Is inserting your own history into a tangentially related story really necessary?

In "Was outing anonymous blogger Grogs Gamut really necessary?", Kate Doak has produced a mostly serviceable article about what came to be known on Twitter as "#groggate". The issue is covered in a straightforward way and deals with relevant issues of online journalistic ethics, but the way that The Scavenger has presented the story is by literally sexing it up.

Even before the article proper begins, the audience is given context: the author of the article is a transsexual who was outed in some way that goes undefined in the article. A media commentator does not need to say "I am qualified to comment on this because I have lived through an analogous situation"; a media commentator would be better placed saying "I am qualified to comment on this because it is my job to do so" - but of course, they shouldn't say that because it is implicit.

Doak is trying to insert herself into a story that can stand perfectly well for itself. It's an uncomfortable graft onto an otherwise straightforward piece. The Grogs Gamut case - a public servant's identity was revealed by a writer from the Australian - is an interesting one, and definitely valid for exploration in the identity management landscape of interconnected social media, but this is only basically attempted here.

It's somewhat ironic that Doak would go on to explicitly outline the qualifications of Massola and Latika Bourke later in the piece – and only tangentially writing about what she is presumably being paid to write about.

At this point it becomes clear that this is an uncomfortably written and not strictly proofread article, featuring "it's/its" confusion and also a "compromised" tweet - that is, one edited to fit within 140 characters but presented outside the medium so as to look like an exercise in illiteracy.

Doak attempts to write both a personal and investigative piece and doesn't quite "make it" with either approach. The whole endeavour is compromised, initially by an attempt to add personality and relevance, and then by a total breakdown in vision.

Pure Poison infiltrates the Battleship Australian

Pure Poison is a sub-blog of Crikey, positioning itself as a sort of textual and online counterpart to the ABC’s Media Watch. In recent times, The Australian has come under fire for going to “war” against the Greens and Pure Poison stands as one of several outlets that have objected.

The Australian’s defence to criticism of its war on Greens: stop oppressing us! stands as Pure Poison’s response to The Australian’s response to general media response to The Australian’s partisan coverage of many aspects of politics in the lead up to the election and the aftermath. That sentence may seem convoluted but so, too, do The Australian’s defences for their actions.

Author Jeremy Sear makes a great deal of the fact that The Australian has failed to delineate its reportage from its editorials. The most satisfying quote that one can pull from the article is “News Ltd has acted not as a trustworthy broker of information but as an advocate for the Coalition” – emphasizing specifically what responsible journalism is supposed to be about. If one cannot tell the difference between the editorial and news sections of a newspaper, then that newspaper has not done its job correctly according to the largely unwritten charter of professional journalism; it’s like journalism’s collective unconscious is uniformly failing to be tapped into by News Ltd.

Sear’s article is relatively brief but savage nonetheless. It pointedly mentions that The Australian wants to “destroy” the Greens and has ignored the meat of its criticism. It suggests that The Australian has undermined its own credibility in all future coverage of the Greens and the new minority government.

Pure Poison is the sort of thing that exists precisely because outlets like News Ltd and people like Andrew Bolt exist. Sear’s work will remain a sad necessity as long as news outlets like The Australian treat their readers with contempt.