Job criteria at Courier Mail: “must be a dog whistling racist willing to pose as a journalist”

This morning’s Daily Telegraph and Courier Mail (Murdoch’s flaccid Sydney and Brisbane organs) featured the following beat-up from one of Rupert’s resident right wing ratbags, Tim Blair.

The quote in the title comes from an irate commenter and neatly summarises the depths to which the gutter press will go to when they are trying to get an outcome for its owner. Strictly speaking, Islam is a religion not an ethnicity but Islamophobia has the same roots as does anti-Semitism and the language and iconography are the same. So is the underlying racism which fuels the bigotry.

Why most people would normally be interested in a piece about an obscure Sydney suburb that states the bleeding obvious as in “Muslims live in this suburb” is hard to fathom until you factor in the following:

1. This churnalism acts as clickbait for the bogots with lots of juxtaposed lurid pics and pokey buzzwords to get them into a frothing frenzy about the “Muslim threat to ‘Strayan culture’ “.
2. Lakemba has a large Muslim population (51.8% according to the last census) so it makes for a focus of fear and loathing for Islamophobes, preferred suckers for News Corpse nonsense.
3. The state seat of Lakemba (safe Labor) will lose its sitting member, Robert Furolo, who is retiring at the next state election. Labor is holding a pre-selection for his replacement and two of the candidates are Muslim.

We look forward to the following headlines from Tim Blair

Catholics take over historic building!                         

Jewish businesses set up in Bondi!

 Hillsong invades New York!               

SDA products take over supermarket!

But it won’t happen will it…

Meanwhile here’s some sample tweets reacting to the bilge.

Read some more from Antoinette here if you can get past the paywall.

And some useful contacts for making a complaint

1. Press Council Making a Complaint and Online Complaint Form

2. Media Watch contact details