Our weekly look at media spin tactics: let’s dissect the PR that aims to blow one’s own horn, bury one’s errors, resurrect the shambling zombie corpses of well-flogged deceased equines, and ooh look A Big Distracting Thing.
N.B. please stay on topic – this thread is for holding up a mirror to the tactics of the spinning Hollow Men. Breaking news stories are relevant only so far as the subtext of the message they are selling and how it plays to counter opposing messages – discussions of policy detail and implications etc belong on topical threads (if a relevant thread doesn’t exist, please request one in the latest open thread).
Instead of admitting that their previous stories on Gillard being “awkward” with world leaders in Asia were a beatup, the Oz is taking the line that she’s “adapting” to the world stage after her latest overseas trip.
Funnily enough, Alison Carrabine used a very similar expression on ABC Sydney this morning. Maybe she said “adjusting” instead.
Virginia Triolli’s lead into an interview with Microsoft’s Gordon Bell was spun as opposition to the NBN. Bell promptly hit that one for six and went on to praise Australia and the NBN as totally necessary infrastructure for the 21st century.
Zorronsky @ 3,
The failed economic prophets of the OECD with their occasional bursts of tenth-rate science-fiction started this one on the NBN. Looks like its got legs in the local media unlike the OECD’s even more outrageous suggestion that we should increase the GST and put it on food. That one doesn’t appear to have legs. When News Ltd floated it yesterday or the day before the public reaction was so hostile they dropped it like a hot potato. Or maybe ABC2 just hasn’t been instructed to pick up the baton on it yet.
And what on esarth did Virginia do that she woke up between 1am and 4am thinking, Did I really do that?
Here, is the Bell, Trioli interview on 24 this AM.
Trioli hasn’t improved since she left radio. I don’t think Bell could quite believe her attitude at first.
Oh happy day, Trioli’s lost for spin,the truth prevails.
A few days ago heard on Radio National news a “journalist” describe the Federal ALP Government as the “incoming” government.
Talk about zombification.
As pointed out most ungraciously elsewhere, the Royal Engagement is this week’s Big Distracting Thing, and boy is it big.
So what’s being buried in the noise? The British PM obviously would have been given the heads-up on the announcement, and the speech by Ken Clarke revealing the payouts to Guantanamo Bay detainees was thus most propitiously timed for the day before, so that they got a story out about how there would be a proper judicial review, honest, just before any skepticism was drowned out by the royal circus.
What other nasty stories have PR machines rushed to the press to get out of the way while everybody’s looking in another direction?