious if they were single, and more likely to be religious if they were in committed relationships.

Now for the even more controversial part: 502 women, also with regular periods and not taking hormonal contraception, were surveyed on voting preferences and a variety of political issues.

The researchers found that during the fertile time of the month, when levels of the hormone estrogen are high, single women appeared more likely to vote for Obama and committed women appeared more likely to vote for Romney, by a margin of at least 20%, Durante said. This seems to be the driver behind the researchers’ overall observation that single women were inclined toward Obama and committed women leaned toward Romney.

Here’s how Durante explains this: When women are ovulating, they “feel sexier,” and therefore lean more toward liberal attitudes on abortion and marriage equality. Married women have the same hormones firing, but tend to take the opposite viewpoint on these issues, she says.

“I think they’re overcompensating for the increase of the hormones motivating them to have sex with other men,” she said. It’s a way of convincing themselves that they’re not the type to give in to such sexual urges, she said.

Durante’s previous research found that women’s ovulation cycles also influence their shopping habits, buying sexier clothes during their most fertile phase.

“We still have the ovulatory hormones that have the same impact on female brains as across other species,” she said. We want sex and we want it with the best mate we can get. “But there are some high costs that come with it,” she said, particularly for women who are already in committed relationships.

This isn’t the first time hormones have been looked at in connection to voting. Last year Israeli researchers published a study in the journal European Neuropsychopharmacology examined the stress hormone cortisol in voters in Israel. Levels of this hormone were higher in people right before they were about to vote than in the same people when they were not voting.

Durante’s study on women noted that liberal attitudes favor social equality and tend to be less associated with organized religion. Conservatism is more about traditional values and is linked to greater participation in organized religion.

The most controversial part of the study is not only that hormonal cycles are linked to women’s preferences for candidates and voting behaviors, but also that single women who are ovulating are more likely to be socially liberal, and relationship-committed women are more likely to be socially conservative, said Paul Kellstedt, associate professor of political science at Texas A&M University.

One of the major caveats this paper fails to address is that men also have biochemical changes, Kellstedt said.

“The reader may be left with the impression that women are unstable and moody in ways that extend to their political preferences, but that men are comparative Rocks of Gibraltar,” Kellstedt said in an e-mail.

Kellstedt does not study biology, but he has been involved in research suggesting that men’s political preferences are even more volatile than women’s.

“There is absolutely no reason to expect that women’s hormones affect how they vote any more than there is a reason to suggest that variations in testosterone levels are responsible for variations in the debate performances of Obama and Romney,” said Susan Carroll, professor of political science and women’s and gender studies at Rutgers University, in an e-mail.

Carroll sees the research as following in the tradition of the “long and troubling history of using women’s hormones as an excuse to exclude them from politics and other societal opportunities.”

“It was long thought that a woman shouldn’t be president of the U.S. because, God forbid, an international crisis might happen during her period!” Carroll said.

A better explanation for the divide in voting preferences between single and married women is the difference in economic status, she said.

One expert gave it a little more credence: Israel Waismel-Manor, a political scientist at the University of Haifa in Israel, who did the cortisol study last year.

He’s not sure that this hormonal effect Durante found among women isn’t real, but offered an alternate explanation too: Research has shown women prefer more “manly men” when they are in their most fertile phases of the cycle. Obama and Romney are both handsome, in good physical shape and could fit the type of “provider of the family,” so either could fit the ideal, depending on a woman’s preference.

Assuming there is some hormonal explanation, the effects could cancel themselves out, since different women will be on different cycles when they vote, and the candidates have a similar level of physical attractiveness, Waismel-Manor said. A more elaborate research design is needed to examine it further.

“Even if the finding is correct, there’s a chance that it won’t have a cumulative effect on the electorate,” he said.

By Elizabeth Landau, CNN
The-CNN-Wire™ & © 2012 Cable News Network, Inc., a Time Warner Company. All rights reserved.

Teh Parrot Eats Crow

The Sydney Morning Herald 24^th October 2012:

‘BARBARA RAMJAN, the woman who accused Tony Abbott of intimidating her physically at Sydney University, is suing the Victorian Liberal Party powerbroker, Michael Kroger, and The Australian newspaper, over comments during the recent fallout from the saga.

The defamation action, lodged in the NSW Supreme Court on Monday, has the potential to reopen the debate over the alleged wall-punching incident.

It relates to comments Mr Kroger made about Ms Ramjan on the Bolt Report television show on September 23, two articles that appeared in The Australian the next day, and an interview Mr Kroger gave to Alan Jones, in which he called Ms Ramjan "a nutter" and "a nobody".’

Tuesday 25th September 2012

Alan Jones publicly apologizes to Barbara Ramjan

http://podcasts.mrn.com.au.s3.amazonaws.com/alanjones/201209-ramjan.mp3

Newspaper typo accidentally creates a gang of four on council :-)

The Daily Examiner 26 September 2012 at 6am

Clarence Valley Council’s new EE&C Committee membership is reported correctly above, with the exception of omitting Mayor Richie Williamson from inclusion on this committee.

However, membership of the C&C Committee should now read, Williamson, Kingsley, Simmons, Challacombe and Toms.

A sitting mayor has a permanent seat on both committees and the remaining members of both committees were decided at the extraordinary meeting on 25 September.

The first committee meetings are scheduled for 9 October 2012.

Punters spewing over Daily Examiner's poor performance

As if Wednesday's debacle at the Examiner wasn't enough to put punters off their weetbix, today's edition will have punters who buy the local rag shaking their heads and asking themselves why they bother to buy it. Today's paper has reprinted the TAB dividends it published on Thursday - how thoughtful, they are the results for the races the paper forgot to print on Wednesday. Perhaps DEX thinks that's an act of compensation.

DEX blooper - reprints old race fields

The only things correct in the four-page racing lift-out in today's Daily Examiner are the paper's name and the date. Today's Examiner reprinted the race fields for Saturday 8 September.
The events at Warwick Farm, Doomben and Flemington have been well and truly run and won, so the very least readers could have been provided with was a new lot of tips from the paper. But, oh no, the paper had the temerity to print its original, and in most cases losing, tips.
Who went to sleep at the wheel steering the good ship DEX last night? Was it the night helmsman or the captain? C'mon, who's going to put their hand up and claim bragging rights for this little ripper at the annual Xmas party? Perhaps a stewards inquiry is needed.

Orams at it again on the front page of The Daily Examiner

If ever a journo is going to gloriously balls up the front page of one
of the local newspapers, it would be Graham teh meeja is me
second choice career Orams.
According to him on the 10th September; “Vote counts were not
updated during the day yesterday after a flying start to the
counting on Saturday night”. WRONG!
In fact when I looked at the NSW Electoral Commission website I
could see there had been a minor correction and one major update
over the course of Sunday the 9th.
And every single candidate placing in the race for a seat on council 
he mentioned after the leading three, plus all their percentages,
were also wrong when the newspaper went to print.
Fair dinkum, the bloke's a menace.
Just for the record this is what the running total looked like
yesterday in the am and pm:

Summary of First Preference Votes
Candidate	Party/IND	FP Votes	Quota Ratio	% Formal Votes
MORRISON Rod	IND	656	0.30	2.99%
SCOTT Margot	IND	410	0.19	1.87%
PARKINSON Paul		483	0.22	2.20%
HOWE Craig	IND	1,154	0.53	5.26%
BAKER Andrew	IND	2,326	1.06	10.59%
TUNKS Ursula	IND	416	0.19	1.89%
DE ROOS Joy		408	0.19	1.86%
SIMMONS Jim	IND	1,336	0.61	6.08%
CLANCY Greg	IND	1,078	0.49	4.91%
BEEBY Jane	IND	419	0.19	1.91%
HUGHES Sue	IND	1,381	0.63	6.29%
TOMS Karen		1,028	0.47	4.68%
McIVOR Micheal	IND	298	0.14	1.36%
CHALLACOMBE Jeremy	IND	1,027	0.47	4.68%
WILLIAMSON Richie		6,975	3.18	31.77%
McKENNA Margaret	IND	877	0.40	3.99%
KINGSLEY Jason	IND	1,685	0.77	7.67%
Total Formal Votes Counted		21,957
Total Informal Votes		1,875
Progressive Total Ordinary Votes		23,832

Summary of First Preference Votes
Candidate	Party/IND	FP Votes	Quota Ratio	% Formal Votes
MORRISON Rod	IND	734	0.29	2.87%
SCOTT Margot	IND	443	0.17	1.73%
PARKINSON Paul		536	0.21	2.10%
HOWE Craig	IND	1,500	0.59	5.87%
BAKER Andrew	IND	2,478	0.97	9.70%
TUNKS Ursula	IND	499	0.20	1.95%
DE ROOS Joy		432	0.17	1.69%
SIMMONS Jim	IND	1,396	0.55	5.47%
CLANCY Greg	IND	1,188	0.47	4.65%
BEEBY Jane	IND	444	0.17	1.74%
HUGHES Sue	IND	1,504	0.59	5.89%
TOMS Karen		1,095	0.43	4.29%
McIVOR Micheal	IND	335	0.13	1.31%
CHALLACOMBE Jeremy	IND	1,295	0.51	5.07%
WILLIAMSON Richie		8,463	3.31	33.14%
McKENNA Margaret	IND	1,163	0.46	4.55%
KINGSLEY Jason	IND	2,033	0.80	7.96%
Total Formal Votes Counted		25,538
Total Informal Votes		2,168
Progressive Total Ordinary Votes		27,706