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Monday 2nd September 1996

International:

Chhime Rigzing (yes, that is spelt correctly!), the Dalai Lama's representative in Australia, said while Tibetans had enjoyed improvements in health and education, the cost in human suffering was far too high.

Mr Fischer said last week that those advocating Tibetan independence and who criticised China for alleged human rights abuses in the region had not got the full story.

Mr Rigzing said the six million Tibetans living in Tibet were dominated by the 7.5 million Chinese and subject to apartheid.

"There is segregation of virtually everything now," he said. "There are even different schools for Chinese and for Tibetans."

Political:

Sir Max Bingham, who was one of the major players involved in the initial set up of the CJC said that the body was disruptive as it started to poke its nose into areas normally handled by government. In the latest incident it has challenged the move to advertise the top sixty police positions - a move that means that the incumbents have to re-apply for their jobs.

CJC Chairman Frank Clair has leapt to the defence of his watchdog body... which, hopefully, will one day get something right.

Media Wars:

Let's start with the Manning Clark allegations by the Courier Mail. You might recall that the editor of the Courier Mail suggested that Clark might have been an "agent of influence".... Well over the weekend Andrew Clark, who happens to be the editor of the Fairfax Sun-Herald and the son of the late Manning Clark got his revenge, editorially speaking.

Clark accused the Courier Mail of suffering "editorial mad-cow disease", its pages being "taken over by a pack of scoundrels, malcontents and no-hopers".

Wow... but you ain't heard nothing yet - there's more!!

The Courier Mail today, in an article by Peter Charlton, says that Andrew Clark spent the weekend "indulging himself in yet another diatribe of The Courier Mail, this time using the pages of a News Limited publication, The Australian"... woe is me... poor Chris Mitchell, the editor of the Courier Mail, with the shoe now firmly on the other foot, now wailing that neither Clark's Sun Herald nor its stablemate, the Sydney Morning Herald, would afford him the right to reply - refusing to publish his letter.....

The Courier Mail calls this "curious behaviour indeed from executives in a major media organisation, especially since The Courier published Clark's criticism of the paper and its executives in full last Monday" (after the unanswered Manning Clark "expose" the previous Saturday I might add).

The Courier Mail then goes into the dubious and unfortunate history of Fairfax - the failures of young Harvard-driven Warwick Fairfax and the "air of studied superiority" of the Fairfax flagship, the Sydney Morning Herald.

"... most of all it likes to take down its competitors, News Limited."

It continues, "the Courier Mail's publication of the Manning Clark story has given the Fairfax executives and journalists another target: this newspaper and its editor".

And one of the journalists leading the attack... none other than David Marr. Now why would David Marr be so antagonistic? Well, according to a lengthy explanation in the Courier Mail, he was on the panel of the Miles Franklin award that chose the Helen Demidenko novel "The hand that signed the paper" last year. Of course the Courier Mail was one of the papers that exposed the real background of Helen Demidenko "the blond haired darling of the Sydney set" not an Ukrainian but, tut, tut, very English... the whole book was a story of fiction and not based, as claimed by the author, factual at all.

Of course Marr looked a bit silly... but the Courier's implication is that factual reporting and professional journalism in Marr's article has been tainted by a personal vendetta.

Of course, according to the Courier Mail "being exposed was enough, but being exposed by a Brisbane newspaper from the Murdoch stable was even worse..."

The closing cliche is the statement "The sound you hear so clearly from the south is the tinkling of glass on a vulnerable jaw."

Right fellows, I am just a man in the street, now if a vendetta at such a low level (ie between two journalists) can colour factual reporting so badly, what happens in the event that Murdoch, Packer or Black should be reported on. Yes, I know, you just turn the other way and say it never happened... that's the real expose behind this little verbal fistycuff!!!

So we can therefore accept that factual, balanced reporting in newspapers is a fantasy and that the media barons do manipulate what we read and believe. Well, I guess we all knew that anyway...

Personal trivia, from the global office:

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