http://www.thepunch.com.au/tags/news/ Politics, political opinion, world news, sports news and the latest news and views updated live, daily on The Punch - Australia's best conversation. en Copyright 2012 The Punch penberthyd@newsltd.com.au penberthyd@newsltd.com.au Sat, 26 May 2012 20:00:49 +0000 Sat, 26 May 2012 20:00:49 +0000 Politics, opinion, world news, sports news, latest news, views, Barack Obama, Kevin Rudd, Julia Gillard, Nathan Rees, Malcolm Turnbull, Peter Garrett, Barnaby Joyce, Australian, federal politics, opinion polls, election, The Punch, thepunch, punch ExpressionEngine 1.6.7 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss 15 http://www.thepunch.com.au/images/punch-logo-rss.png http://www.thepunch.com.au/ 144 70 Politics, political opinion, world news, sports news and the latest news and views updated live, daily on The Punch - Australia's best conversation. Search The Punch keywords http://www.thepunch.com.au/search/ http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/The-long-road-that-leads-away-from-struggle-street/ News.com.au has today published the results of its exclusive Cost of Living survey, and the results are a major eye-opener. The take home message is this: a huge number of us say we’re struggling. Reading the survey, which was taken by 30,000 Australians, you wouldn’t know that we’re one of the world’s 10 wealthiest nations in raw GDP per capita terms. Neither would you think we managed to surf out the worst of the global financial crisis. Or crises. Or whatever. The national breakdown is as follows. Forty-eight per cent of us say we are “managing to get by”, 28 per cent of place ourselves on “Struggle St”, 17 per cent are “barely coping” while 7 per cent of us are on “Easy St”. penberthyd@newsltd.com.au (David Penberthy) Article http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/The-long-road-that-leads-away-from-struggle-street/#comments http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/The-long-road-that-leads-away-from-struggle-street/#item7309 Sat, 26 May 2012 20:00:49 +0000 I have something of a man-crush on Karl Stefanovic. Like my addiction to surfing animal-attack videos on YouTube, I’ve taken to stalking the Gold Logie winner’s career with morbid fascination. The Today Show host is an anomaly in the news world. You don’t know how he survives, let alone thrives, but he does. What other Australian television personality, let alone journalist, can drunkenly ogle his co-host on breakfast primetime, then go on to win a Gold Logie two years later? And then, when he wins that Logie, include his wife’s arse in the acceptance speech? http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/I-love-karl-stefanovic-more-than-he-loves-his-wifes-arse/ I have something of a man-crush on Karl Stefanovic. Like my addiction to surfing animal-attack videos on YouTube, I’ve taken to stalking the Gold Logie winner’s career with morbid fascination. The Today Show host is an anomaly in the news world. You don’t know how he survives, let alone thrives, but he does. What other Australian television personality, let alone journalist, can drunkenly ogle his co-host on breakfast primetime, then go on to win a Gold Logie two years later? And then, when he wins that Logie, include his wife’s arse in the acceptance speech? penberthyd@newsltd.com.au (David Penberthy) Article http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/I-love-karl-stefanovic-more-than-he-loves-his-wifes-arse/#comments http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/I-love-karl-stefanovic-more-than-he-loves-his-wifes-arse/#item7140 Sat, 26 May 2012 20:00:49 +0000 I have something of a man-crush on Karl Stefanovic. Like my addiction to surfing animal-attack videos on YouTube, I’ve taken to stalking the Gold Logie winner’s career with morbid fascination. The Today Show host is an anomaly in the news world. You don’t know how he survives, let alone thrives, but he does. What other Australian television personality, let alone journalist, can drunkenly ogle his co-host on breakfast primetime, then go on to win a Gold Logie two years later? And then, when he wins that Logie, include his wife’s arse in the acceptance speech? http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/kim-kardashian-no-news-would-be-good-news/ In the past week over 400 people have died in floods in Thailand, three Australian soldiers were killed in Afghanistan and the European economy teetered on the verge of collapse. But most devastating of all was the news that Kim Kardashian’s marriage was in disarray after just 72 days. Australia’s commercial networks and newspapers almost fell into the trap of misreading the break-up as a pointless, inane, staged piece of nonsense, but then came to their senses and ran blanket coverage of the story for three days. Things could’ve got much, much worse though. There was the chance the vacuous, money-hungry, talentless reality TV star could have pulled out of her promotional tour to Australia, opening up the possibility that some media outlets would have to resort to reporting serious news.  penberthyd@newsltd.com.au (David Penberthy) Article http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/kim-kardashian-no-news-would-be-good-news/#comments http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/kim-kardashian-no-news-would-be-good-news/#item7071 Sat, 26 May 2012 20:00:49 +0000 I have something of a man-crush on Karl Stefanovic. Like my addiction to surfing animal-attack videos on YouTube, I’ve taken to stalking the Gold Logie winner’s career with morbid fascination. The Today Show host is an anomaly in the news world. You don’t know how he survives, let alone thrives, but he does. What other Australian television personality, let alone journalist, can drunkenly ogle his co-host on breakfast primetime, then go on to win a Gold Logie two years later? And then, when he wins that Logie, include his wife’s arse in the acceptance speech? http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/fooi-13-young-drinkers-arent-the-only-bingers/ There’s an awful lot of hand-wringing these days over the binge drinking epidemic. Well, here’s a really obvious thought. Maybe all those teenagers and 20-somethings are only living up to the example we’ve set them on all kinds of fronts. Think about it. Society today is full of bingers. We’re all bingers. We consume anything and everything in ever-increasing proportions, usually to the point of excess and often to the point of vulgarity. Forget the obvious cases of food and booze for a minute. Take entertainment. Remember the days when you’d passively sit back and wait for your weekly instalment of TV drama? That is sooo 2005. penberthyd@newsltd.com.au (David Penberthy) Article http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/fooi-13-young-drinkers-arent-the-only-bingers/#comments http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/fooi-13-young-drinkers-arent-the-only-bingers/#item6998 Sat, 26 May 2012 20:00:49 +0000 I have something of a man-crush on Karl Stefanovic. Like my addiction to surfing animal-attack videos on YouTube, I’ve taken to stalking the Gold Logie winner’s career with morbid fascination. The Today Show host is an anomaly in the news world. You don’t know how he survives, let alone thrives, but he does. What other Australian television personality, let alone journalist, can drunkenly ogle his co-host on breakfast primetime, then go on to win a Gold Logie two years later? And then, when he wins that Logie, include his wife’s arse in the acceptance speech? http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/oh-the-huge-manatee/ By now, you’ve probably heard about Happy Feet, the ailing emperor penguin who was found near New Zealand a few months back. After rehab, Happy Feet was released this week, only to go missing somewhere in southern waters. Some say he was gobbled by an orca. We think he might’ve been munched by a huge manatee, even though said mammals reside only in the northern hemisphere. Hey, never let the truth get in the way of a good headline. Dead or alive, Happy Feet has captivated everyone. This is not unusual. Animal stories are always popular in any form of media, especially online. And if you think about it, that says something gently profound about our own humanity. penberthyd@newsltd.com.au (David Penberthy) Article http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/oh-the-huge-manatee/#comments http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/oh-the-huge-manatee/#item6712 Sat, 26 May 2012 20:00:49 +0000 I have something of a man-crush on Karl Stefanovic. Like my addiction to surfing animal-attack videos on YouTube, I’ve taken to stalking the Gold Logie winner’s career with morbid fascination. The Today Show host is an anomaly in the news world. You don’t know how he survives, let alone thrives, but he does. What other Australian television personality, let alone journalist, can drunkenly ogle his co-host on breakfast primetime, then go on to win a Gold Logie two years later? And then, when he wins that Logie, include his wife’s arse in the acceptance speech? http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/do-you-ever-really-listen-to-the-other-side-of-the-story/ “As the number of available outlets for political news grows, so does the tendency of citizens to self-select which news to consume and which to ignore.” So says Georgetown University’s Rebecca Chalif, in her 2011 study Political Media Fragmentation: Echo Chambers in Cable News. This statement seems obvious and fairly innocuous on the surface. Thirty years ago, people were vastly more confined in how they consumed their news - it was perhaps three TV channels and one or two newspapers. According to the Australian Market and Social Research Society, the media has become far more fragmented over the last 15 years. Free-to-air TV has gone from five to 17 channels with over 120 subscription channels available, and we have over 600 newspapers and 1,500 magazines available to us. penberthyd@newsltd.com.au (David Penberthy) Article http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/do-you-ever-really-listen-to-the-other-side-of-the-story/#comments http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/do-you-ever-really-listen-to-the-other-side-of-the-story/#item6708 Sat, 26 May 2012 20:00:49 +0000 I have something of a man-crush on Karl Stefanovic. Like my addiction to surfing animal-attack videos on YouTube, I’ve taken to stalking the Gold Logie winner’s career with morbid fascination. The Today Show host is an anomaly in the news world. You don’t know how he survives, let alone thrives, but he does. What other Australian television personality, let alone journalist, can drunkenly ogle his co-host on breakfast primetime, then go on to win a Gold Logie two years later? And then, when he wins that Logie, include his wife’s arse in the acceptance speech? http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/if-no-news-is-good-news-what-do-we-make-of-2011/ So what are we to make of 2011, a year in which one has hardly been able to catch one’s breath in between momentous events (and it’s only just September!).  We have had major environmental disasters (the Queensland floods, the Christchurch earthquake, the Japan earthquake/tsunami), and the spectacular fall from grace of seemingly unassailable powerful men (such as Tunisia’s Zine el Abadine Ben Ali, Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak, Libya’s Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, Osama Bin Laden, IMF Chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn (even though rape charges were recently dropped), and Rupert Murdoch). For the second time in a few years, the global economy teeters (including the first downgrade of the US’s sovereign debt status since 1917 and the very real possibility of the demise of the Eurozone). Anders Breivik wreaked havoc in a murderous rampage in Norway.  We also have a new state in the form of South Sudan. There have also been flashbacks to unfortunate episodes of the 1980s, with a major (and ongoing and unresolved) nuclear emergency in Japan’s Fukushima recalling the Chernobyl disaster, famine in East Africa, and England’s recent riots recalling unrest under Thatcher, oh ... and on a nicer note, a Royal Wedding. penberthyd@newsltd.com.au (David Penberthy) Article http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/if-no-news-is-good-news-what-do-we-make-of-2011/#comments http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/if-no-news-is-good-news-what-do-we-make-of-2011/#item6623 Sat, 26 May 2012 20:00:49 +0000 I have something of a man-crush on Karl Stefanovic. Like my addiction to surfing animal-attack videos on YouTube, I’ve taken to stalking the Gold Logie winner’s career with morbid fascination. The Today Show host is an anomaly in the news world. You don’t know how he survives, let alone thrives, but he does. What other Australian television personality, let alone journalist, can drunkenly ogle his co-host on breakfast primetime, then go on to win a Gold Logie two years later? And then, when he wins that Logie, include his wife’s arse in the acceptance speech? http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/Po-faced-and-pie-faced-what-next-for-Murdoch/ So much for the schadenfreudegasm. Last night’s grilling of Rupert and James Murdoch by the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee was rather more like a ‘rose ceremony’ in an episode of The Bachelor: slow and excruciating, but compulsive viewing nonetheless. The entire event was full of tension and politeness in equal measure, and James Murdoch’s long-winded non-response to the first question was more heavily scripted than the episode of Winners and Losers which aired earlier in the evening. penberthyd@newsltd.com.au (David Penberthy) Article http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/Po-faced-and-pie-faced-what-next-for-Murdoch/#comments http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/Po-faced-and-pie-faced-what-next-for-Murdoch/#item6329 Sat, 26 May 2012 20:00:49 +0000 I have something of a man-crush on Karl Stefanovic. Like my addiction to surfing animal-attack videos on YouTube, I’ve taken to stalking the Gold Logie winner’s career with morbid fascination. The Today Show host is an anomaly in the news world. You don’t know how he survives, let alone thrives, but he does. What other Australian television personality, let alone journalist, can drunkenly ogle his co-host on breakfast primetime, then go on to win a Gold Logie two years later? And then, when he wins that Logie, include his wife’s arse in the acceptance speech? http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/News-of-the-World-scandal-doesnt-make-us-all-hacks/ I was going to start this with a deliberately understated introduction along the lines of: This is not journalism’s finest hour. But then I remembered that the whole News of the World scandal was in fact unearthed by journalists. And then I couldn’t work out how to start. Journalists are prone to navel gazing; the unkind would say that’s because of an over-inflated sense of our own importance. The kind would say it’s because we are aware of the inherent privilege and responsibility of what we do. But you can’t deny the NOTW catastrophe is an incredibly significant story, so no wonder the non-News Ltd press are wallowing in it – gleefully, in many instances. penberthyd@newsltd.com.au (David Penberthy) Article http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/News-of-the-World-scandal-doesnt-make-us-all-hacks/#comments http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/News-of-the-World-scandal-doesnt-make-us-all-hacks/#item6278 Sat, 26 May 2012 20:00:49 +0000 I have something of a man-crush on Karl Stefanovic. Like my addiction to surfing animal-attack videos on YouTube, I’ve taken to stalking the Gold Logie winner’s career with morbid fascination. The Today Show host is an anomaly in the news world. You don’t know how he survives, let alone thrives, but he does. What other Australian television personality, let alone journalist, can drunkenly ogle his co-host on breakfast primetime, then go on to win a Gold Logie two years later? And then, when he wins that Logie, include his wife’s arse in the acceptance speech? http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/we-are-all-to-blame-for-the-dumbing-down-of-politics/ Sex and alcohol used to be the weapons of choice if you wanted to attract fellow uni students to a meeting.  The ad industry has known for decades that sex sells.  And now we have the internet to tell us in even more precise detail just how attractive humans find sex, scandals or booze – preferably all three. So should we be surprised that, as Lindsay Tanner’s new book Sideshow highlights, the media don’t love good policy, but they simply adore “sexy” stories?  penberthyd@newsltd.com.au (David Penberthy) Article http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/we-are-all-to-blame-for-the-dumbing-down-of-politics/#comments http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/we-are-all-to-blame-for-the-dumbing-down-of-politics/#item5780 Sat, 26 May 2012 20:00:49 +0000 I have something of a man-crush on Karl Stefanovic. Like my addiction to surfing animal-attack videos on YouTube, I’ve taken to stalking the Gold Logie winner’s career with morbid fascination. The Today Show host is an anomaly in the news world. You don’t know how he survives, let alone thrives, but he does. What other Australian television personality, let alone journalist, can drunkenly ogle his co-host on breakfast primetime, then go on to win a Gold Logie two years later? And then, when he wins that Logie, include his wife’s arse in the acceptance speech?