After three decades at the network Ray Martin has quit Channel Nine.

Despite Martin’s apparent goodwill, his departure comes as a black cloud hangs over the Sunday program, which he was to host when it returns this Sunday morning.

Sources say Martin has clashed with network bosses over changes to the Sunday format in the last two weeks, which Martin felt would “gut” the 25 year old program of its journalistic gravitas.

The “gravitas” of which Martin speaks has been a hallmark of his contribution to Australian journalism over the past 39 years. How could any self-respecting Australian forget the kind of hard-hitting investigative reports, arse-licking John Howard “interviews”, Commonwealth Games commentary, and celebrity pap that Martin used to bring us on A Current Affair during his six years hosting the program?

And of course there’s the legendary John Safran confrontation after Martin’s filthy ethics-neutral journalistic tactics were turned back on him.

No matter how bad Martin’s journalism was it was never as bad as his fashion sense.

Blue, pink and yellow: together at last

And no matter how bad Martin’s fashion sense was it was never as bad as Mike Munro’s.

For the love of God, are they Tasmanian tigers?

Ray Martin: good fucking riddance.

Say what you like about the little smart-arse turdburger who threw a party at his parents’ house and ran up a $20,000 police response bill, but I couldn’t help enjoy the way he stuck it up those sanctimonious, sermonising pricks at A Current Affair by refusing to take the bait they kept offering. As John Surname said at his other blog (is that like when you leave your wallet in your other pants?): “He’s stuck in a quandary. He doesn’t want his parents to be angry at him, but he doesn’t want his mates to think he’s pissweak.”

Make sure you watch right through to the last two questions. Gold.

UPDATE: It seems that young Corey Delaney has gone into bidness with a website and a video.

I normally avoid A Current Affair like the plague but I sometimes tune in for a jenkem-like snort of tabloid methane. Tonight’s ludicrous beat-up was on those Moooslims, those ones who come to Australia in, like, their thousands and don’t, y’know, integrate with normal people? The rationale for this ’story’ was a town meeting in the Sydney suburb of Camden - but it was a fairly thin premise, and the ‘town meeting’ ended up looking more like the carpark at a rodeo than rational democracy-in-action.

ACA then went straight to an objective source on the issue of Moooslims: Fred Nile of the Christian Democratic Party. The justification for this was that the CDP is now the voice-of-the-people because its vote has “skyrocketed” in NSW (which it has, they now register almost half the vote of the Greens). Fred claims we’re at risk of being swamped by Moooslims and besides, there are Christians being persecuted in Moooslim countries who deserve to come here first! He wants a ten-year moratorium on new Moooslims coming into the country.

Amongst the other damning evidence:

* Twenty years ago there were 30,000 Moooslims in Australia; now there are 300,000. They must be breeding like rabbits.
* Sydney now has 40-something mosques. Melbourne has, erm, a lot too. And if you look at these mosques on Google Maps, it looks even worse.
* The Moooslims want to build a Moooslim school in Camden. Absolutely appalling.
* Vox Pop Man says Moooslims aren’t like ‘us’ because they “…don’t come up, shake ya hand and say ‘g’day’, mate.” (If you could see Vox Pop Man, you’d probably understand why.)
* And Keyser Trad has… nine children!

My guess is that Nine will be screening a few anti-terror ads tonight.

Bagging Today Tonight and A Current Affair for shoddy journalism is a national sport. It’s the mainstay of Media Watch’s weekly schedule. The latest controversy about Papuan Kid Soup has spawned a fresh round of attacks on the soap opera that is commercial consumer current affairs.

But look at it objectively for a minute and things aren’t quite so cut-and-dry. Critiquing the quality of “journalism” on these programs is like shooting fish in a barrel. It’s so obviously not journalism that it basically defeats the purpose of exposing it as unethical sensationalism. That’s what got GrodsCorp thinking and today I can reveal the resuts of our EXCLUSIVE investigation.

Networks Nine and Seven are working together — Naomi and Tracey serve the same master.

That’s right, readers; their latest Papuan cannibal adventure has given the game away. There are no legal battles, no crisis meetings, no angry airport encounters. Only two networks who collude in order to orchestrate the most ridiculous and trainwreck-like coverage across their respective television channels.

It’s all too perfect: the duelling heads of news and current affairs, the pathetic autocue reader desperately chasing credibility, the bemused naked kid from some stone age tribe that is (apparently) destined to become casserole. Rob Sitch and the Working Dog crew couldn’t script this any better.

If you’re still a doubter, just watch for both programs’ ratings for this week just gone and this week coming. Far from being swathes of partisan TT or ACA devotees out there, cheering their favourite host on in the Wa-Wa Wars™, there are simply a couple of million suckers who continue to fall for the current affairs cartel’s offerings and mindlessly tune in for a fix of scripted, sensationalist TV.