Thursday, December 20, 2007

AUSSIE LINK IN DISHONEST REPORTING AWARD

HONEST REPORTING has announced its annual DISHONEST REPORTER AWARDS and Fairfax buffoon Ed O’Loughlin has gained a nomination - DR AWARDS!

Poor Ed is probably livid that he didn't make it as THE Dishonest Reporter for 2007 but his nomination in the Worst Moral Equivalence category for his oversimplified background information on Qassam rockets was well deserved. However, the HR write up on his award overlooked the fact that once Ed established his ignorance over the Qassams he made a sincere effort to atone for his sins by ignoring them and their victims most of the time.

The introduction to the awards was also very informative as it covered the year’s highlights from a news perspective of the region:-

"What a year of surprises.

Hamas
seized control of the Gaza Strip. Ehud Olmert and Mahmoud Abbas talked peace in the presence of Saudi and Syrian dignitaries. BBC journalist Alan Johnston was held hostage for nearly four months. When Israel struck an unidentified Syrian facility, the only significant protest came from North Korea.

And then came
Farfur, the Hamas mouse.

Who would've thought?

Of course, there were other unsurprising developments. Qassam rockets continued to fall on Sderot. This year's three unfortunate fatalities:
Oshri Oz, Shirel Friedman and Chai Shalom.

Israeli MIAs Gilad Shalit, Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev ended the year in captivity, as did other
Israeli MIAs.

The Israel Lobby was a top selling book while The Man From Plains documented Jimmy Carter's controversial book tour."

Naturally, our hero generally steered clear of imparting information on much of the above to his readers - especially the stuff that might cause embarrassment to the Arab cause. After all, who among the readers of the Age or the Sydney Morning Herald wants to know about the preaching of race hatred in the Palestinian media or about an anti Semitic mouse that entertains Palestinian kiddies by preaching murder, violence and death to Jews?

And speaking of embarrassment, Ed has plenty of friends at Wikipedia who persist in obliterating any mention of the accusations of anti Israel bias made against him in the past. I wonder if his mates are able to censor references to his latest award?

Although O’Loughlin is not a real Aussie in that he’s actually an Irishman, his award in the Dishonest Reporting category for Worst Moral Equivalence category makes me want to break out into the special native chant reserved for the truly pathetic

Aussie Aussie Aussie oy oy oy vey!

1 comment:

Wilbur Post said...

An entry has been placed in Wikipedia as follows:-

Reception and criticism of reporting on Israel

O'Loughlin's reporting has received criticism from media commentary groups and the Australian Jewish and Lebanese communities who have accused him of unfair journalistic practices. Australian MP Michael Danby is quoted as saying "There's nothing funny about O'Loughlin's systematic bias against Israel"[1]. Bret Stephens (former editor of the Jerusalem Post) in a 2004 editorial accused O'Loughlin of anti-Israeli bias in the Mordechai Vanunu case, claiming that O'Loughlin's coverage was "an open and shut case of bias" [2].

O'Loughlin has also received criticism in the Jewish Political Studies Review[3] and the Australian-based ICJS Research[4].

In 2003 a (now-defunct) organisation called Media Studies Group (a group that monitored anti-Israeli bias in the media) published an analysis of the The Age's reporting on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, with particular reference to O'Loughlin. The authors identified 210 cases of perceived violations of various journalistic standards, and that O'Loughlin was responsible for 51% of these. [5]

On 19 December 2007, O'Loughlin was nominated for a "Dishonest Reporter" award and won an award[6] in the "Worst Moral Equivalence" category by Honest Reporting, a media monitoring group with approximately 140,000 subscribers.


Naturally, O'Loughlin's friends aren't happy. Someone has placed this entry at the top of the entry:-

"A Wikipedian is concerned that this section gives undue weight to one side.

Please see the talk page. Help improve the article by adding more information and sources on points of view that may be neglected."

In other words the Wikicensor is about to go snip and in doing so will do exactly what Ed does. Hide the truth on the blank pages.