(Image: Tom Red/Private Media)

Good for what Ailes you So the ABC and The Australian are going at it over the role Fox News played in perpetuating the “big lie” that former US president Donald Trump actually won last November’s election, and the whole debate has become a giant horseshoe.

Four Corners argues Fox had better journalistic standards under Roger Ailes — the former media adviser to every Republican president between Richard Nixon and George Bush Sr, the man who wrote to George W Bush days after 9/11 to encourage him to use the “harshest possible measures“, and who left the network after a series of allegations of sexual harassment in 2016. The Australian counters with the observations that Ailes was “notoriously hardline” and “forced out in 2016”.

A separate shout-out to Chris Kenny for employing whatever keyboard shortcut gives us his column to attack the ABC for following the “same old script“, which is probably the funniest thing he’s managed since that time he did a Sky News segment and wrote a column claiming ABC presenters Kate Evans and Cassie McCullagh joked on air about “murdering conservatives”, when in fact it was a joke about art “conservators” as part of a murder mystery they were reviewing.

Come fly with me We aren’t the first to observe this, but for a guy whose detractors dub “Scotty from marketing”, our prime minister sure seems kind of bad at, you know, marketing. Qantas’s latest tear-jerker of an ad is yet another example of how every good ad we’ve seen concerning the pandemic has come from other countries or loathsome creative types. When the federal government has a crack, it’s forgettable stuff like July’s “arm yourself” campaign.

Beyond the simple aim of encouraging vaccination during a global pandemic, the government really ought to take a cue from Qantas for another reason: distraction. Qantas, after all, wants Australia vaxxed so it can get back to belching a metric tonne of pollution across the skies and employing every brutal negotiating tactic in the book against its workforce. But who remembers all that? That lovely couple need to get to Singapore for their wedding!

Trading blows Cricket legend, baron, David Brent’s hero and now trade envoy to Australia Ian Botham. Australia’s high commissioner to the UK George Brandis has greeted the news with the tweet equivalent of over-eagerly attempting to join a conversation and killing it dead. It will be interesting to see if Botham’s traditional dynamic with Australians continues.

Not content with bludgeoning Australians on the cricket field, Botham has famously had a series of scraps with Ian Chappell and was charged with assault in Perth after an altercation with a plane passenger which allegedly included a “clip round the ear” and the line “eyes to the front or you’re next” (Botham, for his part recalls it thus: “I put my hands on his shoulders, redirected his gaze to the front and told him to mind his own business.”)