Calling 'shenanigans' on political and media spin - two good articles. Can we please have more?

It's been a strange week in politics, by any measure and on a number of fronts.

But there's also been something strange going on - departures from spin. Nay - outright criticisms of spin...

The first was not really out of the ordinary - another solid blog piece from Greg Jericho on the ABC's The Drum (and his personal blog the famous Grog's Gamut). It's a longish piece - Greg's posts generally are - but stick it through as he systematically demolishes 'media by anecdote'. He loves graphs and uses them to great effect in demonstrating the lie of Gerry Harvey's pitch that online shopping is killing Australian businesses and the assertion by Terry McCrann and others that there is a looming wages blow-out.

Then today was this great piece by Daniel Hurst on the 100% online media outlet BrisbaneTimes.com.au. In it, Hurst firmly yanks the rug out from under Queensland Liberal and wannabe premier Campbell Newman and his claims of worsening crime under Labor. 'Law and order' (or Laura Norder as some have come to call it) is a traditional fallback of the Liberals in campaigns, when they rely solidly on the FUD factor - fear, uncertainty and doubt - and lazy journalism.

These two critiques clearly show that a little bit of digging - sometimes a very little bit of digging - will often tear down the common misperceptions and deliberate deceptions that have become so frequent in spin and media.

Then there was this third important departure from media 'business as usual' - Brisbane's Courier Mail (a News Ltd paper!) loudly declared they were pulling their journalists off the campaign buses for lead combatants Anna Bligh and Campbell Newman!

"That practice, whereby political parties control the movements of all journalists and photographers, does not enable us to best serve our readers..."

What the hell is going on?? Whatever it is, I want more of it. Please.