you don't deserve better. politics for non-politicians is a spectator sport, much like football. the participants are celebrities, and attract celebrity commentary.

if oz were a democracy, if you were citizens, you would be able to require a higher standard of political discourse. but you're not, you're cattle. too ignorant, too lazy, too fearful, to demand democracy.

so go on whining about the standard of pollies, the standard of reporters, the drought and global warming. never raise the question:"why do things never change?" the answer is "you get the government you deserve," and the lackey reporters you deserve as well.

Ah, the Press Gallery in Canberra - left wing.
The ABC - ditto
SBS - ditto
The NUJ - very definitely ditto
Occasionally an individual journalist will break out.
Question, are our journalists sufficiently well educated? A few have some in depth background to what they are reporting but most of them need to do a lot more homework.
A journalist's job is to report the news, not make it up. Australian journalists have yet to learn that simple, basic lesson.
We are very poorly served when the main news item is the retirement of a state footballer - on the day that there was a major earthquake in Peru and 452 Kurds were killed in Iraq

Communicat

You've just got to work out which are the right-wing publications.

Start with the Australian. Then go the the Courier-Mail, depending on the issue.

The Sydney Morning Herald is an outstanding publications. I'd go to them for some middle-ground.

The Australian right wing? You are joking of course? Some right wing columnists perhaps but the overall tone is to the left.
Then take a look at the Advertiser here in South Australia...it is so far left that the Opposition might just as well not exist except in the negative. The problem is that this is what people read too - the Australian is viewed as the 'intellectual' paper. Intellectual?
We don't need an election. The media has made up its collective mind. We are going to have a Labor government. The spin doctors are at work. Rudd is a media made (and media mad) man. It's all froth and no substance but the media can work with that. They love playing with slippery soap bubbles.

Yeh, that Albrechtson is a real left wing loony. And Shanahan is obviously a communist plot. Pearson is smitten by Julia Gillard and Matt Price pretends to be a fence sitter, but we all know he's a Maoist from way back. Piers wouldn't follow the Liberal Party line if his head was on fire. Andrew Bolt is pretending to have transfered his loyalty to Costello, but it's really a trick to bolster Rudd. And have you noticed how the weather is always reported as coming from the left?

"The sour grapes on display have been hilarious."

As readers, we deserve better.