Recent US studies demonstrate that watching Murdoch’s US Fox News increases the likelihood of you believing what’s not true about COVID-19 and – if acting on it – possibly dying.

The studies are also an indication that Fox audiences are modern day versions of a Montaigne insight from almost 500 years ago. In his essay It is folly to measure the true and false by our own capacity he said: “Perhaps it is not without reason that we attribute facility in belief and conviction to simplicity and ignorance: for it seems to me I once learned that belief was a sort of information impression made on our mind, and that the softer and less resistant the mind, the easier it was to imprint something on it.” read more

The current Victorian Hotel Quarantine Inquiry headed by the Honourable Justice Jennifer Coate AO is putting two things on trial – one predictable media fodder and the other at the root of decades of neo-liberal outsourcing and privatisation.

The first trial is the traditional one which fits neatly into standard media coverage: who did what, why did they do it, who did they tell, what did those told do and were Ministers warned or informed in some way? read more

The Morrison Government’s attitude to our history is that it started with Captain Cook and then – as if transported by the Tardis or Dr Emmet. L. Brown’s DeLorean car – arrived at the era of John Howard, Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher and Milton Friedman.

If it took the time to look beyond this narrow prism it might get some insights into how climate variations have influenced world history by felling empires; provoking civil wars and economic destruction; how science is helping us understand what happened in these episodes in history; and, how the climate emergency will have more profound and long-lasting impacts than any of those other past climate events. read more

In 2004 Janet Jackson flashed a breast (sorry, suffered a wardrobe malfunction) during the Super Bowl half time entertainment. The same day 109 innocent civilians were killed in a suicide bombing in Iraq.

This coincidence was noticed by Carl Hiaasen of the Miami Herald who asked the question: guess which one led the news? read more

Successive Australian Governments have revelled in having a close relationship with their US counterparts. At times it is has been pandering; at others it has resulted in engaging in illegal or unwinnable wars; and, it has all been cloaked in mutual admiration for being democratic in spirit and practice. read more

The Eden-Monaro by-election status quo ante result raises two interesting questions: why isn’t the Prime Minister’s high approval rating translating into an improved rating for the government; and, why oh why do the media keep up the same old tired approaches to covering political events?

The Morrison Government was very successful in initially framing the vote in terms of the 100 years since a government had won an opposition seat in a by-election. That set them up for another miracle claim if they won but also protected them against needing to explain away failure. read more

In 2010 the BP Deepwater Horizon huge and disastrous oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico demonstrated just about every possible lesson on how not to handle a crisis.

A CEO, Tony Hayward, who said dumb things which demonstrated a lack of empathy; technical people thrashing around in vain attempts to stop the flow; oil and gas lobbyists frantically working the corridors in Washington and Florida to prevent any tightening of the already loose controls on off-shore drilling; and, a post spill compensation plan which rewarded many of the unaffected and failed to compensate the affected – just as happened after Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. read more

Two reports on social and economic options for post-COVID-19 recovery, one from the Grattan Institute and one from Phil Ruthven, have recently been published. We can also assume there is a third, not yet public, in the form of a snap back and marketing plan lurking in the Prime Minister’s mind.

But the two which are already public largely focus on different priorities, except in some places in the Ruthven case, from any Morrison plan of returning to the policies which have given Australia a decade of slow growth, record debt levels even before COVID-19 and wage stagnation. read more

Donald Trump promised he would make America great again. Instead he has presided over a significant collapse in belief in American exceptionalism.

While the rest of the western world (other than fellow travellers like Morrison and Howard) has always been conscious of what really makes the US exceptional – racism and limited democracy; constant waging of war; appalling health care for poorer citizens; worker exploitation; religious extremism; massive inequality; organising coups and assassinations in nations around the world; torture of prisoners; and the ignorance, hypocrisy and myopia which allows many citizens to deny it all. …and to add to that list of the exceptional, The Economist (20 June 2020) reported that the US is one of only 13 countries (along with Venezuela and Syria) where the maternal mortality rate increased between 2000 and 2017. read more

Google has become the default casual research tool for most people if a sometimes dangerous one for students now that AI plagiarism software is widely used in universities. Yet publishers are still issuing print editions of various reference texts and some of them are still of greater value and utility than online searches. read more