ZIONIST FAIRFAX - DEPENDENT - ALWAYS

It has long been known that the media in Australia tug their forelocks to the Australian zionist lobbies, but never has it shown itself to be so subservient as what happened in Sydney with the Sydney Morning Herald over an article by Mike Carlton on 26 July 2014 and the outcry from the zionists during the week of around 4 to 8 August 2014.

This is a long story and in Melbourne only bits and pieces have filtered through the fog, but as much as possible will be detailed.

Here is the Mike Carlton article - without the cartoon at the centre of some explosive attacks about the cartoonist's and Carlton's supposed anti-semitism - the expression all zionists use for any criticisms of their beloved country Israel:

Israel's rank and rotten fruit is being called fascism

July 26, 2014

Mike Carlton

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The images from Gaza are searing, a gallery of death and horror. A dishevelled Palestinian man cries out in agony, his blood-soaked little brother dead in his arms. On a filthy hospital bed a boy of perhaps five or six screams for his father, his head and body lacerated by shrapnel. A teenage girl lies on a torn stretcher, her limbs awry, her face and torso blackened like a burnt steak. Mourners weep over a family of 18 men, women and children laid side by side in bloodied shrouds. Four boys of a fishing family named Bakr, all less than 12 years old, are killed on a beach by rockets from Israeli aircraft.

As I write, after just over a week of this invasion, the death toll of Palestinians is climbing towards 1000. Most are civilians, many are children. Assaulting Gaza by land, air and sea, Israel has destroyed homes and reduced entire city blocks to rubble. It has attacked schools, mosques and hospitals. Tens of thousands of people have fled, although there is nowhere safe for them to go in this wretched strip of land just 40 kilometres long and about 10 kilometres wide. There are desperate shortages of food and water, of medical and surgical supplies.

In an open letter to US President Barack Obama, Dr Mads Gilbert, a Norwegian surgeon working at Gaza's al-Shifa hospital, writes of "the incomprehensible chaos of bodies, sizes, limbs, walking, not walking, breathing, not breathing, bleeding, not bleeding humans. Humans! 

"Ashy grey faces – Oh no! Not one more load of tens of maimed and bleeding. We still have lakes of blood on the floor in the emergency room, piles of dripping, blood-soaked bandages to clear out ... the cleaners, everywhere, swiftly shovelling the blood and discarded tissues, hair, clothes, cannulas – the leftovers from death – all taken away... to be prepared again, to be repeated all over."

The onslaught is indiscriminate and unrelenting, with but one possible conclusion: Israel is not fighting the terrorists of Hamas. In defiance of the laws of war and the norms of civilised behaviour, it is waging its own war of terror on the entire Gaza population of about 1.7 million people. Call it genocide, call it ethnic cleansing: the aim is to kill Arabs.

As none other than Malcolm Fraser tweeted this week: "If any other country went to war killing as many civilians, women and children, it would be named a war crime." But it is not, although the UN is asking the question of both sides.

Yes, Hamas is also trying to kill Israeli civilians, with a barrage of rockets and guerilla border attacks. It, too, is guilty of terror and grave war crimes. But Israeli citizens and their homes and towns have been effectively shielded by the nation's Iron Dome defence system, and so far only three of its civilians have died in this latest conflict. The Israeli response has been out of all proportion, a monstrous distortion of the much-vaunted right of self defence.

It is a breathtaking irony that these atrocities can be committed by a people with a proud liberal tradition of scholarship and culture, who hold the Warsaw Ghetto and the six million dead of the Holocaust at the centre of their race memory. But this is a new and brutal Israel dominated by the hardline, right-wing Likud Party of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his coalition. As one observer puts it: "All the seeds of the incitement of the past few years, all the nationalistic, racist legislation and the incendiary propaganda, the scare campaigns and the subversion of democracy by the right-wing camp – all these have borne fruit, and that fruit is rank and rotten. The nationalist right has now sunk to a new level, with almost the whole country following in its wake. The word 'fascism', which I try to use as little as possible, finally has its deserved place in the Israeli political discourse."

Fascism in Israel? At this point the Australian Likudniks, as Bob Carr calls them, will be lunging for their keyboards. There will be the customary torrent of abusive emails calling me a Nazi, an anti-Semite, a Holocaust denier, an ignoramus.  As usual they will demand my resignation, my sacking. As it's been before, some of this will be pornographic or threatening violence.

In fact, that paragraph within the quotation marks was written by an Israeli. Gideon Levy is a columnist and editorial board member of the daily newspaper Ha’aretz. Born in Tel Aviv to parents who fled the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1939, he despairs of what his country has become and the catastrophe its armed forces are visiting upon Gaza. After a recent column calling on Israeli pilots to stop bombing and rocketing civilians, his life was threatened and he now has a bodyguard day and night. It has come to that. In the worst insult of all, Levy is branded "a self-hating Jew".

Israeli propaganda is subtle and skillfully put. "If Israel were to lay down its arms tomorrow, she would be destroyed; but if Hamas were to lay down their arms, there would be peace," goes the line, parroted endlessly.

But in all these long and agonising decades, Israel has never offered the Palestinians a just and equitable peace. They would have only a splintered, vassal state, their polity and economy and even their borders and freedom of travel and trade managed and determined by Israel. The occupation of Palestinian lands would remain with the relentless expansion of illegal Israeli settlements on the West Bank of the Jordan and the Dead Sea.

As the Palestine Liberation Organisation official Hanan Ashrawi put it this week in a television interview with the Australian journalist Hamish Macdonald: "No nation can accept being imprisoned, being besieged by land, by air, by sea and deprived of the most basic requirements of a decent life: freedom of movement, clean water. For seven years they have been under a brutal and lethal Israeli siege ... You shell them and you bomb them; you destroy homes, you destroy whole neighbourhoods. You obliterate, annihilate, whole families, and then you come and say that this is self defence?" 

That is why the killing and the dying goes on. Ad nauseam, ad infinitum. And the rest of the world, not caring, looks away.

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That was the start of a very ugly saga which revealed the zionist influence on not only the Fairfax media, but also the Murdoch media and left both groups with mud on their faces.

At the end of his article, apparently Carlton provided his email address for people to send comments, and apparently they did, in large and abusive numbers. In responding to many of the nastiest, Carlton used language which the SMH took exception to, and the Murdoch media got hold of some of them and between them all they made a gigantic issue of it.

Carlton told some of them - and I am on his side about this, although many are not - to fuck off.
Many comments called him anti-semitic and many other crudities, probably too numerous to list here, but you get the drift!

My take on all of it is that the zionist community in Australia think they have the right to insult and abuse anyone, Jewish or otherwise, who dares to criticise apartheid zionist Israel which has been behaving as revoltingly as any police state with which we have become acquainted in the last 150 years.

The Sydney Morning Herald decided to suspend Carlton and called him in to tell him, at which stage he promptly - and correctly - resigned. In my view he had nothing to apologise for, but of course thousands have seen it differently.

The Murdoch media, who are incapable of keeping their paws off anything they deem to be fair game, climbed in with an article and cartoon, all of which were as to be expected, disgusting. The cartoon has since been withdrawn and is no longer available on the web.

The same has happened with the Glen Le Lievre cartoon which appeared with the Carlton article, and it was, together with the cartoonist, accused of the vilest anti-semitic slurs and insults known to the semi-literate newspaper classes.

If we have reached the stage when comments about Israel are off limits, then censorship of the worst type has arrived and the intimidation of journalists and those who respond to articles and blogs will be complete.

It is up to all of us to complain about those in Australia who support Israel at all times and under all circumstances, and those of the so-called Jewish religion need to take themselves off to Israel and stop pretending to show any joy at living in Australia.

I don't think the story is finished yet. Practically all politicians in Australia are zionists, whether they are Jewish or several other religions and they are all in the pocket of the Australian Jewish zionists who have them literally eating out of their pockets with their wonderful free trips to Israel.

It is all to nauseous to contemplate, and as one of our friends says when reading some of these disgusting goings-on, have a bucket handy!
 

THE AGE - FAIRFAX MEDIA - AND LETTER-WRITING TANGLED WEBS!!

The Age newspaper has been trying to tell its readers - old and new - how independent they are, and this large advert in recent papers is to persuade us that we really can accept that items published in Farifax appear without fear or favour!

Preserve us from such pious platitudes!

After a lifetime of reading newspapers in many countries and experiencing the downgrading of journalism and reporting in Fairfax in recent years, we can but despair that papers which were so good in past eras can be so bad in the current times that they cannot be trusted to tell the truth, nor to report - critically - matters which should be analysed, dissected, discussed and show honesty and lack of bias.

For many years of my long life I wrote letters to newspapers in whichever country I happened to be living in, and the topics were many and varied. I used to get letters published from time to time and certainly one's expectations were based on the fact that space for letters has always been limited and the number of letter-writers has been rising over time.

However, many years ago, when I was living in Sydney and writing letters on a regular basis to the Sydney Morning Herald (SMH) and which were just as regularly not ever published, a reader - and writer of letters - wrote in to say - and it was a published letter - that he or she had written about 100 letters to the SMH in a certain period of time and a certain number had been published - and was that a record?

So I wrote a letter to the SMH - which was of course NOT published! - stating that I had written about 100 letters in that same period of time, and NOT ONE had been published, and I was sure that was a record!

I also accused the letters editor of keeping a little black book with the names of people whose letters were not to be published, and the letters editor of the time had a weekly review column on letters sent in to the paper, and my black book suggestion was utterly refuted with all sorts of justifications given as to why my letters may not have got themselves published.

All nonsense, of course! My letters were not published in the SMH - and later not in The Age in Melbourne - because the respective letters editors and their chief editors didn't like what I had said on certain topics and they were certainly not going to print those letters!

So, back to the huge advert above of Fairfax damning themselves with this rubbish and also the following items which have been appearing in The Age since Saturday 28 September 2013:

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Never too serious or silly for poised pen

Date

September 28, 2013

Alex Kaplan

Each morning Myra Fisher reads the front page of The Age, thinks ''Bugger that …'', and fires off another missive to the editor.
With almost 500 letters to her name in the past 15 years, it's no surprise she has taken up the mantle of legendary late letter-writer Constance E. Little.

Myra Fisher has had her 10 pennies' worth for 30 years. Photo: Michael Clayton-Jones

For Mrs Fisher, having her ''10 pennies' worth'' is her sport. ''I love it,'' she says. ''I pit my wits against politicians, against sportsmen, against radio announcers.''

Like Constance E. Little, who when her health was failing contacted Mrs Fisher asking her to keep up the penmanship, no topic is too serious or too silly to tackle.

Mrs Fisher has shot politicians (Amanda Vanstone) out of cannons and given them the rude finger. She's dished out advice on the cooking of Patagonian tooth fish (fried better than poached) and observed the delight of a kiss (I said to my husband of 54 years, ''Kiss me like you used to''. He did. Oh, what joy!)

Being a leftie, she has not hesitated to give a tick to Julia Gillard (After a long labour - it's a girl!) or a kick to Tony Abbott (Face it, Tony, women are just ''not that into you''.)

The Letters page, she says, gives ordinary people a place like no other to have a voice. ''It's a forum, and it's a democracy. I can have my little say, and how wonderful is that? I mean, I'm nobody.''

Myra Fisher was born in London's East End in 1931, the daughter of Jewish migrants. She left school at 15 and trained as a hairdresser.

''I'm not highly educated but highly attuned,'' she says.

Her family journeyed to Melbourne as ''10-pound Poms'' when she was 17. Three years later, after a five-month courtship, she married Ron Fisher. ''He was so handsome - it was 'lust' at first sight!''
They raised a son and two daughters, one of whom died in 2001, aged 45.

Her observations, at 82 and a grandmother of five, often move her to write. ''The world has changed,'' she says. ''We've got to go along with it.''

A discussion this year about the unwillingness of men to wed prompted a longer, more personal letter about Ron, who died on St Valentine's Day this year.

''My husband volunteered into the navy when he was 17 … he spent his 21st birthday alone on guard duty at Chatham Barracks. What a man he was. Responsible and funny and mature.

''I look at my grandsons, and I love them to bits, but they're boys.''

When Mrs Fisher began writing to The Age more than three decades ago, she would read out letters on the phone to the paper's copytaker to type up. But as the internet age dawned, she refused to be left behind.

The prospect of making people chuckle keeps her going.

''Such a miserable bloody world some mornings, you wake up and read the paper. So if you can bring a smile to somebody's face, how lovely is that?''

Her occupation as a letter writer has taken on a life of its own. She burst into tears upon hearing from Constance E. Little. ''I was just knocked out.''

Having a letter published is a privilege, she says. ''I don't take that lightly.''

Alex Kaplan is Letters Co-editor.

Pardon me for mentioning… Unpublished letters to The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald (Allen & Unwin) is available now. RRP $24.99

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Our passionate people of letters

Date

September 28, 2013

•  

Elizabeth Minter

Julia Blunden was 11 when she first started voicing her strong opinions as a primary school student. Her contributions to ABC radio's Argonauts Club were regularly read out on air.

More than 50 years later, Julia is still trying to influence public opinion, regularly writing letters to the editor on issues close to her heart such as public transport and climate change. Writing letters to the editor is a family affair in many Age readers' households. Julia's husband, Ralph, who has a master's in moral philosophy and a doctorate in education, is also a regular contributor. Occasionally the couple discuss issues and suggest improvements to each other's letters, but there is little rivalry in who gets published. ''We tend to stick to our areas of knowledge,'' says Ralph Blunden. ''While I used to write long-winded missives, I have learnt over the years to be much more succinct.''

Peter Allan, another regular over the past decade, says his introduction to The Age was through Odd Spot: ''In high school my friends and I would go to the library at lunchtime and get a chuckle each day.'' Allan says The Age then became ''my paper''. Just like some people can't start the day without a shower or a cup of coffee, ''I can't start the day without my Age''.

Peter Allan and his daughter, Kate, are both regular letter writers to The Age. Photo: Angela Wylie
He is also pleased to claim some credit for inspiring a new generation of writers.

His daughter, Kate, 23, a history honours student, recently had her first Age letter published, while his son and some of their friends have also picked up their pens in the cause.

''I am encouraged that I have helped inspire the next generation to get involved and not just sit on the sidelines.''

Kate Allan says that knowing her father had been published gave her confidence to start contributing. Gen Y representatives regularly join in online debates but Allan says there is something special about an argument being printed. ''What you are saying just doesn't disappear into cyberspace and there is much more accountability.''

Matthew Van Wees had his first letter published as a 14-year-old, when he made a cricket wisecrack about John Howard and Shane Warne.

In a remarkable show of perseverance, he continued to send in letters for another eight years before he was published again. Now a pharmacist, Matthew, 24, and his brother Nathan, 22, who has also begun contributing, indulge in some healthy sibling rivalry. Matthew is currently just pipping his brother in the publication stakes.

Letters that are accurate, factual and topical help a writer get published. Writer Barbara Chapman, for example, always provides references for claims made in her letters and regularly champions the causes of the voiceless in society, such as refugees and domestic violence victims. About seven years ago, after witnessing several disturbing events in adult education where she worked, she received a letter from a senior bureaucrat warning her not to speak publicly. ''I was initially intimidated … but about 12 months later, I reclaimed my voice. And the warning had the reverse effect.''

She began writing to the paper more regularly. ''Silence is consent, and I couldn't be silent in the face of institutional misconduct. It can be a formidable task to get another perspective out there because of the power imbalance in society, but that is why the Letters page is so important. It is one of the last bastions of democracy and truth.''

Some letter writers express frustration with what they see as a perceived bias of the page. They believe that while readership of the newspaper would be evenly split between Coalition and Labor/Green voters, the letters do not reflect this, with a far higher proportion criticising the Coalition than Labor.

However, letters are published in strict proportion to the numbers received on any topic. Recently, for example, The Age received more than 80 letters critical of the Abbott government's male-dominated cabinet, while just over 10 letters backed the new Prime Minister's decision to have just one woman.

Barrister Douglas Potter believes the page falls for party-political campaigning. ''People have obviously been given a script with talking points and the writers make those same points. I don't think it is a coincidence that so many letters are published on a certain topic from day to day.''

Thomas Hogg, an economist who has been writing letters for more than a decade, is dismayed by what he calls an appalling understanding of economics generally, but especially from politicians and opinion makers.

As a public servant - he headed up two state government departments and was the chief executive of the Australian Manufacturing Council - he was constrained from speaking publicly. But when Jeff Kennett came to power and Hogg was made redundant, he became free to comment. He also believes the page is too heavily biased towards ''inner-city lefties''.

Potter also dislikes the anonymous contributions allowed by other media. ''If you really believe something, you should stand up and be counted.'' Yet newly published writers can feel daunted. Kate Allan said she felt good at having her letter published, ''but it soon turned to a feeling of paranoia that someone might cut down what I said''.

''Because I am still quite young I am a probably a little more thin-skinned than older writers.''

This is why Chapman has respect for letter writers. ''They care enough to write in, even though they can expose themselves to possible ridicule, contempt or even hostility.''

But despite the brickbats and bouquets, one message is consistent: the desire to be heard and make a difference to society lies at the heart of most writers' motivations.

The importance of the page to readers as they go about their daily life is also a common theme. Says Peter Allan: ''I like the fact that the page is a conversation with a lot of people. It is like attending a rally when a few hundred or even a few thousand people attend. The rally might not achieve much but when you see a huge crowd of people that hold the same values as you, it feels good to know you are not fighting these issues alone.''

Allan believes readers have a strong sense of ownership of the page. That writers are regularly allowed to criticise actions taken, or articles published, by the paper adds to its integrity, he says.
At its most basic, ''everyone writes in because they are trying to make the world a better place, even though we do not all agree on how to do that''.

Pardon me for mentioning… Unpublished letters to The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald (Allen & Unwin) is available now. RRP $24.99

 

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 In your own write

(editorial theage 300913)

Many are called, but few are chosen. Thus the eternal quandary of contributing to the letters-to-the-editor pages of The Age. Conversely, our letters editors, Liz Minter and Alex Kaplan, are faced with the daily task of selecting perhaps 25 letters out of about 300 submitted for publication.

It is no coincidence that The Age's editorials and our readers' letters share this space: the harmony of our opinions chiming with your opinions may contain more than a few dissonances, but this is exactly why we have always encouraged and valued your correspondence. Letters (emails, more likely) are as vital to newspapers as audiences are to a performance: without them, there can be no way to gauge the public mood - be it supportive or conflicting.

This week, some of our unsuccessful letter writers of the recent past finally receive their moment in the sun via a whole book devoted to their efforts. Pardon me for mentioning … is a compendium of unpublished letters to The Age and our sister paper, The Sydney Morning Herald. Edited by Ms Kaplan and her Herald counterparts, Julie Lewis and Catharine Munro, this book is not just an excuse to run resuscitated dead letters. It is a reminder of the diversity of opinion, quirks and foibles and downright common sense that lurks within the Fairfax readership.

On Saturday, we caught up with some of The Age's legion of letter writers - a breed that crosses generations and many differences of opinion. What they have in common, apart from their addiction to playing letter-lotto, is the desire to be heard and to make a difference. We salute them all, especially the indefatigable Myra Fisher, of East Brighton, who has written almost 500 letters to The Age in the past 15 years. To all of you: keep writing!

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How fortunate

(letter in theage 300913)

As a fellow ''letter writer'', it was nice to put a face to your name, Myra Fisher (''Never too serious or silly for poised pen'', 28/9), and to read of the general acknowledgment for the ''passionate people of letters'' (Insight, 28/9). Whenever I submit a letter to the editor, regardless of whether it's published, I feel privileged; just as I do every time I go to the ballot box to vote. I am deeply aware of how blessed we are in Australia to not only have the freedom to express our views, but to be encouraged to do so. How many worldwide would give everything to have this right, and in fact, often do so?
Janine Joseph, Prahran East

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Some years ago, when the fact that newspapers were not prepared to publish my letters became more and more apparent, I started a web page called Unpublished Letters, and managed to publish letters which needed to be out there and which had been ignored. Recently I have not been as driven to write letters to the media because I have developed my web pages more and more to reflect my politics, and the urgency of the main stream media has diminished.

 

OPEN LETTER TO GREG HYWOOD OF FAIRFAX MEDIA

The following item appeared in The Age newspaper on Monday 29 July 2013:

Because it is not easy to read from the scanned copy, I am retyping it so that it is clearly legible and able to be interpreted:

The greatest compliment a fiercely independent media organisation can receive is condemnation from those who fear free speech and unfailing scrutiny of the rich and powerful.

So the Herald humbly welcomes the hubris and triumphalism of James Packer and Lachlan Murdoch this week at the launch of the book Killing Fairfax: Packer, Murdoch and the Ultimate Revenge.

In doing so we do not accept their false premises that the company which has funded the Herald'squality journalism for so long is dying, nor that this pair of moguls' sons can claim credit for any problems Fairfax has faced.

Rather, we see the premature exaltation of Packer and Murdoch as proof certain that the Herald and its stablemates are doing just as they always have. And that is fulfilling a critical democratic duty, without fear or favour, without regard to commercial self-interest. With respect, what an affront it surely is to all Australians for Packer and Murdoch to rejoice over threats to quality journalism.

For 182 years the Herald has exposed corruption, protected the vulnerable, pursued growth for all and embraced an optimistic vision for the nation based on a contest of ideas. That Packer and Murdoch can gloat over any potential reduction in media diversity reflects poorly on them, thereby highlighting the importance of ensuring Fairfax's journalism survives.

And it will survive, funded by a new, sustainable business model to replace what were once, indeed, rivers of gold. Technological advances in the past two decades have forced Fairfax and other newspaper companies to change as those lucrative classified advertising revenues slowed sharply and shifted to online outfits.

Packer and Murdoch rode by chance with some of them, gambling that they could cash in and wreak delicious revenge against Fairfax for daring to expose their families' power and behaviour to unwanted scrutiny. "You'd have to say they've got thin skins," was the conclusion of Killing Fairfax author Pam Williams - tellingly, a Fairfax employee.

With glasses raised in toast this week, Packer said: "Fairfax didn't see any of this coming. They thought it was all beneath them.They thought we were idiots. You know, I think we killed Fairfax." Murdoch responded: "I think so."

For the sake of those who value democracy and a proudly Australian voice, let's hope not. Fairfax made mistakes along the way. No one in the myriad media organisations that have vanished or struggled can deny that. But Fairfax survives.

With respect, Packer left the media because the power his family sought through it was evaporating and money mattered too much. With respect, the Murdoch empire has relied on global film revenue to fund its news media, will rely on TV revenue in future and has used phone hacking to seek a commercial advantage.

By contrast, Fairfax is developing a business model that can ensure the Herald serves the Australian public with independent journalism for 182 years. That Williams can write a book which exposes her employer to cheap shots from rivals says a lot about editorial independence.

Contrast this to the Murdoch emprie's rejection of internal dissent and insistence on groupthink, to Kerry Packer's intolerance of criticism and his son's "hatred, hatred, hatred, hatred" outburst in describing his motivations against Fairfax. Contrast it to the Herald's ability to give credit to where it is due and play every issue on its merits.

To the chagrin of Packer and Murdoch, the Herald's team of fearless journalists remains a thorn in the side; a check and balance on the extremes of power; a challenge to the cosy status quo; a rival that cannot be paid off; in essence that most dangerous of ideas, free speech in pursuit of the public interest.

Kate McClymont, Adele Ferguson, Linton Besser, Peter Hartcher and so many more - let no businessman or politician say their work and that of countless other Fairfax journalists has not made this country a better and more civilised place.

The Herald believes Australians will always value quality journalism and keep supporting a business that has a long record of delivering it. While you can now access the Herald's journalism in many ways, the core promise has not changed.

And you still have a choice about what sort of country Australia should be. It can be one where the commercial interests of Packer and Murdoch prevail, self-satisfied and free of scrutiny. The other is one where, as the first Herald editorial said in 1831, editorial management of newspapers is conducted upon principles of candour, honesty and honour. Where respect and deference are paid to all classes. Freedom of thinking. No wish to mislead. No interests to gratify. Dissent with respect, to establish a principle.

By these sentiments we shall be guided, and, whether friends or foes, by these we shall judge others, we have a right, therefore, to expect by these we shall be judged.

We will not let negative judgements of the past distort our view of a future which, with the collective efforts of everyone at Fairfax on behalf of our loyal readers and shareholders, is destined to be a bright one.

Greg Hywood
CEO & Managing Director
Fairfax Media

....................and now the open letter:

Dear Mr Hywood,

I would like to start at the end by commenting on your choice of journalists' names whose praises you are singing and would suggest that at least one of them, who was associated with reporting on the Wood Royal Commission all those years ago in New South Wales, showed the SMH's prejudices and biases by reportage which was so one-sided and shocking that it caused several problems for many of the people who had appeared before the Commission.

Much more recently, one of your most senior and respected journalists was guilty of the most outrageous bias and exaggeration in her reportings about the first female prime minister in Australia's history. Fairfax reporting over this unfortunate period of our political scene in the last few years showed bias that even Rupert Murdoch would have been proud of!

There have been topics in recent times which Fairfax media have dealt with which were to the right of Genghis Khan and competed favourably (sic) with some of the worst reactionary papers in the country.

Those of us who have for many years endeavoured to write letters to the SMH and The Age on controversial topics have been totally ignored, while some of the favourite letter-writers of the current letters editor received favourable treatment and regular letters by them appeared in the papers.

Oh, and did I mention that Israel is the "holy grail" while Palestine doesn't exist?

While it is acknowledged the paper has always had limited room available to publish letters from its hundreds of correspondents, one has always felt that to exclude those we have written on a regular basis shows a bias without equal.

Fairfax media have not gone downhill just because of online development, they have gone downhill because people who read newspapers and are hoping to read those which don't always without variation reflect the views of right-wing reactionary religious bigots in the communities expected Fairfax papers to present views which are not extreme at the far right end of the spectrum, and would here and there represent other views than just those of one or both of the mainstream parliamentary parties.

People like Amanda Vanstone and Nicolle Flint have no place in the Fairfax media for their reactionary stance on so many issues and Flint, who is doing a PhD on environmentalism and Australian farmers is obviously unworthy of such a qualification if her article headed "Anti-GM attitudes are harming the hungry" is an example of her ignorance and blindness in relation to the outcry internationally against GMOs and the firms guilty of propagating their spread.

Have others had a look in on Fairfax media - such as those who have other views on GMOs? If so, we have found it difficult to find.

Fairfax has seldom shown enough bravery and fortitude to fight the establishment on issues which groups in the community have found little place for their voices to be heard - where, for instance, is the Fairfax outcry in Victoria over the issue of public transport versus the road and petrol lobbies? Where has Fairfax been over issues such as labelling of genetically modified foods in our supermarkets?

Where has Fairfax been when certain Australian citizens have had problems overseas and the government and opposition have refused to help them? Where is Fairfax over the issue of asylum seekers and human rights abuses?

These are a few modern examples, but we can go back a few decades when Fairfax's stand on issues of gay rights and AIDS "victims" showed ongoing prejudice and bias some of which still exists to this day!

And I would guarantee that an open letter such as this would not see the light of day in your prejudiced and closed 21st century Fairfax newspapers.

There are many of us who wouldn't buy a Murdoch paper if they were the only ones available, and there are many of us who feel that the alternative we have been seeking has progressively (sic) been letting us down more and more for the last 30 years.

Fortunately for those of us brought up on newspapers and controversy, now totally lacking in Fairfax, we have access to the internet where we get the news which Fairfax should be printing in its media.

The bottom fell out of Fairfax shares over the last 5 years and if Gina Rinehart gets control of more and more shares in Fairfax, she will probably endeavour to shut it down altogether.

Is this the police state of media that we would like in this country? I don't think so!

And finally, this letter in the Sunday Age of 4 August 2013 encapsulates the Fairfax problems in a nutshell:

Not in our name

I searched and searched for a report of the 5000 people in the streets of Melbourne on Saturday July 27 protesting against Kevin Rudd's refusal to honour our commitment to compassion for those displaced from their countries by terror. Nothing. Keep your ear closer to the ground - the people of Melbourne are saying ''not in our name''.

HELEN WALSH, Watsonia

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Following the announcement of the federal election taking place on 7 September 2013, the papers started filling up with the usual nonsense from editors and hacks on the two main sides of politics. Fortunately for the sanity of some of us, this letter found its way into publication in The Age on 6 August 2013 and says it ALL!:

Live up to your promise, editors

Monday's editorial said all the right things about The Age wanting to provide readers with informed analysis of the issues. Could you start by scrapping the regular columns of blinkered, anti-Labor, pro-Liberal barracking from Amanda Vanstone and Nicolle Flint? I don't want you to ''balance'' their diatribes with equally biased commentary from Labor hacks - not that I recall you trying to do so. Just report the news, and back it up with balanced, objective, rational commentary from people who know how to analyse the issues.

Adrian Jackson, Blackburn South

AUSTRALIA'S MEDIA BECOMES "RUPERTISED"!

The current media politics in Australia have become mono-voiced and the mono-voice has taken its cue from the main monopolistic media broker in the country.

Have you noticed that with the one voice they are crying "GET GILLARD BY FAIR MEANS OR FOUL!"

I am not a Gillard fan - she and her ALP government have let down the Australian population and those who would hope to become part of that population, and they have failed us on many issues.

However, with one voice the media are trying to destroy a legally elected government and to prove that the natural government of the country is in the hands of the most conservative voices ever to shout from the rooftops ""WE SHALL GOVERN AND WE ALONE SHALL DECIDE WHO GOVERNS THE COUNTRY"!

The main voice has been the Murdoch-controlled media which is roughly 70 per cent of all media in Australia. But the other 30 per cent is more or less Fairfax media and the ABC which has thrown in its lot with the Murdoch gang to the extent that there is no possibility of ever obtaining fair and reasoned argument on that once august organisation.

From Keating onwards, all governments hve undermined and underfunded the ABC and of course the coup de grace was when Howard appointed Mark Scott as Managing Director of the organisation after he had already subverted journalism at Fairfax.

Journalists who might actually voice dissent and reason with sound arguments are on notice not to rock the media boats which give them their livelihoods - which are shrinking anyway, because alternative media are able to tell the truths which the main stream media (MSM) won't do - they are all supporting reactionary, right-wing, homophobic bigotry and worse.

Is this a media dictatorship taking over?

It certainly seems so!

Here is an interesting letter from The Age 0n 6 February 2013:

Media must pin down politicians

IT IS time the media accepted some responsibility for the contempt in which politicians seem to hold their constituents. Fatuous sound bites from doorstep interviews have become the basis for opinion pieces. When did fact checking and research go out of the journalistic kitbag?

The public has learnt to expect that politicians have difficulty with the truth, but it seems the media, caught up in the frenzy of being first with the news, are also losing credibility. Pinning politicians down to answer questions, and presenting in-depth analysis once were the basics of political journalists.

Policies and costings for every political party's platform should be demanded by the press and then properly scrutinised and reported by journalists. If journalists went back to basics, the freedom of the press would mean something. It would mean electors would be free to choose the government they want, knowing exactly what it is intending to do.

Greg Tuck, Warragul

MICHELLE GRATTAN DOES MORE DAMAGE AND THEN SUDDENLY MOVES ON!

Michelle Grattan has worked for Fairfax media for many years and has slowly but inexorably moved from centre (?) to ultra right, becoming more and more extreme in the last 5 years since the Rudd/Gillard governments arrived in Canberra.

She has done her best to destabilise the present government and undermine Gillard at every turn.

She has done nothing to ensure investigation of the Slipper/Ashby/Thomson/Jackson scandals, she has done nothing to investigate the Oppositions's role in destablising the government and indeed she has done her level best to assist them - the Opposition - at every turn.

Grattan is reported as having accepted a post at the Australian National University where she will apparently be involved in media studies.

I pity her students - one-sided narrow prejudiced reporting does not academic freedom make as we are witnessing at the moment in the USA where - as in Australia - any criticism of Israel is taken to be anti-semitic, where the real anti-semites are the Israelis and zionists around the world!

The Gillard government may not be the best government ever seen in this or any other country, but in the country of the fair go - supposedly - every effort is being mounted by the media - Murdoch/Fairfax/ABC - you name it - they are all trying to cause the government to collapse.

We all make mistakes, some worse than others, but human beings are fallible creatures and it does not make them be condemned for all their efforts.

Gillard and Rudd have personally done me a great deal of harm, and their approaches to many aspects of government have been appalling, but do people like Grattan really believe that the Abbott-led team will be so much better than those who are in government at the moment?

If so, they are deluding themselves, and should the unthinkable occur at the election in September 2013 many of these people will be as shocked as the Queenslanders and News South Welshmen have been since electing Newman and O'Farrell.

FAIRFAX MANAGEMENT AND JOURNALISTS HAVE ONLY THEMSELVES TO BLAME!

Mark Scott moved from Fairfax to the ABC, and the ABC has followed a downward path on a similar trajectory to that of Fairfax in the ensuing years.

Fairfax management agenda has been on a particularly right-wing reactionary path since the Howard years, following a political direction set since at least 1996 onwards.

Instead of responding to what many of the Fairfax readers have hoped for over the years, Sydney Morning Herald and The Age journalists have allowed themselves to forget about in-depth investigative journalism, and being seduced into the reactionary maelstrom of gutter journalism at its worst.

Where stories cried out for "deep and meaningful" investigation into allegations and counter-allegations of various breaking-news issues, most journalists have gone for the superficial, meaningless slurs and innuendos, the latest of which is the story about Peter Slipper, Craig Thomson, James Ashby and Kathy Jackson.

Why is it that independent journalist investigators, people who are not working for Fairfax, News Limited, the ABC and other like-minded media outlets, managed to get the factual information so lacking in those organisations' reporting of the important parts of the story?

Is it because they illustrated graphically their determination to bring down the Federal government and cast aspersions on all those who support it in the current parliament to the extent that most Fairfax journalists have worn their politics on their sleeves, and in the process shown what their mettles are like as journalists and reporters.

Some of the most senior reporters at the Fairfax newspapers have become so reactionary in their reporting of stories from the current federal parliament that they could easily be mistaken for members of the opposition parties without too many doubts about their interests and aspirations.

The only difference Rinehart would make to the editorial direction of Fairfax is to put the stories in her own image.

As things stand at the moment, they are not far off!