That "Parched" Stuff? It's Water

THAT Fairfax reporters are incompetent when not actively biased has been known and widely recognised for some time, especially by those who no longer buy or read the Silly and Phage. A young and naive lawyer shacks up with a crook, helps him via a concocted power attorney to conceal a significant property investment from his abandoned wife, and then gets fired when her malfeasance comes to light. To most, that would represent a prima facie case that the crook had been hanging his trousers on the bedpost of an arrogant and devious slut, but by the reckoning of Michelle, Lenore, Katharine, Phillip and all the other Fairfax girls it is glowing evidence of a strong, confident and admirably independent modern woman.

Perception is , of course, an entirely subjective thing, and sympathy must come easy to reporters who long ago sold their own honour for the privelege of parroting press releases and talking points from those whose approval and warm regards they value more highly than truth. So perhaps, on that score alone, the refusal by all but Mark Baker to take a closer look at the crook in The Lodge can by explained, if not endorsed.

But what about those moments when there is absolutely no room to grant the benefit of the doubt,  when those papers prove so blind to impartial reason that the visual evidence they provide directly contradicts the assertions of their own words? Here is a recent example (emphasis added at the Billabong):

WHEN is logging not logging? When it is ''ecological thinning'' in national parks, according to the governments of New South Wales and Victoria.

The two states are conducting trials in national parks on both sides of the Murray River. Under the project, trees will be cut down at 22 sites over about 400 hectares of the Barmah National Park in Victoria and the Murray Valley National Park in NSW. Most of the timber will be burnt as firewood.

The study will examine whether felling smaller trees gives more established trees a better chance of surviving in the parched environment.

Parched environment, eh? Here's the picture that appears just  a centimetre or so above that description.

It isn't just moral and political corruption that is laying Fairfax low. It's that the company has elevated blind stupidity to a prime virtue.

A NOTE: Anyone genuinely interested in the health of the Murray, particularly around Barmah (where the Professor once hooked a Murray Cod so large it could not have been landed without the assistance of a Land Rover's PTO winch), needs to read this. It will explain why those red gums need thinning, why the myth of their timeless presence is so oft and loudly repeated, and why Fairfax's green legion of environment writers should never, ever be believed, slack and lazy bastards that they are.)

Media Botch

SOMEWHERE in a tear-stained corner of the Media Watch HQ a researcher is feeling bruised, battered and bitterly disappointed. That person also should be burdened with guilt, but as this is the ABC we are talking about, that emotion will be a non-starter, despite the drubbing Jen Marohasy has just dispensed.

Here is how we can assume it went down, going on what newsroom types have told the Professor is Media Watch's standard operating procedure. Late on Friday, Marohasy would have received a swag of questions from one of the altar boys who kneel before Jonathan Holmes’ pulpit. These always arrive on Fridays to catch the target unaware and, more important, to permit inadequate time to compile a comprehensive response. There would have been follow-up communications as well, all stressing that the show has a deadline and repeating the need to respond ASAP. By Monday, further attempts to respond would be rejected on the grounds that the show's shooting schedule was so far advanced no changes or amplifications could be included.

Marohasy’s crime is to have argued with great energy and much evidence that the Murray’s lower lakes are being stuffed by the gates which prevent seawater flooding in when drought reduces freshwater flows. Marohasy maintains the lakes and the ecology they support are better served by allowing them to become brackish from time to time. The tone of Media Watch’s question was accusatory, the implication being that Marohasy was in the pay of “irrigators and water-rights entrepreneurs” who wish to spread more Murray water on their upstream crops.

From this we can conclude that someone at the World Wildlife Fund, Greenpeace, or some other group had worded up a mate at Media Watch and provided their version of the settled science about how the lakes have always been freshwater etc. As the catastropharian Robyn Williams is the ABC’s science editor, an empty test tube if ever there was one, it is safe to assume that familiarity with scientific methods and matters in the Media Watch compound is best measured with a microscope. Indeed, given the youth of what one gathers to be a typical Media Watch researcher it would be a surprise if an appreciation for science extended any further than a recognition of the need to drink more water while under the influence over Ecstasy.

Well Holmes’ crew picked the wrong woman. Marohasy puts down their questions like a vet with an old dog. Gently, calmly, but ever-so-firmly she answers them all. The exchange is now on her website.

She also contacted her lawyer and had her warn Media Watch to be very, very careful.

And guess what? Holmes junior league crusaders backed right off, dropped the story and ran away. The item will not be running tonight, although there is no guarantee the blunt tools in Holmes drawers will not go back to their green mates for fresh ammunition. Fools and fanatics, particularly the publicly funded varieties, are like that: they never know quite when to stop.

As for Media Watch, being forced to can the Marohasy hatchet job must have left a hole in tonight’s show, so Holmes could need something fresh and scandalous to justify a bit more of his pouting and smugging. Time is short, so why doesn't he hunt close to home?

Why not examine your own show’s methods, Jonathan? And while you are at, what about correcting the record in regard to the deletion of Milly Dowler’s voicemails, or is regret another of those sentiments unknown to ABC types?

How many weeks has it been now?