This was published in Crikey’s subscriber email yesterday.

Utegate raises no end of questions for the media too
Here’s Crikey’s own Bernard Keane thinking out loud via Twitter on Saturday:

Not sure how both Rudd and Turnbull can still be leaders after this. One or other is in deep trouble.

And it’s starting to look quite that serious. Both men are calling aggressively for the other to stand down, and both are standing firmly by their stories. It’s a Mexican stand-off that will end with egg on face if nobody pulls the trigger. One (or possibly both) of the two men will certainly be seriously compromised when the truth does finally out.

Fairly amazing when you think about it. That political leaders withstand the political pressure exerted by wars, global financial crises, and overboard children, but the question of the existence of a single email, and the genuineness of that email, can threaten to end political careers

While there are many aspects to this saga, clearly the most central is the question of that email from the Prime Minister’s office to a public servant by the name of Gordan Godwin Grech. The Daily Telegraph printed the email in last Saturday’s newspaper, later conceding that it was never actually sighted. The reporter in question, Steve Lewis, claims that it was read to him over the phone by a “primary source”. Kevin Rudd flatly denies the existence of the email and searches of the relevant IT infrastructure seem to suggest that no such email was ever sent.

Malcolm Turnbull has been hinting none-too-subtly since 4 June that he’s known about some sort of correspondence believed to be “smoking gun” evidence of Kevin Rudd’s dodgy dealings. Reading his statements in the context of the last few days (great summary by Possum) makes this clearer than it was at the time. Turnbull says that he had not seen the email prior to its publication in the Tele; unfortunately for Malcolm he blew that charade apart this morning when he said Senator Eric Abetz was reading the email from the newspaper a day before it went to print.

All in all it’s a tangled web of minutiae that promises to be explosive in its untangling. But the politics aside for a moment, whichever way you look at this whole thing the media is up to its armpits in it, and some serious questions have been raised.

Firstly, is Steve Lewis telling the truth about the manner in which he received this email? A cynic might suggest that the “read over the phone” story is a bit far fetched given that there’s an awful lot of information to be read out, what with email addresses, CC’s, timestamps and the rest. Is Steve Lewis trying to keep his informant at arm’s length to protect his or her anonymity?

Secondly, is it ethical for the Daily Telegraph to mock-up for display an email using the text read to one of its reporters over the phone, implying rather boldly that it is in possession of the electronic or printed version of the email? Shouldn’t the fact that the email has not been sighted be disclosed to readers who will otherwise interpret the mock-up as proof of possession?

Thirdly, and most seriously, should Steve Lewis and the Tele protect a source that has fed them an allegedly fraudulent email, now the subject of an AFP criminal investigation, that may possibly be the catalyst for the Prime Minister or Opposition leader of the nation quitting their job? While most people would agree that it’s important for journalists to be able to afford their sources a certain level of protection, surely there comes a point at which the interests of the nation override that protection. While the Tele deserves a certain amount of credit for breaking a story of significance, perhaps there are now greater priorities than an extra day at the centre of attention.

Steve Lewis has today written an article calling for “full transparency” from the Rudd government over Utegate. The thing is, if Lewis was a little more transparent himself the whole controversy would instantly become a lot clearer. And let’s put this in perspective one more time: the bona-fides of a single email, the source of which is likely known to a newspaper journalist, will either end the career of the nation’s Prime Minister or Opposition leader, or cause them significant damage. A heavy burden of responsibility for a reporter and newspaper who hold the key to the truth.

Is this effort by Andrew Bolt his most disgraceful and offensive post yet?

First there was BoltWatch, then there was The Blair/Bolt Watch Project, and now there’s…

The newest addition to the Crikey blog network is a joint effort between Jeremy Sear from An Onymous Lefty, Scott and Ant from GrodsCorp, and Tobias Ziegler from Not A Hedgehog.

Broadening our focus from simply Bolt and Blair to any journalist or opinion writer in the mainstream media, our mission is to expose intellectual dishonesty, flimsy arguments and the distorted data wherever they appear in the nation’s press.

Head on over to Pure Poison and get involved! Because as Possum so brilliantly said: “Sure it might be run by some of the biggest hobo’s on the Australian intertubes, but now they’re Crikey hobbo’s – so they dress better, don’t smell so bad and have 25% extra snark.”

This went out in Crikey’s subscriber email this afternoon and is available to members on their website. Thanks to Bridgit whose comparing and contrasting I drew upon.

Nothing’s off limits for Bolt’s pompous point-scoring
In July last year a newborn baby, umbilical cord attached, was found dead in a rubbish bin in regional Victoria. The traumatised local community and a stunned nation felt sadness for the child and concern for the unknown mother. There is an unspoken understanding in the media that such tragic events should not be the catalyst for political or ideological point scoring, but that didn’t stop Herald Sun columnist Andrew Bolt from callously using this child’s death as an excuse to lay the boot into environmentalists because the body was inside a green shopping bag.

Planet saved, baby dead

Utterly tragic, but in some ways a grim metaphor.

[…]

In the hysteria to “save” Earth from a warming that’s actually halted, we ignore a true and growing threat to children.

Two weeks ago Victoria suffered through its worst heatwave on record, with the mercury hitting at least 42 degrees each day for three straight days. The state’s infrastructure groaned under the pressure and residents had to cope with public transport meltdown and electricity failures. Over thirty people died due to the heat and Bolt happily used those deaths to beat another of his ideological drums.

Killed in a green frenzy

More than 30 Victorians died in last week’s heat in one of the great scandals of green politics.

[…]

Those who died last week were in less danger from global warming than from the deadly incompetence of green governments trying to “stop” it.

And two days ago over one hundred people died and nearly a thousand homes were lost in Australia’s worst ever bushfire tragedy. Andrew Bolt saw red as Greens leader Bob Brown linked the fire to global warming, accusing him of using the tragedy to score political points.

Preaching over the dead

At least 36 Victorians die in bushfires, and Bob Brown sees on (sic) opportunity to preach politics…

And as if that wasn’t hypocritical enough, without drawing breath Bolt went on to try and score some counter-points of his own by linking to a graph and an article that he believes disprove the theory of global warming.

Then only two hours later, Bolt used the devastation of the Victorian fires and the preceding heatwave, along with the Queensland floods, to attack the government’s proposed stimulus package.

The stimulus package for these times

Here is some free advice to Kevin Rudd that will be good for him and good for the country.

[…]

Prime Minister, announce that you’ve had a change of mind, forced on you by this terrible tragedy in Victoria, and the flood devastation in Queensland.

You will now spend $1 billion of your package on rebuilding in Queensland. You will spend $2 billion more on restoring the devasted (sic) towns on (sic) Victoria. There will be $1 billion on fire research and protection. Another $1 billion on air-conditioners for the pensioners whose lives were at risk in the heat wave. There will be $2 billion for a new dam in Victoria to not just secure water supplies for a growing population, or even climate change, but from a fire in existing catchment areas that could endanger water quality. You will invest another $2 billion on schemes to bring water from the flood-prone north to the south, if feasible. Another another (sic) $5 billion for helping state power networks operate in high temperatures.

Clearly Andrew’s political points are more important that others’ political points, and no death is too tragic to prove them.

In one fell swoop, Overland editor Jeff Sparrow* slaps down Miranda Devine, the “populist Right” and the Young Liberals, whose “undergraduate” bleatings about Left-wing bias in universities and schools were rightly dismissed as “farcical” at the conclusion of a Senate Inquiry last week:

But the Young Libs are, at least, authentically undergraduate. Miranda Devine, on the other hand, is old enough to know better. Yet she too threw her weight behind Make Australia Fair – and with accusations that were even more risible. Why, there’s a Brisbane school, don’t you know, that celebrates Mao Zedong as a “freedom fighter”, right next to George Washington and Mahatma Gandhi – Liberal Senator Brett Mason popped in once and caught them in the act.

Devine’s revelations about Brisbane’s Long March High are not just nutty. They, like the Make Australia Fair campaign, epitomise the peculiar brand of petulant victimology that now grips the populist Right. The Young Liberals’ education campaign website reads, in fact, like one big pity party, a compendium of stories of youthful Tories oppressed by mean teachers, and books with which they don’t agree and posters they see on university walls.

“I have found the constant liberal-bagging, jokes and Labor pushing agenda threatening and frustrating,” confesses one disconsolate young reactionary. “In class discussions I constantly feel like my opinions aren’t welcome and quite often I do not say anything.”

But hang on a second. Aren’t the Liberals the champions of individual responsibility? Don’t the Young Libs themselves proudly proclaim their opposition to the “nanny state” and declare that “while we believe the government should provide the individual with the best opportunities possible, we recognise that the onus is on the individual to seize the opportunity”?

Didn’t, in fact, Ms Devine herself devote her next column to an attack on the whole notion of government intervention?

And there’s plenty more gold where that came from. Read it and weep, wingnuts.

* Writing, in this instance, in Crikey, which I can’t access because I’m a tightarse non-subscriber.

The recent Lachlan Connor action has reminded me about something I meant to blog at the time but completely forgot about. In the middle of November I received an email from a journalism intern at Crikey addressed to Lachlan Connor.

From: Alesha Maree Capone (XXXXXX@student.rmit.edu.au)
To: lachlanconnor@gmail.com
Date: Nov 13, 2007 5:06 PM
Subject: Re: Hillsong stuff

Hi, I’m an intern at the journalism site crikey.com and I’m wondering where you found this quote “lesbianism as a sin that their residential program assists girls to ‘walk in freedom from.’” that is was posted on your blog on 22 October?
Thanks- this would be a big help with a story I’m working on

Easy enough mistake to make, I suppose, given that his name is on the front of the website. So I answered her question and politely informed her that Lachlan didn’t exist.

From: The Editor (XXXXXX@gmail.com)
To: Alesha Maree Capone (XXXXXX@student.rmit.edu.au)
Date: Nov 13, 2007 5:51 PM
Subject: Re: Hillsong stuff

Hi Alesha,

The quote comes from here (http://www.talkaboutparenting.com/
group/alt.adoption/messages/437079.html) and is spoken by Sarah Scantlen, Assistant Programs Manager at Mercy Ministries:

Approximately 40 girls live at Mercy for up to a year, coping with everything from drug abuse, suicidal thoughts, eating disorders, unplanned pregnancies and lesbianism. “We do have girls who have a history of lesbianism, and that’s definitely an issue that we deal with,” says Scantlen. “We are cautious to make sure that we’re not putting them in an area where there’s going be more struggle or temptation because this is a girls’ home. In dealing with it in counseling, they have been able to walk in freedom from that.”

Do you reckon you could email me a copy of the finished article?

Cheers,
The Editor

ps/- Lachlan Connor is a fictional YouTube politician created by my site (http://www.grods.com/lachlan-connor-independent/). Sorry about the confusion.

I reckon I spelled it out pretty clearly so imagine my surprise when I received this email the next day addressed, once again, to Lachlan Connor.

From: Alesha Maree Capone (XXXXXX@student.rmit.edu.au)
To: lachlanconnor@gmail.com
Date: Nov 14, 2007 3:54 PM
Subject: Crikey article
mailed-by student.rmit.edu.au

Hi Lachlan,
You can find the article at the link below. Thanks very much for your help- Alesha Capone.

http://www.crikey.com.au/
Politics/20071114-Borders-between-charity-and-Hillsong-church-thin-.html

That’s some fine attention to detail right there.