The Advertiser Editors have some bloody nerve!

I had to laugh at the editorial entitled “Free people must be allowed a free press” that was on the AdelaideNow website on April 28, 2007.

The gall of the Advertiser editors to claim that they are some kind of bastion of democracy is phenomenal. If they actually think that they need to stop smoking the crack they are obviously are on and come down from their ivory tower and actually participate in the local community, because it's obvious they have an over inflated perception of them selves and their newspaper.

I couldn't help myself - I had to write in:

You claim that “A free media, the freedom of speech and expression of opinion, is the heartland of any democracy”.

The moment News.Corp appropriated all of Adelaide's papers into one was the moment the “press” ceased to resemble anything remotely associated with the word “free”. Murdoch's constant and consistent meddling in political affairs in Australia, the UK and USA stripped his media of any claim to the democratic process. Add to that the Federal Government's recent relaxing of media ownership laws to allow Murdoch more control and your entire diatribe at the government and lawmakers becomes fallacious at best, diabolical at worse.

You claim that parliaments are “the epitome of half-truth and obfuscation” yet in the last few months the Advertiser has shown itself to be more than equal to that task.

You claim that we are “fed a diet of misleading and shrewdly crafted press releases” but who publishes these releases? Who constantly publishes unresearched feeds from PR people and foreign newspapers?

The story about Knut the polar bear still has not been corrected in ANY news corporation publications, although the ABC's mediawatch showed that elements of the story were completely false and the animal rights activists involved now fear for their life because you “copy and pasted” the article from AP's news feed.

Examples of this sloppy journalism on corrections has increased phenomenally in recent years and yet your responses to such places as mediawatch when queried on it are unapologetic in most cases, and downright rude in others.

I have a challenge for you – you research and report the truth properly according to the MEAA's code of ethics, and when you do screw up the truth of the story you print a prominently positioned apology, and we, the public, will help to fight to stop your freedoms being eroded.

But until that time to ask that we support you would be laughable if it wasn't such a disturbing and disingenuous use of the Advertiser's editorial.