Best of 2025 - Blame and frame: How Chinese Australians are counted when blamed, discounted when needed
We say we want to understand China. Then we glance past a million Chinese speakers at home and start counting somewhere else.
Recent articles in Media
11 January 2026
Best of 2025 - Journos as heroes and villains - 'The Hack' reviewed - Part 1
In films and on the small screen, journalists are portrayed as heroes or villains. In The Hack they are both. Does this reflect the diminished, benighted standing journalists hold in society today or is it a step forward in showing the complexities of the work?
10 January 2026
Best of 2025 - New revelations of the Murdoch empire’s underbelly – From The Hack’s real-life journalist
This is the humblest day of my life, declared Rupert Murdoch to a parliamentary committee on 19 July 2011.
8 January 2026
Best of 2025 - Blaming China won’t keep the lights on – or pay the power bill
Sky News is back on the beat with a familiar headline: “The $20,000-per-person climate tax: Cost of Australia's green agenda to become astonishingly clear this week when new emissions targets are set.”
7 January 2026
Best of 2025 - Why key leaders attended China’s military parade – Asian Media Report
In Asian media this week: Nations “must adapt” to new power politics. Plus: Raid “will hurt” South Korea’s US investments; Trump’s strategic shift towards Pakistan; What’s next after Nepal’s 8 September massacre; Thailand gets its first minority government; Why India has the world’s biggest diaspora.
7 January 2026
Best of 2025 - If we want to win the Pacific, we must first listen – and stop blaming China for everything
A 9 September editorial in The Sydney Morning Herald, titled China and Australia in a high-speed race to win control of the Pacific, offered a vivid picture of the daily contest for influence in the region.
7 January 2026
Best of 2025 - Rupert Murdoch’s greatest scoop
On Wednesday 25 February 1976, The Australian published a sensational front page story headlined Iraq promises $US500,000 to pay Labor’s debts/Whitlam in secret Arab election deal.
5 January 2026
Best of 2025 - Furious Modi rejects Trump’s phone calls – Asian Media Report
In Asian media this week: India turns its attention to Japan and China. Plus: Trump wants US to own land used for bases in Korea; Despair turning young refugees to armed insurrection; Beijing pushing AI as next growth-engine; Manila ramps up its anti-China stance; The wounds that time cannot heal.
5 January 2026
Best of 2025 - The ABC's public comment guidelines: A 'crackdown' on management, not workers
The ABC’s new public comment guidelines, which replace its existing “personal use of social media” policy and follow the debacle of the Antoinette Lattouf affair, have been portrayed by rival media organisations as a crackdown”, “a gag order”, “a hit” on ABC employees, and other such alarming epithets.
5 January 2026
Best of 2025 - John Menadue in conversation with David Marr
In a wide-ranging discussion, P&I editor-in-chief John Menadue discusses a life full of achievement driven by conviction, and nominates seeing off the White Australia policy and establishing P&I as highlights. He is speaking with David Marr on ABC Radio National's Late Night Live.
22 December 2025
What Australia’s teen social media ban could mean for reading
As under-16s are locked out of major social media platforms, online book communities that helped many teens discover reading are disappearing too. What’s being lost, and what might replace it?
17 December 2025
Can AI help save local journalism without hollowing it out?
As local news outlets shrink and news deserts grow, artificial intelligence could deepen the crisis or, if used carefully, help sustain public-interest journalism at the community level.
16 December 2025
Font of all knowledge? Of Rubio, Rupert and playing to type
A curious US culture-war memo about typefaces becomes a sharp lesson in readability, newspaper craft, and how badly those lessons have been forgotten in Australian journalism.
Catch up on other sections
More from Media
8 November 2025
Murdoch, the Dismissal and my job in Japan
31 October 2025
Open letter to David Marr on his interview with Chris Hedges
10 October 2025
Journos as heroes and villains - 'The Hack' reviewed - Part 2
