FURTHER to the earlier post in regard to the Walkley Awards, reader Bob on the Murray writes to point out that this year’s winner of the commentary & analysis division was none other than Laura Tingle of the Financial Review. “Have you read any of the columns she submitted?” he asks. “I had a bit of a look and they’re shockers.”
The supplied URLs led to three pieces of work by the AFR’s piece of work. Bob wasn’t joking. This is the temperate and reasonable way Tingle begins the first of three submitted articles judged to represent the best political writing of 2011:
There are two possible explanations for how an opposition presenting itself as an alternative government could end up with an $11 billion hole in the cost of its election commitments.
One is that they are liars, the other is that they are clunkheads. Actually, there is a third explanation: they are liars and clunkheads.
But whatever the combination, they are not fit to govern.
The AFR was once an eagerly anticipated guest in the Billabong’s brekkie nook, but these days it is seldom given the opportunity to make toast taste bad. Indeed, since Peter Ruehl’s death, only two or three copies have darkened the doorway. The dismal circulation figures, which have shed some 17% in three short years, suggest it has worn out its welcome in many other households and offices as well.
Do you think the likes of Tingle might have something to do with the rejection? Nah, that couldn’t be the case, not when her peers judge her to be the best there is – unless, of course, the collective esteem for a harpy and partisan hysteric reflects a mindset that might also explain the judges’ own publications’ current ills?
We joke about things that can happen only in America. Only in Australia is there just one daily business newspaper dedicated to proliferating the views of the opponents of capitalism, including many of its staff writers. And the only online business daily makes the AFR look rightwing. The drugs are better Down Under.
ReplyDeleteI think the AFR has a new editor-in-chief pinched from The Oz so will it be a matter of time before Laura T(B)ingle is relegated for incompatibility with the supposedly business theme of this once respected newspaper?
ReplyDeleteI don't think so - so I wont be a reader.
Perhaps Ms Tingle can point out to laymen like myself what she thinks of those in charge of our finances on how we can be 12 billion worse off from last year? Projections, scenarios and possibilitys are the keystones of this Government. Same as the Carbon Tax which is built on shonky modelling.
ReplyDeleteGo easy on her people, after all she is married to alan shamsey...
ReplyDeleteToo much pillow talk there I suspect Rabz. Ramsey was too awful for even the SMH to keep.
ReplyDeleteI discuss media bias, specifically in terms of A Sceptical Climate by Prof. Wendy Bacon (but, perhaps, in less gentlemanly terms than Prof. Bunyip might advocate) here.
ReplyDelete