Our weekly look at media spin tactics: let’s dissect the PR and propaganda 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!
Our busiest roundtables and other discussions last week were on climate change, the latest with Wikileaks, how we wuz robbed of the FIFA World Cup, and the effect of the GFC on Ireland. Some of those stories are still in the headlines, others are getting hardly any attention.
What other stories are being buried while more flashy stories are hogging the limelight?
We now have the astounding thesis from Barrie Cassidy that Mr Rabbit was the principal agent in Rudd’s demise.
(Yeaterday’s Insider program)
Its seem we got it all rong about Rupert and climate change.
http://mumbrella.com.au/the-australian-twitterati-have-got-our-climate-change-stance-wrong-37113
And we hang out at MCDonalds 24 hours a day.
http://www.news.com.au/entertainment/television/with-oprah-fever-rising-what-impression-will-oprahs-guesst-get-of-australia/story-e6frfmyi-1225966220960
(The next few weeks are going to be ‘orrible.)
CMMC,
Mr Rabbott is an unreliable source of opinion, to put it very politely. Cassidy (with his long-displayed anti-Rudd fixation) no less so. Hence one quotes the other, in a self-perpetuating bootstrap loop. That’s Spin for ya!
I love a statement he made a couple of days ago. He did not think it was fair that PM Gillard was attacking him personally. When it was pointed out that he was doing the same, his reply was along the line of that he was testing her mettle. T
his man is unbelievable in his double talk. Mr. Abbott’s is waiting for the business world to call for return of workchoice so he can ride to their defence. The problem is if I recall correctly, there was ever a strong support for what Mr. Howard did from these same people. Strong industrial laws make an even playing field for small business as well as large ones.
Mr. Abbott’s biggest problem is that he believes his own spin. He really does believe that the public is stupid. Why does he live in the middle of last century? The model he is using is from Nazi Germany. His political mentor was Mr. Santamaria. His main adviser today seems to be an ousted PM from the last Coalition government. It is time he woke from his slumber and realises this is 2010 and the 21st century.
“The model he is using is from Nazi Germany.”
Godwin’s Law, if I’m not mistaken.
Didn’t Goebbels have a philosophy along the lines of: “The more audacious the lie, and the more it is repeated, the more readily it will be accepted as fact”.
Abbott follows this practice with his three-word slogans such as “Stop the Debt”. The fact is, Australia’s per-GDP debt is minuscule compared to other advanced economies. It’s hardly the problem Abbott makes it out to be. But because the slogan sounds good (nobody ‘likes’ debt) he chants it again and again, abetted by the useless media, banking on it being absorbed into the political conversation as pointing to a dangerous ‘reality’.
Another example is the Coalition, beginning with those master spinners, Howard and Costello, endlessly chanting “Surplus good!” such that it’s now accepted as incontrovertible. Practically all governments since WWII, Coalition and Labor, have had periods of budget deficit where the state has acted in the interests of smoothing out economic cycles, funding war efforts, etc.
Spin, relentlessly repeated, and unchallenged by the supposed gatekeepers of the media, alters political perceptions, contributing to the public being manipulated and made more ignorant of important matters.
“Abbott follows this practice with his three-word slogans such as “Stop the Debt”.”‘
Which is presumably entirely different to the ALP’s one word “rollback” slogan in relation to the GST a few years back.
I think there’s a danger in being ideologically blinkered around this stuff. All oppositions attempt to come up with cut-through messages that avoid engaging with the detail of the issue at hand and all Governments roundly lambast oppositions for doing so by releasing talking points designed to show the opposition’s carping negativity and lack of co-operation in the greater (government)good.
Many of those talking points have been eloquently recycled here but if it’s ‘spin’ we’re talking about I’m not sure that either side have particularly clean hands. Nor I suspect has either side been channelling Dr Goebbels.
Of greater note is the utterly dumb decision of the Coalition to have a go at the Government over Rudd and Wikileaks – redefines crap media tactics for mine.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/in-depth/wikileaks/coalition-demands-to-know-whether-julia-gillard-shares-kevin-rudds-views-on-china/story-fn775xjq-1225966238991
It’s going to work though. This will mortally wound Rudd. I’ll wait for the dedicated post before expanding.
BER=waste, insulation=rorts and deaths.
Smuggles=genuine bloke. (Partly right: he is a bloke and he is a genuine twat.)
Coalition=believably competent alternative government.
Coalition=good economic managers.
The one thing Rudd got right, & it’ll mortally wound him?Crikey, that really is injustice.
It was Abbott quoting Goebbels on Insiders on Sunday. Which, of course, is the kind of hypocrisy one has come to expect from the Libs.
Damien from Cafe Whispers has provided this great link debunking NBN myths.
Speaking of Wikileaks, the spin that it is about to be shut down appears to be off the mark. Indeed, it is on 355 mirror sites.
One of them appears to have been provided by LP’s very own in-house, ex army, no nonsense, righty, Razor.
http://wikileaks.razor1911.com/
Just been watcghing Channel 10 News. Promoting upcoming Winfrey visit.
Oprah House, FFS! Has this country no bloody pride?!
Great bonsai story about the dark side of mining in the Sydney Morning Herald On-line.Seems workers have had a few non-Queensbury type title fights,and hanker over girls shipped in by limousine from some other suburb of the outback.So this behaviour plus work was the thing that will save this country from ruin!?Why can’t these men be elitist-hippies like me,and just stay sober,walk away from fights, women,because they can put you in mental hospital if the law is called in. Living like a Catholic priest-monk has some advantages,if well paid!? Like thinking is everyone crazy with alcohol or drugs,whilst pretending,[ for public scrutiny] that a severe mental disorder gets one up in the morning. Now if only I could get on the ABC’s Religion story hours as interviewer,and show up for the money.And the bosses use to complain about the “ice-cream right”,that a unionist enforced.
Spot on, Geoff. And in any event Mesma is hardly a credible attack dog.
But it is consistent with a coalition tactic to respond to any and every media wave opportunity. Post-Rudd, Labor seems to be moving out of that fixation. That has led to some short-term pain – even supporters are yelling for Labor to DO something NOW – but the longer term offers greater hopes for policy development and implementation.
“The one thing Rudd got right, & it’ll mortally wound him?Crikey, that really is injustice.”
Now I know why Rudd got the shaft.Gives a whole new meaning to the “Emporer has no clothes”
A message for Rudd.Please don’t negotiate anything else out side of ordering your lunch, next time your in China on my behalf.
I’ve posted on the latest Saturday Salon (@128) what I think is an outrageous piece of spin by Myer and Harvey Norman (for starters) on setting up overseas shopfronts because they are suffering from those in Australia who buy GST free from overseas. I’m hoping there are enough people who will be outraged by this blackmail attempt by the big stores that talk of a boycott would be something to think about.
Don’t know how to make a link to this and an earlier comment by Paul Burns on the same site but I ask that people have a look and provide any comments which may be relevant.
Did no one find it strange that Malcolm Turnbull was ‘invited’ on to the 7.30 Report as balance the PM’s appearance last night? If Tony Abbott declined an invitation aren’t we entitled to know?