The Sydney Morning Herald reports that the Australian Transport Safety Bureau has released its final report into an incident in 2008 in which a Qantas 747 lost its main power unit in flight and landed in Bangkok on backup battery power.

This reporting does not meet the general standards of reporting of aviation incidents, on two counts:

1. It does not include the word plunge as in “The plane plunged 300 feet…..”
2. It does not describe the flight crew as heroes.

What kind of outrage is this? As we know, all planes in any kind of incident “plunge” and all crew are “heroes”. The SMH seems to follow standards of reporting somewhat different from other aviation writers in Australia.

Note to self: remove tongue from cheek when ready.

Melbourne’s Herald Sun reports that Ian Botham and Ian Chappell had a fist fight in Adelaide recently.

The Herald Sun reports:

Botham, who hasn’t spoken to former Australia captain Chappell since 1980 …

and

Since then [March 1977] the pair … have only traded insults.

Which ‘fact’ is correct?

Or is there some way of trading insults without speaking?

From Annabelle Crabb’s WikiLeaks and the ‘Handy Heel’ manoeuvre at ABC’s The Drum:

[Talking about Vladimir Putin and Silvio Berlusconi:]

One hopes they also share clothes; an advantageous arrangement, seeing as Mr Putin is frequently shirtless, and Mr Berlusconi rarely in need of trousers.

Is it just me, or does the rescue capsule used in the Chilean mine disaster remind you of Mr Squiggle’s rocket?

Later: It seems it’s not just me. Friends tell me that the similarity was discussed on Jon Fain’s program this morning.

“Lesbian martial arts expert frees under age lover in Indonesia”

It’s a real headline from The Telegraph in the UK.

This tops the headline I’d previously remembered as the best I’d ever heard. It was (allegedly) from a religious newspaper in the US and read:

“No Catholics killed in recent floods”

Ain’t the media great?

There’s a storm in a tea cup going on between our erstwhile leader, Paul Keating, and his erstwhile speech-writer, Don Watson. In the big scheme of things, I doubt it matters much.

But I’ve no idea what Mr Keating meant when he wrote this:

There is no doubt some of these moments when juxtaposed each to the other provide a matrix of a kind that helps paint a more nuanced picture of Australia in a way that people can both relate to and better understand.

Let me try: Some of these moments provide a matrix, and that kind of matrix helps paint a nuanced picture, and people can relate to and understand the *way* in which the picture is painted (not, note, the picture itself).

What does that mean?

I’ve heard of keeping your heart on your sleeve, but never keeping your hand on your shoulder.

Most people, including, I suspect, the president of Argentina, keep their hands dangling off the end of their arms. The Times seems confused about this:

Foreign Policy yesterday published a thoughtful essay on the relationship between Latin America and the US: ‘Adios, Amigos: How Latin America stopped caring what the United States thinks’.

Some time ago, I was appalled when I read a piece on ABC News online in which a murder was not news, but bystanders’ reactions to the murder was reported as news. The ABC is at it again, reporting reactions rather than news.

On Thursday 11 February 2010, at around 8pm, the Queensland parliament passed legislation related to surrogacy. That’s news.

I would expect ABC News to report the facts. Specifically:

• the most important provisions of the legislation
• how the legislation changes the legal situation
• how the legislation compares with legislation in other states and other countries
• when the legislation will come into effect, if not immediately
• the scope of the legislation; that is: who is affected by it
• the political background to the legislation
• what groups or individuals voted for and against it.

The morning after the legislation passed, ABC News online published at least 4 pieces about it. The best of them presented some facts along with comments from the Premier, the Attorney-General, the Deputy Opposition Leader and a government MP who crossed the floor:

ABC’s piece concentrates on the comments, not the news. 88 words of news; 198 words of comment. It gets worse. Here’s another of the ABC’s reports:

This is not reporting the news.

The article contains 8 words identifying the news, and 223 words reporting comments by two interested parties David Molloy (of the Queensland Fertility Group, a practice offering fertility-related services such as IVF, described as ‘Excellence in fertility care’) and Louise du Chesne, spokeswoman for Action Reform Change Queensland, an organization ‘Advocating for Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender equality through campaigns for legal and social change,and public education’.

ABC News online published two other reports on this topic the day after the Queensland parliament passed the legislation. Both offer reactions, rather than news:

• Surrogacy laws spark mixed response. Posted 12 February 2010, 9.06am. “There have been mixed reactions to the decriminalisation of altruistic surrogacy in Queensland…”
• Family groups to fight surrogacy laws. Updated 12 February 2010, 5.09pm. “Religious and family groups have vowed to go to the electoral barricades in Queensland over what they are calling legislative child abuse – laws allowing gay and single people to use surrogate mothers…”

It’s good to read about the reactions of relevant parties to important pieces of news. But reporting of the facts should come first.

Both the Courier-Mail and The Australian did better than the ABC.

AAP gave the clearest description I could find of what this legislation will do.

Under the reforms, which extend to same-sex couples, legal parentage of a child born in altruistic surrogacy agreements – whereby another woman has a baby for no payment – will transfer from the birth mother to the parent or parents who commissioned the birth.

AAP’s report was published, verbatim, by the Sydney Morning Herald, Yahoo!7News and Bundaberg’s News-Mail.

Jonathan Green, editor of ABC’s The Drum, and previously one of the ABC’s more interesting columnists, writes, with much tongue in cheek, about Australia Day:

It [Australia Day] marks–and I offer this information for the young people reading who have been betrayed by an education system that long ago consigned even the rudiments of history to, ah, history–Australia Day marks the moment the first governor of NSW pulled up in a jolly boat somewhere near the end of the third runway at Sydney airport, raised a flag and began the random discharge of firearms. Sheep, binge drinking and urban sprawl would follow.

Mr Green is perhaps insufficiently troubled by the facts.

Australia Day marks the moment Captain Arthur Phillip pulled up somewhere near Wharf 3 at Circular Quay, not the third runway at Kingsford-Smith.

View Keep runways out of Sydney Harbour in a larger map

A bit of research yields the following:

• 18 January 1788: Phillip arrives near the end of the third runway in his jolly boat ‘Supply’.
• 19 and 20 January 1788: The remaining 10 ships of the First Fleet arrive at Botany Bay. But Phillip decides there is too much aircraft noise, he wants a view better than the Kurnell Oil Refinery, and altogether just doesn’t like the place.
• 21 January 1788: Phillip and a few mates set off in some little boats to find a better place to hang out. They find Port Jackson (aka Sydney Harbour), stay a couple of nights at the InterCon, and then hot foot it back to Botany Bay to get the rest of the fleet.
• 23 January 1788: Phillip & Co make it back to Botany Bay with stories of their knees-ups at the Rocks.
• 26 January 1788: The whole fleet quits Botany Bay, sails to Port Jackson, ends up in Sydney Cove, and does the whole flag-raising thing. 200-odd years later, 20 million people get a day off work to eat lamb chops.

Or, as Wikipedia puts it rather more succinctly:

Phillip’s instructions were to establish the settlement at Botany Bay, a large bay further down the coast [than Sydney Cove]. Botany Bay had been discovered by Lieutenant James Cook during his voyage of discovery in 1770, and was recommended by the eminent botanist Sir Joseph Banks, who had accompanied Cook, as a suitable site for a settlement. But Phillip discovered that Botany Bay offered neither a secure anchorage nor a reliable source of fresh water. Sydney Cove offered both of these, being serviced by a fresh water creek which was soon to be known as Tank Stream.

Sources:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Phillip
• http://www.manly.nsw.gov.au/IgnitionSuite/uploads/docs/Phillip’s%20First%20Three%20Days(1).pdf
• http://home.vicnet.net.au/~firstff/story.htm
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Fleet

All the NHM has done is remove any reference to the overall award. Re-writing history, rather than ‘fessing up: