By Alasdair Black
I’ll bang on about this until my last dying breath.
It is the abject failure of our Fourth Estate (the mainstream media) to fulfil its democratic role and hold government to account. Worse, on top of that they run a protection racket for their favoured horse in the race; the LNP.
There was an article on the The AIMN about the sin of omission which goes to the heart of the failure of our Fourth Estate. The omission of campaigning hard against this government on its corruption, on its mishandling of major issues and policy stuff ups such as failure to act or lead cohesively on climate change mitigation and its abrogation of its constitutional responsibility during the pandemic!
The Murdoch media, the worst of all, actively proselytises for its favoured horse in all electoral races; the LNP! It plays a game of omission and bias with utmost exigency.
The corporate media may not be as biased with its non-objective, advertorial news reporting like the Murdoch media, but it fully commits the sin of omission when holding a LNP Governments to account, either state or federally.
The Fourth Estate should have wrestled the Government to the ground over Robodebt. Remember how they advertised, supported and prosecuted the LNP’s campaign on “pink batts?”
You couldn’t have avoided it anywhere, over four deaths which was more of an industrial OH&S issue than a government failure. But the howling from the mainstream media backed in the LNP. So inevitably, once in power the LNP instigated a Royal Commission, purely out of self-interested motives and political advantage, for, the four unfortunate deaths.
What of the Fourth Estate’s duty of accountability for an alleged 2,000 deaths from Robodebt? Where was their moral outrage then? Where was the concerted accountability campaign for those 2,000? Where was the media howls, full of conscience, moral pain for the 2,000 alleged suicides of the sort that enraged them with pink batts where they lost all objectiveness in their demand for justice in the four deaths?
Apparently, deaths at the hand of government policy is only horrendous when it occurs under the stewardship of Labor.
The 2,000 alleged Robodebt suicide victims, were ‘untermensch’, drainers of the state coffers, hardly worth shedding a tear for, let alone accountability and justice, from the reigning cartel of welfare-hating pricks, running our decrepit democracy into the ground?
Wait for the next election. Will they start another fear campaign like the one scaring pensioners about franking credits, that 99% of pensioners don’t get? Will they lie or back up claims for their LNP buddies about bogans and their 4WD or utes being stolen from ‘under their noses’? Will they go along with the LNP lie that Labor is going to close all coal mines and throw all mining workers on the dole queues? And promote the Trumpianesque “big lie” that big coal and gas is here forever and anyone who says otherwise, is in a leftie conspiracy to deindustrialise Western civilisation?
Why yes, Dorothy, all the above and much, much more!
Just wait for LNP policy and electoral advisers to brainstorm with the Murdoch editors and Palmer in a phone hook-up to war game the next election for the LNP.
I am so sick of what passes for an alleged democratic Fourth Estate in this country. It’s a con, a Libertarian neo-CON.
If it wasn’t for online social media sites like The AIMN – and many others – we’d hardly know of the endless, imbroglios affairs, conflicts of interests, rorts and scandals that have occurred under eight years of this corrupt LNP Government.
It’s not the Australian voter’s fault. They’re drowning with online alt-right conspiracies, lies and alternate facts; a biased LNP supporting Fourth Estate.
The ALP has been rendered voiceless by a disinterested or antagonistic Fourth Estate, struck with profound deaf, dumb and blindness to LNP wrongdoing, prosecuting their democratic sin of omission on the Australian people in regard to ALP opposition voices.
I have little hope for an ALP victory unless the people finally suffer fatigue from the LNP chorus and our mainstream media. Palmer has finally jumped the shark… let’s hope the corporate media has overplayed its hand and does likewise.
Otherwise, I fear this vile coagulation of pus currently running this country will only win again and putrefy our democracy, yet more. If that’s even possible, can they get any worse?
Yes, naively pollyannaish of me, of course they can. Corruption knows no bound, until a united people get sick of it.
Oh how I pray fervently for that day.
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In my favourite movie genre, the Western, the tyrants were the big landowners and the bank manager – the black hat and pencil-thin moustache brigade. On the side of the lone goodie – usually a John Wayne type (what irony!!) was the local newspaperman, bravely seeking the truth and printing it without fear or favour. But the newspaperman has actually been on the side of the oppressors both historically and today; in the persons of the Beaverbrooks and Murdochs, newspapermen have been oppressors themselves.
You are right to say the ‘’ALP have been rendered voiceless….. by an antagonistic Fourth Estate…’’ But how to we change that? My suggestion is we put them on the back foot. Surprise them! At the moment, they control the narrative which controls the discussion. Change the narrative and we change the discussion. Sneak up behind them with a narrative so unexpected that they fumble and stumble, not knowing which way to turn.
Easier said than done, of course, particularly with an ALP party structure so tied up in its own knots that it cannot function with the flexibility it needs to defeat such antagonism.
One organisation the LNP fear more than Labor, is Getup, who have successfully changed the narrative in the past. They hold a unique position in the public perception with a massive following, healthy resources and strong leadership. Just sayin’.
Democracy is being gamed by big media and played to benefit big business. If businesses pay large amounts of money to “influencers” to gain advantage over their competition then how much is the influence of the media outlets of Murdoch, 7 and 9 worth to the L/NP? Advertising with these media outlets should be counted as political donations to the L/NP.
Strong language, but not inaccurate.
I write as a freelancer for a small regional paper, who are not owned by Murdoch. But they still only praise the Libs and hate Labor. Why do so many in the media support only one side of politics?
This idea that the Libs support business, even if it’s only true for some businesses, has infected almost every company in Australia. Years ago, a relative worked for a major car dealership, and they bribed all their staff with a $50 payment if they voted for the Libs. It didn’t matter who led or was in the party, they just supported the Libs regardless. A bunch of sickos.
Further to John Kelly’s good point on the presence of Get-up! as a defacto opposition to the connivance of both parties and the corporate media. Get-up! has a million+ members who a drawn to a party free, issues based, campaigning platform that is not part of the endemic corruption we are forced to participate in.
Definitions, the meaning of a word, is very important – Democracy most of all. It is a concept we have not embraced in our politics, a technically better description of our system is that of “Electoral Dictatorship” by a party, one of two parties that have memberships in the tens of thousands. Tiny, radical, extremist parties given a duopoly on power by a system that has failed to evolve with no thanks to the direct intervention of the corporate entities controlling our economy (LNP & ALP being two of those entities).
It is not for the media to hold these rogue elements to account, it is for the voters to do so, as it always has been. I hope we may evolve the system that is leaving us one destiny, certain disaster, to a system that offers opportunity for timely and considered change – Democracy – a process that empowers us all to contribute to and activate the solutions to the many compounding problems our parties see fit to ignore and bury in the trivia of their obscene and absurdist political theatre.
Get-up! remains important but sadly, marginalised while it has no direct power to effect change.
The NEED is to change our system, revoke the franchise of the representative vote and embrace our Democratic rights to engage, articulate, collaborate and act.
Co-operation is the game changer, the trait that defines the success of the human species. The competition of the economy, of our political system simply dictates an outcome of monopolists and disaster.
The media and the LNP can only continue to dominate the political, business and social spheres because the people (voters) are so thoroughly brainwashed, drugged or bribed that they cannot or will not ,object because they are completely corrupted themselves. Their only worry is keeping their jobs, getting their kids to school, thursday night shopping, saturday soccer. They are like zombies concerning everything else, fed bullshit on TV and a pittance by their employers, but somehow seemed fullfilled when they watch two teams of oversized muscle bound giants pummel each other to a standstill. Most of them couldn’t even spell the word democracy.
From ten years ago on the ABC, NY journalism Prof. Jay Rosen on Australian media (link has full transcript including comments from Lindsay Tanner) in ‘Why political coverage is broken’:
‘The following is a transcript of Jay Rosen’s keynote address at New News 2011, part of the Melbourne Writers Festival, co-sponsored by the Public Interest Journalism Foundation at Swinburne University of Technology. (Melbourne, Australia, August 26, 2011.)
This talk had its origins in my appearance about a year ago on the ABC’s Lateline with Leigh Sales. We were discussing election coverage that looks at the campaign as a kind of sporting event. Every day journalists can ask, “who’s ahead” and “what is the strategy for winning?” A perspective that appeals to political reporters, I said, because it puts them “on the inside, looking at the campaign the way the operatives do.”
I then mentioned the ABC’s Sunday morning program, The Insiders. And I asked Leigh Sales if it was true that the insiders were, on that program, the journalists. She said: “That is right.” I said: “That’s remarkable.” She… well, she changed the subject. And let me add right away that Leigh Sales is one of the most intelligent journalists I have ever had the pleasure to meet.
So this is my theme tonight: how did we get to the point where it seems entirely natural for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation to describe political journalists appearing on its air as “the insiders?”‘
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-08-30/rosen—why-political-coverage-is-broken/2862328
Forget Getup, Labor etc – change the culture, by refusing to participate and refusing to cheer.
Agree it is easy to blame journos and editors, but the real problem rests with autocratic proprietors, wealthy vested interests and government “mates” who pass so called “security” laws that are then used to block coverage of substantial issues, at precisely the time when voters need to see and understand issues(regardless of greedy profiteers).
An example coming to mid is last week’s report (small print, of course) on the astonishing amount of tax and royalties dodged by huge TNCs harvesting oil and gas riches in the Timor Gap. What good this money could have done for a nation where social infrastructure quality declines by the minute.
There is NO real comment (as on so many real-world issues), but perhaps this has been because actual journalism is “sat on” by employers and politicians anxious to dare not offend those local and off shore are our REAL masters rather than the sock puppets at the shopfront near Lake Burley Griffin.
Very few stories seemed to be released without at least some “spin” to “sanitise” a story where conservative MSM HAS to release also or lose credibility (as Murdoch has done). Not that Murdoch worries, the damage has already been done, IMHO. Even ABC news will focus for weeks on some thing about the Duke of Whatisit’s wife having a kid, but who remembers the report recently about costs for the leaky subs from France up again in price, to nearly a hundred billion dollars. We were told the order had been cancelled, yet this snippet turns up?
Or Julian Assange and the Star Chamber operated by Lady Arbuthnot, wife of a major arms trader on the Arabian Peninsular, at a time, when the truth would have told of people who want a n appearance kept up at the cost of the disgusting truth. Not a dicky bird, right across MSM, had to keep up the image of the City of London as victim while the tormentor Julian was prevented any show of a REAL trial.
Like wise in Australia where Bernard Collaery is under going a Star Chamber of perverted law likewise, for daring to stick up for the people who revealed our contemptible rip off of a dirt poor country, Timor L’Este, in orde r to please foreign governments and oil multinational, none of which have contributed so much as brass razoo to this country out of gratitude.
included is the purloined letter.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jun/10/when-americas-richest-men-pay-0-in-income-tax-this-is-wealth-supremacy
If Australians are stupid enough to buy a stinking, Z-rated Murdoch rag that will permanently pollute their minds, muddy the waters with misinformation and blatantly support the worst, most corrupt, inept, non-achieving and dangerously undemocratic government in living memory, then they will – most definitely – deserve the appalling, rigidly conservative, Neanderthal miscreants that they vote into power! Anyone with an IQ >10 has already realised that this is an unspeakably depraved regime overflowing with skirt-lifting misogynists (even rapists), stone cold, callously inhumane sociopaths, war mongering megalomaniacs and totally corrupt, self-serving capitalists who don’t give a rat’s behind about ANYONE or ANYTHING but themselves! The LNP is currently led by a useless, publicity-seeking bible-thumping hypocrite who, in reality, is nothing more than a morally bankrupt, callously inhumane, inept member of a lunatic religious cult who will only be remembered for scuttling away to Hawaii during the worst fires in Australian history!
WAKE UP, AUSTRALIA!!! There are THREE types of LNP voters:
(1) Obscenely rich, self-serving, billionaires (like Gina Rinehart, Gerry Harvey, Twiggy Forrest, et al) who KNOW that their obscene wealth (combined with an unfairly low level of tax-paying contribution) will be doubled and protected by an elitist government who despises anyone who is on a pension, struggling or on any type of welfare. It is THESE type of multi-billionaires who protect their wealth by becoming huge donors to the LNP neoliberal “cause”. It is THESE multi-billionaires in the Top 1% who are the ONLY priority with the LNP – besides the LNP THEMSELVES, of course – everyone else (that is YOU and I) are dirt under the LNP’s feet!;
(2) Working- or middle-class Australians who, somehow, falsely believe that the LNP will protect THEIR best interests which is akin to haemophiliacs putting all their trust into Dracula! Really? These misguided people, sadly, believe EVERYTHING they inhale from the Daily Terrorgraph or some other repugnant, totally biased Murdoch rag, are deluded beyond reason and keep voting for an elitist, dangerously undemocratic regime that works AGAINST them in so many ways: tearing down Medicare, destroying our environment, defunding our children’s education and selling off and privatising just about EVERYTHING Australians value!
(3) Uneducated, politically-disconnected fools who are about as dumb as a box of bricks! These people don’t know a THING about politics; they don’t bother to do the slightest research on the type of right-wing-extremist sociopaths they keep putting into power and inflicting on the rest of us! Not only do they NOT KNOW about politics, they DON’T CARE! It doesn’t matter HOW bad, HOW corrupt, HOW inept, HOW callously inhumane, HOW self-serving, HOW depraved and/or HOW deviant the LNP become – and, let’s face it, the LNP cannot get much worse – it is people like THIS who just keep voting for them over and over again! Willingly dumbed down to oblivion by Murdoch, their lives – and the lives of their children – are being DESTROYED by the very government they blindly support!
LNP supporters? Which category do YOU fit in? Rich and self-serving? Working- or middle-class, pretentious and totally misinformed or just incredibly dumb, politically disconnected and gullible?
The media had been playing up Morrison’s attempts to sell an Asian travel ‘bubble’ to Singapore prime minister, Lee Hsien Loong. But that was quickly put back in its box with Lee noting that the rate of vaccination in both countries would have to be to a much greater extent before that occurred ; particularly Australia’s roll out which is lagging by international standards.
Wow Kathryn,that’s telling it like it is.
Sums it up nicely for me. Well done.
Kathryn….. everything I think about and put so comprehensively. Keep it coming.
POLITICAL RESPECT NEEDS TO BE EARNED!
It is NOT a God-given right for a politician to EXPECT respect especially when one realises that the bible-thumping hypocrite, Sloth MorriSCUM, has the appalling, and un-Christian, ability to treacherously backstab his way to the top of the worst government in living memory, through his malicious betrayal of his political colleagues, to become the worst, most inhumane, corrupt and self-promoting PM in living memory – just ask Michael Towke, Malcolm Turnbull and Brittany Higgins, all of whom were victims of Morrison’s unspeakable sense of entitlement, despotic political ambition and perfidy!
Never before in our history have we seen a government that is so unspeakably depraved; a cabinet of arrogant, smirking, misguided, self-serving, totally obscene miscreants who hide, protect and even promote the worst kind of shallow, criminally corrupt grubs, stone cold capitalistic sociopaths and misogynistic predators (even rapists) in their midst!
The LNP are nothing more than a rabid pack of undemocratic fascists who will lie, lie and lie, say and do ANYTHING in order to warp and control the gormless, Murdoch-manipulated masses in order to win an election and to maintain their bloodstained grip on autocratic power! This is a regime that don’t give a rat’s behind about ANYONE but themselves and their billionaire donors in the Top 1%. This is a shameless, dictatorial regime who’s every policy is based on self-serving greed and designed to enrich, empower and provide benefit to themselves and their cronies and to HELL with everyone else! The LNP firmly believe that things will be done THEIR way or the highway!
As for the rest of us? The LNP continue to target, vilify, cruelly attack and denigrate anyone and everyone who is struggling, on a pension, or receiving welfare of any kind; The LNP are a pack of smug, entitled fascists who seek to muzzle democratic debate or silence any other political view or opinion that goes AGAINST their own sick, twisted, ultra-conservative and self-serving ideology! History has PROVEN – over and over again – that the LNP are overflowing with callously inhumane, rapacious snivelling political parasites who STILL maintain their hateful attacks against the most vulnerable people in our society! This is IN SPITE OF THE FACT that the LNP are, in fact, the WORST burdens on our taxpayer system with, Sloth MorriSCAMMER, a failed marketeering, publicity-seeking, bone-idle, lazy, bible-thumping hypocrite as a psuedo “leader” who just happens to be the fifth HIGHEST paid politician in the world!
Sloth Morrison is a Machiavellian hypocrite, a signed-up member of a diabolical, profit-obsessed CULT whose incompetence, heartlessness and complete inability to LEAD has been proven time and time again! The way he cowardly ran off to Hawaii during one of the worst fires on record; the way he traitorously backstabbed his way to the top, the way Morrison has been pushed out of just about EVERY job he ever tried – and failed – to hold before he became the WORST Crime Minister in our history! WOW! If anyone can name ONE SINGLE THING Sloth Morrison has achieved to benefit the lives of ANYONE but himself, please enlighten me!
….. And yet there are STILL idiots out there who keep voting for these sociopaths? Stupid is what stupid does!
The LNP cabinet are overloaded with psychopaths, ANNIHILATORS, destroyers, pathological liars and callously inhumane sociopaths. Vandalising our environment; defunding everything Australians value including Medicare, our Superannuation benefits, OUR taxpayer-funded ABC and privatising/selling-off everything taxpayers own (often to foreign owned predators).
WAKE UP AUSTRALIA BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE!!!!
Yes, Alasdair, “a leftie conspiracy to deindustrialise Western civilisation?” is the continuous cry of the lnp, including a national party trustee, that hit my in box with daily feeds of septic bullshit. Have you seen the amazon shops with no humans? ps Spot on john kelly the media have to get advertising and thrive on sex, violence and controversy. The rabbott was a master at exciting the media to forget about the ball and attack the man. Till labor finds something controversial to attack the lnp the electorate will have no reason to risk labor and the greens. Sorry kathy, you are giving a good impression of neither knowing any lnp voters nor speaking with lnp supporters. People like, the lying rodent, the rabbott, scummo and the bandit are steeped in the pragmatic principle of ‘what ever it takes’ now to achieve the required end. If that includes all the forms of lying, cheating knives in the back and corruption so be it. You also need to remember that 50% of the population is below average, like phon, and can barely read. The arrogant words you use are unbecoming of someone who wants respect to be earned. Labor has outlets to reach these voters but it requires arming its members with the counter measures and chicanery to use at grass root levels and it requires pollies to be honest and give the media controversy. Until them we will get more of the same till a charismatic gough or bob arrives.
here is the latest:
SNOW, TRAFFIC JAMS AND ELECTRIC CARS:
Has anyone thought about it?
If all cars were electric and were caught up in a three hour traffic jam… dead batteries! Then what?
Not to mention, that there is virtually no heating in an electric vehicle.
And if you get stuck on the road all night, no battery, no heating, no windshield wipers, no radio, no GPS (all these drain the battery) !!!
You can try calling 000/911 to bring women and children to safety!
But they cannot come to help you since all roads are blocked and the greenies will probably require all police cars to be electric also (if we still have police departments then) !!
And when the roads become unblocked no one can move! Their batteries are dead and they cannot move. How do you charge the thousands of cars in the traffic jam? (That is a business I think I’d like to look into.)
Same problem during summer vacation departures with miles of traffic jams.
There is virtually NO air conditioning in an electric vehicle. It would drain your battery quickly.
This will make cars run out of “fuel” and create never ending traffic jams, not to mention high tempers.
No PC reporter talks about this of course!
You can’t even call in horses to rescue you.
The Animal Rights Lobby are against using horses and cows. Besides they defecate and produce methane!
Food for thought…
Words Fail Me !
Good one, terence,
Head shakingly demeaning of the other awardees.
I noticed whose picture was included with hers? the grinning rabbott.
ps
The autocue journalist, karl baby, when he heard biden say ‘she reminded me of my mother’, laughed and said ‘the dude is a 100’. Sorry, karl baby, the queen is old enough to be his mother.
Terence, I’ve had a confirmed disrespect for these awards ever since a self-serving rello of mine got a gong for ‘Services to the communinuty’ from which community he had made considerable profit.
All just so much bullshit for the brain-dead.
On the other hand, there are many recipients who thoroughly deserve recognition for their works, and others who remain “unsung heroes”.
It’s all a bit of a lottery, in my view.
Credlin, of course, should be charged for treasonous behaviour while in the employ of A.J.Abbott PM.
Words didn’t fail me,Terrence,although I did have to apologise and explain to several of my neighbours…some of whom live in the next street.Mind you,there seem to a few new For Sale signs appearing.