GERARD HENDERSON’S MEDIA WATCH DOG – ISSUE NO. 49

16 APRIL 2010

IN THIS ISSUE

● Steve Keen – False Prophet, Long March

● Who’s Reading Peter FitzSimons?

● Emma Alberici & Mark Colvin Get It Right Over Nazi-Soviet Pact

● LNL’s Left Night Out With David McKnight Proves Maurice Newman Correct

● Sydney Writers’ Festival 2010 – Much Tax-payer Funding and Carbon Emissions But Few Women

● Clarifications – Michael Kirby Plus Andrew Pegler v Neil James

● Bruce Shapiro Get It Wrong re Vietnam War

STOP PRESS

STEVE KEEN – HAVE MEDIA COVERAGE, WILL WALK

Right now, according to reports, economic alarmist and media tart Steve Keen is on his way between Canberra and Mount Kosciusko in the Snowy Mountains. This trek is Professor Keen’s settlement of his failed bet with economist Rory Robertson. Keen wagered Robertson that property prices would decline by 20 per cent during the current economic downturn. They didn’t; he walked.

Steve Keen first came to prominence when he was interviewed by Kerry O’Brien on the 7.30 Report on 8 October 2008 and by Liz Hayes on 60 Minutes on 19 October 2008. Kerry O’Brien did not argue the toss when Keen predicted an immediate massive decrease in home values along with zero interest rates in 2010 and 20 per cent unemployment lasting up to a decade. Earlier, Keen got top coverage – along with a colour pic – in the Daily Telegraph (21 September 2008) when he declared that property prices would fall by 40 per cent or so in the next few years.

Gerard Henderson analysed Steve Keen’s economic alarmism in his Sydney Morning Herald column on 21 October 2008. This led to a personal correspondence between Keen and Henderson along with an exchange in Crikey (on 21 October 2008 and 22 October 2008) where Henderson offered to purchase Keen’s inner-city apartment for 40 per cent off his reserve price. But the offer was declined. This raised the query as to why Keen had a reserve price when he believed that property prices would fall.

As he set off for the Snowy Mountains yesterday, Keen – ever the media-tart – once again predicted a 40 per cent cut in house prices and another Great Depression, as in the early 1930s and the late 1890s.

Gerard Henderson would again offer to buy the Keen abode at 40 per cent below the going price. But, alas, Keen is currently renting his digs.

 

Steve Keen is an academic – he’s Professor of Economics at the University of Western Sydney – and he was on telly again (Lateline, no less) last night.

NANCY’S PICK OF THE WEEK

Fitzy Fires – But Who Cares?

Nancy just loves perseverance. For weeks now, in his Sun-Herald column, Peter FitzSimons has been trying to spark up controversy as he tackles that soft-target – the Christian faith in general and the contemporary Catholic Church in particular.

▪ 21 March. Fitzy rails about sexual abuse in the Catholic Church and bags Pope Benedict XVI.

▪ 28 March. Fitzy reflects that he was expecting “dozens if not hundreds” of “angry emails” in response to last week’s column. How many did he receive? Answer: “Not one”. Fitzy put this down to the fact that “no Catholics are prepared to defend the indefensible”. He overlooks the possibility that no one gives a toss about his column.

▪ 4 April. Fitzy bangs on about how Reserve Bank Governor Glenn Stevens has expressed a belief in God. There follows lotsa sneering. Then Fitzy issues a challenge: “Send blistering emails. See if I care”. Yawn.

▪ 11 April. Fitzy reports that his rant against the Pope and his “cheap shot at Reserve Bank Governor Glenn Stevens” encouraged a response from “several religious nutters”. That’s all. Well, at least Fitzy knows his readership base. Yawn on.

FIVE PAWS AWARD

This week’s Five Paws Award goes to ABC Radio’s London based correspondent Emma Alberici and PM presenter Mark Colvin for last Tuesday’s reportage.

Ms Alberici and Mr Colvin not only understood the significance of the aircraft crash which killed the Polish president Lech Kaczynski. But they also recognised that it occurred on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the Katyn Massacre. The Katyn Massacre took place during the Nazi Soviet Pact – when Stalin’s Soviet Union was an ally of Hitler’s Nazi Germany and the two dictators had divided up Nazi Germany between them.

Who knows? Next up Professor Stuart Macintyre may include a general reference to the Nazi-Soviet Pact in all his histories covering the Second World War. Just one. See Issue 44.

Meanwhile it’s Five Paws each to E.A. and M.C.

MAURICE NEWMAN SEGMENT – SPOTTING ABC GROUP THINK

First Up, Some (Nancy Approved) Doggerel

Last night I saw upon a stair

An Aunty-view that wasn’t there

It wasn’t there again today,

Oh, how I wish it’d go away

This occasional segment is devoted to the ABC chairman’s speech on 11 March 2010 – in which Maurice Newman declared: “There should be no public perception that there is such a thing as an ‘ABC view’ – we must be neither believers nor atheists but agnostics who acknowledge people have a right to make up their own minds.” Well said. Go Aunty – and so on.

This might have been seen to be an unremarkable speech. After all, Mr Newman was simply underlining the point that there should be a diversity of views on the taxpayer funded public broadcaster. But, no. A number of Aunty’s journalists, led by Media Watch presenter Jonathan Holmes, got rather upset at the ABC chairman and rejected the position that there was something of an ABC view – on anything. Hence MWD’s decision to set up this segment devoted to highlighting those occasions when the ABC set up panels where everyone agrees with everyone else and a thoroughly self-righteous ideological time is had by all.

Last Wednesday, Late Night Live producer Kate MacDonald produced a discussion titled “Is Neo-Liberalism dead in Australia”. The focus was on the recently released Goodbye to All That?: On the Failure of Neo-liberalism and the Urgency of Change (Black Inc. 2010) which is edited by Robert Manne and David McKnight. Participants on LNL were McKnight and Richard Denniss, the director of the left-wing think tank The Australia Institute.

And so it came about that leftist LNL presenter Phillip Adams essentially agreed with leftist academic David McKnight who essentially agreed with leftist commentator Richard Denniss who essentially agreed with Mr Adams that neo-liberalism is, or should be, dead. Talk about a group-think. [Is this the same David McKnight who once upon a time said some benign things about the Khmer Rouge, led by that communist chap Pol Pot? – Ed.]

SHEILA-LITE SYDNEY WRITERS FESTIVAL CHANNELS AUNTY – PITY ABOUT THE CARBON EMISSIONS

Meanwhile the news is that Aunty like group-think has infected the Sydney Writers’ Festival. In Crikey last Friday, Margot Saville reported the announcement by new SWF director Chip Rolley of this year’s program. Mr Rolley told the roll-up at Sydney’s Walsh Bay on 8 April – which consisted primarily of luvvies and assorted miscellaneous sandal wearers – that the 2010 Sydney Writers’ Festival was taking place “at a time when the world is emerging from global economic collapse and threatened by the prospect of catastrophic climate change”.

Good point, don’t you think? Some of those present at Walsh Bay may have anticipated that – in view of the continuing impact of the Global Financial Crisis and emerging eco-catastrophe – Chip Rolley might have announced that the SWF had rejected all taxpayer funds (with a view of reducing the budget deficit) and decided not to fly any authors to the Festival from overseas or interstate (with a view to reducing carbon emissions).

Not on your nelly. The SWF director announced, instead, that this year the SWF will receive a whopping subsidy of $430,000 from the New South Wales State Government and that lotsa talent will be flown in to Sydney to proclaim, interalia, the need to reduce carbon emissions.

Margot Saville has drawn attention to the lack of female talent from overseas at this year’s SWF – especially on such topics as the economy and climate change. The two best known sheilas are the American Elizabeth Gilbert (the author of Eat, Pray, Love and Committed: A Sceptic Makes Peace With Marriage) who writes essentially about herself and her marital state and the Frenchwoman Catherine Millett (author of The Sexual Life of Catherine M.) who writes essentially about herself and her sex life.

MWD’s favourite SWF session involves a panel on climate change titled “Have We All Been Conned?” comprising Professor Ross (“The Global Icecaps May Be Melting”) Garnaut, Clive (“Sometimes Call Me Jacob”) Hamilton, and American eco-activist Bill McKibben – with Tim Flannery in the chair. This is one of those panels, much beloved by the ABC, where everyone essentially agrees with everyone else.

For the record, no one on the SWF’s climate change panel is a climate scientist. Garnaut is an economist, Hamilton has degrees in arts and economics and McKibben does not claim to have any formal qualifications in science. Indeed the only degrees which Mr McKibben lists on his biography are of the honorary genre. Tim Flannery who, according to John Styles in today’s The Spectator Australia, has been interviewed on Lateline on climate change on no fewer than nine occasions, has qualifications in arts and science but specialises in mammalogy and paleo-climatology.

Tim Flannery is perhaps best known for his failed prophecies. Remember them?

▪ Interviewed by a sympathetic Maxine McKew on Lateline on 10 June 2005, Tim Flannery declared that – since 1998 – the water at Sydney’s Warragamba Dam catchment “has been in virtual freefall and they’ve got about two years of supply left, but something will need to change to see the catchment accumulating water again”. Eh, yeah. It rained. In June 2005 the Warragamba Dam was 38.3 per cent full – the current figure is 57.3 per cent.

▪ On 15 April 2004 The West Australian reported Tim Flannery’s prophecy that Perth would run out of water. He also predicted that Perth would become “the 21st Century’s first ghost metropolis” (The Sydney Morning Herald, 19 May 2004). In April 2004 Perth’s water storage stood at 27.5 per cent of capacity. Today the figure is 37.5 per cent.

Still it should be a great SWF session. Attendees please wear sandals.

CLARIFICATIONS/CORRECTIONS

Michael Kirby – Not The Demonstrating Kind

In Issue 46, reference was made to the fact that former High Court judge Michael Kirby AC, CMG had launched Malcolm Fraser: The Political Memoirs, co-authored by Malcolm Fraser and Margaret Simons. MWD found it somewhat ironic that Mr Kirby had done the honours on this occasion, describing him as a one-time member of the “Shame/Fraser/Shame” Club.

MWD did not intend to imply that Michael Kirby ever railed against Mr Fraser when he became prime minister, following Governor-General John Kerr’s dismissal of Gough Whitlam’s Labor government on 11 November 1975, or taken part in demonstrations against the Fraser Government. Not at all.

All MWD attempted to imply was a view that, circa 1975, Michael Kirby would privately have disapproved of Malcolm Fraser’s decision to deny supply to the Whitlam Government – along with the Governor-General’s decision to dismiss Whitlam consequent upon the denial of supply. The message was that now Mr Kirby is something of a fan of Mr Fraser. That’s all.

Plain English – Andrew Pegler vs Neil James

Last Tuesday MWD received a call from a corporate affairs staffer within the ABC’s Ultimo bureaucracy who wanted to know precisely who wrote Gerard Henderson’s Media Watch Dog. Good question, eh? Soon after, a certain Neil (“Call me Doctor”) James, executive director of the Sydney based Plain English Foundation, phoned to ask whether Nancy Henderson was a pseudonym of Gerard Henderson. Eh, not really. Dr James was under the impression that Nancy Henderson had written about plain English in MWD . [Does Nancy have a Ph.D.? – Ed.]

It seems that the ABC staffer was setting the ground for Dr James’ subsequent phone call. In any event, Neil James called to advise that he – not Andrew Pegler – was head of the Plain English Foundation. The reference is to MWD Issue 48 where the somewhat inarticulate Andrew Pegler was described as belonging to an entity termed the Plain English Foundation. MWD took this information from a “supa” placed on the screen when Mr Pilger was interviewed on the ABC 2 News Breakfast program last Friday.

MWD is happy to affirm that the Melbourne based Andrew Pegler has nothing whatsoever to do with the Sydney based Plain English Foundation which is headed by Neil James. Is that plain?

HISTORY CORNER

BRUCE SHAPIRO – CARPETS OVER HANOI

Bruce Shapiro is Late Night Live’s weekly correspondent on matters North America. He is a columnist for the leftist The Nation Magazine and an executive director of the Dart Center for Trauma and Journalism at Columbia University. Last Tuesday on LNL Bruce Shapiro compared recent events in Iraq with the United States’ “carpet bombing of Hanoi” during the Vietnam War. LNL presenter Phillip Adams proffered no correction.

It is not clear if either Mr Shapiro or Mr Adams have visited Hanoi. If they have been to Hanoi, they should be aware that Vietnam’s capital was not carpet bombed during the Vietnam War of the 1960s and 1970s. Hanoi was – and remains – a heritage city which dates back to around the 9th Century and contains numerous archaeological sites and architectural relics.

In short, Hanoi is one of the great historical cities of Asia – unlike Ho Chi Minh City (nee Saigon) and Singapore, where development has led to the destruction of much of the ancient city. And unlike Tokyo – which was largely destroyed by fire-bombing during the Pacific War.

Bruce Shapiro seems unaware of one central fact of the air war over Vietnam. The US Navy and US Air Force were instructed not to carpet bomb Hanoi and to do what could be done to limit damaging Hanoi by targeting only designated sites of direct military significance to the communist North Vietnamese capital. In fact, American air crew were ordered to fly along dedicated paths so as to minimise collateral damage when bombing targets near Hanoi. The North Vietnamese placed sophisticated ground-to-air missiles, which had been supplied by the Soviet Union, under these flight paths and shot down many US military planes.

At times, sections of Hanoi were severely damaged by US bombs. However, if the whole of Hanoi was consciously carpet bombed – as Bruce Shapiro has claimed – Hanoi would not be the heritage city that it is today.

Until next time.