Monday, May 09, 2005
MEDIA WATCH ATTACKS!
The ABC’s Media Watch—using your taxes to monitor evil conservatives!—has launched into Janet Albrechtsen and Arthur Chrenkoff following Albrechtsen’s mention of Chrenkoff’s Good News From Iraq. The program’s attack begins with this extract from a recent Albrechtsen column:
When something positive does happen it either gets filtered through the anti war eyes of the media or is all but ignored. And that’s what the terrorists are counting on. They must detest The Wall Street Journal. Each fortnight the paper’s website includes a round up of good news from Iraq … last week came the latest instalment, all 27 pages of it.
Media Watch responded:
27 pages of good news, from the prestigious Wall Street Journal? We wanted to know more ... but couldn’t find it on their web site. Until we followed this link to a spin-off site called OpinionJournal.com, where, if you hunt hard enough ...
Opinion Journal is a WSJ spin-off in the same way Media Watch is an ABC spin-off. It’s run by the same management. Eventually Media Watch did find Arthur’s latest WSJ contribution, after some two million readers had no difficulty earlier locating Chrenkoff’s website:
Scroll down the page and its pretty soon apparent that far from being the news that no-one else has reported, Arthur’s good news is culled from stories produced by the BBC, the Washington Post, and other media outlets.
Stories like this —Iraqi Boy, 10, Gets New Legs in America
Surgeon, Prosthetics Firm Make Donations to Help Wounded Iraqi Boy Walk Again
— ABC News (US)
Great example, clowns, and a reminder of why Chrenkoff is such a valuable antidote to misery-chasing ABC tax leeches. Media Watch ignores the many items Chrenkoff cites that are shunned by the wider press.
There’s also a fair swag of material direct from government agencies like USAID. These pages were not produced by a Wall Street journalist, but a self described blogger.
Not only is he a mere blogger, but much worse:
So who is Arthur Chrenkoff? Well a quick google search throws up this ...
Dr.Arthur Chrenkoff is a former Policy Vice-President of Queensland Young Liberals. ...
Chrenkoff’s credibility is blown to hell! He’s exposed as a member of the evil party! Next, Media Watch plays the chickenhawk card:
He lives in Brisbane. He’s never been to Iraq, and has no plans to do so. Arthur just trawls the web for the good news from Iraq.
If it’s so damn easy, why doesn’t the ABC ever do the same?
Arthur is not paid by the Wall Street Journal or the Dow Jones website OpinionJournal.com which publishes his blog without editing.
Media Watch is apparently unaware that the Dow Jones Company owns the WSJ and all its associated sites. Either that or it’s trying to convince viewers that the primary WSJ site and OpinionJournal.com are separate entities. And what’s Media Watch’s problem with no editing? When the Melbourne Age edits Michael Leunig’s cartoons, Media Watch gets all upset about it. Janet Albrechtsen replied to Media Watch’s stupid questions:
”... the round-up is indeed compiled by Mr Chrenkoff and published online by the WSJ, a highly respected newspaper. Any suggestion that I somehow misrepresented the relationship between the WSJ and ‘Good News from Iraq’ would be the kind of slanted journalism I thought Media Watch was set up to eliminate, not perpetuate.
And she receives a predictably dumb answer:
No Janet.
Good News from Iraq is not published on the highly respected Wall Street Journal website — it’s a blog published by a sister site.
Take another look at that so-called sister site. See the big words at the top of the screen? “From THE WALL STREET JOURNAL Editorial Page”? And the “WSJ.com” icon to the left?
You’ll note that throughout this attack Media Watch hasn’t once sought to challenge any of Chrenkoff’s Good News. It simply aims to bring down Chrenkoff, a conservative whose views aren’t acceptable to Media Watch. As reader Cheesie writes: “Privatise the ABC. Right now. Even better, force it to work on Chrenkoff’s budget and see how far they get.”
UPDATE. Media Watch executive producer Peter McEvoy emails:
Just to correct your blog again.
Media Watch did not launch an attack on Arthur Chrenkoff. I spoke to Arthur at length before the story and have always made it clear that I think his “Good News” project is admirable.
Arthur clearly does a lot of hard work to compile his blog - I’m amazed that he finds the time on top of his job. I think it’s a useful collation although of course it’s only one side of the story. Arthur makes no bones about that. As he told me:
“In no writing of my own do I ever deny that those negative things are going on. I guess the problem that I see is that wherever there’s bad news it gets more prominence. In reporting there’s a natural bias to violence and controversy rather than boring things like ‘another sewerage station was opened today’ which in the long run may be more important. I’m trying to redress the balance.”
Arthur’s blog expresses his politics and his personal passion, which is great, but that’s not a substitute for reporting the full story, good and bad, from Iraq.
There is still an important difference between journalism and blogging. Just as there is a difference between the site that Janet Albrechtsen identified http://www.wsj.com (you left that out of your quote by the way) and the other Dow Jones site where Arthur Chrenkoff’s Good News appears http://www.opinionjournal.com.
Regards
Peter McEvoy
UPDATE II. Australian investigative blogger Gandhi reveals the secret links that connect Chrenkoff to a sinister global network of US-backed operatives located everywhere from Bagram to Berlin:
For example, Chrenkoff celebrated his blog’s first anniversary with some intriguing nods of thanks to supporters including “Major Tammes at the Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, our special correspondent and tireless translator Haider Ajina, and friends at CENTCOM, various embassies and ministerial offices, who have to remain nameless.”
Another example. I became suspicious that Omar Fadhil, one of the bloggers at Iraq The Model, was actually running a Berlin-based radio show. According to my Google search, about the only person in the world who posted a link to this German “Election Radio” show was Australian-based blogger Arthur Chrenkoff, who just happens to be a very big fan of the brothers at Iraq The Model (the feeling is mutual). Chrenkoff’s link to the German radio show was included in part 20 of his “Good News From Iraq” series. Surprise, surprise, Omar Fadhil at Iraq The Model then just happened to post a link to Chrenkoff’s Good News From Iraq Part 20 story!
Wheels within wheels, my friends. Wheels within wheels. And there’s more, as Gandhi exposes the terrifying truth about Iraq the Model’s Jewish promoter:
The site has links to 16 Jewish Publications, 5 Jewish Charities and 32 other Jewish Links. Now why is such a site promoting Iraq The Model?
You tell me.
As if that evidence weren’t compelling enough, Omar from Iraq the Model confirms it all:
Ghandi, everything you mentioned is true.
now, could you please leave us alone.
we’re the bad guys and you’re an angel from heaven, does this satisfy your beautiful sick mind?
get the fuck out of this CIA blog or I will have your brain taken out and tested in our secret laboratories.
Omar
Media Watch must hire this man. He will uncover for them all the darkness of the blogosphere.