Fox in the Sky

 Australians are not exactly spoiled for choice for television news. In fact, most people with a brain will just go straight to the radio or internet to get their current affairs coverage. We have Channels Nine, Seven and Ten, to deliver your basics (e.g. Lindsay Lohan caught with her head in a bag of cocaine) or the ABC, which mainly focuses on national issues, and SBS. Most Australians can't even access the new 24 ABC news channel, the first of its kind to be broadcast here.

If you have Foxtel, you only have CNN as an alternative to the disturbingly unbalanced Sky and Fox. Unfortunately, CNN has a propensity to show far too many programs on the top ten millionaires in Nigeria and international golf tournaments. But when they do broadcast actual news its pretty good.

Apart from this option, most television viewers are being swallowed by a conservative news agenda, whose main tactics are to report on trivial trash so as to distract the public from the real issues like climate change and conflict in the Middle East. Its easier to divide opinion over whether Kim Kardashian has a fat ass (she does) than how Obama should face China on human rights issues.

Sky is great at this tactic. Take this morning, when the channel was swamped with coverage on Tony Abbott's accusation of "low bastardry" towards Julia Gillard. Bastardry is not a word. Sky news (and Channel 7, its partner in crime) have gone apeshit with this "issue", calling in "experts" such as 2GB radio hosts to comment on what this story says about each politician's personality.

They also called in former Deputy Premier John Watkins, who looked quietly embarrassed at being there, and repeatedly tried to steer the conversation towards what he believed should be the real issue:

Why is Australia still involved in Afghanistan and when will there be a full debate in parliament on whether we should still be there?

The news anchor glossed over this and got back to the hardhitting questions. "Yes, but what does this say about Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott's relationship?"

Quality news, Sky.

But then, what can you expect from a corporation owned by someone almost as evil as Margaret Thatcher and a certain dictator with a mustache I won't name.