On the Lack of Bias in Australian Newspapers
When you have to read a fanatic Labor supporter’s letter to the editor complaining about right-wing biasness to find out that the paper you’re reading may be that, you know just how relatively ‘unbiased’ the Aussie newspapers here are 
What was that guy complaining about?? That guy should came and have a look at the Malaysian or Singaporean newspapers!
Anyway, back to the topic. I am an avid newspaper reader, and before coming to Australia, I was a staunch reader of The Star. MCA-biased, but nevertheless it had great non-domestic political content. It had great international news as well as a lot of interesting lifestyle news. NST sucked comparatively to it.
Fast forward to the future. Coming to NSW, Australia 3 years ago, I was initially stuck with the Daily Telegraph, thanks to my dad who took a peculiar liking to it. I didn’t. Before I go on, I think non-Aussies should know that the major newspapers here are all state-based. So the papers in NSW are different from the ones in Victoria, and so on. Anyway, I thought the Daily Telegraph was too tabloid-like, what with its weekly celebrity exposes (the most recent one being about Ralph Fiennes’s airborne sexual exploits with a Qantas air stewardess, lucky fella 
). So I tried NSW’s supposedly most authoritative and formal one, the Sydney Morning Herald for a while. That too, didn’t really work for me. True, it had more serious content, but I felt it was too NSW-centric which ultimately was a bit boring.
That was when I stumbled upon The Australian at the beginning of my second year at uni. There was an annual subscription discount going on there, and so I decided to try it. The Australian is Australia’s one and only ‘national newspaper’, ala it covers the whole country, as oppose to only a state. And it’s chokeful of interesting current events commentaries, political insights, as well as lots of national-level news on everything. Now, this was the newspaper that I had been looking for! 
And so here I am now, an avid The Australian reader with my annual membership card. And that was when I found out about the irony of this. Following the tradition of all democratic Western country’s newspapers, certain newspapers have always had certain accusations of bias associated with them. And apparently, The Australian is supposed to to be more sympathetic towards the right-wing conservative Liberals! Well, that was news to me! It really goes to show how low the level of bias here in Australian newspapers when a year-long reader like me only found out about this now. In reflecting this, I don’t think it’s fair for that guy to accuse The Australian of that. There were certainly enough left-wing Labor columnists to balance out the right-wing Liberal ones in it. The most rabid right-winger that I could pick up there was Denis Shanahan, and the foreign correspondent Greg Sheridan (whose interesting book, Asian Values, I’ve read before) which is pro-Asia on foreign relations but very neocon in his support for George W. Bush’s preempt wars. On the Left side, I think Matt Price fits that bill, although he’s more of a moderate left-winger than a loony ‘love everybody and hug trees’ kind.
However, I must agree with the common perception of the Daily Telegraph’s Labor-bias. It was very clear in the way they hyped up Mark Latham during the 2004 federal election. Kinda in the dark about where the Sydney Morning Herald’s allegiance lies though.
Anyway, that’s all for now. Ciao!
