Daily Telegraph Dog-whistling?

[steve777]

Today's (Sept 1) Daily Telegraph's home page has a headline "Labor sells off the farm to China". This linked to an article about the approval by the Treasurer of the sale of Cubbie station to a Chinese-led consortium. The article itself, including the title, are quite balanced and informative. The article dealt with the facts and issues at hand, basically that the Treasurer approved the sale of the privately-owned Cubbie Station after it was given a tick by the Foreign Investment Review Board. It would have been capricious and against the national interest had the Treasurer decided otherwise, as the article made reasonably clear.

The fact is, however, that the description in the link to the article on the Telegraph's home page was just plain wrong and I suspect willfully so. If the aim of the Telegraph is to inform its readers, the link from on the home page certainly detracted from it. Judging by the comments on the article, many Daily Telegraph readers apparently thought that the Government owned Cubbie Station or possibly that we should disallow Chinese investment in Australia.

I believe that the Telegraph decided to make this another salvo in its anti-Gillard Government crusade. Worse still, it engaged in a spot of dog-whistling. Certainly some of the commenters on the story heard a whistle.

Here is a link to the article (cut & paste): w w w .dailytelegraph.com.au/news/labor-to-sell-the-farm/story-e6freuy9-1226462753550

[jreidy]

I saw this and meant to post here, in print it is a banner headline, in huge type "Labor Sells the Farm"

I am sure, if the coalition was in power, to would have read "<I>Government....</I>"