They’re a precious bunch, aren’t they? Yesterday, we had the confected “news” about Howard’s phenomenal comeback in Newspoll. Today we’ve got two “blogs” from the Newspoll head honcho and now from a very cranky Dennis Shanahan himself. The snags at the barbie must have been overcooked or something.
I was stimulated to consider whether Dennis Shanahan was right when he interpreted the turnaround in John Howard’s better prime minister rating as something more than merely encouraging. How could this be a turning point in the campaign if voter intention has not moved in spite of the Prime Minister’s improved ratings?
The question is whether the data supports the view that a turnaround in Mr Howard’s better PM rating presages an improvement in the Coalition’s electoral stocks. The short answer to this question has been yes in the past three elections.
From comments on his piece in the GG:
The correlation you speak of does not exist in the graph on the link. Howard’s preferred PM rating is either the same as or above the primary vote and when it is above, it drops down to the primary vote rather than the primary vote lifting to it
Or to put it another way, here’s Peter Brent at Mumble:
It is silly to linger over the entrails of one single opinion poll, but let’s deal with O’Shannessy on his terms.
Martin sets the question as:
“whether the data supports the view that a turnaround in Mr Howard’s better PM rating presages an improvement in the Coalition’s electoral stocks. The short answer to this question has been yes in the past three elections.”
But the answer - long or short - is “no”, because there’s a difference between “presage” and “being accompanied by”. Martin notes that in 1998, 2001 and 2004, both Howard’s “better PM” and voting intentions rose as elections approached. But as the graph shows, the two measures rose simultaneously. Martin seems to acknowledge this, but then jumps to:
“the basic pattern of improved leader’s ratings being followed by an improved primary vote appears supportable.”
As we know, Howard’s better PM numbers last weekend were not accompanied by a vote improvement; in fact the vote gap increased.
In any event, it’s not just Howard’s’ “better PM” numbers that have improved as elections have approached. Incumbents’ generally do; see for example Keating v Howard, below.
What the Coalition desperately needs is better voting intentions. Votes win elections, not all that other fairyfloss.
The other point to make is that each election campaign has a different dynamic. Perceived correlations in polls (not that there is one here) are just that - we’re not talking about natural science like laws here where if you throw a cricket ball twice with the same force behind it from the same spot it will go the same way (although, even then…) - even if the effect O’Shannessy claims to have discerned existed in the past, there’s nothing to say that it will recur. Howard isn’t a blank state - if you pull the same political tricks again and again, eventually people wise up, and get sick of them and you. As Peter Beattie would also know.
But, back to Shanahan’s extraordinary reaction:
For all of the academic PhD aspirants and armchair journalists prepared to cite “margin of error� of two points one week, and then claim a victory the next based on the same two points (or condemn the reporting based on such a small shift), it is necessary to remember there is a real world that involves politics, the public’s latest thoughts and journalism that can’t afford the luxuries of a year-long PhD consideration, to ignore what the public is thinking or to ignore the latest shifts in public thinking.
The margin of error that Newspoll states is actually 3%, and Peter Brent (at whom I imagine this jibe is aimed since he’s a PhD candidate) is more than capable of producing quality analysis quickly (which should be what Dennis is paid for) and Shanahan’s blather reveals his inability to read polls, but anyway…
The motivations of the GG are open to debate. It might be the desire to curry favour, it might be political bias, but I think Shanahan has unwittingly given the game away - they want to influence “real world” events, and they don’t at all take kindly to being questioned. Shanahan’s “blog” is probably as much a reaction to the comments on his execrably written and ludicrously reasoned sausage sizzle piece as anything else.
This is the first election where the punters can talk back to the GG on its own website. Rupert may have decreed that online is the main game, but I bet a lot of self-anointed and highly paid pundits don’t like it one little bit.
Derision and laughter wouldn’t be the sort of reaction these agenda setters would be accustomed to. But that’s life - if you blow your own credibility where there’s some accountability, that’s what you get.
It’s also interesting to consider how, in the event of a Labor win, this mob will carry on their trade as “political analysts”. The online paper trail is much more accessible than it once was, and descending from the pulpit to rough it up with the congregation raises the stakes for them, I’d suggest. Shanahan, in this excerpt, is really putting his credibility on the line:
I’m content with having my say, not forcing my views down anyone’s throat and leaving judgment to history. So far history has been on my side.
Cheers to all those who engage in the great, democratic and political exercise of freedom of speech.
Cheers indeed.
Update: Possum Pollytics gives O’Shannessy and Shanahan the regression equation treatment!
More: We can perceive some of the value of Shanahan’s resounding endorsement of freedom of speech from this update from Mumble:
I think Dennis Shanahan wrote this this morning (as opposed to yesterday). The “PhD” mentions refer, I believe, to me.
A courtesy call from Editor-in-Chief Chris Mitchell this morning informed me that the paper is going to “go” Charles Richardson (from Crikey) and me tomorrow.
Chris said by all means criticise the paper, but my “personal” attacks on Dennis had gone too far, and the paper will now go me “personally”.
No, I’m not making this up.
If they only get as personal as I get with Dennis, then it should be tame, as I don’t believe I’ve ever criticised anything other than his writing.
And to think I described Dennis, in a chapter in a book being launched this month, as (with no sarcasm) “a fine journalist”.
All very strange. And - I’d be lying if I didn’t admit - a little stomach-churning.
I posted this yesterday at Blogocracy, and apologies if anyone at LP has previously noted the same.
Government Gazette indeed…
Interesting!
ZOMG I can’t believe 1 or 2 per cent movements or non-movements in polls months before an election can provoke so much jibber jabber. Of course the media need something to report, so Howard comebacks will always be beaten up. As will any Labor surges, no doubt.
One thing is clear - Labor has the lead, but of course you can’t write off Howard. How much more discourse is useful?
What is that recent book about the incessant human tendency to over-predict? That one about the swans? This is a case in point.
I’m more interested in what it tells us about media power, David. I agree there’s a surfeit of polls this year - but Shanahan is right about one thing - they’re pawns in a political game.
And there isn’t much of a Howard come back, and the way it’s reported plays to a particular script - there’s a different one for Rudd.
It tells us that media need to make stories out of nothing…
Power? who cares who it reports as leading? Labor probably prefer to be perceived as being behind… That’s what I’d prefer anyway…
That’s a very sanguine view of the media, David. Shanahan very clearly (all too clearly, actually, from his pov) wants to be a player in politics.
Poor old Gazetteers - the OZ is much like an University Philosophy department, a loss-making enterprise-cum-retirement home for the tenured old guard, wholly subsidized by better performing parts of the business, and kept on for prestige/ sentimental reasons.
Like middle-aged men globally, fantasies of power distort their perception, eg
” There’s nothing more attractive than a national columnist, pissed, with a beergut , in a suit, hello ladies!”
and
“Look, half a percent jump in Janette’s scone recipe rating in New Idea. HOLD TEH FRONT PAGE!”
“Shanahan, in this excerpt, is really putting his credibility on the line”
C’mon, Mark! Being a journo in the GG means never having to say you’re sorry. Just ask Greg Sheridan about his decades-long record of panegyrics to the blood-soaked General Suharto and out-of-hand dismissal of East Timorese independence aspirations, among many other blunders.
Interesting too that the piece wasn’t opened to the public for comment. I’m absolutely sick and tired of these jokers talking down to us without the right to reply.
It should be noted that whatever he thinks of Shanahans analysis yesterday, our criticism of him is based on the long view, Shanahan is a liar with the facts and a Govt apologist to boot.
Shanahan may very well want to be an important political player… and by talking about his stuff that’s exactly what we are contributing to…
I think this poll stuff is just depthless simulcra, more meaningless than dangerous. Just because it gets published in broadsheets and talked about by people who love talking about politics for the sake of it doesn’t mean it has any substantive power… Certainly I don’t think exaggerating Howard’s standing boosts his election prospects, if that’s what anyone is implying.
David, again, Shanahan is right that this sort of spin does shift the dynamics of how people in political parties perceive the state of the game - affects the mood, morale, and as he’s at great pains to emphasise, can factor into leadership. I think you’re missing the point - the way he seeks to exert power is by influencing others in the same media/Canberra/pollie loop. That’s why it’s important that this mob should have some accountability. I’m sure poor old Kim Beazley thinks so.
And the comments section is closed after but 16… Oh the Irony!
Exactly, Mark, and it’s why other media outlets, particularly the ABC pick up on the narrative time and time again.
And of course it’s not just ‘exaggerating Howard’s standing’ - it runs to the selection of issues deemed worthy of our attention, the way these issues are presented, and the continual repetition of government talking points.
In my opinion these liars and dissemblers are a threat to democracy.
As we all know Shanahan’s MO when analgising a poll is to look for which of the results he can best spin positively for the govt. Had he looked at this weeks poll results objectively the obvious question to ask would have been why is it that the improvement in Howard’s personal standing is not reflected in his parties share of the vote, since both set of fugures usually move in unison.
One interpretation of this anomaly is that no matter what people think of Howard personally and his performance as PM they believe he will not be around for long after the next election and are indicating there voting preference with this in mind.
Voters are know looking beyond the Howard era and are making a decision as to who should follow him as PM. It appears they have looked at the alternatives and decided overwhelmingly that it should be Kevin Rudd.
No doubt Howard-lovers are craving any reassurance they can get. By pandering to this, News Limited is serving the causes of social democracy by proliferating disinformation and complacency among conservatives.
“No doubt Howard-lovers are craving any reassurance they can get. By pandering to this, News Limited is serving the causes of social democracy by proliferating disinformation and complacency among conservatives”
Or as Peter Brent suggests, keeping the Costello wolf from Howard’s door more likely.
That’s right, I think, and Shanahan more or less admits it.
Most of this crap isn’t actually addressed to the public. We have to force our way in!
Which is why I thoroughly endorse adrian’s comment above:
[link]
Ooops silly me, they did blog it, I actually read the piece this AM in a different section. I take it all back.
Well if Liberals are misguided about their most effective leader, wouldn’t this by definition weaken their chances?
I just had to say that sentence about News serving social democracy.
Poor old Shanahan - it’s really a “moments like these” kinda thing
I havent seen a published foot-stomping, dummy spitting tantrum like that for years!
Mr Newspoll should have known better though - for anyone interested, I’ve dismantled that twaddle about Preferred Prime Minister ratings being a leading indicator for the Coalitions “electoral stocks” using a series of regression equations:
[link]–-the-phantom-metrics/
These guys need to get thier act together.
Thanks, Possum. Just paste the link in - if you use html syntax, it doesn’t appear.
Have a laugh with Johnny’s Jumped the Shark. Take a minute to check out [link]
Oops - thanks Mark
[link]–-the-phantom-metrics/
Ta da
I’ve added a link in the post, Possum.
I wonder if O’Shannassy and Shanahan will reply… Regression equations at ten paces!
Somehow I think not.
I think people should take a look at the update at Mumble.
[link]
Gives you an indication how pissweak and thin skinned this paper really is.
I was just about to link to that:
Their reaction shows a lot in common with the government they try hard to represent. The view that Peter Brent holds on the way that rag frames its political coverage in my opinion is quite widely held. They think by intimidating the critics and shooting the messengers that this will somehow dissapate that view. I think their strategy will work about as well as the governments has over the last couple of years. Prissy bunch aren’t they.
So much for Shanahan’s piffle about freedom of speech.
Freedom of Dennis’s speech maybe. It seems to me the whole thing is more about some journos trying to come to grips with the changed media landscape. Once they ruled the earth unchallenged but now people have the audacity to challenge their views.
Mark, I think you got it right when you suggested this blogging business would not have been welcome by alot of theses journos in question and it has probably been forced upon them. All they will do with moves like this is exacerbate the problem, but being dinasours squashing things is the only thing they know.
Yep. This is a typical bullying tactic to try to chill criticism - as you say, characteristic of the government’s m.o. too.
Sounds like Mumble could do with a show of support.
Frankly, it would be harder to challenge their views if they weren’t so patently rubbish. Hopefully Ozblogistan will make them more accountable.
Actually, bugger accountable - just more in touch with observable reality will do.
By the way, see Crikey today? The ‘Govt Gazette’ tag is really taking off nationally!
Woohoo!
You did very well with that one, Lefty E!
Thanks Mark, but it would have just been more empty ranting at the telly without LP.
And thats why blogs are so important. They open the national loungeroom - to a joint, deliberative rant!
Seriously though, those bastards need to learn the frame game cuts both ways in the era of new media.
As Fydrich memorably quoth once: Welcome to Ozblogistan … Dennis.
“Actually, bugger accountable - just more in touch with observable reality will do.”
Exactly right. They don’t seem to be in touch with political reality at all so you have to wonder what this is all about. Has Dennis run off to his dressing room in tears and locked the door, which has led to this “editor” trying to coax him out with promises of retribution.
I know for Peter Brent it must be stomach churning but given the quality of work in that papers editorials, to be pilloried by them can be probably worn as a badge of honour.
I love the lame way they’ve tried to appropriate the wonderful ‘Govt Gazette’ tag. Shanahan pretends the Oz was labelled the ‘Rudd Gazette’ last year. And maybe Beazley’s camp saw it that way.
But meddling in opposition politics is one thing. Running an hysterical campaign against Labor because they won’t bow 100% to a deregulated IR agenda is another. And boostering Howard and spinning opinion polls is even funnier.
I loved the lecture length blog from Shanahan today. Finished with a flourish about welcoming free speech/exchange, with all the sincerity of George Bush. Then they close down the blog after a dozen replies!
Why do they bother? Only Matt Price of their journalists seems to half understand the medium.
mark says:
I believe that Shanahan’s is doctoring the Coalitions spin because he wants to be Costello’s press secretary. But the Coalition must win the next election for that to happen any time soon. Not likely to happen.
Perhaps thats why he is getting thin-skinned.
I think Mark is right to blast the Australian for its biased coverage. Its gone well beyond a joke when bloggers and so on can make mincemeat of the national paper’s most authoritative pundits.
However it would be nice to see Mark apply the blow-torch to the professional Howard-haters out there in the press gallery. Alan Ramsey, for instance.
But that kind of bi-partisanship is probably a bridge to far at this stage.
Shanahan
Holmes
The difference, of course is that Ramsey (any others?) is equally critical of Labour and Rudd, so he is hardly in the same category as Shamaman and the rest.
Precisely, anthony!
I doubt that very much, Jack, since as noted on this thread, Shanahan’s spin has consistently kept the Costello wolf from the Howard door. You may have him confused with Milne.
As for Ramsey? Who cares? With the occasional sharp exception, most of his columns are tedious and predictable. Well past his use by date.
I’ve noticed that the Australian seems to consider itself more of a political advocacy group, then a newspaper. They would much prefer to influence policy and parties, than ‘keep the nation informed’.
You guys are being unkind.
Shanahan has a very important function as the trough that is placed before the PM when he needs to leak.
Someone has to do it.
What the Australian seems to be doing with Mumble is what Julia Gilliard stated four years ago is the ‘1 per cent theory’ as applied by the Essendon team of 2000.
What an astounding couple of days of “journalism”.
You’d not want to have been a punter, loyal reader of The Australian,, sipping a coffee and taking in a bit of a political update, yesterday: how confusing that utterly ridiculous bunkum must have been. “Where’d my paper go?” they’d ask. “This just does not make sense.” Or has The Australian gone entirely Entertainment Today, and the full patronage of their readers expect it? But no: “Keeping the Nation Informed” it says. So why would a national paper do that to their readers? That wasn’t spin, yesterday, because there has to be something solid with which to create spin. It was puff.
And then to wake up this morning to a continuation of it, through some sort of sooky soap opera - gobsmackable!
And you’d not want to be a young journalism student, though they’d be realistic and in tune enough to spin, this last two days must be nevertheless incredibly disheartening.
Shorter Shamaham: “The only poll that counts is the one I’m counting on.”
Reading about Shemaham & Co doing a dirt article on Crikey & Mumble shows how desperate they are in re-electing Ratty.
News Ltd are scared that the ALP will reverse the Media Laws which are currently benefiting Lord Rupert and the other media outlets are worried that they will also be affected.
Hence the Pro Howard line.
(Snort!) Some door! Some wolf!
Really, you can’t complain about the media overstating their own importance while making a claim like that. Once you picture Howard getting sick of the mewling as poor pussy scratches at the door, you have a clearer picture of the Howard-Costello farce than is afforded by Dennis “The Bouncer” Shanahan.
Social Democracy? Oh, you mean the ALP, ah…
If you really want to see some shameless abuse of an opinion poll have a look at this. It is far worse than anything I have ever read from Shanahan.
Hey Jack Strocchi,
You still living in Bondi dodging that French wanker you used to share a flat with on Ben Buckler?
Been a while since the stadium days with sebel! I’m in Adelaide but moving to Finland soon.
Cheers
Dan Murphy
I don’t think that Shanahan and the rest t appreciate the idea that the strength of the blogosphere is in its ability to expertly challenge the claims that their style of punditry relies on.
The excellent Possum Commitatus statistical analysis is a prime example of this.
The strength of a journalist is nested in the strength of the their network of contacts and experts - and it used to be that journos were the best place to go for good analysis, because their network gave them access to wide range of experts that not many other people are generally able to hear from. And, from the journos perspective, even when they got it wrong there wasn’t really anywhere public that they could be challenged.
But that’s changed now - partly in the media shift from analysis to opinion (seriously - who actually does any analysis any more?), and partly in the opening up of blogs.
An active blog community with a broad readership can bring together in a public forum a huge range of people with diverse specialities and a casual interest in the subject at hand.
Want to talk polls? We’ve got a statistician who can poke holes in your claims. Economics? Here’s an economist who disagrees. Biotech? IT? The sad lack of opportunities for our young tennis players?
A good network of blogs will have someone who knows someone - that’s their fundamental strength.
I don’t think the old hacks like Shannahan get this yet. Their network of contacts, experts and insiders still puts them in the box seat when it comes to breaking news, which blogs aren’t very good at - but it doesn’t give them the same kind of leg up in the analytical stakes that it used to.
Particularly when they get old and lazy, and you’d be hard pushed to argue against the claim that a large portion of the current gallery are about ready for the glue factory.
I think the irony detector needs to be switched on, Andrew!
What a marvelous post cranky - I’ve never seen that argument put so well in so few words.
The real irony is that these media folks don’t need to fabricate reality to produce quality print.I find that George Megalogenis (to give an example) produces great stuff worth reading that blends both the insider gossip that their jobs provide for, combined with observable reality.
Shanahan lately (like Paul - behold by gravitas - Kelly) are off with fairies more often than not.If Murdoch really is keen to utilise the power of distributed opinion… their days are well and truly numbered.
And I suppose for that we can be kind of thankful.
Thanks Possum -
I think there is a place for the commentariat in the MSM - even the ones I think are wrong most of the time.
But what separates the good journo’s from the shithouse ones is the same thing that always has:
Do they do the hard yards and check the story with multiple sources, and do they list the sources directly, so the facts can be checked and the bias inferred? Or do they just blather on and on, repeating the same spin from the same source without ever mentioning where it came from.
I find myself in agreement with Glenn Greenwald’s constant refrain over at Salon, that this culture of hiding the sources for government stories, even the trivial ones, is a real blight on journalistic culture - perhaps less so in Australia, but it’s still there.
We shouldn’t be in a position where we’re able to pick what side of the liberal leadership debate the various commentators are on - because their sources should be listed up front, or they should be running the stories as gossip, rather than ‘analysis’.
Chris, you are right - the link to the editorial produced this howler:
So, withdrawing troops immediately or via a timetable only got uum… 63% of support, but compared with the HUGE Govt. position of 31% support for leaving the troops…piffle.
Maybe Newspoll could provide at least another 4 or 5 options for Oz troop withdrawal in their polling, and further split the community’s support for withdrawing our troops:
a) Troop withdrawal before Xmas Lunch
b) Troop withdrawal before next Ashes Series
c) Troop withdrawal during Beijing Olympics
d) Staged troop withdrawal with Sondheim score
e) Staged troop withdrawal as per Labor’s lame timetable.
I try not to link to News sites as a rule, & I’ll never buy a Murdoch paper and wont have Fox (altho would love to watch the AFL in Sydney)…..I just wont give the bastards one cent, if I can help it.
“As we all know Shanahan’s MO when analgising a poll ”
That it is probably a better description of what he actually does with the poll results. They probably need all they can get since their bounce keeps failing to appear.
[link]
BTW Wasn’t it around about this time they were supposed to get the great tax cuts bounce as they appeared in pay packets?
What a great site, many thanks to the awesome Possum Comitatus- am very new to the blogosphere and now quite addicted to Possum - you should put up a health warning, Possum. The new vegetable wars is getting off to a sterling start, it would seem. Rudd says, maybe a good idea to get the A3C to have a look at whether or not there’s anything going on we should be concerned about. Dolly Downer comes out swinging with absurd statements about Rudd monitoring/controlling the price of carrots. All I’ve heard so far is confirmation that either prices paid to farmers haven’t moved in their favour for yonks and people trotting out their own experiences of price rises/ manipulated prices and so on and so forth. PJK might be right that Gary Gray couldn’t get out of bed without running a focus group to find out which side to do it, but whatever k rudd and the machine are doing at the moment, it seems to be working, and it cuts right past the likes of the Shanahans of this world.
Monica:
Monitoring the price of carrots?
To which K.Rudd might respond … why is Howard trying to control the price of petrol with the umpteen inquiries that have been held by ACCC, usually at the govt’s behest?
I wonder if Therese Rein, via her employment business is providing hubby with a valuable insight into the “real world”, a view that is difficult to gain from a long-term tenancy in Kirribilli House?
In response to a column early this year from Mark in Online Opinion, I suggested that blog-land and the Internet in general could play a real role in influencing the outcome of this federal election, while the commentariat are progressively sidelined due to the decreasing circulation of newspapers. Judging by the shrill bully-boy tactics we have witnessed today I think we can smell their fear. The other part of the equation is whether the drops of wisdom squeezed out of this online noodling eventually nourish Those Who Are Less Politically Engaged (i.e. they have lives, or they don’t care in the first place).
:-/
I say just let Shanahan and Co. keep on going the way they are going. At least it keeps Howard from being trumped unexpectedly by Costello as the government wades into ever deeper waters… And if Howard loses, what a feast of consternation and dismay that will be. Where did we go wrong? The collective howl will be, or maybe ‘We wus robbed!!!!!!!!!!’…
It’s possible - anything that gets people engaged and talking about politics is going to have a flow on effect - like Lefty E said, we’re not just yelling at our tvs anymore! Hopefully some of it cascades beyond those of us who participate in it.
The price-monitoring thing is bound to be Swannie’s idea. He’s been getting loads of press in local papers for years - he coordinates his own monitoring. People really do care if a loaf of bread is cheaper at Woollies or Coles today. Dollar Sweetie couldn’t have been more clueless on the 7 30 report tonight - no one gives a rats about a quarterly average figure posted on the ABS website for baked beans. What gets to people is the fact not just that food tends to rise much more in price than the CPI but also that the chains do their own version of what goes on with petrol - raising and lowering prices constantly.
Dollar Sweetie demonstrated yesterday on radio he didn’t know whether a loaf of bread or a carton of milk was more expensive. Blokes like him with six figure salaries wouldn’t give a rats anyway, and would probably whinge mightily if they ever had to do their own shopping, and console themselves with the points they’d earn by whacking it on the platinum Amex. This is the guy who complains that his salary is far below what his mates in Collins St get. None of them would have a clue about how most people live.
I’m coming to hate my local Coles. The prices are more exxy than other Coles around the joint because there’s no competition. They never keep the shelves fully stocked, and I am getting so frustrated with the decline in brand choice as they try to force everyone to buy their own crummy brand. Coles is notorious in Brissie for differential pricing according to perceived wealth of suburb as well.
I hope Wesfarmers give them a good shakeout.
IGA are opening up the road soon, and I know where I’ll be going, even though Colesies is only five mins walk.
Sorry, comment crossed with St Margaret - I was responding to Monica and OH if that’s not clear.
Good way to boost readership at Crikey, Mumble and Ozpolitics. The more people referring to sites like this the better - bringing in the facts, contexts and alternative views. Maybe people will become fully informed.
Bring on the controversy!
Well, the GG has done it’s editorial. Heh! Poor babies, I think their feelings were hurt.
Their typo by the way.
I liked this bit the best.
Comedians.
Ludicrous attack by the Oz against the ‘extreme left’, ’sheltered academics’, ‘failed journalists’, but mostly the online community.
For your dose of daily prissiness, see here.
ROTFL!
All your polls are belong to US!
Be interesting, on the other hand, to see how they defend their (ahem) credibility if it doesn’t, and even more so, if Rudd wins!
A staggering claim for an authority that doesn’t exist any longer. The wailing of a dinosaur as it has it’s flesh ripped from it’s hide by smaller smarter warm blooded mammals.
If we’re all having a swingeing swing at The Awfulstralian here, then some may enjoy what happened the other night when I got shitfaced and started organ-banging.
Now it’s several mornings later and I’m sober(ish). But Greg Sheridan is still a titanic prat though.
Saw that, Nabs. Who said the art of fisking was so web 1.0?
Dan Murphy on 11 July 2007 at 5:00 pm
No, sharing my time b/w Melbourne & Sydney now. And the French wanker got replaced by fiance.
These days I work on my seat, rather than working on seats. I am still a financial member of the CMFEU, though.
Up the workers, comrade.
dennis the menaces latest blog (0 posts so far i only tried twice
)
[link]
Tim Dunlop had a Blogocracy post on the subject: The Australian versus the The Blogosphere. Now it has vanished. What’s up with that? A bit of muscle from Chris and the boys on the lowly Newscorp admins?
Any idea what happened to Tim Dunlop’s post on the Mumble Affair? It was there, and it’s in my RSS reader, but the post itself seems to have been taken down.
Yes, my reader too, Darryl and DaOoSG. I only get the teaser, though, not the full article. If anybody’s got a copy on their clipboard, could they post it?
(I look to cut ‘n’ paste Greenfield for leadership here, naturally.)
The missing Blogocracy Post:
Who says the mainstream media don’t pay attention to the blogosphere? This extraordinary story relates to this week’s Newspoll results and the way The Australian reported it. Peter Brent runs the excellent psephological blog called Mumble. It’s one of a number of blogs that run analysis and commentary of opinion polls, and others include OzPolitics, Possums Pollytics, and Poll Bludger.
Yesterday, Peter Brent noted that he had fallen foul of some of those at The Australian:
The editorial is up this morning and yes, they do “go� Peter Brent. They defend themselves in the strongest possible terms and attack, specifically and generally, just about anyone who disagrees with them, particularly “Australia’s online news commentariat that has found passing endless comment on other people’s work preferable to breaking real stories and adding to society’s pool of knowledge.�
There are a number of things to say about all of this. The first is that the editorial is as much concerned about charges of bias against The Australian as anything else. This is how it begins:
If bias is in the eye of the beholder, then there are a lot of “beholders� out there who think The Australian is biased, particularly in its coverage of polling data. The evidence for this is not just to found in the blogosphere but on their own pages where their columns and articles often fill up with criticism from their own readers accusing them of spinning information in favour of the Howard Government. In attacking the “online commentariat� they are also attacking a sizeable sampling of their own readership.
The latest bout of charges of bias were prompted by this week’s Newspoll and many people, including me, were struck by the way The Australian chose to cover the story. For instance, Bryan Palmer at OzPolitics wrote:
What’s interesting is that The Australian seems to believe that only they are capable of objectivity and they reject entirely any charge of bias. This is odd given that Chris Mitchell himself has said:
It is precisely that “generous� “broadly supportive� “right-of-centre� tilt that people are responding to when they see Newspoll reported the way it was this week. For the editorial to deny that any such tilt exist seems disingenuous.
So I think the editorial is ill-conceived and way off the mark in singling out Peter Brent in the way that it does. His site largely confines itself to interpretation and in doing so, provides a great service. The idea that he can’t comment without the editor of The Australian ringing him up to say they are going to “go� him is disturbing.
Still, I think it is fair to say that News Ltd, including The Australian, has opened itself to comment and criticism from its readership more so than Fairfax, the other major news organisation. They have embraced readers comments and “blogs� more fully, and this site alone is evidence of that. So while most News news stories and columns allow reader comment, the same is not true of Fairfax. You can, for instance, comment on Dennis Shanahan’s and Paul Kelly’s columns, but not Michelle Grattan’s or Gerard Henderson’s.
But having embraced such an approach, they have to accept that not everyone is going to agree with them or buy into their particular take on a given issue or, indeed, their own self-image. The Australian is, of course, completely free to defend themselves, but it might also pay them to reflect on why so many people see them as the “government gazette� rather than just dismiss nearly all such criticism as “a waste of time�.
ELSEWHERE: Mark Bahnisch comments, as does AB at Surfdom. Possum Pollytics provides a detailed analysis of an aspect of Newspoll that argues against the claim, made by the CEO of Newspoll and Dennis Shanahan, about the relationship between primary vote and the preferred PM figure. It’s exactly the sort of analysis that the editorial claims is lacking in the online sites.
That’s all? Is News Ltd fucking soft or what?
Unless it’s to be re-edited and re-posted later on, still if it has been pulled News should be totally ashamed of itself, I’m happy with what Tim has written, they should be too.
I’ve got a new post up about the editorial today, so please direct comments here:
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