6.The way the polls are reported are continually slanted to present Rudd as on the ascendency even when there are numerical reverses that have show the coalition gaining. In such cases his positives are highlighted in reports rather than the coalition positives.

7. Just listen to the difference in styles applied to interviews with Liberal and National politicians to the styles applied to Labour and Greens politicians. If you can't see bias you are blind and deaf.

The bias it is much more widespread than the eight journalists mentioned, who btw consistently write balanced articles. It is constant in just about every media item or article being present to the voters in this country.

Rudd is getting a free run and the country will pay if he's elected. Just as it paid under Whitlam and Keating. Will they never learn?

And all this without swearing or denigrating other contributors

Basically,

1. Rein defused the situation by relinquishing the company. In contrast, Howard bailed his brother's company out while refusing to do the same for any others, then insisted that there was nothing untoward about it.

2. The Coalition gets constant "leeway from scrutiny". If the media reported on all the Coalition's meetings with businessmen, fundraisers, smurfed donations and de facto campaigns by ostensibly non-partisan groups, we'd need a seperate daily newspaper to cover it all.

3. Probably not, because Rudd said he regretted it, it wasn't appropriate, and the club owner said Rudd had turned and walked out almost as soon as he arrived. Case closed.

If it had been a Coalition minister, he would have first denied it, then said it was appropriate under the circumstances, then gone in for savage personal attacks on anyone who mentioned it.

4. So, you're saying that commentators selected by a multinational television corporation, including a Packer journalist who has shamelessly barracked for Howard for 11 years, were the final word on the debate, but the plurality of other journalists and the Australian public got it wrong?

5. No surprise at all. Rudd's new on the scene, so each gaffe seems like a momentary lapse. Howard's got a huge backlog of them which portrays a man who is ageing and losing control, which is true.

6. More to the point, why is it that when the Coalition cracks a points gain which doesn't even exceed the stated margin for error on the poll, we get a week's worth of front page news claiming the Coalition is resurgent and Labor is doomed?

7. I agree. It's much easier to ask current goverment ministers why we should believe them now, when they've got a decade-long history of deceit and scurrilous opportunism behind them, than it is to take a potential government to task over things it hasn't had a chance to do yet.

Blogging about journalists' faults is interesting and useful. Outside of the Press Council and ABC Media Watch it is also about the only way we consumers have of influencing 'the game' to choose a 'brissendom'.
To illustrate the point has any OLO reader ever got anywhere criticising a journalist by a letter to the editor of his/her publication? I certainly have not and as a former scribe I often find plenty to fault.
Perhaps if the press gallery folk were prepared to concede their occasional failure in print/on air it would redress the balance. For example I would love to know why Brissendom and his two fellow 'conspirators' agreed poste haste to Costello's second thoughts on his 'on-the-record' restaurant getogether. I have seen the pack mentality in action and it ain't pretty.

Sancho

I think you've just proved my point.

Btw...interest rates are about to rise...or so the biased media proclaim daily... but have you looked to see on who's opinions the gulible idiots base that claim.

Yep you got it... economists...bank employed economists. And the banks wouldn't want to see a rates rise... now would thay?

Just how silly have people become?

Well keith, we're agreed on one thing - people are getting silly.

Everything you say has been soft-on-Rudd reporting, has been reported in a pretty straightforward manner, or in many cases, has been criticised.
You neglect to mention in the stripper affair, that certain journalists also came out with unsubstantiated claims Rudd had harassed the dancers.

The fact of the matter is, the public just didn't bite. I suspect it's more of an issue of disliking Howard than any real affection for Rudd, though I think your impression that it's all the media's fault is the typical view of people who don't like the way the wind is blowing. Both sides of the political spectrum are guilty of blaming the media, though I tend to view that as a copout.
I'm not saying we have fantastic media in this country, quite frankly we don't have the population to sustain sufficient outlets and there is a dearth of proper ownership and competition.
Though I reject your assertions they're being kind to Rudd.

You keep shooting the media as the messenger. It's the public who aren't biting, though I suppose it's harder to blame them.