FED:Media must stop slander nonsense: minister

AAP General News (Australia)
08-31-2011
FED:Media must stop slander nonsense: minister

Eds: Reissuing to change master keyword to Media not Milne as sent.



SYDNEY, Aug 31 AAP - Media organisations need to start acting responsibly and stop
printing "nonsense", including slanderous comments about the prime minister, federal Transport
Minister Anthony Albanese says.

Columns printed in News Ltd papers in recent days are of "real concern", Mr Albanese
told reporters in Sydney on Wednesday.

He was referring to columns by Glenn Milne in Monday's The Australian newspaper and
by Andrew Bolt in Wednesday's The Daily Telegraph.

Milne's column was removed from the paper's website and an apology was issued to Prime
Minister Julia Gillard.

The Milne article alleged Ms Gillard had once shared a Melbourne home which was purchased
with embezzled union funds.

"How is it that a false allegation about the prime minister is published in The Australian
newspaper without anyone ... contacting me or my office for a comment?" Gillard asked.

On Saturday, the Herald Sun columnist Andrew Bolt put on his blog "a tip on something
that may force Gillard to resign".

In a column entitled `Looking down the muzzle of censorship', Bolt wrote on Wednesday
that he had been instructed not to write any more on the issue and he had considered resigning
as a News Ltd columnist.

"Not being able to report on what I consider improper pressure by a desperate prime
minister to kill a story meant I could not report fairly on the political scene as I saw
it," he wrote.

Mr Albanese said Bolt was "today, a much more humiliated man".

"On the weekend, Andrew Bolt talked up old accusations which News Ltd acknowledged
in their apology to the prime minister ... were false," he said.

"What the decent thing for Andrew Bolt, Glen Milne and others is to simply withdraw
those allegations.

"And today you have ... the assertion that you shouldn't just be allowed to print factually
incorrect statements is somehow an attack on the freedom of the press.

"Freedom of the press does not imply the freedom to write lies."

Mr Albanese said in general, extreme views were frequently being put out as news.

"We continually get these extreme views trotted out, including the slander against
the prime minister, and I just think it's about time that people acted responsibly," he
said.

"They've got to call it for what it is, and they've got to stop this sort of nonsense
that is being put out there as legitimate media."

However, Mr Albanese said any inquiry into the media in Australia should not be considered
in the context of "any particular issues".

The government is to decide whether to hold an inquiry into the regulation and ownership
of the media after Greens leader Bob Brown gave notice last week he would seek to establish
one, Fairfax newspapers reported on Wednesday.

AAP ih/wjf/mo

KEYWORD: MEDIA ALBANESE (REISSUING)

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