Rex in the City

Crikey highlights an interesting phenomenon. A big, stinking, rubber-burning U-turn on the part of the News Limited tabloids.

One day they're whipping the Corby frenzy to insane levels, and the next day chief loon Ackerman is lambasting the Rednecks.

The level of sexism, racism and ignorance reflects very poorly upon Corby's supporters, no atter whether she is innocent as they believe, or guilty as she has been found by the Indonesian court.

The rednecks need to be reined in. They can express their frustration as enthusiastically as they ish but they seriously devalue their cause by resorting to gutter invective.

Crikey explains that someone in News has intervened - Given instructions to the mighty mouths to shut up and back off.

Whether it was the result of government, proprietorial or senior management
intervention, calling the News Limited tabloid dogs off just as their Corby
coverage was hotting up was an intervention. Stopping a tabloid newspaper
mid-stream in a populist campaign is like, well, stopping you-know-what just
when it's getting steamy.

The next question is, will the sleaze buckets over at Channel Nine pull their heads in?

Keep an eye out for tell tale indicators of Packer embarrassment over at Tim's propaganda factory.

Update: Right on queue - Packer climbdown in process. Also Tim quotes directly this little black duck in comments here - complete with spelling mistake (Unattributed natch apart from the appellation -online leftist). At $1 per word, the City is wondering if we should be expecting a cheque soon in the mail, and whether its Inc GST or Ex.