Tuesday, October 22, 2013

Journalism 101 at The Australian

If any of you budding young journalism students out there aspire to work for Rupert's Australian, you'd better start developing a real down on BDS, OK?

It might help, for example, if next time you're reading anything (anything, that is, apart from your usual fare of text messages or tweets), you carry a pin with which to jab any of those 3 offending letters whenever they rear their fugly heads.

Just keep in mind that when it comes to the Middle East, The Australian Jewish News has nothing on The Australian.

So what does this mean in practice?

Well, if you're writing about any of those NSW Greens politicians who've deviated from core Greens' business such as tree-hugging into hardcore Israel-bashing, you couldn't really find a better model than Joe Kelly's piece in today's Australian, Watermelons gain power in Greens:

Greens senator Lee Rhiannon should always be dubbed "hard left Greens senator Lee Rhiannon."

Those who support her should be described not as her supporters, but as "her forces."

'Watermelons' - as opposed to 'tree-huggers' - are never elected to the leadership of the NSW branch, they "seize control" of it, OK?

NSW Greens MLC David Shoebridge should be labelled "controversial."

A little innuendo goes a long way: "Mr Greenland has denied being a 'far-out leftist'."

And when it comes to sources, simply refer to "one Greens source said," or "a labor observer said," or even just "the source said."

Piece of cake, really.

No comments: