Former prime minister Kevin Rudd (Image: AAP/Mick Tsikas)

Scrub the Sky As former PM Kevin Rudd points out, Sky News has been “quietly scrubbing incriminating COVID-19 misinformation videos from websites … Dozens of videos have vanished with no correction or apology.” Trying to find the stories under headlines like “Were doctors free to prescribe hydroxychloroquine we wouldn’t need the lockdowns” get you nothing but a “page not found” message.

Or maybe Sky is just continuing to catch up with its weird older brother Fox News? Its screeching U-turn on Alan Jones’ vaccine misinfo late last month coincided with a striking change in tone from some of Fox’s high-profile hosts. Maybe Rupert Murdoch has decided he’d rather not have to use all those lawyers he hired for the COVID misinformation lawsuits he somehow knew were coming in the early months of the pandemic.

Orwell well well When you invoke George Orwell in an op-ed, you’d better get your ideas straight. In this weekend’s Sydney Morning Herald Labor right speechwriter Dennis Glover brags about getting the gig of editing Labor’s 2019 program (dubbed “the longest suicide note in history”) by eviscerating most of its progressive measures. Apparently he got the news of Labor’s 2019 defeat while on holiday in Spain, looking at the trenches above Barcelona where Orwell got shot in the neck. The alleged lesson of Orwell’s brigade’s failed attack? Don’t go over the top.

Wow, you know you’re in the Labor right when the lesson of the Spanish Civil War is to duck the fight. But it gets better. Orwell was shot by a sniper while actually in the trenches, which were exposed to the enemy. The attack on Barcelona was a breakout from being pinned down.

In the election campaign, ScoMo’s Christian warriors may well do the same to a cowering Labor and pick them off one by one. Still, at least this suicide note — which shows that the right, as always, is more interested in owning the left than beating the Libs — is concise and well-edited.

Scaling Olympus China did well in the Olympics, pipped at the last minute by the US with 39 gold to China’s 38. We guess all those US outlets didn’t need that weird accounting system that put it ahead of China — who topped the gold medal list for most of the Games — after all.

According to the China Daily that success was due to President Xi Jinping’s inspiring thoughts about the joys and benefit of physical jerks: ”President Xi has attached great importance to the development of sports in the country, and has on many occasions expounded on his understanding of sports and laid down principles for the cause.”

In fact, August 8 was China’s national fitness day (timed to coincide with the end of the Tokyo Games and China’s triumph?). Xi’s musings on sport include this mouthful:

Sports is an important indicator of social development and human progress, and an important manifestation of overall national strength and social civility. It plays an irreplaceable role in improving people’s fitness and health, facilitating well-rounded human development, enriching people’s intellectual and cultural life, promoting economic and social development, and galvanising the Chinese people of all ethnic groups to promote the spirit of striving for excellence and outperforming themselves.

We’re not sure where the Uyghurs or those in one of China’s 380 internment camps fit in this.

All in the family The company named six times in the first nine paragraphs of Terry McCrann’s column in The Australian today is research outfit Roy Morgan. Pretty good PR if you can get it. Of course, the PR game is all about forming good connections.

Incidentally, who’s the head of PR at Roy Morgan? Coincidentally, it’s Julian McCrann, son of Terry McCrann.