The Daily Telegraph is facing sharp criticism after two of the paper's writers named the racehorse Black Caviar as their "sportswoman of the year".

In a column outlining "the best and fairest of 2012", theTelegraph's sports editor Phil Rothfield and fellow writer Darren Hadland described Black Caviar as a "mighty mare [who] took on the Poms on their own turf and still beat them".

In doing so, they overlooked numerous human candidates, including the track athlete Sally Pearson, cyclist Anna Meares, and Australia's 4x100 freestyle relay team, all of whom won gold medals at the London Olympics. At the Paralympics, the swimmer Jacqueline Freney took home eight gold medals.

The word "woman" is defined in all standard contexts as an adult human female.

Rothfield and Hadland named Michael Clarke, the captain of the Australian cricket team, as the "sportsman of the year" in the same article.

http://www.mediaspy.org/2012/12/23/after-naming-a-horse-as-sportswoman-of-the-year-daily-telegraph-draws-ire/

Meanwhile the Razer (sport? What's that?) at Crikey sez:

Australians have raised no idols save for an outlaw, Ned Kelly, and Carbine, a horse. This was the view historian Brian Fitzpatrick held of his fellows in 1956. But, that was a long time ago and our mythology’s expanded since then. The national tabernacle now surely includes those who fought and died in the Dardanelles and, of course, Phar Lap.

And thanks to a winning streak unequalled in a century, it seems a mare could join these heroes. According to The Daily Telegraph, Black Caviar is Sportswoman of the Year and galloping her way toward a pantheon dominated by sires and men who died badly for no good reason.

In a piece that nobody at News Limited expected any woman to read, Phil Rothfield and Darren Hadland took a “tongue in cheek” look at the year in sports. It looked like something that was knocked up in five minutes; there can be no other way to excuse the use of old s-x-and-cricket gag “bowl a maiden over” to describe batsman Chris Gayle.

http://www.crikey.com.au/2012/12/24/razer-misguided-feminism-offends-everywhere-even-in-a-horse/

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Gus: Obviously some fair-monded people saw the bloody piece and a few got their knickers in a knot and I can't blame them, considering the entire media is totally blind to Tony Abbott's mad antics and uses stupid unfunny stunts such as purile nominations to mask ingnorance-plus of any subject... Some levels of "feminists" may be in similar trenches as various forms of chauvinists and misogynists... But in general feminists ar entitled to a better back rub... It's a question of degree, though one can say that The Terrograph is 100 per cent a joke of a newspaper...

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But the really offensive aspect of this ostensibly hilarious joke and the lame attempts to defend it, are that they reproduce the crippling sexism of the media in reporting women’s sport.  We know this article is sexist, because it would never happen to men’s sport despite Rothfield’s attempt to suggest otherwise.  But it is also part of a much wider culture of sexism in reporting women's sport.
Women’s sport is underfunded and women athletes are underpaid.  Women’s sport is under-reported and when it is reported, women athletes are often patronised.  Older male Olympic Games commentators continually referring to women as ‘girls’ is an example of this.  In another way, so is the sexualisation of the so-called lingerie league football where women are said to be athletes, but the context of the sport indicates its true agenda.  In a similar vein, Rothfield and Hadley cited Australian Olympian Leryn Franco as the 'hottest Olympian'.  Faster, higher sexier? I can read the sports pages of mainstream media for days and days without seeing a single report of a woman athlete or women’s sporting competition.  The message I get is that women simply do not play sport.  This is patently incorrect.  While I learn daily about the slightest twinge or pain (particularly in the groin region) in any number of sportsmen and endless speculation over their games, their training, their coaches and their administrators, sportswomen and their world of training, coaching and competition is all but invisible.
http://katgallow.blogspot.com.au/2012/12/shining-light-on-sexism-in-sports.html

LET’S JUST PUT our thinking caps on for a minute and imagine what Australia would be like if Rupert Murdoch gets his wish and in 2013 installs a coalition government led by Tony Abbott, Joe Hockey, Julie Bishop and Mal Brough.

Everything they do will be according to the wishes of a man who lives in a $100 million dollar Park Avenue penthouse in New York city and spends most of his working days in a skyscraper office building with a telephone clamped to his ear directing the activities of his 50,000 employees. That is, when he is not encircling the globe in his private fleet of Boeing jets.

We can expect that the Coalition team will have some attractive policies to present to the voters before the 2013 election, but they will be discarded and forgotten immediately the votes are counted because they will be too busy celebrating and getting their marching orders from the old man in New York.

Then the new policies will click in and, bearing in mind the record of previous Liberal governments, we can expect the following changes — extracted from reading recent editions of The Australian and past activities of News Corporation.

read more: http://www.independentaustralia.net/2012/politics/if-rupert-murdoch-wins-in-2013/

A few days ago, The Australian received an adjudication by the Australian Press Council against them for likening wind energy to paedophilia in the piece mentioned above. This slap on the wrist was promptly followed by another piece in The Australian by the same author who unrepentantly declared:

“I stand by every word of the piece – especially the bit about paedophiles. I would concede that the analogy may be somewhat offensive to the paedophile community.”

No ambiguity there, this is the deliberative reasoning system wantingly, and wantonly, drawing an analogy between wind energy and paedophilia. There really are people like that out there, and they are given an opportunity to publish in Australia’s national newspaper.

But that doesn’t mean The Australian will publish just about anything, however bizarre or pornographic it may be. Far from it, The Australian is quite capable of editorial restraint. For example, they elected not to run the statement from the ABC that very calmly explained the difference between an analogy and emotive short-circuitry.

read more: http://www.independentaustralia.net/2012/business/media-2/day-the-australian-died/

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The Australian is not so much the worry... It's only read by rabid ritewingnut Liberals who do not need to be convinced of anything... They hate Julia, they hate Swan, they even hate Turnbull...

But the worry is that other merde-och rag, the Terrorgraph (and its provincial derivatives) or whatever they call it... It is designed with precision — like the New York Post is in the US — to target the mind of the ordinary Australian bloke, that of the people whose brains is wired for the path of least resistance since asking proper questions can be demanding... Thus the spoon-feeding of crap is done like one feeds a baby with an aeroplane/spoon to make the babe swallow the mush... It is designed to sway the usually inclined Labor-voter towards making "think" Liberal — that is to say that everyone can dream to be king, as long as one slaves all one's life... It's the dream based on inequity and selfishness, packaged, in glorification of biffo and the "tits and bums" of stars, in fish and chips newswrapper...

PHEW, what a stressful week that was. For a while there it looked like Kylie Minogue had given up her recording career - it was almost too distressing to contemplate. Certainly, it made a mess of my Monday morning.
The prospect was so dramatic that media outfits across the nation splashed with the story. Of course they would. I mean, Kylie giving up singing? That's about as big as it gets, right?
Actually, no, but it was the middle of January and there wasn't a whole lot of news about. But here's the thing: it was wrong. Kylie apparently isn't giving up singing, a fact later recorded in slightly more subdued terms across the country on websites and in papers. As The Age noted: ''It could rank as one of the shortest retirements in music.''
The episode was a confluence of an old and a new phenomenon.
Australian media outlets have for years been susceptible to publishing on Monday mornings the exaggerations, half-truths and falsehoods that emerge in the British Sunday tabloids. Sure enough, suggestions Minogue was tossing in her singing career emerged in Britain's Sunday Mirror. The story got traction here on Sunday afternoon and evening, published on various websites and through the same social media the star eventually used to quash the story. Of course it did. What web editor wouldn't like such click-bait? All those Kylie fans, all that traffic. Eventually it found its way into major newspapers on Monday.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/modern-medias-not-wrong-for-long-approach-is-just-not-good-enough-20130119-2d04j.html#ixzz2IVagDeJ3

Outgoing Australian of the Year Geoffrey Rush has expressed frustration that high achievers in the performing arts do not get the same recognition in Australia as those in sport.

The Oscar-winning actor has delivered his valedictory speech in Canberra ahead of this year's winners being announced at a concert outside Parliament House.

In his speech, Rush said a newspaper article at the end of last year described him as being pushed off the stage by Australian cricket captain Michael Clarke.

"He is the undisputed captain of 2012, end quote," Rush said.

"I'm sure he is and I'm genuinely in awe of his historic achievement, but I do hope that one day a graduate from the Newtown High School of Performing Arts or the Empire Theatre youth program will challenge this automatic presumption in our psyche."

Rush said he was often asked what it meant to be an Australian.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-01-25/rush-delivers-valedictory-speech/4484718?WT.svl=news3

See toon at top...

Black Caviar's stature in Australian racing has been further recognised with her induction into the Racing Hall of Fame.

The highest honour at Thursday's induction ceremony went to Carbine, who was elevated to legend status alongside Phar Lap, Makybe Diva, Bart Cummings, Arthur Scobie Breasley and TJ Smith.

Carbine, who carried a record 66kg to victory in the 1890 Melbourne Cup, also had an illustrious career at stud and his blood is carried by many of the champions of the modern era.

The unbeaten Black Caviar, who won her 23rd race last Saturday, is just the second horse inducted before retirement, the other being dual Cox Plate winner Sunline.

The Australian Racehorse of the Year for the past two seasons, Black Caviar was officially ranked the world's best sprinter for 2012.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-02-21/black-caviar-inducted-into-hall-of-fame/4533280

See toon and story at top...