(Image: Private Media/Tom Red)

Palmer gives a handout Is there any more vivid and depressing illustration of the state of modern media than the ad on the front page of The Sydney Morning Herald this morning? Clive Palmer, whose long-running campaign against reality has filled the coffers of advertising departments in all the major newspapers — even those who dedicate every other issue to portraying him as a prize tool — has added another frame to this shitshow reel, shifting listlessly from vaccine scepticism to lockdown protest.

Palmer has pumped hundreds of thousands of dollars into Nine and News Corp over recent years. But putting anti-lockdown hysteria on the front page while New South Wales is ravaged by a ruthless strain of COVID, and while anti-lockdown protests are already putting the state’s health system at risk really raises the question: is there anything they wouldn’t print for the right price?

That was then, this is now, this is still now Queensland has the highest rate of vaccine hesitancy in the country. Let’s check in with the messaging from its chief health officer Dr Jeannette Young on the AstraZeneca vaccine, to see how she’s working to put that right:

  • Young, June 30: “I don’t want an 18-year-old in Queensland dying from a clotting illness, who if they got COVID probably wouldn’t die. Wouldn’t it be terrible that our first 18-year-old in Queensland who dies related to this pandemic, died because of [AstraZeneca]?”
  • The Courier-Mail, August 1: “The Queensland Children’s Hospital is on standby to take COVID-19 virus cases with 10 children under 10 among the state’s latest new infections.”
  • Young, August 1: “I said I didn’t want 18-year-olds to have AstraZeneca and I still don’t.”

What the Rudd Ah, former prime minister Kevin Rudd. Say what you want about his virtues and flaws, the guy approaches language with the same uncanny and haunting approach as the questions Blade Runners ask to find out if you’re a replicant.

On last night’s Four Corners which was looking into Australia’s disastrous vaccine rollout, Rudd summarised his criticism of Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s lack of interaction with Pfizer’s CEO thus: “The smart thing to do is just to pick up the Alexander Graham Bell and have a yak, and see what you can shake out of the tree. That is where he has failed.”

Well. Indeed.

The Sky’s limits We in the bunker have been surprised as we flicked to the centre of the last few editions of The Australian to find its media section eerily silent on Sky News’ seven-day ban from YouTube. Surely there weren’t enough ABC employees behind a pot plant or tweeting something with colourful language to completely squeeze it out of that paper? We thought media censorship (when it’s aimed at News Corp) was a huge concern for it? Remember when its Franco-like coverage of its own Bill Leak ended up running for more words that the entirety of 1984?

So why ignore the silencing of its stablemates? Could it be a further sign that rest of News Corp is cutting Sky loose? Rather than an example of the Oz ignoring bad news, could it be — like The Daily Telegraph ditching Alan Jones’ column — a sign that it simply doesn’t want to be associated with the grotesque carnival of Sky after dark any longer?