From Jonathan Holmes, The SMH

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Unlike bad science, bad journalism often goes unnoticed and uncorrected. Even if falsity’s exposed, a "clarification" in small print at the bottom of Page 2 does little to correct a Page 1 story. A roasting on Media Watch is forgotten in a month. The Press Council is a joke and ACMA a lumbering tortoise of a regulator.

But a good story sells papers, draws viewers and wins accolades – almost regardless of what relation it bears to the truth.

There are great stories that are also true stories – or as near to true as it’s possible to get. There are plenty of good journalists who will put their names to nothing less.

But that doesn’t alter the undeniable truth of the proposition: by the very nature of the trade, the media can’t be trusted to tell the truth.

Jonathan Holmes, presenter of Media Watch on ABC1, was on the affirmative team at Tuesday’s IQ2 debate: the media can’t be trusted to tell the truth.

Meanwhile:

The global economic downturn has had a huge impact on News Corporation's results, and it says charging for internet content is likely to become more widespread to support the costs of quality journalism.

Rupert Murdoch announced that his company suffered a 30 per cent decline on last year's performance.

News Corp reported a fourth quarter loss of $US203 million ($241 million), in line with its forecasts.

Across the fiscal year the company recorded a $US3.4 billion ($4 billion) loss.

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Gus: Good on Pilger for his long gutsy dedicated journalism.

When the US troops invaded Iraq and a storm-trooper unit found a "secret" weapons-of-mass-destruction factory in a remote place, the embedded US reporters were emphatic about it — success and all that. I had to argue with some Jewish friends present at the time of the live reportage that how could anyone there know what this factory was about? "Here's the proof!" My Jewish friends exclaimed as the camera panned the machinery. I said as I usually say: "crap!"...

... Within a few hours, new newsreports demoted the factory from a "WMD nasty piece of work" to a "secret sly grog facility". No WMDs were ever found in Iraq. The US con — a splendid double cross — with the help of a mostly bizoted main stream media (including Mr Murdoch's Fox and his other outlets) after some biffo, worked like a charm on the general public. Invasion we shall have till the lies run out of steam, then we switched to the "democratisation" of Iraq soft porkie with "acceptable nuances" — except that under the UN charter, this sort of reason for agression is totally illegal... But we (I didn't) bought the package nonetheless...

More than one million Iraqi dead, nearly 4500 US troops dead, more than 35,000 US troops maimed for life, an unsettled country after six years of de-constructive reconstruction... etc...

And of course once exposed, wrong reporting in such cases are blamed on government agency "getting it wrong", by media proprietors, if they bother to do so... Often, not even a correction or apology on page 2, but a many glowing and supportive editorials for having gone to war anyway...

From Phillip Adams...

AMONG those I know who've turned or are turning 70 during 2009 are Michael Kirby, Germaine Greer, Andrew Peacock and John Pilger.

Plus John Howard - and me, his greatest fan. Though born within hours of each other John and I have different star signs, thus saving astrology from embarrassment. And had he not blown out the candle that was JFK, Lee Harvey Oswald would be blowing out 70 candles in 2009.

Talking of the fascinating and assassinating: two other leaders brought down in their prime share the astrological sign of Cancer, the crustacean that gave its name to the most dreaded of diseases. (Pity those of us whose star sign is a death sentence.) Gough Whitlam, who turned 93 on July 11, the day before my 70th, shares the fateful, fatal sign with Julius Caesar.

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read more of Phillip Adams at The Australian...

Note Phillip isn't John Howard greatest fan... Sarcasm... Easy Phillip... Take a deep breath...

Happy Birthday all...

from Crikey ....

Reaction to Pilger award reveals Zionist lobby's fear of dissent

Freelance journalist and author Antony Loewenstein writes:

In 2003, Palestinian politician and human rights activist Hanan Ashrawi won the Sydney Peace Prize. The Zionist establishment reacted with outrage, accused her of extremism and pressured then New South Wales Premier Bob Carr to not present the award.

The campaign was a disaster and convinced large swathes of the Australian public that many Jews were intolerant of debate. I investigated the saga in my book, My Israel Question, and found a startling lack of awareness by Jewish leaders of their actions were perceived by the wider public.

Six years on, little has changed.

This year, the Sydney Peace Foundation awarded its annual prize to journalist, author and documentary maker John Pilger for "enabling the voices of the powerless to be heard". He will receive the award in November, presented by New South Wales Governor Marie Bashir. Last year Kevin Rudd did the honours for Aboriginal leader Pat Dodson.

Jewish leaders again are on the offensive. President of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ), Robert Goot, said that, "Pilger does not promote peace, but is a polemicist, a distorter of facts and history and he promotes an extreme Palestinian narrative at the expense of Israel's narrative and objective analysis."

Leadership strategist Ernie Schwartz told the Australian Jewish News (AJN) this week that he would urge the Jewish establishment to present a "unified view ... [and] be realistic about the fact that we'll always come across as myopic. That's just the way we're going to be cast."

But bullying organisers of the award and threatening them isn't a perception problem; it's how the Zionist lobby does business.

Director of the Sydney Peace Foundation Stuart Rees tells Crikey that he has received huge amounts of supportive mail from across the world in appreciation of this year's choice. "He [Pilger] has a broad body of work that covers a wide range of countries," Rees says, including Cambodia, Burma, Australia, America, Bangladesh, Iraq and Afghanistan. "He isn't just about Israel/Palestine."

Rees dismisses comments by Zionist lobbyist Colin Rubenstein that the prize is discredited and says that "we don't think that derision is an appropriate form of commentary. When people have lost, they resort to character assassination."

Rees says he has not yet heard of any pressure on Sydney University management to threaten funding, as happened during the Ashrawi affair, but accusatory letters have started.

The level of Zionist anger towards Pilger was displayed at last Friday's Politics in the Pub event in Sydney. A Jewish man approached Rees after the talk and asked if the "next winner would be Hitler".

Curiously, this week's AJN features a letter that asks whether Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah or yours truly should win next year.

Rees argues that the reason so many Zionist leaders react as they do is because "they're tribal. They have to repeat a certain mantra, otherwise they would be disloyal to this image."

Former Zionist Federation of Australia president Dr Ron Weiser proved this point recently by writing, in support of illegal West Bank settlements and against Barack Obama, that the Australian Government's position would remain blindly pro-Israel if unthinking "consensus" was maintained. Profound fear of dissent was palpable.

The question of academic freedom is central to a healthy democracy. Attempts by any lobby group to stifle it should be challenged. Witness the current moves in Israel and America against Ben Gurion University academic Neve Gordon for daring to write in the LA Times in support of a boycott against "apartheid" Israel.

President Professor Rivka Carmi condemned the article and said: "Academics who entertain such resentment toward their country are welcome to consider another professional and personal home". In fact, academic freedom is specifically designed to allow individuals to express views without fear of retribution.

Closer to home, Associate Professor Jake Lynch, director of Sydney University's Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies (CPACS), tells Crikey that he rejects any accusations of bias against him or the centre for taking a strong stand against Israeli violations and Sri Lanka's war against the Tamils.

He currently receives full university backing for his work, despite the steadily increasing number of complaints from the Singhalese and Jewish community to the institution, insisting on spurious grounds of "balance".

The obligation of a peace centre, Lynch argues, is to get out the "voices of the subjugated". The university's former vice-chancellor, Gavin Brown, told Lynch during a 2008 visit by Uighur activist Rebiya Kadeer that "you shouldn't give the critics [looking for balance] any indication that they're having an effect".

Lynch called in May for an academic boycott against Israeli institutions due to their complicity in the occupation of Palestine. The university's vice-chancellor rejected his overture, supported by many Sydney University academics, but he tells me he's determined to find a way to pursue the action another way.

Lynch is keen to counter the perception that, "if you criticise Israel you're anti-Semitic or anti-American if you damn America. The Pilger award should widen this debate. The aim of his British ITV documentary producers is to provide a perspective that is rarely heard; Palestinians are marginalised."

Stuart Rees commented during last week's Politics in the Pub that Pilger won the award because he was simply "doing his job [as a reporter]".

Antony Loewenstein is an independent journalist and the author of My Israel Question and The Blogging Revolution

A potentially embarrassing dispute between the vice-chancellor of the University of Sydney, Dr Michael Spence, and the recipient of the university's 2009 Sydney Peace Prize, the journalist John Pilger, appears to have been quietly resolved.

Matters came to a head last week when Pilger wrote an open letter to Spence accusing university security staff of acting ''in a manner I personally associate with universities in non-democracies'' after they banned two left-wing political activists, Peter Boyle and Paul Benedek, from holding information sessions on campus.

The pair, who publish the newspaper Green Left Weekly, were accused of putting up posters during the university's orientation week in February promoting the socialist youth group Resistance. The university claims Resistance was not a registered club; Pilger says it was authorised ''to operate with 'the permissions of a registered club' ''.

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Having to bat for free speech at Sydney University is a battle reminiscent of South Park being censored for mentioning the M word with a picture that could have been representative of the M prophet...

Meanwhile one has to know that Dr Spence is a "parsons fellow" reverend... who is recognised as a leader in the field of intellectual property theory and encourages fundraising and substantial sponsorship from benefactors and corporate groups... amen. Ahem... The synergy between universities and private enterprises has always been a contentious issue. Watertight contracts need to be made as to whom owns the "research" at public universities and I know that often there is a fine line...

I know many people who work in the area of intellectual property, from music to science and technology, and, from time to time, I make reference to cartoonists and comedians...

Now seriously is there a copyright on Jesus and Prophet M?... Or on being an atheist?