The political image which dominated Day 12 of the election campaign was the touched-up prime ministerial portrait on the cover of the big-circulation Australian Women's Weekly.

Amazing what make-up and good lighting can do, Ms Gillard quipped yesterday when asked about the cover shot.

But the PM's Photoshop fortunes have turned.

By this morning the Weekly's 'pretty Julia' had morphed into' Julia the pensioner' at the hands of the editors of Sydney's Daily Telegraph newspaper.

The Telegraph's politically-pointed front page homes in on the substance of the Labor leak against Gillard, the suggestion she had questioned the government's plan to lift the age pension in the Rudd Cabinet.

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It would have been irresponsible for Julia not to ask any questions about the affordability of the pension rises, which SHE DID NOT OPPOSE... Meanwhile Tony is definitively turning to sand like his rock-solid promises...

If you have not yet been brain washed by the foreign media control of Austalia's very supicious Murdochracy let me just make a point - again.

On what basis does an Australian citizen vote for a government? They would be as uneducated as the Howard "New Order" if they believed just one iota of the crap that the media bias is determined to convince us to vote for a foreign controlled government, "for our safety".

Even at my age, like the Afghanistans, I would try to DEFEND my country and for my right to do so but, it there has been a massive con during the Howard era that, while we do not have any value in the Security Council which Rudd had tried to achieve, we nevertheless are expected to put our military in danger for non-defensive reasons.

God Bless Australia and may we rise up against the Corporation's blackmail of our nation. NE OUBLIE.

http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/unfair-and-unbalanced-how-news-failed-to-fell-government-20100920-15jo1.html

Fair and balanced. According to Chris Mitchell, the editor-in-chief of The Australian, the Prime Minister thanked him for the newspaper's election coverage being ''fair and balanced''. Is it a coincidence she used the much-mocked slogan of Rupert Murdoch's American TV news channel Fox News?

The slogan is so synonymous with the network that when the left-wing American media identity Al Franken titled his book Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right, Fox (unsuccessfully) mounted a lawsuit, claiming the title infringed their trademark.

This most controversial of American news outlets - trusted according to a recent survey by 74 per cent of Republicans but only 30 per cent of Democrats - still provokes outrage. Earlier this year, the former New York Times executive editor Howell Raines thought Fox's conduct so betrayed journalistic standards that other news organisations should ''blow the whistle'' on its propaganda campaign against the Obama administration. Even Rupert Murdoch's son-in-law, Matthew Freud, said he was ''sickened and ashamed'' by Fox's ''horrendous and sustained disregard'' of journalistic standards.

More than any other media proprietor in the English-speaking world, Murdoch has recognised and cultivated the commercial and political benefits of partisanship. Having been an enthusiastic supporter of Margaret Thatcher in Britain, when he was building his American beachhead with the purchase of the New York Post in the 1970s, he was determined to make his mark.

He campaigned for Ed Koch for mayor, which Koch said made his victory possible. His opponent, Mario Cuomo, lamented that when Murdoch endorses you, he hands the whole newspaper over to your campaign.

In Australia, News Ltd titles account for about two-thirds of daily newspaper circulation, far higher than any proprietor enjoys in any other established democracy. Whatever the company's virtues, such domination is not healthy for democracy or for the development of professional excellence and media diversity. Increasingly, News Ltd manifests monopoly arrogance, not least in its attitudes to anyone who criticises it.

This year, Murdoch's Daily Telegraph published an editorial advocating the election of an Abbott government, starting on the front page and running over the next two. It is not only Labor sympathisers who thought the editorial views of the Telegraph and The Australian informed the papers' selective news priorities and the framing of their coverage.

When the Telegraph was following up one of the leaks disclosed by Laurie Oakes and Peter Hartcher, who reported that Gillard had privately opposed the size of the pension increases, it assailed her with many critical comments from pensioners - ''live a day in our shoes''. Strangely, none of those quoted expressed gratitude that the Labor government had increased the rate by $30 a week, or contrasted Labor's greater generosity compared with the Howard government's.

But the most notable aspect of the story was the image of a haggard 80-year-old Gillard dominating the front page. I cannot remember the Telegraph ever doing this to a male leader or to a Liberal, and it is hard to imagine it doing so.

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Sometimes the paper seems willing to say anything that will create a sensation. How else to explain its chief political correspondent arguing five days after an election that we need another poll? Never mind parliament, never mind the constitution. Let's move from three-year terms to two-week ones. This was simply crazy - like a Fox.

Rodney Tiffen is emeritus professor of government and international relations at the University of Sydney.

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