There’s objective journalism, and then there’s the Daily Telegraph

There are days when I pull a muscle in my eyes from rolling them so much. Today is one of those days. Check out this fine example of “objective” headline writing from the Daily Telegraph: Just who’s going to pay our bills now that the carbon tax has passed.

Um, that would be the Government. You know, the generous compensation package that your own newspaper reported on during June.

Of course, the reporting by Gemma “302 words on how Gillard is a hypocrite because we’ve calculated the emissions from flying a single pair of shoes from China” Jones is just as, ahem, balanced and objective:

But as the carbon tax Julia Gillard vowed never to impose was passed into law, yesterday marked a dark day for the majority of Australians opposed to it.

Oh, puh-lease. Anyone with half a brain knows that minority governments involve compromise in order to work.

Liberal MPs seized on a handshake between Mr Brown and Labor Senate leader Chris Evans.

“That handshake between the leader of the government and the leader of the Australian Greens says it all about the betrayal and the sellout of traditional Australia Labor Party values to the Greens,” Liberal senate leader Eric Abetz said.

OH NOES! A handshake! I shook hands with a charity collector this morning, so clearly I have sold out to ChildFund Australia.

Later, Jones “objectively” writes that Bob Brown was “crowing” over the victory. (It is possible that the story was changed in subbing, but it’s unlikely given her prior form.)

Now to another “objective” story in the Daily Telegraph, this one from Andrew Carswell: Hot to Trot on Karl Marx’s dogma at the federal government’s media inquiry:

THE first academic chosen to appear at the federal government’s media inquiry yesterday is a Marxist who once claimed Western democracy was a charade.

A fine example of playing the man, not the ball.

Martin Hirst, an associate professor of journalism at Melbourne’s Deakin University, joined three other prominent critics of News Limited, publisher of The Daily Telegraph, in speaking at the opening day of the inquiry, claiming there were not enough strong left-wing opinions in the mainstream media.

It’s easy enough to test whether this is just a lefty-pinko claim. Let’s name the regular mainstream media columnists, shall we? The ones who write each day/week and feature on the MSM’s websites as regular contributors. On the right we have Miranda Devine, Andrew Bolt, Piers Akerman, Gerard Henderson, Paul Sheehan, Janet Albrechtsen, and pretty much everyone who writes for The Punch. Plus there’s an increasing number of Liberal politicians, both current and former, who write for Fairfax. On the left we have John Birmingham, Ross Gittins, Jessica Irvine. That can’t be right.

While they may not be mainstream, Professor Hirst’s views are certainly strong, and considerably left.

He holds views that are “considerably left”? Quick! Someone arrest that man for being in possession of opinions not shared by the Right.

The Daily Telegraph can reveal the professor and prolific blogger has been a contributor to the Marxist Interventions web portal, on which claims are made he has been “the only Trotskyist to ever work in the federal press gallery as a journalist”.

Yeah, that isn’t a scoop. It’s publicly available information on the Marxist Interventions website, where it states: Martin Hirst has been active in socialist politics since 1975 and claims to have been the only Trotskyist to ever work in the federal press gallery as a journalist. To suggest that it is top secret information that you have dug up is to lie to your audience. And it’s just as ridiculous as writing “The Daily Telegraph can reveal that Peter Costello was a former federal treasurer”.

In his submission yesterday, Professor Hirst attacked News Limited for slanting stories in a way that was against the government, saying: “If they can find a way of attacking Julia Gillard … They will do so.”

Uh, Carswell, this post begins with Exhibit A.