The old joke for The Age used to be The Spencer St Soviet. It lost currency mainly because the Cold War is getting too long ago.
The Age usually attacks Labor governments for not being left-wing/progressivist enough (the level of acrimony is not the issue). And it is in the news business, so it can hardly avoid genuine stories. Even there, it's narrowness can get in the way -- I remember a former prominent Age journalist telling me that the problem with their coverage of issues under Kennett was that readers were left working out whether the latest attack was justanotherAgeattack or whether there was substance to it this time. Similarly, potential stories go begging because they don't "fit in" with the worldview.
When I was in Canberra, people would read the Oz, the AFR and the SMH. At best, we would glance through The Age because it was like the SMH only worse (more predictable, less substantive content).
As for FoxNews, it seems fairly clear to me that the rhetoric of each side in the US feeds off the other -- the right yells about treason, etc; the left yells about stupidity, etc; both yell about tyranny-being-just-around-the-corner. It is all way overdone, though it is natural to notice more the stuff that insults oneself than the stuff that insults other folk.
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Re: Not what he says
Date: 2005-06-12 08:26 pm (UTC)The Age usually attacks Labor governments for not being left-wing/progressivist enough (the level of acrimony is not the issue). And it is in the news business, so it can hardly avoid genuine stories. Even there, it's narrowness can get in the way -- I remember a former prominent Age journalist telling me that the problem with their coverage of issues under Kennett was that readers were left working out whether the latest attack was justanotherAgeattack or whether there was substance to it this time. Similarly, potential stories go begging because they don't "fit in" with the worldview.
When I was in Canberra, people would read the Oz, the AFR and the SMH. At best, we would glance through The Age because it was like the SMH only worse (more predictable, less substantive content).
As for FoxNews, it seems fairly clear to me that the rhetoric of each side in the US feeds off the other -- the right yells about treason, etc; the left yells about stupidity, etc; both yell about tyranny-being-just-around-the-corner. It is all way overdone, though it is natural to notice more the stuff that insults oneself than the stuff that insults other folk.