John Singleton, who controls 2GB and profits from Alan Jones's hysterical ravings, understands this concept extremely well. This is what he told Alan Kohler on Inside Business in 2005:

SINGO: I can tell you only this - there's sure to be no decisions made that are going to in any way affect the chances of John Howard being re-elected as Prime Minister in the next term, so...

KOHLER: What does that mean?

SINGO: Well, it means the terms are going to be, the changes to the media cross-ownership laws will be only those that don't make any existing media owners, doesn't disadvantage them.

KOHLER: And what do you think that turns into?

SINGO: It means life's a rort and it's only a rort if you're not in it, that's what it means. And John Howard likes being Prime Minister so he's not going to set out to upset the existing media owners by saying, "Oh, laissez-faire, let's have every available - let's have 50, 100 radio stations, 20 TV stations..." da da da da da. And the natural barriers to entry in other things like magazines and newspapers preclude it in any event, so...

It's this sort of unhealthy culture which Australia needs to tackle and News Ltd's brutal treatment of the Gillard government might just deliver a solid media inquiry that generates some useful reforms.

Sydney shock jock Michael Smith is no fan of Julia Gillard, but he's used her Fair Work Act to help avoid being sacked by radio station 2UE.

2UE has been trying to sack Smith, recently named The Power Index's Megaphones rising star, over an unaired interview with former Australian Workers Union president Bob Kernohan that raised allegations about Julia Gillard's former relationship with a union official.

Magistrate Shenagh Barnes yesterday granted an interim order that restrains 2UE from sacking Smith because it would contravene the Fair Work Act. 2UE now has to reinstate him on his former terms and conditions. It is unknown when the fiery talkback host will be back on air (Smith has been suspended since September 6).

Smith, who played a crucial role in turning allegations against Labor MP Craig Thomson into a national scandal, has bombed out in the ratings despite his skill at generating headlines

The latest ratings survey shows Smith with a piddling 5.1% audience share and an average daily audience of only 32,000. His afternoon rival, 2GB's Chris Smith (no relation), boasts an average audience of 86,000.

Michael Smith Lives To Rant Another Day

A school boy from Sydney's north was brutally bashed and verbally abused by more than 20 students for being Muslim, the boy has claimed.

Hamid Mamozai, 15, was allegedly hit up to a dozen times by two fellow students at Asquith Boys' High School on Wednesday as several more cheered and hurled racial abuse from the sidelines.

''[They were saying] hit him more, hit him more, he deserves it, you terrorists, go back to where you came from, go blow something up,'' Hamid told Channel 10.

He said he was kneed in the face four of five times and hit up to 15 times in the face.

Hamid was taken to hospital unconscious and with internal bleeding but suffered no serious injuries.

Najia, Hamid's sister, said he had been subjected to racial abuse at the school for up to two years and was ''emotionally and mentally sick'' because of it.

''The boy is scared ... he doesn't get out of the house,'' she said.

His mother, Hosna, who fled war-torn Afghanistan 20 years ago, said she had repeatedly complained to the school to no effect.

''I just want to know why this is happening, why the principal doesn't care that students are being bullied, why don't they stop it? I want other parents to know why this is happening,'' she said.

Asquith Boys' High declined to comment last night.

In response to inquiries from the Herald, a spokesman for the Department of Education said one student had been suspended for 20 days and the police had been informed.

Teachers provided immediate assistance to Hamid and called his family and an ambulance when the incident occurred, the spokesman said.

Hamid and his family have been offered counselling and the school has arranged to meet with Mrs Mamozai this morning.

''Racism is not tolerated by Asquith Boys' High School, which disciplines students engaged in such behaviour and supports students subjected to it,'' the spokesman said.

''Disciplinary action has been taken against students who have previously used racist language to the injured student. Due to the police investigation, it is inappropriate to comment further on the incident at this stage.''

Schoolboy was beaten 'for being a Muslim'

Can we really be surprised at this behaviour, given the recent anti-muslim sentiment stirred-up within the community by the usual "shock jocks"?

This incident & any other racist behavior is something that we should all be ashamed of.

Disgusting. 

The Australian clears Gillard as bully boy Bolt remains defiant

We produced this detailed examination in our August 30 edition of the attempted smear of Julia Gillard by the aggressive right wing triumvirate of Andrew Bolt, Michael Smith and Glenn Milne.

In our view, the issues about what Julia Gillard knew of the AWU irregularities were worthy of discussion, but certainly not in the style or context pursued by this blokey trio and only if the facts were accurately presented.

Whilst Milne was sacked from Insiders and hasn't appeared in The Australian again and 2UE attempted to sack Mike Smith but was reportedly thwarted by Julia Gillard's Fair Work Act, News Ltd and Network Ten have seemingly done nothing to discipline the forever bullying Andrew Bolt.

Even The Weekend Australian produced this interesting piece by Hedley Thomas last Saturday which revealed Pauline Hanson's controversial former adviser John Pasquarelli was behind the statutory declaration produced by former AWU heavyweight Bob Kernohan shortly before the 2010 election. Pasquarelli is a former Liberal too, which smashes the credibility of saying Kernohan was a genuine Labor man seeking truth and justice for his long-suffering members.

And then there was these killer lines from long-serving investigative News Ltd reporter Hedley Thomas:

The Weekend Australian has examined thousands of pages of documentation and conducted numerous interviews to test long-standing allegations, referred to in last year's statutory declaration, that Ms Gillard - as a junior partner at the Melbourne law firm Slater & Gordon - was involved in wrongdoing by her then boyfriend, Mr Wilson.

None of the material examined is capable of supporting the claims that Ms Gillard was a beneficiary of ill-gotten funds or that she knew at the time that Mr Wilson was involved in alleged fraud.

On the material available, the most that could be said is that Ms Gillard and Slater & Gordon provided legal advice to Mr Wilson at the time and that she was unaware he was simultaneously involved in alleged fraud.

End of story, you would think, yet Andrew Bolt is the only person yet to have conceded he was wrong to claim a scandal was about to break that was so damaging for the PM, that she may be forced to resign.

Stephen Mayne

Just the other day I found myself listening to Ray Hadley, the famous football and current affairs commentator, explaining to his radio audience how the government's evil carbon tax would ruin us all.

To be honest, I didn't understand the finer points of his argument, and I'm not sure he did either. He was radiating rather more heat than light, as he is wont to do, but the message was clear: Mad Julia, the Greens, and the independent MP Rob Oakeshott were hell-bent on wrecking the joint. Disaster was upon us.

This echoes the dire predictions we have been hearing elsewhere. The mining magnate Gina Rinehart, down to her last $11 billion, give or take, has been warning anyone who would listen that the coal industry is in deep trouble. The extra costs imposed by the carbon tax would see foreign investment driven away from our shores.

Then there's Tony Abbott, who has been stumping the country in hard hat and fluoro safety vest to let us know that coal is "a goner". This "toxic tax" would force mines to close down here, there and everywhere, with thousands of jobs lost. And that, in turn, would devastate the steel industry. Whyalla, he said in April, would become a "ghost town, an economic wasteland if this tax goes ahead".

Yet something odd is happening. Just last week, la Rinehart picked up a cool $1.26 billion by flogging off one of her private companies, Hancock Coal, to an Indian conglomerate, GVK. Not bad for a day's work. GVK announced it would invest another $6 billion to develop Hancock mines in Queensland, and the infrastructure that goes with them.

These were "truly world-class coal assets in both quality and scale", said the GVK group vice-chairman, Sanjay Reddy.

And the puzzle gets deeper. Last May, India's biggest coal importer, Adani Enterprises, forked out $1.8 billion for the Abbot Point coal port terminal, just north of Bowen in Queensland. And it plans to build another $1 billion-plus coal port near Mackay.

That's on top of $10 billion the company has invested in developing mines and rail lines in Queensland's Galilee Basin. The chief of Adani's Australian operations, Jignesh Derasari, says that will create 5000 jobs during the construction phase and 3500 permanent jobs. By 2020 he plans to be shipping 60 million tonnes of coal to India each year.

And yet another Indian outfit, Lanco Infratech, has bought the Griffin Coal company in Western Australia for $750 million, with similar grand schemes for rail, ports and other infrastructure.

You can only assume these Indians - simple peasant folk, probably - have never heard of Mad Julia's carbon tax. Obviously, they have been right royally duped. Ray and Tony should do the decent thing and let them know they've made a frightful mistake.

Mike carlton

When more than a million people tuned in to watch Nine's coverage of the NRL preliminary final at Sydney Football Stadium last Friday night, it's doubtful they were expecting to be drawn into a Canberra bunfight.

But at halftime of the match between Manly and Brisbane that's exactly what they got, as unlikely political lobbyists Ray Warren and Phil Gould weighed in to the debate on poker machine reform.

The pair were clearly concerned about the impact mandatory pre-commitment plans would have on the bottom line of the code's poker machine-fuelled leagues clubs, the financial backbone of rugby league. And they were determined to send Andrew Wilkie and the federal government a message.

"Not only has the Manly Football Club been doing great work on the field this season," began Warren, in a clearly-planned minute-long editorial. "They've also been very busy working with the community off the field with significant funding from the Manly Leagues Club and Harbord Diggers, for whom a lot of these kids played."

Warren went on to list some programs run by the Manly Sea Eagles and paid for by pokies, before describing the mandatory pre-commitment technology as "untested".

"Yeah, the proposed mandatory pre-commitment that they've put forward is a rubbish policy," agreed Gould, as the players ran back on to the field for the second half. "It won't work. It won't solve the problem they say they're going to target, and it will do irreparable damage to the hospitality industry. It won't work and it will hurt."

"And that's an endorsement," finished Warren.

The "it won't work and it will hurt" line mirrors the message coming from key lobby group Clubs Australia, the most vehement opponent of Wilkie's reforms. Clubs Australia believes mandatory pre-commitment will ruin the pubs and clubs who thrive on poker machine dollars.

Channel Nine also included a link to the Clubs Australia website, which Warren and Gould urged concerned fans to visit. Clubs NSW has also uploaded the editorial to YouTube.

A spokesperson for Clubs Australia says Friday night's prime endorsement was not paid for and came off Channel Nine's own bat. The network had contacted Clubs Australia earlier in the week to say they planned to give them a plug, but that was all the information given.

"I think it reflects how much impact the mandatory pre commitment technology would have on the NRL and junior sport," a Clubs Australia spokesperson told The Power Index.

It's the latest salvo in an ongoing stoush, as rugby league becomes a key battleground in the poker machine debate in New South Wales. NRL leagues clubs are some of the most profitable poker machine venues in the country.

Last year the Parramatta Leagues Club earned $43.4 million in revenue from its pokies, while the Bulldogs Leagues Club raked in $69.5 million. The clubs say that without this cash community groups, including rugby league clubs, would suffer.

A former captain of the Canterbury Bulldogs, Steve Mortimer, has even been drafted on by Clubs Australia to sell "It's Un-Australian" campaign. MPs with powerful leagues clubs in their electorate are being lobbied behind the scenes.

They also have a key backer in the NRL, whose CEO David Gallop says the reforms will "severely damage rugby league and other community sports".

Warren's comments on Friday are also interesting in the context of his recent admission that he believed gambling had cost him a better life and that it annoyed him when problem gambling was "swept under the rug".

But for whom Warren and Gould were speaking on this occasion is unclear. Was it on behalf of the network or the commentary team? Or were they just personal statements? Channel Nine did not respond to an emailed list of questions.

But what is clear is that Channel Nine has an interest in the code surviving and prospering. As the primary commercial TV broadcaster, they have been a key partner of rugby league for years.

And if the NRL is right and mandatory pre-commitment see its clubs lose an estimated $144.4 million of revenue a year, then there might not be much left to broadcast.

Much of Nine's popular programming in New South Wales and Queensland relies on rugby league and plenty of their key identities have links to clubs desperate to see their leagues clubs continue to bring in poker machine dollars.

Gould is a key Penrith Panthers identity, having been recently installed as football operations manager. Last year the Penrith Leagues Club took home more than $90 million from poker machines.

Independent MP Andrew Wilkie says he was appalled at the comments by Warren and Gould. He says such comments are evidence that the pokies industry is prepared to "say and do anything to protect its profits".

"If the commentators had wanted to join the reform discussion during the game, they would have served the public interest by laying out the facts of the debate instead of the patent nonsense they subjected sports lovers to," he told The Power Index

Independent senator Nick Xenophon agrees. He's been backing Wilkie's efforts for poker machine reform and reckons commentators should stick to the game.

"They should get their facts straight. They should talk about how 40% of revenue made by clubs comes from problem gamblers," he told The Power Index.

"Commentators have a big audience and they need to be responsible about what they say - calling the reforms 'stupid', which will seriously address problem gambling in Australia, is quite simply irresponsible."

meanwhile .....

Poorly-performing Melbourne talkback station MTR is about to get a major overhaul - and may still be sold off altogether.

MTR - whose roll call of announcers includes Steve Price, Andrew Bolt, Sam Newman and Steve Vizard - has been a ratings flop since its launch last April. The latest ratings survey shows its audience share dwindling at 1.9%, far below rival 3AW's 16.9%.

MTR posted a loss of $6.2 million last year, according to analysis of the Macquarie Radio Network's latest annual report in the Australian Financial Review today. MTR's poor result contributed to the station's total net profit falling by 4.1%.

In the annual report, Macquarie executive chairman Russell Tate says the MTR joint venture with Pacific Star Network will not continue "in its current form...beyond October 2011."

Tate told The Age earlier this month that if Macquarie buys 3AW from Fairfax Media - as it still hopes to do - then the company would almost certainly sell off MTR. He speculated that it may revert to a music format.

Luckily for John Singleton and his shareholders, the net profit of Macquarie's Sydney stations jumped 63% on the back of strong performances from Alan Jones and Ray Hadley at 2GB.

Bolt & Co face shake up at MTR

The usual reactionaries have risen as one in defence of Andrew Bolt, the Melbourne columnist and village idiot, convicted on Wednesday for breaching the Racial Discrimination Act. An attack on freedom of speech, they howled. A dark day for democracy.

Since the verdict, Bolt himself has played the martyred victim, drenched in self-pity, a sickening spectacle.

His fellow Murdoch hack, Miranda Devine, invoked the spectre of Nazi concentration camps, thereby immediately losing the argument. The shadow attorney general, George Brandis, blathered about George Orwell's 1984.

Most ludicrous of all, one Sinclair Davidson, a Melbourne economics professor and, predictably, a "Senior Fellow" at that sink of right wing propaganda, the Institute of Public Affairs, wants to scrap the law altogether and let "market forces" punish discrimination. This is not satire. He meant it.

What these savants ignore is that Bolt just got it wrong. That's W-R-O-N-G. As Justice Moredecai Bromberg found, the columnist's two offending emissions in the Murdoch Herald Sun were shot through with "gross errors".

The bottom of Bolt's rant was that pale-skinned Aborigines were more white than black, and should behave that way. Instead, they had decided in adult life to become "official" or "professional" blacks, thus muscling in on "other people's glories" - jobs, preferment and prizes that should be reserved for proper Aborigines.

He sprayed special venom upon the academic Larissa Behrendt who, he claimed, had a German father. "Which people are 'yours', exactly, mein liebchen?" he sneered. Bolt clearly prefers his darkies dark.

In fact, Behrendt's father was a black Australian. She - and the other eight plaintiffs in the case - were raised from infancy in Aboriginal culture and society. Given that crashing blunder, the rest of his stuff falls in a heap, exposed for the racist garbage it was.

The judge did not smother free speech. He skewered dud journalism.

Bolt's parents were from Holland. If he believes that freedom of speech carries a licence to spear people for their ethnicity, he will not then object to me suggesting he would do better to quit the media and take up growing tulips and making cheese.

Wearing clogs. Ah, the Lying Dutchman.

Never let the facts get in the way of a good story, Mynheer.

Mike Carlton

The Occupy Sydney camp looked harmless enough when I saw it late last week. Sleeping bags and milk crates were arranged in a neat semi-circle at the top of Martin Place outside the Reserve Bank.

A bunch of boys stood listlessly here and there, ignoring a big-breasted girl in a sarong who was doing some sort of dance. A small Chinese man who looked like Ho Chi Minh chatted amiably with a fat little police officer. Placards demanded the smashing of capitalism and there was the mandatory photo of Che Guevara, Cuba's Guerrillero Heroico and ''an inspiration for every human being who loves freedom'', if you believe Nelson Mandela. Or the bloodthirsty butcher of Latin America, take your pick.

Everything was peaceful. There was no noise and the kids weren't getting in anyone's way. It was no trouble to walk past them to and from Macquarie Street.

But last Sunday the coppers moved in at dawn, busted up the camp, and 40 people were arrested. A senior police officer explained that bankers had been abused on their way to work.

How frightful. We can't have that sort of anarchy happening: bankers copping an earful one minute, world revolution the next. Saved in the nick of time. The police had been protecting the public, doing their job responsibly, said Barry O'Farrell.

For the next few days I scanned the media to see if there'd be any outcry about this assault on freedom of speech. You'll remember that when Andrew Bolt, Melbourne's village idiot, got done for racial discrimination, there were weeks of hullabaloo from the High Tory claque. The left had won an infamous victory for Orwellian political correctness; democracy itself was at stake.

This time around, not a peep. Freedom of speech, it seems, extends only to those people the right agrees with. When that ugly rabble of Alan Jones listeners hurled abuse at Julia Gillard from the public gallery in Parliament a few weeks ago, opposition MPs invited a bunch of them to lunch.

Mike Carlton

from Crikey .....

Sheridan flouts Press Council directive on 'illegal' asylum seekers

Crikey senior journalist Andrew Crook writes:

AUSTRALIAN PRESS COUNCIL, GREG SHERIDAN, THE AUSTRALIAN

The Australian Press Council has launched a fresh probe into The Australian's foreign editor Greg Sheridan over his use of "illegal" to describe asylum seekers, after the decorated columnist repeatedly flouted an earlier recommendation to stop.

As Sheridan presumably girds his keyboard this morning to respond to the tragic drowning deaths of dozens of asylum seekers off the Indonesian coast, Press Council executive secretary Jack Herman has confirmed the regulator had received a new complaint highlighting his re-deployment of the rogue descriptor.

Sheridan used the phrase twice in September -- on September 3 (the Gillard government was "now under siege over the illegal immigrant/boat people issue") and September 15 ("For the first time, listening to parliament this week, I thought the government had the better of the argument on the illegal immigrant issue").

In a front-page piece on October 14 reacting to the government's shelving of the Malaysia Solution, Sheridan tapped out the barred bon mot on four occasions ("Illegal immigrants and the people who smuggle them can mark this down as a magnificent victory over the Australian political system" / "It makes a mockery of the government's previous position that it is not Australian policy, or pull factors, but the conditions in the source countries, or push factors, that cause this determined illegal immigration" / "Illegal entry by boats will now be quicker, easier and cheaper than the lengthy process of trying to come here as an immigrant" / "Australia will now be subject to determined illegal immigration by people who have not undergone a selection process by Australian authorities".)

But he had previously been told to cease and desist. In an APC adjudication published in The Australian on June 20, as required under its membership of the Press Council, it had been made abundantly clear that the "inaccurate" and "unfair" phrase was out of bounds and that "asylum seeker" should be used instead. The Press Council's guideline no. 288 spells out how journalists should refer to people seeking asylum:

"The Council believes that the term 'asylum seeker' is a widely understood descriptor, generally a fair and a sufficiently accurate one, and one which avoids the kinds of difficulties outlined above. The Council recommends its use as the default terminology in relevant headlines and reports both by the press and others."

And as activists have repeatedly pointed out, under the UN Refugee Convention -- to which Australia is a signatory -- a person is lawfully able to enter a country for the purposes of seeking asylum, regardless of how they arrive or whether they hold valid travel or identity documents.

The June complaint was submitted by James Sharp and related to Sheridan columns on October 23 and 28 last year and March 5 this year. In its judgement, the APC noted The Australian was fully aware of its preference, having been the target of a another upheld complaint brought by "A Just Australia" in 2009.

Herman told Crikey this morning since the APC had issued its guideline it had received a positive and compliant response from most sections of the media. However, some journalists such as Sheridan had decided to stand their ground. There were also problems when politicians and officials used the term -- in that case "it was hard to expect journalists not to do the same".

Unfortunately for Sheridan, the APC found his use of "illegal" in the March 5 column in relation to Senate debate had not in fact been uttered by any senator. Also, according to the Council, the fact the pieces constituted analysis or commentary rather than hard news was no excuse.

News Limited is understood to be currently preparing a response to the latest complaint. It will also prepare a submission to the federal government's media enquiry led by retired judge Ray Finkelstein and journalism academic Matthew Ricketson, which is expected to examine the role of the APC.

Sheridan did not respond to three questions sent to him this morning in relation to the matter.

Andrew Bolt trawls through Peter Roebuck's past, Piers Akerman takes an interest in Papua New Guinea and Janet Albrechtsen gives a backhanded compliment to Julia Gillard. Here's what Australia's most powerful Megaphones have been up to over the past week.

Andrew Bolt: The conservative firebrand today takes aim at some sections of the media - namely Fairfax and the ABC - for their coverage of cricket writer and broadcaster Peter Roebuck's suicide. Roebuck jumped to his death from the sixth floor of a South African hotel on the weekend after police questioned him about an alleged sexual assault. Andrew Bolt thinks that the testimonials written by Roebuck's former colleagues should have mentioned Roebuck's former conviction for caning four South African boys.

"If Peter Roebuck were a Catholic priest, rather than a cricket writer, would there have been this silence?" he asks.

Piers Akerman: The one-time foreign correspondent lambasted Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard over the weekend for neglecting the political turmoil that's engulfing Papua New Guinea. Akerman slammed Gillard for not commenting on PNG's woes, before adding that it would be hypocritical of her to do so. Gillard, he argues, is in no position to lecture our neighbours on the need for a free press and independent judiciary given she instigated a media inquiry and accused High Court Chief Justice Robert French of inconsistency earlier this year. As for Rudd, Akerman thinks three visits to PNG since 2007 isn't nearly enough. "Barry McKenzie or Sir Les Patterson would stand tall as one of our representatives abroad today," he concluded.

Janet Albrechtsen: Julia Gillard and other Labor ministers received a lukewarm tick of approval from the economic rationalista today for attempting to distance themselves from The Greens. Emphasis on the lukewarm. Albrechtsen thinks the Prime Minister's support for dumping the ban on selling uranium to India is "the most sensible move by Labor since it returned to power in 2007". Yet, because she made the announcement after securing Greens votes for the carbon tax package, it's also further proof that she is a "political opportunist" who lacks conviction.

Alan Jones: The talkback king ventured out of 2GB's Pyrmont studios earlier this week to broadcast live from Mildura, where he focussed on the issue of water reform in the Murray Darling Basin. Environment minister Tony Burke re-arranged a flight to chat to Jones on air - a sign of the broadcaster's power if ever there was one - and unsurprisingly copped a grilling. Jones lashed Burke for the federal government's voluntary water entitlement buyback scheme - a policy launched by John Howard's government back in 2005. The rural rights advocate thinks it ridiculous that farmers are encouraged to sell their water entitlements when coal seam gas companies and timber operators can use as much water from the basin as they like.

Alan Jones and 2GB have breached the commercial radio codes of practice, according to findings published by the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) today.

The broadcaster breached the codes by "failing to present factual material accurately and by not making reasonable efforts to present significant viewpoints", ACMA said in a statement.

The segments of the Alan Jones Breakfast Show that were found to have breached the codes were broadcast in February this year and were about native vegetation laws and their administration by the then NSW Department of Environment and Climate Change.

ACMA said Jones failed to present more than one viewpoint about the laws.

"The codes require licensees to make reasonable efforts or give reasonable opportunities to present significant viewpoints on controversial issues of public importance," ACMA chairman Chris Chapman said.

"Licensees can do this either within the same program or across similar programs but merely presenting substantially identical viewpoints is not sufficient to satisfy the code."

ACMA also found that one of the segments contained a factual error.

The original complaint to ACMA also alleged 2GB breached the code rule against broadcasting material likely to encourage violence for its own sake but this was dismissed.

ACMA is in discussion with 2GB about its response to the breaches.

http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/tv-and-radio/fair-go-alan-jones-breached-broadcast-code-20111123-1ntrr.html

Holden has withdrawn its sponsorship of Kyle Sandilands's radio show after he launched a withering personal attack on a journalist, threatening to "hunt her down" for reporting poor audience reaction to his wobbly new TV project.

The car maker this afternoon announced it was dropping its financial ties to 2Day FM's Kyle and Jackie O Show after Sandilands launched a breathtaking attack on a News Ltd journalist, calling her a "piece of shit" after she reported on the falling ratings of his TV show.

from Crikey …..

Three golden moments from radio that have hit the news in the past 24 hours.

2DayFM's Kyle Sandilands attacking News Ltd journalist Alison Stephenson, one of the first of many to report on the unfavourable audience reaction to Sandilands' TV show:

"Some fat slag on news.com.au has already branded it a disaster. You can tell by reading the article that she just hates us and has always hated us ... What a fat bitter thing you are. You're deputy editor of an online thing. You've got a nothing job anyway. You're a piece of shit.

"This low thing, Alison Stephenson, deputy-editor of news.com.au online. You're supposed to be impartial, you little troll. You're a bullshit artist, girl. You should be fired from your job. Your hair's very '90s. And your blouse. You haven't got that much titty to be having that low-cut blouse. Watch your mouth or I'll hunt you down."

Tim Flannery, in a letter to Quarterly Essay, reveals how he was set up by 2GB's Ray Hadley, revealing that "caller David" who blew the whistle on Flannery's supposed hypocrisy for living in waterside home, was actually an employee of Hadley's:

"The experience has taught me several things about the hate media in Australia. First, as they seek to slur those they hate, they do not hesitate to manufacture a story if one does not exist. Second, as the story is picked up by other opinionists, they are prone to weave ever more scandalous fictional tidbits from the blogosphere into the story.

Third, in their efforts to obtain an interview some journalists will lie and ignore the truth when it’s inconvenient to them.”

Just this morning, 2GB's Alan Jones has been found guilty by the Australian Broadcasting and Media Authority (ACMA) of breaching two sections of the industry’s broadcasting code:

"It’s the first time in ACMA’s history that such a judgement has been handed down. Jones’s spray against the NSW Department of Environment and Climate Change (DECC) in February 2010 was judged by ACMA to be factually inaccurate and unbalanced.

"In addition to bending the facts and ignoring alternative views, Jones also played the man, as he so often does. He named an employee of DECC, whom he claimed was responsible, branded him 'a turkey' several times, and advised him to 'start checking the address of the nearest Centrelink office'. He then told his listeners, 'this bloke who’s giving you grief, we’ll find out where he goes next'.

"ACMA and Jones’s employer, radio station 2GB, are currently discussing what remedial action should be taken. There are six similar complaints against Jones and 2GB still waiting in the rack, this time over his broadcasts on climate change."

The Press Council have copped quite a bit of flak over the past few weeks of the media inquiry, with the tired phrase "toothless tiger" being repeated ad nauseum.

But given all these gents have form, is ACMA really any better?

from the Power Daily …..

Devine on vile Kyle, Jones found guilty, Bolt stars in climate-gate: the sequel

Miranda Devine rationalises Kyle's rage, Andrew Bolt trawls through the latest batch of leaked climate emails, and Alan Jones is in trouble with ACMA. Here's what Australia's most powerful Megaphones have been up to over the past week.

Miranda Devine: The Devine Miss M, like most Australians, was outraged by Kyle Sandilands' bile-filled rant last week against a female journalist who dared point out his latest TV show has been a ratings disaster. But the conservative columnist thinks it's too easy to blame Sandilands alone for his indiscretions. Political correctness, she believes, is turning Gen X males into misogynists.

"This the shape of neo-sexism, as Generation X males take out their frustrations on women, casting off a decade of extreme political correctness that did nothing but bottle up their rage," she thundered.

"In pop culture, crude sexism, misogyny, homophobia and plain old bad manners are rife. It is as if the political correctness constricting the surface culture has incubated fetid hatreds underneath, away from the moderating influence of civilised society.

"Not that it's any excuse, but Sandilands is the perfect product of a politically correct culture. We become what we repress."

Andrew Bolt: Christmas came early this week for our most powerful Megaphone. Another batch of leaked emails from researchers at the University of East Anglia's Climactic Research Unit was released, just in time to overshadow the UN climate talks in Durban.

"The leaked emails give a powerful impression of a tight group of scientists convinced of their 'cause' and stifling even their own doubts," Bolt opined.

"The real world was already making fools of the warming catastrophists who have for so long dominated the debate and shut out the sceptics. Now these emails let the rest of us into the joke."

For the record, it's worth pointing out that six parliamentary and scientific committees into the original 'climate-gate' emails found no evidence of fraud or scientific misconduct on behalf of the climate scientists involved.

Alan Jones: Sydney's shock jock supremo made history last week: he was found guilty of breaching two sections of the radio industry's broadcasting code. As The Power Index reported, it's the first time the Australian Communications and Media Authority has handed down such a finding.

ACMA found that Jones' February 2010 rant against the NSW Department of Environment and Climate was factually inaccurate and unbalanced. Jones accused the department of behaving in a way "that leads people to murder" and lambasted one of its employees as a turkey.

There are six similar complaints against Jones and 2GB still waiting to be decided, all regarding his broadcasts on climate change.

In 2011, Australia's Megaphones have been louder than ever. Alan Jones, Andrew Bolt, Ray Hadley and Co have all had a say in how this country's run – and caused plenty of controversy in the process. Here are their 10 most memorable moments.

10. Chris Smith helps co-ordinate an anti-carbon tax rally

2GB's curly-haired king of second chances upped the ante on Andrew Bolt and Alan Jones by not only railing against Julia Gillard's carbon tax but co-ordinating rallies to oppose it. Smith decided the time, date and place for the controversial March "No Carbon Tax" rally where some protesters waved sexist signs such as "Juliar: Bob Browns [sic] bitch".

"I've done nothing except support the right of people to protest," Smith told The Power Index earlier this year. "I think it's part of our role to do that."

9. Piers Akerman bags Rupert Murdoch's Mum

News Limited's rotund right-winger raised eyebrows across the nation in June when he said Rupert Murdoch's 102-year old mother, Dame Elisabeth, was too old to speak out on climate change.

"I just think the very elderly, no matter how cogent they are, should not be out fronting campaigns," Akerman opined on Insiders to the surprise of his fellow panellists.

"I'm saying that she's been used."

8. Ray Hadley flays Tim Flannery

The spittle was flying at 2GB studios last month when Ray Hadley launched an extraordinary spray against Climate Commissioner Tim Flannery. The stoush started when Flannery, writing in Quarterly Essay, accused Hadley of setting up a call with a neighbour about his waterside property. Hadley got the caller, David, back on his show to insist he'd never met the radio host and had called the program himself.

"Is there nothing you won't do to try and discredit your opponents?" Hadley fumed at Flannery. "You low bastard. You low bastard. Fair dinkum.

"When we go to a defamation court sometime in the future, professor, I'll rely on that tape from David exposing you for what you are. An unmitigated liar who's tried to sully my reputation by an attack on me yesterday which was completely and utterly false."

Flannery stands by what he wrote.

7. Janet Albrechtsen's rough sex rant

Australia's answer to Ayn Rand turned the dial to kinky in August by extolling the virtues of rough sex. Albrechtsen began the piece by quoting a scene from Sex and the City in which the prim and proper Charlotte asks: "Don't you ever just wanna be really pounded hard, you know?"

Writing after the case against former IMF boss Dominique Strauss Kahn collapsed -- despite his accuser having vaginal bruising -- Albrechtsen slammed "the stubborn puritanism that says if a woman is bruised during sex, then it must be rape".

"Surely we should have learned by now not to prescribe the choices women make about how they conduct their sexual lives, whether these choices are totally white-bread or rough and rollicking or somewhere in between."

6. Miranda Devine links lesbians to the London riots

The Devine Miss M sent gay rights advocates into paroxysms of rage by linking lesbian parenting to the London riots in an August column.

In the controversial piece, Devine wrote that Finance Minister Penny Wong's decision to have a child with her partner Sophie Allouache was not something the Australian public should celebrate. She went on to argue that gay marriage is "simply a political tool to undermine the last bastion of bourgeois morality -- the traditional nuclear family. You only had to see the burning streets of London last week to see the manifestation of a fatherless society."

Gay marriage supporter and former Australian Medical Association president Kerryn Phelps told The Power Index at the time that Devine's piece "defies intellectual scrutiny" and is "offensive on so many levels".

5. Derryn Hinch gagged by the courts

The self-described Human Headline was sentenced to five months' home detention in July for breaching suppression orders prohibiting the identification of sex offenders.

He was also banned from broadcasting, communicating via social media or engaging in gainful employment.

In sentencing, Magistrate Charlie Rozencwajg told Hinch his behaviour had been deliberate and contemptuous and said he would send the 67-year old to jail were it not for his poor health.

Hinch groupies will be relieved to learn the provocateur is, as of midnight last night, a free man again. He's already fired off his first tweet and will be back on air on 3AW this afternoon.

4. Michael Smith kickstarts a national scandal

Until August, Michael Smith was just a little-known, low-rating Sydney talkback host. Then came his 2UE interview with Labor backbencher Craig Thomson in which he elicited the revelation that Thomson had authorised the payment of Health Services Union funds to escort agencies. Smith continued to set the agenda on "brothel-gate" in the weeks that followed.

Yet, by September, our "Megaphone to watch" had been taken off air – and hasn't been heard since. His decision to dredge up old allegations of fraud against a former boyfriend of Julia Gillard saw his employer, Fairfax Radio, brand him a "real danger" to the station and try to sack him.

3. Neil Mitchell's war against Simon Overland

In February, the 3AW mornings host confronted Simon Overland with leaked crime statistics that undermined the commissioner's claim, made before the state's 2010 election campaign, that there has been a massive drop in street assaults in the Melbourne CBD. The leaked report showed while there had been a decrease in assaults in the "streets", assaults had increased in takeaway shops, restaurants, venues and in car parks over the last 12-months.

The leak heaped even more pressure on Overland, who Mitchell, The Herald Sun and disgruntled foes in the police force had long been campaigning against. Overland retired in June on the same day an Ombudsman's report was released criticising his handling of crime stats during the election campaign.

2. Alan Jones renames the PM "Ju-liar"

The Sydney shock jock's heated February interview with Julia Gillard still makes for fascinating listening 10 months later. First, Jones chastises the PM for arriving 10 minutes late. Then he slams her for reneging on her promise not to introduce a carbon tax before the last election.

"Do you understand, Julia, that you are the issue today, because there are people now saying your name is not Julia but Ju-liar and they are saying that we've got a liar running the country," Jones howled.

He then played a grab from a listener, Brad, saying he felt like he could cry when he heard Gillard's carbon tax announcement. "How much of this raping do we have to tolerate from this government."

Later in the year Jones went even further by calling for Gillard – and Greens leader Bob Brown – to be thrown out to sea in a chaff bag.

1.     Andrew Bolt found guilty

It had to be you, Andrew, it just had to be you. Our most powerful Megaphone became the star of one of the biggest free speech scandals in recent Australian history when he was found guilty of breaching the Racial Discrimination Act in September. Bolt was pinged for two 2009 articles in which he accused fair-skinned Aboriginal people of playing up being black for career advancement. After the finding, Bolt's supporters raised over $100,000 for full-page newspaper ads defending his right to offend and Tony Abbott visited Bolt's home to offer his support. Debate continues to rage about whether the Racial Discrimination Act should be amended and exactly who does, and doesn't, have the right to identify as Aboriginal.

Megaphones

from the Power Index …..

Alan Jones speaks out on what it means to be gay, readers rate Miranda Devine's year that was and Piers Akerman's crusading pays off. Here's what Australia's most powerful Megaphones have been up to over the silly season.

Alan Jones

It's a hard knock life for Jonesy. While most of us spent the holidays lazing around, the shock jock was hard at work, preparing to make his musical theatre debut. Jones is currently starring in the Sydney production of Annie, playing former Democratic – yes, Democratic – President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

"FDR was very left-wing and a big spender, those things . . . that I don't politically embrace," Jones said earlier this month. "But that's history and this is fictional, so I didn't have a problem with any of it."

Even more surprising, in an interview ostensibly about his role in Annie, the intensely private broadcaster opened up to gay publication SX about the issues face by young gays and lesbians.

"There is nothing wrong with people feeling that their sexuality is 'a' and someone else's is 'b'. Now the young ones understand that – you don't make choices about this, it just happens. The world is not going to end, and people have to be regarded and respected for who they are and what they bring to the world," he said.

And what does Jones think of the fact GLBT youth are far more likely to attempt suicide than their heterosexual counterparts?

"Well I think for a start we are still living in a fairly hypocritical environment," he told SX. "On the one hand we say, 'sexuality is not an issue. Gender is not an issue. Equality is everything.' And yet if someone happens to have the courage to say that they're gay, suddenly they're described as a 'gay artist' or a gay whatever."

"And that is sometimes difficult for people to deal with, and it leads to all these insecurities, which are totally unnecessary. One day we'll stop – I mean good god, you go back to Martin Luther King when he said people ought not to be judged by the colour of their skin ... Hopefully one day we'll develop a level of sophistication and decency where we're not referring to people according to their colour, their sexuality, their whatever. But while that continues, I have very strong concerns about the damage that this does to people."

Piers Akerman

Three cheers for News Limited's portly polemicist. While Bolt, Albrechtsen, Devine, Hadley and Jones have temporarily disappeared from our air waves and opinion pages, Akker Dakker has kept up the good fight by blogging daily.

He used his weekend Daily Telegraph column to continue his long-running crusade on the "Heiner affair", a controversy surrounding the Goss cabinet's 1990 shredding of documents relating to child abuse. In the two months leading up to the 2007 election, Akerman wrote 11 articles trying to ignite interest in the affair and Kevin Rudd's role in it. But his campaign got little traction; even News Limited stablemate The Australian dismissed it as a non-story and a conspiracy theory.

But Akerman's efforts may not have been in vain. Queensland Liberal National Party leader Campbell Newman told the columnist that, if elected, he may launch an inquiry into the scandal through the Director of Public Prosecutions.

Dick Smith

The entrepreneur/adventurer/philanthropist has never been afraid of taking on unpopular causes. Just look at his campaign for the government to bring David Hicks home from Guantanamo Bay, an issue he latched on to long before Hicks became a cause celebre of the Left.

But now he may have taken on his biggest challenge yet: convincing Aussies to pay more for online purchases.

This week Smith, via an op-ed in The Australian, backed electronics kingpin Gerry Harvey's call for GST to be applied on goods bought online from overseas.

"A globalised market cuts in both directions and, with the politicians' and media's help, we are kidding ourselves if we keep thinking there won't be a price to pay for all the products we are buying off the internet without paying tax," Smith blustered.

"Either jobs will go or wages will be cut, or it could be both...If we want low global prices, then we will most likely have to accept low global wages and working conditions. That's the rarely mentioned dark side of the GST-free bargains we are getting online."

Miranda Devine

For Sydney-based newspaper nuts, one of the joys of the Christmas season is Miranda Devine's annual column revealing some of her most memorable reader emails from the past year.

Luckily for us, she kept the tradition going this year despite jumping ship from Fairfax to News. Some of the feedback was unfriendly: "You aren't Andrew Bolt in drag are you?" asked one reader. Another advised Devine to enrol in counselling after she linked lesbian parents to the London riots. But the conservative colmnist also has her fans.

Reader Ian wrote: "I read your column on a regular basis and support your stand against the trendies, lefties and bigots (which is) obviously having an effect to generate the volume of responses against you. Because the truth hurts these people."

Allan Jones Speaks Out On Gay Rights, Mirand Devine's Hate Mail, Piers Akerman Blogs On .......