The Australian's blogs: the unwashed is talking back

3 June 2007

These blogs are a useful thing, and personally I think Rupert blundered in permitting them. Reason?

Well, the thing I notice about you Murdoch commissars (“officials whose duties include political indoctrination, detection of political deviation, etc.”) is that your analytical adroitness - and especially your grasp of the facts – doesn’t stand up that well when you are subjected to regular critical scrutiny.

You are fine when you are the only voice – indeed you can almost look objective, commanding and well-informed. But put you in amongst the cut and thrust of public opinion, and your biases suddenly become very visible, and your facts are often shown to have been cherry-picked to support a crusade.

Greg Sheridan and Paul Kelly in particular have sounded self-assertive to the point of arrogance for a very long time. It is hard to forget their 2003 excoriations of opponents of the Iraq war. (Though they seem to have.) That was easy enough to maintain when all they had opposing them was a few carefully selected letters to the editor.

Now things have changed. The misinformed, disinformed public is talking back.

2013 postscript: The Australian's management apparently took this message to heart; the paper's blogs were soon emasculated, and are these days not worth reading, let alone commenting on.