Gladys’ cheerleader in chief at the Sydney Morning Herald finally comes out swinging – at the NSW Opposition Leader. And editorials from The Australian get oh-so-close to touching on the failures of the federal government in aged care and vaccine rollout.
A woman alleges she was raped in parliament in the lead-up to the 2019 election. Scott Morrison – the Prime Minister of Australia – needed to ask his wife how to feel; needed a prompt to respond by think about it in terms of if it were his daughter. And the media response? Crickets.
No critical commentary. No calls for resignations. Just what-about-ism and deflection. Even the ABC either failed to ask a Coalition minister to appear on 7.30, or failed to report their refusal to appear.
The Australian‘s Dennis Shanahan:
As for News Corp’s Alice Workman, it was a matter of “toxic laundry” and the Labor Party had the problem.
NSW Politics
Alexandra Smith, the State Political Editor of the Sydney Morning Herald, rarely takes a break from being Gladys Berejiklian’s cheerleader.
After spending months waving away Berejiklian’s pork-barrelling of hundreds of millions of dollars and the premier’s “I don’t need to hear about that bit” approach to her boyfriend selling visas, to name just two NSW Coalition scandals, Smith finally got the opportunity to do the real job of a journalist – which is holding power to account.
Smith went after Labor leader Jodi McKay.
It’s hard from the articles to tell what the story actually is, but McKay appears to have, at worst, supported a letter of support. Supported a constituent in supporting someone in their community. It was in fact a pro forma letter. McKay categorically denied it as being a letter of support, but that didn’t stop the journalist running it as fact in the lead. Nor did it stop the Sydney Morning Herald running the standfirst that she wrote a letter of support.
Lockdown blues
As Victoria went back into a brief lockdown – as Sydney, Perth, South Australia, Auckland and more have done in recent weeks or months – the media response was predictably balanced and proportionate.
NewsCorp was practically frothing at the mouth with excitement. The Australian‘s Simon Benson forgot to mention that the other states “stamped out” outbreaks due to lockdowns.
Editorials from The Australian got oh-so-close to touching on the failures of the federal government in aged care and vaccine rollout (as a country we’re about 80th in line, not at the front of the queue);
The Australian‘s Adam Creighton’s brain was well and truly “fried”, to use his words, despite not even being in lockdown; undermining the effectiveness of the vaccine; and once more incorrectly claiming that the flu is worse than Covid.
The Herald Sun’s idea of a contact tracing bungle included “authorities had incorrect contact details” (hard to contract trace if Victorians give authorities the wrong information). 
If the following sentence were grammatically correct it might convey the idea that people were unnecessarily contacted – a bit better than people not getting contacted?
So rabid was the media response that people with Covid-19 who were moved from the Holiday Inn left with garbage bags over their head to keep their faces out of the media – good decision given they were plastered over the front page – but even the use of garbage bats was also the government’s fault, apparently.
(The Australian)
IR Reform war
The war on Industrial Relations continued, as the Australian Financial Review kept pushing the “modest” adjective.
Someone please get these guys a Thesaurus. Peter Hartcher at least upgraded to describing them as “minor”.
Michael Tanner is completing a Doctor of Medicine/Doctor of Philosophy. His writing explores the intersection of economics, the media and public health. His writing has also been published in The Age. Michael’s Twitter handle is @MichaelTanner_
Comments
13 responses to “Tamed estate: the PM has to ask his wife how to feel empathy yet Labor is on the hook?”
Always look forward to this post.
Berejiklian? Had an ‘impartial’ cheer squad for years. If the Sydney media stopped pleasuring themselves with pandemic porn they would see what the real issue is. They should get their stories in order for x-examination at a formal inquiry into say, Sydney Metro.
NSW opposition leader? Stories inaccurate but a letter covering a constituent’s letter is taken as an endorsement. Leaders shouldn’t sign anything unless sure.
The mouth foaming at Premier Andrews? Dumb and missed the point. He made a goose of himself in media releases, and references to Brisbane and Perth. But he didn’t order the lockdown. Vic. Parliament hasn’t done its job.
‘Success’ of Brisbane and Perth lockdowns – the scoreboard disagrees: 10 days, 30 locations visited by infected prior to lockdowns and…… 1 within community transmission. Millions were subject to detention for? – those unconcerned by that are in a different library to me. Prof Dwyer’s post about the mechanics of variants makes sense. But it doesn’t explain the scoreboard or excuse those lockdowns. Nor do quarantine, aerosols, ‘hyper infectious mutants’ – they make it worse. It looks like some States are well into the S bend. Its time for change.
Love your work!
Keep it up.
Love your work Petal. Beautiful alliteration with the pandemic sentence.
Great job, thank you!
Thanks Michael, always appreciate your roundup of the output from the local media’s stenographers and PR hacks.
I for one appreciate your articles, Michael; I look forward to them. Where else can one find this sort of dissection of the hyper-partisan, LNP-promoting Australian corporate mainstream media? It’s utterly astounding the way there’s been a collective amnesia which permits of no comparison being drawn between the Victorian 5-day lockdown and the recent snap lockdowns in all the other big states bar NSW. Or the fairly recent confessions of corruption by Ms Berejiklian – all hidden away behind a fog of amnesia too. And we’re all supposed to be in a lather of despair over the lack of ‘trustworthy news’ on Google and Facebook? It’s clear where the most egregious ‘fake news’ comes from.
The AIM Media Network, Independent Australia and Crikey now do more than The Conversation, The Guardian and ABC on analysis while our supposed ‘media’ i.e. NewsCorp, 9Fairfax and 7West simply pump out political/corporate agitprop, directing the LNP in supporting selected sectors.
Related, most of the media avoid readers’ comments on this issue of Google/Facebook vs. NewsCorp, with most articles both supporting NewsCorp and not giving a full picture (e..g ignoring monopolistic behaviour of NewsCorp). However, when comments are allowed it’s quite clear that many of the public see this issue as ‘owned’ LNP govt. conducting a legal ‘shakedown’ on behalf of NewsCorp etc.
No doubt from now till the next election we will see the favour returned in kind through free advertising for the LNP with ongoing anti-Labor agitprop while ignoring the LNP government’s own lack of leadership, risk avoidance, science denialism, moral and ethical issues.
Thank goodness Facebook clobbered newsfeeds like those featured above. I am still wondering why the Morrison government did us all a favour indirectly by forcing FB to dump news feeds. I wonder what Murdoch is saying……
Sorry Michael I don’t like your style of journalism. Mighy be ok for face books but out of character with P&I
Well i think he is doing a ripper of a job. So that makes it one all i guess.
That’s ok Skilts; the good thing is we are all entitled to an opinion!
Indeed Peter. And we respect each other here when we do disagree. Good on you mate.
And can you explain why? I think not explaining why it’s ‘out of character with P&I’ is out of character with P&I.
I prefer to read a coherent and properly constructed essay. I find the cut and paste from other sources difficult: often in different print and format. I prefer the format that JM prescibes for his publication.