EVERY so often someone lets the cat out of the bag. [ ... ]
Last September, the Sydney Morning Herald journalist and former ABC Media Watch presenter David Marr insisted that the "natural culture of journalism is kind of vaguely soft-Left inquiry sceptical of authority". More ominously, he decreed that journalism should be a left-wing closed shop. "If they don't come out of that world, they really can't be reporters." Anyone else, he said, can just find another job. [ ... ]
Recall Cassidy's brave remarks on commercial TV about the ABC's almost deranged attempt to impose an extraordinary dose of political correctness after 9/11: "At the ABC, a memo went out about a week ago to all radio commentators that they were not to say anything derogatory about the Taliban . . . So here I am on Channel 10, I can say that the Taliban execute women for adultery. They've been known to throw acid in the face of young girls who don't wear veils and so on. I can get it off my chest on Channel 10 but I can't say it on the ABC."
And an academia cat is also on the loose.
[... ] One recent example was the president of an English teachers' association – and former chairman of a government curriculum committee – who editorialised that the nation's English teachers had failed. This was not because of any prevalence of bad grammar or inadequate knowledge of Shakespeare. This was because their former students had just re-elected the Howard Government.
Our hearts should go out for those afflicted by political correctness in other lands.
