(but The Age really is the most left-wing major paper in Oz) That may well be. So what?
What is the problem with having one left-of-center (whatever 'the center' is supposed to mean in this context) mainstream newspaper? Please, I really want to know.
It is not like the Herald Sun doesn't exist. It is not like the commercial TV channels don't exist. It is not like the commercial Radio stations don't exist. Faris' point, however, was that the Age being so far to the left was in and of itself wrong. He would, it seems, prefer for the choice not to be exposed to the right-wing commentariat to go away.
Faris drew attention to precisely one statement: The Age is Left Wing. Well, yes, it is, compared with all the other newspapers in the country. Why is this an issue? If he doesn't like The Age, no-one is forcing him to read it. No-one is silencing Henderson, as he still has his SMH gig.
Are you really comparing FoxNews with The Age? Seriously? Because The Age does, you may be surprised to know, print articles attacking both Federal and State governments. FoxNews, on the other hand, is infamous world wide as a 24hour source of lunatic far-right propoganda. The Simpsons episode where the FoxNews crawler had such messages as 'Democrats Cause Cancer' and 'JFK posthumously joins GOP' was funny because they were not far off what are really shown.
What I got from what Faris chose to highlight about Henderson's dropping was that this allowed more space in a Left-wing newspaper for Left-wing columnists. The Horror! If Kenneth Davidson had been dropped, to make way for a columnist who was prepared to say that whatever the government was doing, it must be the right thing, then there would not have been a whimper of protest. Nor, I suspect, if Murdoch were to buy The Age outright and do his usual trick of replacing the entire editorial team with a more compliant one (as he did in Britain).
The problem is not that there is a narrower range of opinion in The Age. The problem is that the center of the range of opinions in The Age has been shifted in the wrong direction. Faris explicitely compared The Age with the SMH, in the context of the SMH printing more conservative columnists. Why couldn't the Age be more like them? Why couldn't they have been grown-up, and sensible, and seen the light, and been more like the right[!]-thinking us?
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Re: Not what he says
Date: 2005-06-11 10:07 pm (UTC)That may well be. So what?
What is the problem with having one left-of-center (whatever 'the center' is supposed to mean in this context) mainstream newspaper? Please, I really want to know.
It is not like the Herald Sun doesn't exist. It is not like the commercial TV channels don't exist. It is not like the commercial Radio stations don't exist. Faris' point, however, was that the Age being so far to the left was in and of itself wrong. He would, it seems, prefer for the choice not to be exposed to the right-wing commentariat to go away.
Moreover, if the readership of the newspapers is so far to the right, 1) does that mean therefore that I don't exist? and 2) why, as I said, does The Age get as high a readership as it does? It's not simply the Green Guide, as the Sunday Age and the Herald Sun do their own TV guides. It might be the Saturday Age Jobs Section, but you yourself pointed out that the Sat. Age numbers are dropping (probably because of Internet Job sites). At least some of these readers must like what The Age is doing. Oh, sorry, I forgot, they are all left-wing Leunig-loving Leninist Latté-sipping ivory-tower academics, and therefore aren't real people, and so don't count.
Faris drew attention to precisely one statement: The Age is Left Wing. Well, yes, it is, compared with all the other newspapers in the country. Why is this an issue? If he doesn't like The Age, no-one is forcing him to read it. No-one is silencing Henderson, as he still has his SMH gig.
Are you really comparing FoxNews with The Age? Seriously?
Because The Age does, you may be surprised to know, print articles attacking both Federal and State governments. FoxNews, on the other hand, is infamous world wide as a 24hour source of lunatic far-right propoganda. The Simpsons episode where the FoxNews crawler had such messages as 'Democrats Cause Cancer' and 'JFK posthumously joins GOP' was funny because they were not far off what are really shown.
What I got from what Faris chose to highlight about Henderson's dropping was that this allowed more space in a Left-wing newspaper for Left-wing columnists. The Horror! If Kenneth Davidson had been dropped, to make way for a columnist who was prepared to say that whatever the government was doing, it must be the right thing, then there would not have been a whimper of protest. Nor, I suspect, if Murdoch were to buy The Age outright and do his usual trick of replacing the entire editorial team with a more compliant one (as he did in Britain).
The problem is not that there is a narrower range of opinion in The Age. The problem is that the center of the range of opinions in The Age has been shifted in the wrong direction. Faris explicitely compared The Age with the SMH, in the context of the SMH printing more conservative columnists. Why couldn't the Age be more like them? Why couldn't they have been grown-up, and sensible, and seen the light, and been more like the right[!]-thinking us?