Thread by @R_Chirgwin

Australian journalists: set the bar higher ffs. Just because a friend wrote the op-ed doesn't mean it's any good.

You keep passing around the most vapid, obvious rubbish as if it's profound in ways we mere readers can't understand.

You fail us so badly.

Take this piece, for example. @KetanJ0 explains why it's rubbish; what irks me is that the simple fact of "authority" is all you need to get quoted.

Where's the challenge?
smh.com.au/world/europe/t…

Here, Peter Hartcher "earns" his pay with an analysis that's about three-quarters recap of events with a few bon mots. We honestly deserve better.

smh.com.au/national/in-de…

Or this piece. What's the value using a senior journalist's time rehashing statements without *any* interrogation?

theguardian.com/australia-news…

Katharine Murphy has a persistent blind spot about Morrison, that she assumes he's a man of goodwill who's amenable to doing the right thing, such as in this piece:

theguardian.com/environment/co…

You'll need to go to your Happy Place before reading this, at the ABC. The first par alone is abject failure:
mobile.abc.net.au/news/2019-12-2…

[HT @DanJCass]
Here's a particularly egregious example from WHO OTHER THAN BEVAN! ... honestly, this dross is an insult.

This isn't out of place here. Honestly, this counts as work?

PS. The gallery press might take a *massive* lesson from the ABC's foreground reporting today. Nobody gets invited to "both sides" a safety message.

And it continues. If you still believe Morrison has the capacity to learn and change, you haven't paid attention:
theage.com.au/politics/feder…

Seriously, can you read this and attribute *any* interest in learning anything whatever to the PM?

https://twitter.com/TerrySerio/status/1208357249120256001?s=19

Nobody seriously challenged him in the press conference. Don't tell me, let me guess, "now is not the time". 👎

https://twitter.com/abcnews/status/1208276067317772288?s=19

The "RFS brigades crowd-funding" story is another stunning fail from journalists. When the bosses fulminated that they "have all the resources they need", not ONE journalist said "so why do local brigades run sausage sizzles at Bunnings?"

FOR PITY'S FUCKING SAKE BEVAN.

Also: every damn journalist who declined to examine the political tenets of Pastor Bumblefuck's religion is complicit.

He refused to hear the former fire chiefs because he has set his face against *anything* that looks like expanding the role of government.

A brigade captain just called Robbie Buck on @abcsydney to thank the public for food donations. Why is that necessary, journalists?

You'll have Gladys and Morrison in front of you, ASK THE DAMN QUESTIONS.

And ffs when Fitzsimmons or Mullens said brigades have "all the resources they need", *challenge* them.

Neither this emergency nor their uniform confers the right to lie to the public.

Morrison has just claimed in his press conference that rural fire services "will continue to get everything that they need."

We *know* this is a lie. Will anyone challenge him?

PS, he's blathering. "Our fire services in Australia are the best in the world" - deflection.

"As a country, we're used to dealing with fires" - the old climate denier's lie.

"After every fire, we sit down, we learn the lessons" - he was warned *before* this fire season. Will he be challenged?

Now we get to climate policy. "I have always acknowledged the connection" between the fires and climate change - will anyone challenge him?

He blames the drought, without acknowledging the link between climate change and drought.

He's been *dragged* to make that connection, and now he's lying about government action on climate change - "Paris commitments at a canter".

He claims his leave has "caused anxiety". Because he can't acknowledge actual anger.

We're back to "not going to hold a hose". But he does actually reach "I apologise". Oh, and "the time for that discussion is over."

"It's time to be kind to each other" - "not a time for argument".

He wants to reassert control over the discourse.

Because if we don't discuss things the way Pastor Bumblefuck wants it, we're somehow failing fire-fighters.

I can't quite hear the questioner, it's about the holiday, and wow he's touchy. And now, he's onto the Canberra bubble angle that "ordinary Australians aren't interested"

He's a train wreck.

On emissions, he's going with the lie that emissions are falling, and having said "not a time for political point-scoring", he's doing his own point-scoring about other parties' targets.

"What lessons have you learned?"

"I've already told you".

And he's given us a shot at the ALP government, but it's not the time for political point-scoring.

We won't "act in a knee-jerk, crisis, or panic mode" about emissions.

No matter how much journalists try, he will always return to sermon-mode. Yes, it's hard to interrogate, but that's why we have journalists to do it.

Right now, "why are you point-scoring?" would be a handy question.

And that's a wrap. Journalists are too damn polite.

Edit: not Mullins, I mean Rob Rogers.

And now there's this: where are the stories highlighting that the deputy PM was directly contradicted by Morrison, the *day* after McCormack conceded under pressure that we need better climate change policies?

COME ON IT'S NOT HARD.

See, here's The Age giving us what McCormack said:

https://twitter.com/theage/status/1208303646502469632?s=20

And does it highlight the contradiction when it reports what Morrison said? No:
theage.com.au/national/i-acc…

It's down to the editor. Damn it, is 24 hours too long for the institutional memory?

It's pointless asking the AFR to do better, but fucking dead set ...

https://twitter.com/ethicalmartini/status/1208664398622941184?s=19