Back in January 2023 News Crap Australia announced that Michelle Gunn, then editor of its daily broadshit The Australian, would become its new editor-in-chief.

As our Media Glass House staff recall, Ms Gunn’s appointment to the top job followed the exit of long-serving News Crap hack Chris Dore who was shown the door after apparently badly misbehaving at a Christmas party a few months earlier.

At the time of Ms Gunn’s promotion News Crap also announced that a new editorial board had been created to “guide coverage and develop editorial direction and opportunities” for The Australian.

Cynics among our MGH teams translated that to mean “well, we’ve installed a woman as editor-in-chief but we really need a few blokes looking over her padded shoulder so she doesn’t have to worry her pretty little head about some of the big issues”.

A headline in The Oz this week was touted around The Bug newsroom by some MGH researchers as proof that the editorial board has clearly failed to impose accepted journalistic standards of balance and fairness or has itself overruled the editor-in-chief and imposed its own biases on coverage. (below)

The headline labels the Prime Minister of Australia, Anthony Albanese, as a traitor to the nation, and by the nation they mean Israel as well as Australia. Our MGH teams suggest no other interpretation can be placed on it given the current political climate and military situation in the Middle East.

The headline sat atop one of the latest in a long line of stories in The Australian that have attacked any utterance, vote, or other action by Australia, the PM, and Foreign Minister Penny Wong, that the paper views as less than full-throated backing for the genocidal actions of Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu’s government in Gaza and now in Lebanon.

It was followed on Thursday and today by more of the same. (below)

Clearly to do anything other than back every single action by Netanyahu and the Israeli Defence Force under his control is treachery, in the eyes of The Oz.

The paper can, by all means, take a position on the conflicts raging in the Middle East and express its views in its editorials inside the paper, or even publish leader articles on the front page if it so wishes.

But our MGH teams believe that slanted headlines published as statements of fact – not as quotes from anyone mentioned in the story – do not meet accepted journalistic standards.

They should not be tolerated in legitimate news outlets, yet repeatedly appear in News outlets.

Our MGH teams also suggest that this type of ongoing campaigning, as opposed to news coverage, raises questions about exactly who sits on the editorial board and exactly what influence they have, with some among our MGH teams having their own ideas about that. (main picture)

They say it also raises questions about whether the paper’s editor-in-chief agrees with the shredding of editorial standards on her watch.

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