7.30 report and objectivity, page-77

Dumb and dumber never get between a cliche and the lazy Australian media.


exNews writes today of something that has occurred to more than one person: the Slipper ‘scandal’ looks like a stitch-up. The Murdoch press and the Liberal Party have form.

The VexNews article distilled the suspicions of a lot here, and I'm sure a lot out in the community. Even a nominally right-wing web site can see what might be happening here.

A conservative blogger elsewhere wrote that anyone who dares to contemplate that this scandal has the smell of rotting fish about it is "blasting off the reservation".

This mocking condemnation would have a little more weight if Utegate hadn't happened.

Utegate was a rolled-gold, 100%, stitch-up.

Utegate proved that conspiracies do happen. It is chapter and verse on how to run a phoney scam.

Let's look at the connections:

1. Same journalist.
2. Same newspapers (Murdoch).
3. Same response from the Opposition.

Where is James Ashby, the plaintiff in this mess? No one, but no one has printed anything from him on the allegations. He's gone to ground, it seems, hiding behind the media's reluctance to be seen as "blaming the victim". He doesn't want to comment, his lawyers tell us. He must be a sensitive soul. So hurt, so traumatized: a 33 year old gay man shocked by someone he alleges sent him a text message with "xxx" at the end of it.

This is not me "blaming the victim". This is asking whether the allegations are true or not, which no one in the media has yet done. They prefer to pontificate in their op eds and to interview each other over how "dire" this is for the government.

They confidently predict that this story will dominate the news for the foreseeable future. One by one they promise their readers that it will destroy even the Budget, the announcement of the nation's balance sheet, in tight economic times.

They don't seem to care that they have publicly, even proudly assured us they will abandon their real responsibilities to achieve coverage of what amounts to unproven, untested, bedroom titillation, with a gay twist.

Yet Ashby was prepared to give his court documents to the cockroach, Steve Lewis, or to advise him of their existence, for publication nation-wide before he went into hiding.

A few Cabcharge dockets are involved. VexNews tells us that the way these dockets were used is standard practice among MPs, not gaming the system, but trying to make it work better for them and the taxpayer dollar.

The speed with which the Opposition has called for resignations and new elections (how long until someone says Slipper should be shot at dawn?) smacks of an attempt to get a bandwagon rolling before too much more extra information that might prove embarrassing to them comes out.

Unfortunately for them we don't sack senior, constitutional officers of the parliament and terminate governments based on what Steve Lewis writes in the Murdoch papers on a lazy Saturday.

Unfortunately for them the same organization, the same personnel as perpetrated Utegate are involved. The organization they work for is under heavy investigation for running scams just like this in the UK, involving corruption of police, intimidation, bribery, perversion of the course of justice, destruction of evidence, illegal access to documents and private telephony, and disgracefully manufacturing evidence and stories based on those lies.

Many of these same techniques are on record as being used by the local offshoot of News: forged emails and their purveying by the same journalist, Steve Lewis, who became a player in Utegate, not just its reporter; premature calls for resignations of all and sundry, parliamentary scandals, fake photographs of political figures, and so on... all of which came to nothing within days, to the shame of those promoting the scam.

The Murdoch press has made no secret, in fact has boasted about their intention to get the goods on Slipper. They have bragged they would bring him down. And now the first "evidence" has come out: a few hundred dollars worth of Cabcharge dockets, and some ambiguous text messages, cobbled together in "court documents" that have been "obtained" by Lewis under suspicious circumstances, resulting in frantic calls for the fall of governments, laid on thicker than Golden Syrup straight after.

Sound familiar?

In any other world except MurdochWorld, right-wing hacks and trolls might have a case to mock conspiracy theorists in this matter as desperate, or "off the reservation".

But in this case it should really be the ones promoting the charges, the ones trying to get the scam off the ground, who should be trying to re-establish their bona fides after their disgraceful, shameful conduct in the past on similar phoneyed-up "scandals".

It's all too quick, too pat. What we are seeing unfolding before our eyes appears to be, judged on precedent, a mass media groupthink exercise in bamboozlement, trying to obtain a quick result before the allegations are tested and the principals ferreted out and interrogated.

Many journalists and editorial writers are telling their readers and viewers that the truth no longer matters. They are telling them that the stories and op eds they are writing themselves are the only "truths" that need to be considered before judgement is passed and execution carried out.

The conservatives themselves, supposed guardians and preservers of our institutions, are urging the abandonment of the rule of law and the principles of justice. They are saying, loud and proud, that even if Slipper isn't guilty of anything, he should still resign. That's what they said about Rudd and Swan too over Utegate. Yet they remained silent about their own Senator Fisher, to name one, when she was up before the Courts and was actually convicted.

They, the self-professed bastions of the establishment, are seriously (and I'm sure they would claim, "responsibly") proposing that the nation's government should be strangled at Budget time. The nation itself - pride of the IMF and the G20, just about the best-performing sophisticated economy in the world - should be put into economic chaos with no Budget and no governance.

For what?

A few hundred dollars worth of taxi vouchers, and an un-investigated, untested, unchallenged set of allegations made by a man who has disappeared from sight, publicised by the same organization that has wrecked governance in the UK, and which nearly wrecked it here with Utegate.

No due process, just perpetual chaos is what they seem to want. Their scoreboard is "The Polls" - meaningless numbers this far out from an election. Their cheer squad is "The Shock Jocks", rabid demagogues who rake dirt and slime for a living, yet retreat to the Coward's Castle of being "mere entertainers" when caught out, as they are so often.

The dumber than dumb, to the point of being brain-dead media are herded like sheep. Dennis Atkins yesterday on Insiders let the cat out of the bag:

”What happens is that most media outlets will start reassessing the strategy for covering the Budget. Do we send our senior political journalists into the Budget lockup, or do we keep them out to watch a potential political and Constitutional crisis on the floor of the parliament? It's going to be a juggling act in terms of how we cover those two competing stories, and I think the public should be in no doubt that these are two stories of equal gravity.

"This is a huge political story that could have enormous political ramifications for the government whose future depends on which way it goes and how it plays out. So it's going to completely overshadow Wayne Swan's Budget.

"The government this week was sort-of putting together all the blocks for its Budget selling, and the message it wanted with the Budget. Speeches and interviews carefully placed here and there. Key lines and themes were going really well. The government was singing from one song-sheet. And I think they all got up Friday morning and thought: 'This is all going well. We know where we're headed and we seem to be putting one foot in front of the other', which for this government is quite a feat.

"Then suddenly, Saturday morning: WHACKO! The whole thing is blown asunder.”

This is Atkins telling us how the scam works. He is an employee of one of the tabloids in question, its senior political commentator, and it's inconceivable that he didn't know about this Lewis story in advance.

Atkins was indiscreet on Insiders. He was telling the audience that the Murdoch press is so confident of its cards in this game that it can still win the pot, even if those cards are laid down face up on the table for all other players to see.

He told us what to expect: the Budget will be ignored because of a convenient sex scandal, sprinkled with confetti made from a couple of hundred bucks worth of Cabcharge dockets. This is now parrotted by Fairfax and the ABC, as night follows day.

The Murdoch-Coalition strategy was there for all to see, laid out by one of its chief perpetrators: "Government has good week. Release next scandal."

Atkins doesn't countenance the possibility that both the Speaker's woes AND the Budget could be covered simultaneously. He knows what has been decided.

He knows the game plan: it is all the Government's fault for its own Budget being ignored.

Atkins has seen it all before... and so have we.

Why do so many fall for this classic Murdoch smear? Why have so many forgotten the very poor form of the story's author, Steve Lewis, and the shameful record of his employer in matters of this type? Why do so many continue to forgive the Murdoch media for continual, egregious, multiple transgressions against laws, standards of decency, conventions and even their own code of basic journalistic ethics?

They have been shown to be habitual liars and manufacturers of stories, yet they are still believed automatically. Journalists, all now parroting talk of resignation and the fall of governments, follow them like sheep to a slaughterhouse killing room.

Not one has bothered to try to interview Ashby, the originator of the allegations. Not one has questioned the timing, or the legal issues involved. They are too busy "reacting", interviewing each other, war-gaming strategies, juggling poll numbers, passing judgement and tut-tutting about the peccadilloes of others to think clearly about just which cesspit this story came from, what's in it for whom and why it's been put out now.

The greater, more urgent scandal is how the media in this pathetically small village called "Australia" is suckered time and time again by the likes of Murdoch and his corrupt organization into abandoning their ethics and their curiosity for the cheapest of scams, promoted for the basest of reasons, spread by the lowest of the low among them.

These caricatures of ethical journalism are lazy, cliché-ridden, group-thinking, single-minded nihilists, without an ounce of creativity, imagination or even professional curiosity, peddling dodgy gay sex "scandals" and taxi rorts as more important than the welfare of the nation and its governance in testing times.

The media in Australia are an absolute disgrace.

UPDATE-1

Questions need to be asked:

1. Who is paying Ashby's legal bills? Actions in the Federal Court do not come cheap.

2. Who paid for the "independent forensic Information
Technology assessment and report" on the text messages?

3. Is Ashby solvent in the case of failure of his application? Will he be able to pay costs if his case fails? Has he received guarantees of financial support? If so, by whom?

4. Where is the evidence Ashby took genuine steps to have the matter mediated before he went to the Federal Court? Indeed, we are told of a "Genuine Steps" statement. Where is it? Slipper says he is "surprised" by the action. How could Slipper be "surprised" if the applicant took "Genuine Steps" to resolve the matter?

5. Worth repeating: who is paying for this very expensive legal action in one of the highest courts of the land?

UPDATE-2:

Looking at the court documents Ashby has submitted, it's plain, from Ashby's own admission, that Slipper formed the opinion that Ashby's loyalty to him was suspect.

By February 26, Slipper was worried that Ashby was having clandestine dealings with the LNP (from which Ashby is said to have resigned) behind his back, or certainly without advising him. Slipper allegedly challenged Ashby on this matter via text messages. Ashby does not say why this conversation occurred, or what were the circumstances behind it, or what was his reply (see 18. below).

It should be noted that none of this "loyalty" aspect has been discussed in the media with any degree of significance.

A bit less than a month later, on March 20, 2012, Ashby claims to have decided Slipper's aim in hiring him was, at least in part, to begin a sexual relationship with him. It appears that Slipper had his own suspicions about Ashby, not of a sexual nature, but regarding Ashby's loyalty to him.

A month after that Ashby filed his complaint with the Federal Court.

Most of the serious charges are evidenced, not by text messages, but by Ashby's personal recollections (no witnesses are mentioned except on one occasion, and then only after the event). Slipper would certainly argue that if, as alleged, he had made advances to Ashby, that he had withdrawn them immediately saying "no hard feelings". Other instances of an allegedly sexual nature were dismissed by Ashby himself with words such as "All good", and the admission that he was not too upset about "the massage". The complaint evidence Ashby's feelings about events.

There is no mention of any formal counseling of Slipper, consultations with the federal government's HR people, attempts at mediation, or ultimatums to Slipper by Ashby (perhaps in the form of a letter of demand), except a reference to a "Genuine Steps statement" that Ashby says has also been lodged with the Court. Instead we have, at face value, a reference to the Federal Court as a first option.

The charges of "breach of contract" involving Ashby's claim he was "forced" to watch allegedly irregular dealings with CabCharge dockets and was traumatized by this seem very weak.

We do not know who is funding Ashby's application to the Federal Court, if anyone, or who funded the "forensic" examination of his mobile phone in order to validate text messages. Neither of these two processes would be cheap. While it is not required of Ashby to reveal these sources at this stage, it would certainly help clear up pubic interest in the matter.

It would also help if Ashby's ENITRE text message records were released, not just the excerpts that support his allegations. We might find out who else he had been talking to, and maybe whether Slipper's suspicions of disloyalty had any substance.

Once again the lack of curiosity from the media stands out like a sore thumb. They seem to be more interested in "the politics" and interviewing each other about this, and to be more preoccupied by the fascinating possibilities of the Budget, indeed the Budget session itself, being blown apart, leaving Australia without a means of paying both its routine and policy-related expenses, and presumably with a Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, who has no policies or costings prepared and out for commentary, yet claims to be ready for an election "in 33 days" if necessary.

Despite my comments above, below is what I believe to be a fair summary of the evidence contained in the "sexual harassment" section of Ashby's court documents.

1. (Time unknown, informer not named) Ashby is informed by an ex-staffer of Slipper's of an alleged apparently consensual relationship between Slipper and a junior staffer in 2003.

2. (June-August 2011) He meets Slipper. Slipper allegedly asks Ashby his opinion of the sexuality of a third person (present in Slipper's home). Ashby at this time admits to Slipper that he is "openly gay".

3. (October 15, 2011) Slipper's first alleged formal job offer to Ashby. Declined by Ashby.

4. (October 27, 2011) Slipper's second alleged job offer to Ashby. Declined by Ashby.

5. (December 5, 2011) Another alleged job offer from Slipper. Accepted by Ashby on December 22. (Ashby later claims that, in November, Slipper had also interviewed another gay man for the job)

--------- ASHBY EMPLOYED --------

6. (January 2, 2012) Ashby travels to Canberra to commence work. In that week he claims to have stayed at Slipper's flat in Hughes. Alleges Slipper made the "Tim {Tim Knapp, a Slipper advisor} says you're my f buddy." comment. Ashby says this was an example of "poor humour, but admits he "brushed it off" at the time".

7. (January 4, 2012) Slipper allegedly asks Ashby to massage his neck. Ashby does so but stop when Slipper "moans" in alleged "intense sexual pleasure". Ashby immediately stops, saying "You're done".

8. (January 5, 2012) Alleged conversation as to why Ashby keeps shower and toilet door closed.

9. (January 6, 2012) Slipper allegedly showers with door open.

10. (Around January 9, 2012 "end of that week") Slipper allegedly tells Ashby that he "looks fat" in a new polo shirt. Ashby claims Slipper knew he had had a "weight problem" and claims this was "vindictive and deliberately spiteful".

11. (January 14, 2012) Slipper allegedly asks Ashby if he has "ever c in a guy's a before?". Ashby claim to have been shocked at the inappropriateness of this question coming from an employer. Says that he was forced to remain with Slipper on that day for work purposes.

12. ("Some weeks later") Slipper allegedly asks Ashby whether he is into "twinks or bears". Ashby claims to have been "uncomfortable" saying "They are not questions you ask."

13. (February 1, 2012) Ashby claims to have advised Slipper not to do an interview with a local newspaper, the Sunshine Coast Daily. Sends Slipper a text to that effect, in strong terms. Slipper does interview. Ashby texts him saying he'll have to clean up the mess (from the interview) as a result. Signs text off with "F---k f--k f--k". Slipper allegedly replies not to worry. Signs text off with "x". A later alleged text allegedly consists of just "Xxx", in reponse to more berating by Ashby for doing the interview.

14. (Later the same day) Slipper later (9.38pm) allegedly texts Ashby "Would be good if you here but perhaps we are not close enough?" Ashby does not reply. Slipper allegedly re-sends the same text at 10.00pm. Ashby jokes ("Ha, ha") about someone called "Tim", asking where he is "tonight". Some banter allegedly follows about who is closer to Slipper: "Tim" or Ashby. Slipper allegedly text Ashby "If you interested we could be closer". Ashby claims to be "comfortable" with "Tim" being "closest", saying he doesn't like "stepping on toes". Slipper allegedly replies that it is "Your call and no hard feelings" if Ashby only wants "businesslike contact". Ashby allegedly asks for clarification as to what Slipper wants the relationship to be. Slipper allegedly replies asking Ashby if he "want{s} something more", adding Ashby is "brilliant at massages". Ashby replies that he is happy the way things are, "the massage is as far as it goes". Slipper then allegedly replies "Oh", then Ashby replies "All good", to which Slipper replies "Sorry things not working out but appreciate your frankness" suggesting that Ashby arranges all further communications "through Tim" as Slipper "cannot guarantee availability", adding that he was sorry Ashby could not make make it to a Sydney Harbour cruise at an unspecified future time.

15. Ashby claims he was dropped from the cruise plan allegedly "because he had rejected the sexual invitations put by" Slipper.

16. (February 2, 2012) The next morning Slipper allegedly text Ashby saying he was "only joking last night", claiming he was feeling "depressed and as tho the weight of the world is on my shoulders." Ashby replies that "we all carry that same level of commitment and stress for various reasons." Slipper allegedly replies "Ok :)".

17 (February 26, 2012) Slipper allegedly texts Ashby saying a third person, "Tim" (note: not Tim Knapp), thought Ashby was "a nice twink!" Allegedly repeats the same message a few minutes later when no response. Ashby claims to have been "concerned" he was being discussed "in sexual terms". More texts follow in which Slipper allegedly reveals a conversation with "Tim" about whether Ashby was loyal to "the thugs in the LNP or to {Slipper}." Slipper was allegedly "hopeful your loyalty was to me {Slipper}". It seems at this time Slipper was concerned about just where Ashby's loyalties lay.

18 (February 26, 2012) Same day, according to the court documents, there allegedly "followed a lengthy exchange of text messages in which {Slipper} appeared to be questioning the loyalty of {Ashby} and attempting to control his actions." Slipper allegedly texted Ashby: ";;)ok I do like you but must understand I get upset when you play with my enemies and keep me in the dark. It is not what I expect of someone I considered I am close to. If you find this intolerable please discuss". The reason for and background of this text exchange is not given.

******************
19. (On or about March 9th, not in court documents) The "Mobile Phone Incident": Mobile phone allegedly snatched from Sunshine Coast Daily reporter's hands and thrown away by Ashby. Ashby later tweets: "Interesting day. Since working in the media, it's deteriorated to a point where I'm embarrassed to {have} ever been apart of it."

******************

20. (March 20, 2012) Slipper allegedly, while praising Ashby for work done on a You Tube video, asks Ashby "Can I kiss you both". Ashby claims no other person was present in the room, but Slipper's media advisor, Karen Doane, was in the next office. When Ashby replied "No" (deliberately loudly) to Slipper's alleged request, Doane's attention was attracted (as was Ashby's intention)

21. Ashby claims to have formed a view by this time - March 20, 2012 - that the purpose of his recruitment by Slipper was to "pursue a sexual relationship with" Ashby. He claims another gay man had also been interviewed for his job in November 2011.

http://www.thepoliticalsword.com/post/2012/04/23/Dumb-and-dumber-never-get-between-a-cliche-and-the-lazy-Australian-media.aspx

THIS WHOLE SAGA IS A STICHUP,IMHO

Raider