SMH: The Herald Buckles to the Bullies

"Confirming I have quit the SMH, sad that a once great newspaper has buckled to the bullies. Thanks for your support... maintain the rage." Mike Carlton tweet 6/8/14

Needless to say, Carlton's surprise resignation has not been the subject, in the pages of the Herald, of the schadenfreude which characterises the Murdoch press treatment of it. That merry gloating, I'll be dealing with in my next post. For now, here's how the Herald's reporting the matter (along with my comments as appropriate):

Sydney Morning Herald columnist Mike Carlton resigns following furore over Gaza column (no byline, 6/8/14)

"Sydney Morning Herald newspaper columnist Mike Carlton has resigned after his angry response to readers who disagreed with a controversial article he wrote... "

Readers? Really? Or Zio-trolls - whether paid cogs in Israel's propaganda mill or free lance?

"Fairfax's director of news and business media, Sean Aylmer, says the issue is not with the column itself but the way Carlton responded to readers in emails and on social media. The column attracted a lot of criticism. Many readers wrote to Mike - what got him into trouble was the way he responded to those readers,' he said. 'It was totally inappropriate, using inappropriate language'."

Oh I see, the column was not a problem, just the way he responded to the deluded fanatics and assorted nasties who cannot bear any deviation from the party line they've been brought up on since birth. Apparently, a frank and forthright verbal flick is too much for the Herald. Maybe it should supply its commentators with a stock standard response: Thank you for your interesting opinion. Have a nice day. Better still, why not just farm out its op-eds on the Middle East conflict to Israel lobby operatives and propagandists? Of course, they'll be indistinguishable from those in the Murdoch press or The Australian Jewish News, but, hey, anything to avoid being CONTROVERSIAL, right?

"Mr Aylmer said SMH editor-in-chief Darren Goodsir rang Carlton yesterday and urged him to apologise. 'As the afternoon rolled on, and more of these emails emerged, we spoke to him last night,' he said. 'In effect, we said we would suspend him and he resigned on the spot'."

What emails? Leaked by whom, and why?

"Carlton confirmed on Twitter this morning that he had left the newspaper, saying he was 'sad that a once great newspaper has buckled to the bullies'. 'After a fortnight of being called Nazi, Jew-hating slime, I told a few people to f*** off. We do that in this country occasionally,' one tweet said... "

Too occasionally, it seems, which explains why the Zionist bullies have the Herald on the run, not to mention our politicians eating out of their hands.

"Zeddy Lawrence, the editor of Jewish News [sic] is pleased Carlton has resigned. 'I am pleased as I think many readers of the SMH and The Age are, that somebody who is abusive, and uses vile language when readers try to engage with him in dialogue, has left his position', she said..."

The rest of the piece is an extended quote from Zio-Zeddy, which begs the question: Why was she asked for an opinion in the first place? An attempt at appeasement perhaps?

Carlton quits after suspension over 'offensive' comments, Madeleine Heffernan & Megan Levy, 7/8/14

"SMH editor-in-chief Darren Goodsir likened Carlton's responses to readers to 'someone in a restaurant complaining to a waiter that the food or the service has not been good enough, and the waiter using expletives to deal with that complaint'."

This analogy tells us more about gutless Goodsir than it does about Carlton. God save journalism with his kind in charge.

"He said he had accepted the view that an apology and suspension was an appropriate sanction for Carlton's response to readers who had written to him in response to a column on the conflict in Gaza... Mr Goodsir said 'he had been at pains to defend the editorial independence of the Herald and its columnists' following controversy over the column."

If sin-binning one of the Herald's best journalists is gutless Goodsir's idea of defending the editorial independence of his paper, then God help the Herald.

"Earlier, Carlton told the ABC he had 'snapped' after being subjected to 'torrents of abuse' for writing a piece stating that Israel was 'waging its own war of terror on the entire Gaza population'. Carlton said while writers have to 'cop it' if they dish it out, there were 'two strands' to the issue: the 'organised Likud lobby' and rival publisher News Corp 'hating him'."

Spot on!