Originally published at the ABC’s Drumroll campaign blog.
I’ve been largely tuned out of the election campaign today, enjoying a friend’s visit and popping into town to buy a couple of books to read. So I’ve only seen two snippets of coverage – a journo, Nick Harmsen, on ABC News 24 proclaiming that Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard’s body language at their meeting today would be “fascinating” (oh, really?) and glimpsing at my feed reader and seeing a photo of Mark Latham at the Prime Minister’s press conference. Apparently he’s a “guest reporter” for 60 Minutes.
No doubt he will be rewarded appropriately.
Contrast Latham’s involvement in this campaign with that of Paul Keating and Malcolm Fraser.
Keating gave a thoughtful and challenging speech in Melbourne this week on the media and the right to privacy. Malcolm Fraser chose the anniversary of the Hiroshima bomb to plead for better measures to confront nuclear proliferation.
Fraser, speaking on radio, indicated very clearly that he had no wish to discuss the campaign. Pressed for an answer to the question of whether he thought the Coalition ready for government, he responded with one word: “No”.
That one word received much more coverage than everything he had to say about nuclear non-proliferation.
There is a contrast here not just between individuals, but between two ages.
Anyone seeking to understand all that’s wrong with the circus this campaign has been transformed into needs to read this post by Pavlov’s Cat, which says it all, really.
Only one politician in this campaign has been honest enough to discuss the real possibility of a double-dip recession and continuing financial contagion. His name is Kevin Rudd. Otherwise, we’re oscillating between a dangerous complacency about the problems facing our nation and a crazed soap opera which is probably being tuned out by most voters.
There may well be a price to pay, one day, for our postmodern politics.
I’d love for Fraser to have answered the same for the ALP.
Right now being governed by a citizen’s jury is seeming quite attractive. Picking people at random has got to be better than this nonsense.
I have heard it said that if Malcolm couldn’t find anything nice to say about Prime Minister Abbott he should have stayed quiet.
Latham of course should be given free reign.
Mark, Malcolm did give his broad reasons before he told Fran Kelly he wasn’t interested in talking about the campaign. He said he joined the Liberal Party, which was a liberal party in the time of Menzies, but now it had become a conservative party, and wasn’t liberal at all.
He’s said it all before, of course.
@3 – yes, Brian, at the time when he spoke about leaving the Liberal party. My point was that he refused to be drawn on the current campaign, and clearly wanted to talk about the nuclear non-proliferation issue.
Mark, I haven’t seen a reaction to the medias tweeter comments on the Gillard/Rudd press conference ever. The tweeter public went negative towards the press, which probably fell on deaf ears.
You see the media somehow think their above critisism and put any negativity towards them as then they’re doing their jobs then, or they get told they’re biased by both sides.
As of today I’ve forgotten what policies were reported on at the start of the election, because earlobes, rudd, latham(thank god he didn’t become PM)seem more important to the journalists then taking time to work out if what they’re saying on policies is true.
Mark,
I don’t much appreciate all the links to the ABC on this blog, or the gratuitous plugs they get.
I’m no less offended than I would be if you were plugging News Ltd through the threads.
For a progressive blog, I can’t see how these ABC links fit. Real mismatch.
“ABC? No thank you.”
Hello cuppa,
I’ve linked a couple of ABC articles– they’re easy to access online and somehow I still prefer the ABC to pure-commercial television/ media. Unfortunately, commenting on national political events requires some interaction with the media and as bad as the ABC may seem at the moment, it’s important to have a public media broadcaster, so remember when you’re beating down on her, that (at least IMO) the day they sell the ABC will be a very sad day.
@6 – Cuppa – as the link makes clear I am writing for the Drum during this campaign. If you’ve been following it, the Drum publishes a wider range of writers than abc staff, including a number of bloggers.
Now can we discuss the topic please?
Re this campaign – we’ve seen this all before of course. im the year leading up to Gough’s Dismissal. The difference this time is, from what I can work out, all the media outlets are involved in some way or other. But we have the added input of blogs, twitter,( which I still haven’t worked out how to use yet, and don’t know if I want to) and the social networks like Facebook. Now, maybe I only tend to read blogs that accord roughly with my own left wing ideology, and perhaps, even on-line. I haven’t followed the election closely enough, but I get the impression the story being told by non-MSM online media is different, perhaps very different, to what we’re getting on radio and TV.
That is where the political tragics are. In 2007, on-line politics for various reasons, got good coverage. My impression is its being ignoree by the MSm this time round, because it doesn’t agree with the MSM narrative. This is all very impressionistic of me. and I can’t provide links to back up my argument, but am I right. Is there something going on on line which gives a more accurate picture of the election campaign that the MSM are ignoring?
I suppose it could be Paul @9. If Facebook and twitter are all they’re cracked up to be, a lot more could be happening under the MSM radar and even possibly pollsters. I’m not too optimistic about that, though.
I agree with you, Mark, it is a circus. More to the point though is who is the trainer and controller of all these performing monkeys? There is no script as in a stage drama to refer to but the performance analogy can be sretched. I’ve had the sense for months of a very well orchestrated media, despite the hopeless disarray and poor talent of the Coalition cast, determined that the ALP would not be allowed a repeat appearance. Kevin’s Rudd’s particular weakness of trying too hard was exploited to almost tragic levels where he was being booed off stage with criticism from every quarter, including here. Now we see the very fine talent of Julia Gillard downplayed and overshadowed in every possible scenario.
Yes, I’m now a Julia fan. She’s performing well in adversity.
“There may well be a price to pay, one day, for our postmodern politics.” and guess who will be paying it. Not the politicians, the media (owners at least) or the rest of those with power and money to burn.
Paul Burns@9: my gut feeling is that you’ve put your finger on something, there.