Recent stories exclusive to (how to) subscribe/rs of the Australian National News of the Day:
One
Nation Birthday Party on Pauline Hanson's farm 10th-12th April
One
Nation state and federal candidates meet in Toowoomba 4th -5th
April
Hindmarsh
Island Bridge case thrown out by High Court 2nd April
The
Hindmarsh Island Bridge farce revealed 31st March
UN
agrees to make our fresh water a "global commodity".... beware farmers -
your fresh water dam WILL cost you! 28th March
Courier
Mail's national affairs reporter Peter Charlton attacks MAI concerns and
breaches ethics guidelines 28th March
The
US Government's global "Cablesplice" project, fact or fantasy? 26th
March
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Today's
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an Aussie's viewpoint on Australia's
first daily Internet newspaper.
Since
October 1995
Pauline Hanson's One Nation birthday party.
A fabulous weekend... check out all the action here.
The unethical Murdoch empire
When dairy milk is not safe how can Murdoch stop reporters reporting the issue? Quote: Fox General Manager, "We paid $3 billion for these television stations, we'll decide what the news is. The news is what we tell you it is."
You must read this story about News Corporation and the manner in which they are distorting the news - straight from the mouths of journalists....
This week's Canberra Column....
Extract from the The Sound of Hammers
I've been saying the republic is dead for months now. Everywhere I go, I hear the sound of people knocking another nail into the coffin, if not actually shovelling earth into the grave. If I were Malcolm Turnbull, the head of the Australian Republican Movement, I'd throw in the towel now, and save myself and my supporters the trouble and expense of fighting a referendum campaign next year.
Often enough the people behind the hammers are the republicans themselves. Anne Twomey is a lawyer in the service of the NSW Cabinet Department, released from her Sydney cabinetmaking for an evening to address a public lecture at ANU. And Mike Keating is the head of the ACT Attorney-General's Department, looking very much at home in the Law School's Lecture Theatre.
One Nation expected to hold the balance of power in the Senate
Democrat research has revealed that Pauline Hanson's One Nation will take at least two Senate seats and maybe three in Queensland.
The Democrat leader Meg Lees said that they expected One Nation to take at least one Senate seat in New South Wales and Western Australia as well.
"One Nation will have a good chance in Queensland," Meg Lees said on television, "Indeed in a double-dissolution they'll probably take two seats, probably one off the Nationals and one off the Liberals... the real losers are going to be the Coalition. They've already acknowledged a five-seat loss, maybe as many as eight.
"Even if they hold the record vote they had last time in the Senate, they will lose five."
Prime Minister John Howard said last Thursday that the Senate's blocking of his ten point plan for the second time will result in him going to the Governor General, Sir William Dean, and asking him to dissolve both houses of Parliament and call a fresh election. To do this he will have to make the trip to the Governor General before the 29th October.
Yesterday David Oldfield responded to Meg Lees comments about One Nation gaining Senate seats - saying the Democrats had underestimated the support out there for the party. "It's our suggestion that in a double-dissolution election we could win as many as three seats in Queensland plus seats in new South Wales, Victoria, South Australia and West Australia.
He said that One Nation will also take lower house seats like Blair - the seat in which Pauline Hanson is expected to win and carry the flag for the party.
The news has panicked the News Limited group who have started linking the "race based" election with "reviving support for a dying One Nation"... in a report in today's Australian newspaper chief political reporter Richard McGregor claims that John Howard has played into Pauline Hanson's hand over the Wik debacle.
In the article McGregor refers to the support required by the Government in a joint sitting of Parliament after the double-dissolution election saying, "To pass the Bills, the Government needs a majority of 224 members of parliament, made up of the 148 members in the House of Representatives and 76 in the Senate."
The journalist confirms Lees' comment by saying that the Coalition is expected to lose 5 to 7 seats in the Senate. The support for the Coalition is expected to be affected in the lower house with just a 2.5% swing against it seeing a loss of over 16 seats resulting in the ALP and the minor parties holding the balance of power in the joint sitting.
He states that nationally One Nation's support is just 4% while in parts of rural Queensland it stands as high as 20%. Yesterday David Oldfield said, "We are holding all the cards - whether they come to us cap in hand or not, we don't care."
Making the
news" -
Subject: REPORTERS SUE FOX TV--INSIDE STORY
To: JOURNET-L@american.edu
I used to think there was nothing worse than seeing a good story killed because the special interest of a news organisation (or one its friends or advertisers) was more important than the public interest. I just found out the hard way that I was wrong. There is something much, much worse -- and it's something that should concern all of us because as corporate owners control more and more newsrooms, it will happen again.
The investigative report produced by me and my reporting colleague Jane Akre was not killed by Fox Television. Instead, as we explain in a lawsuit we filed this past week, Fox managers and their lawyers ordered us to distort, twist, and slant a story and threatened us with immediate dismissal if we would not broadcast material we knew to be false and misleading.
Some of you may remember I posted a note here asking for objective advice about what to do months ago when we were doing the same kind of soul-searching I know some of you have been through. (I couldn't identify the reporters or the news organisation back then.) Most of you said, "Resist those kinds of instructions!"
As we detail in our lawsuit, when we did just that. Fox threatened to fire us within 48 hours and we were told they'd just get another reporter to do it after we were gone. When we said we'd file a formal complaint with the FCC if that happened, we were not fired but were each offered very large cash settlements to go away and keep quiet about the story and how it was handled_all of these details and written documentation including scripts, contracts, settlement offers, EVERYTHING in our legal complaint you can read for yourself.
Fox managers refused to kill the story because word might leak out they bowed to pressure applied by Monsanto and the dairy and grocery industry, we explain in our suit. Monsanto directed its efforts to kill the story to former Republican operative and now-Fox News chief Roger Ailes. Then, over the course of nine months last year, we were ordered to write and re- write the scripts again and again-more than 73 times in all.
You should know there was never any claim that we or anyone working with us ever acted outside the highest ethical standards of good investigative reporting. There are no issues about trespass or hidden cameras or pretending to be somebody else to get inside information.
More importantly, at no time ever was even a single error of fact found in our reporting. We provided literally binders chock full of solid documentation to support virtually every sentence and to show how some of what we were ordered to report was demonstrably wrong. Little of that mattered as we were repeatedly told "it's not whether the facts are true, it was how they are presented"_and, as we also quoted the Fox General Manager in our lawsuit, "We paid $3 billion for these television stations, we'll decide what the news is. The news is what we tell you it is."
After we stood up to being fired, turned down the easy money, and all those re-writes didn't wear us down, we were told we were being suspended without pay but ordered to keep re-writing scripts even though we found ourselves locked out of our offices and the computers that held much of our information. We did write those final two scripts-the honest version we wanted to report, and the version Fox insisted on telling. Both are attached to our suit and available on the web along with our objections detailed point-by-point in the Fox-mandated script.
Finally, after a year struggling nearly a year to tell the story fairly and honestly, we were advised we were being dismissed without cause pursuant to a window option in our contract. Fox's own lawyer contradicts that phony claim in a letter (you can also review on the web) where she writes that although Fox had the right to dismiss us without cause, "_there were definite reasons for the decision that was made." She goes to explain we were really dismissed due to our "pattern of responding to direction with rancor, argument and personal attacks on the lawyers and editors". Our legal claim is that the "rancor and argument" which ensued when we were ordered to lie on television -- along with our statement to Fox management that we would complain to the FCC if the station resorted to illegal conduct in broadcasting news known to be false and misleading -- those were the reasons we were ultimately fired. Fortunately, Florida has a whistle-blower law that makes that illegal.
In any event, all of us in the news business should consider that this kind of conduct by business people masquerading as journalists could well be the next step down the road to journalism nobody can trust or rely upon. These are issues that we ought to be discussing in our conferences and seminars. How will you handle a similar situation if it ever comes up? What, if anything, can be done to stop this kind of thing? And what kind of support could you expect if you put your career on the line over something like this?
Jane and I would be happy to share anything we have with any of you who want to pursue the original story we were trying to tell (our scripts are on the web) or just want to share your opinions and suggestions about any of this. We invite you to visit the web site, post a message there if you like, or contact us directly by e-mail.
Subject: I'd like to go on you mailing list :-)
Hi there.
Just a quick note to congratulate Pauline Hanson and her commonsense approach to the world.
It's about time we had a politician with some guts!
Regards
David Minehan :-)
Subject: content of NOTD
Dear Scott'
A friend of mine was reading the NOTD and wondered if you hold back stories that you do not like or do not fit the groove. Do you withhold any items or do you put all the stories you receive to print. If you do withhold stories what are these.
Ron from Swansea
As you can see from the letter below we publish all points of view.
Editor
Subject: An "Aussie's" viewpoint?
Just a quick observation.
The "News Of The Day" site seems to be nothing of the sort. News is typically impartial, not the one-sided rantings of someone with an obvious vested interest, and bad command of grammar. Particularly when the events focus on the One Nation Party of Pauline Hanson, your 'journalists' seem to rant and rave even more so, intent on attacking mainstream politicians, yet seeing Ms. Hanson as one who can do no wrong.
As I say, it doesn't come across as impartial observance, more as hysterical ranting.
Robert Gormley
The ugly hidden face of the FSIA is once again raising itself in news reports which do not reveal how or why certain events in the Australian banking industry are taking place.
That "cute" word globalisation is behind the business headlines today that a "Superbank era mars four pillars stance"
The table below shows how the greed is good philosophy of the internationalists is swallowing up all in their place:
| Companies | Merging | Value | |
| 1 | Travelers | Citicorp | US$85 billion |
| 2 | BankAmerica | NationsBank | US$60 billion |
| 3 | WorldCom | MCICom | US$41.8 billion |
| 4 | Sanduz | Ciba Geigy | US$36.3 billion |
| 5 | Mitsubishi Bank | Bank of Tokyo | US$33.8 billion |
| 6 | Union Bank Swiss | Swiss Bank Corp | US$33 billion |
| 7 | Banc One | First Chicago NBD | US$30 billion |
| 8 | KKR | RJR Nabisco | US$26.4 billion |
While over 5 million Australians now live below the official poverty line and inflation, we are told, has been halted the latest figures on the weekly cost of children released by the Australian Institute of Family Studies survey are hardly comforting:
| Age | Food | Transport | Recreation | Clothing | Other | Total Au$ |
| 0-1 years | ||||||
| 1992 | 27.54 | 40.68 | 29.23 | 15.30 | 65.98 | 177 |
| 1997 | 31.98 | 47.18 | 32.77 | 17.74 | 76.51 | 206 |
| 2-4 years | ||||||
| 1992 | 24.27 | 31.61 | 22.58 | 13.43 | 53.51 | 145 |
| 1997 | 28.12 | 36.65 | 26.19 | 15.57 | 62.01 | 168 |
| 5-7 years | ||||||
| 1992 | 25.56 | 32.95 | 31.11 | 15.54 | 52.13 | 157 |
| 1997 | 29.63 | 38.22 | 39.40 | 18.00 | 60.34 | 182 |
| 8-10 years | ||||||
| 1992 | 35.67 | 45.89 | 34.19 | 14.35 | 59.60 | 189 |
| 1997 | 41.37 | 53.24 | 39.65 | 16.62 | 69.10 | 220 |
Another perfect day in paradise.
Have a good one.
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