When is an exclusive not an exclusive? When it runs in The Australian. Pearls and Irritations had the real Paul Keating exclusive over the weekend.
Rupert Murdoch’s The Australian is at it again: “Exclusive – Paul Keating has launched a scathing attack on Britain, saying Australia’s oldest ally suffers from ‘delusions of grandeur and relevance deprivation’”. What’s the scam?
The scam is the Keating story ran in John Menadue’s Pearls and Irritations, exclusively, two days earlier. Somehow, Rupert’s rag ran a page one Keating “exclusive”, a page two Keating “exclusive” and a story on its opinion pages, all bagging Keating and failing to give attribution to earlier press reports, the actual exclusive.
Shonky journalism as usual from Murdoch’s mob, even topped off by a hyper-ironic column in its media section by former editor-in-chief Chris Mitchell titled, “Facts come second for journos partial to worry porn” which — notwithstanding the newspaper’s daily sensationalising about the military threat from China, and the daily barrage of purported “exclusives” — put the boot into “catastrophist journalism”.
You couldn’t make this stuff up … oh wait, they do. Pearl and Irritations‘ story here:
Herald indulges UK Foreign Secretary’s demented remarks on China