Greens leader Bob Brown has renewed his call for an inquiry into Australia's media because he says news reporting and opinion have become increasingly blurred.

The Greens leader singled out The Australian, calling it a "viewspaper" that mixed news with editorial opinion.

"It's very difficult for readers these days to be able to read news as news, as fact, as what's happening," he said.

There is a piece by Amanda who suggest that Simon Crean should replace Julia. There is another piece by another Liberal (conservative) luminary who suggested that Bill Shorten should put his hand up and replace Julia... Other Liberals (conservatives) suggest that Rudd should be coming back and replace Julia... Yes the media is full of them who want to see Julia go... These Liberals (conservatives) are annoyed that Julia, despite low popularity polls — polls mostly driven by the Murdoch media and their own liberal (conservative) porkied press releases, actually gets quite a few runs on the board. Most people know that despite "what some media commentators call Julia's "lack of communication skills" to the plebs (us), she is the only Labor figure that can contain Tony Abbott's devious hubris and not let the lies peddled in the media get to her too much.

What annoys these Liberals (conservatives) is that despite a few set back and a few polcies that may not be palatable but are efficient, Julia is doing a much better than Tony and his bunch of midgets ever would.

So they all want her to be going, going gone.. They all want her to be "finished" by her own mob... Because Julia is the only person who presently stops their Tony be ruler of the world...

Tony is a nasty, lying, vindictive and thoughtless puppet, but it's theirs,  not Labor's...

Hopefully, Labor knows that Julia is its only hope, not so much to be "re-elected" at the next election, but to actually do good things for Australia till the next full on ballot...

A new opinion poll suggests former prime minister Kevin Rudd could lead Labor to victory if a federal election was held today.

The latest Nielsen Poll published in today's Fairfax broadsheets says Labor's primary vote would jump from its current low level of 27 per cent to 42 per cent if the party brought Mr Rudd back as leader.

Labor would be ahead of the Coalition on the two-party preferred vote by four points, with a jump to 52 per cent.

But under Julia Gillard the poll shows no change for Labor since last month, with the Coalition ahead 58 per cent to 42 per cent in two-party standings.

Only 19 per cent of survey participants chose Ms Gillard as preferred Labor leader.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-09-12/labor-would-win-with-rudd-as-leader-poll/2880852

My advice for what it's worth would be for Julia to carry on doing the "unpopular" but "necessary" policies for this country... As soon as the next elections in 1013 are announced, she should pass the baton to Rudd and go on a well deserved holiday — or get burnt at the stakes...

We will decide who gets kicked out of this country, and the circumstances under which they go.

That's pretty much the size of what Julia Gillard has announced today.

After several weeks of confusion and internal argument following the High Court's king-hit to the so-called 'Malaysia solution', the PM has simplified things somewhat.

Gone is the talk of onshore processing, and the last vestiges of the Left's fond imaginings that there might be a full revision of Australia's immigration policies. Gone is the prospect of a bipartisan process of negotiation between the Government and the Opposition.

What the Prime Minister has decided to do, with the support of her Cabinet and of her caucus, is to introduce legislation legalising offshore processing in general and try to shame the Opposition into voting for it.

It's a take-it-or-leave it offer. Ms Gillard in her press conference indicated that she saw no need to meet or talk to the Opposition Leader - "There's nothing to negotiate." Indeed, she skipped such niceties and went straight to sledging Mr Abbott for being a beady-eyed, mercenary political wrecker who wouldn't know a principled position if he snagged his Speedos on one.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-09-12/crabb-we-will-decide-says-gillard-and-so-will-abbott/2882026

The Commonwealth Ombudsman, Allan Asher, has resigned.

Mr Asher has been under government pressure to quit after it was revealed he provided questions for Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young to ask him during a Senate committee hearing in May.

The questions were framed so Mr Asher could complain of inadequate funding for his office and to detail problems with Australia's immigration detention centres.

Today, senior government ministers Anthony Albanese and Chris Bowen criticised Mr Asher for not living up to the standards of probity he sets for others.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard said she was concerned enough by the matter to have referred it to the Head of the Department Prime Minister and Cabinet, Ian Watt, who carpeted Mr Asher yesterday.

"I have been concerned about the conduct of the Ombudsman. I think it remains for the Ombudsman to explain how this conduct meets his obligations of independence and impartiality," Ms Gillard told a press conference.

Mr Asher, who also serves as the ACT Ombudsman, will take leave on Monday and officially leave the office next Friday.

In a statement, he said that he recognised the Ombudsman's "enduring strength lies in community confidence in its integrity".

"I have always acted in the interest of those I have served and to bring about meaningful, broad-ranging and long-term reforms to public administration.

"However, I accept that my actions prior to the May 2011 budget estimates hearing caused many in the community and the Parliament to call into question the impartiality of my office.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-10-20/ombudsman-resigns-after-questions-row/3581316

Sometimes smart people are too smart for their own boots — while idiots, like Tony, do well in the public eye that does not expect very much, except for someone to tell them the grass to be greener on the other side. The grass is never greener where ritewingnut charlatans, idiot and sociopaths roam, despite them selling snake oil and salted mines for an exhorbitant price...

From Robert Manne at Unleashed...

Somewhat to the surprise of the head of the media inquiry, Ray Finkelstein, I had drawn only two main conclusions in my recently published study of The Australian, Bad News.

Firstly, the paper would only change as a consequence of courageous and persistent criticism both from outsiders - individuals and other media - and from those insiders who disapproved either of the way the ideological agenda of the newspaper distorted the way it presented news and opinion or of its penchant for character assassination.

Secondly, and far more importantly, I had suggested that the control of 70 per cent of the state-wide and national newspaper market by a single corporation, News Limited, posed a threat to the health of democracy in Australia. Finkelstein pointed out that the figure was disputed. I told him that the figure of current circulation was based on recent research had been conducted by the redoubtable and objective Parliamentary Library.

Such a concentration of press ownership situation was not merely risible; it was unheard of in the English-speaking world and beyond. The only advanced democracy with a media ownership comparable to Australia's was Berlusconi's Italy. The decision to allow Murdoch this level of press ownership and to place emphasis on the regulation only of cross-media ownership, taken by the Hawke-Keating government in the mid-1980s, was a mistake.

Finkelstein asked whether such a concentration of ownership could be called a monopoly. I suggested it could, rather, be called an unbalanced duopoly because of the presence of the Fairfax press. He asked whether monopoly was not what economists might think of as "natural", given the declining profitability of newspapers and the shrinking newspaper market. I thought that it was precisely to avoid such monopolies that liberal economists insisted on competition.

Paper finally accepts that Birmingham did not rename Christmas in the 1990s

ONE of the media's most enduring urban myths, that of Winterval, may finally have been laid to rest after the Daily Mail admitted that there never was an attempt to rebrand Christmas with the politically correct term.
 
The tale has been doing the rounds since the late 1990s when Birmingham City Council's marketing department came up with the idea of 'Winterval' to describe festivities in the city between the late autumn Hindu festival of Diwali and New Year's Eve. Mistakenly, it was seen in some quarters as an attempt to sideline the tradition of Christmas.
 
Since then the term has become a stick with which to beat the politically correct.

http://www.theweek.co.uk/media/42231/myth-winterval-shattered-daily-mail-admits-error