Journalists of the Murdoch stable have scornfully denounced those who have suggested that “The Australian” is biased against the Gillard Government or who said it was campaigning against the government on climate change issues in an untruthful and unscientific manner. They proclaimed the editorial independence of each Murdoch paper.

For many of us the proof is in the pudding. For instance in an edition of the “Sunday Times”  in which a political journalist claimed that there was no bias on climate change, the front page of the same edition carried an attack on Cate Blanchette for her stance on climate change identical to the story found in The Australian newspaper. And universally the Murdoch media relentlessly used and reused the same nasty and inaccurate name “Carbon Cate” to undermine the credibility of her message. Can’t the “independent” Murdoch sub editors make up their own childish and nasty names?  I have also read many articles like Brendan O’Neill’s beat up in today’s Weekend Australian stoutly defending climate sceptics against slurs by  climate change acceptors but can’t remember any recent articles siding with the dominant scientific position of climate scientists.

And I don’t suppose the many articles in the same edition beating up on Julia Gillard and quoting unrevealed Labor sources calling for her to be dumped, being juxtaposed against the gaggle of positive stories about Tony Abbott means that the paper is unbalanced. Not even Greg Sheridan’s gushing article “Abbott Has Right Stuff to Master The World” would indicate a bias would it? By the way Greg I think a more accurate header would be “Abbot Has Credentials to Stuff up The World”

Murdoch media has a worldwide reputation for bias and tattiness and a study by the University of Maryland revealed that ignorance of Fox viewers actually increases the longer they watch the network. Furthermore, according to recent polls, Fox News viewers are the most misinformed of all news consumers in the USA. They are 12 percentage points more likely to believe the stimulus package caused job losses, 17 points more likely to believe Muslims want to establish Sharia law in America, 30 points more likely to say that scientists dispute global warming.

The Australian is fast becoming the broadsheet equivalent of Fox News. Reading it is bad for your sanity.