Various News Limited scribes on the weekend opined (all speaking in the voice of Tony Abbott’s ventriloquist dummy – it couldn’t be moreobvious) that Malcolm Turnbull had set himself the task of tearing Rudd down in order to win. And failed. [By the way, bad move according to the News punditariat - nothing at all to do with publishing fake Utegate emails on front pages - who are now touting the said Tony Abbott, who presumably is as pure as the driven snow and would never resort to personal attacks or absurd and false confected scandalising in the most unlikely event he became Opposition Leader...] In case you missed the various stories, Turnbull has “declared” the Liberals can win the next election. That’s a matter of total irrelevance to the actual dynamic of Australian politics, since the “influence” of the News Limited opinionistas now only extends to Liberal MPs (and, sadly, the ABC’s more recondite political correspondents).
There’s a bit of a problem with this meme.
In a (now) rare piece of relatively sensible and reality based political commentary, Lenore Taylor, formerly of the Australian Financial Review, wrote in The Australian on the weekend that the “personal destruction of Rudd” thing failed dismally for the serried ranks of Howardistas in government and – were she writing completely honestly she might have added – in News Limited in 2007.
She also neglected to observe that Dennis Shanahan was the most enthusiastic participant in this collective delusion. While Glenn Milne, one might conjecture, did the mud slinging antecedent to the putative glorious Howard re-election that never was.
Apparently, the end of the world is at hand. Kevin Rudd borrowed a ute off a bloke. Or something. It’s a scandal! Apparently. Although, why the *fair slice of the Pineapple* PM isn’t receiving high praise for driving such a *dinkum* Aussie vehicle from those who were loudly denouncing him only last week, over their lattes, for his Quinceland vernacular, I don’t know.
These are extraordinarily serious allegations and, on the news I have seen, it doesn’t look good at all.
Orly?
It gets worse. Poor KRudd. Will he withstand these incomprehensible *though terribly serious* allegations? OMG!
Kevin Rudd will not survive if it is firmly established that he—or even his office—made special pleadings for car-dealer mate John Grant. It is undoubtedly his greatest crisis in politics.
Right, that’s it. Refuse supply! The GG should sack him! Hang on she’s some sort of vaguely liberal vaguely feminist upper class Queensland Barrister… Quick, appeal to Her Maj!
Don’t blame me for this nonsense. I’m just the piano player.
WE not only have the “Education Revolution”. In good Stalinist style, we have the “Building the Education Revolution” plan. We also have a band of doubters and dissidents the authorities have decreed to be counter-revolutionaries.
And in true Stalinist style, these counter-revolutionaries must not just be punished for their thought crimes, but ruthlessly suppressed. Martin Amis used his chilling study of Stalin, Koba the Dread, to talk about the “typhoon of unreason” the tyrant unleased upon his nation.
Is this a new incarnation of Godwin’s law that I wasn’t previously aware of? Or is it just that Julia Gillard has interred 10 millions in death camps and let another 20 million starve to death while my back was turned? Thank heavens Hillary Bray is shining a light into this totalitarian abyss.
Apparently all that stands between us and being worked to death in a labour camp is the unstinting cry of freedom ringing from the Canberra press gallery:
All of Gillard’s huff and puff yesterday simply showed a typhoon of unreason building.
If she lets it grow Gillard will be swept away with the winds.
Whose career do you suppose is going to the gulag sooner? Hillary’s or Julia’s?
Amongst the standard-issue ammunition in the journalism industry’s defensive skirmishes against those pesky citizen journalists and news bloggers is the deceptively simple claim that there’s a clear difference between reporting the news, i.e. breaking stories (which is what professional journalists do) and commenting on the news, i.e. “endless talk” (which is what everyone else does).
It’s a line repeated in the latest missive from Christian Kerr in The Australian – a rabid, self-serving rant against all those online commentators from Possum’s Pollytics to Larvatus Prodeo whom he doesn’t like, curiously claiming in its title that “our blogs [are] too analytical”, as if intelligent analysis is somehow a bad thing. Still, if nothing else, it’s got one thing going for it: if ‘real’ journalists are the ones that break stories, then Kerr himself isn’t a journalist.
One problem with that neat definition, though, is that breaking stories isn’t a particularly common trait of mainstream newsroom practice these days: much of the content of our daily newspapers and broadcast bulletins comes from a diminishing number of global wire services, and is simply processed by journalists to fit the local context. Similar to citizen journalists’ common practice of gatewatching – following the news passing through the gates of mainstream news publications, and then commenting on it – this is a kind of industrial gatewatching, where agency feeds are constantly monitored for new items to be inserted into the locally-produced publication. So, news bloggers and citizen journalists don’t tend to break stories – but neither, for the most part, do professional journalists.
That’s spot on, I think, and the rest of the post is well worth reading.
There are the group blogs that cover politics, economics and provide platforms for protagonists in the culture wars; Club Troppo, probably the best and most balanced of them all, Catallaxy for the libertarian right and Larvatus Prodeo, not just for the latte left but rather a stronghold of the fair-trade, rainforest alliance-certified, decaff and soy brigade. Then there are all the one-man bands.
So, here’s the thing Christian, the web is a big place, enough for a number of points of view, everyone develops their own audience, culture (I know you’d like to reach for your revolver at this point) and style.
At LP we like nothing better than a nice fair trade latte while we chase those who disagree over a cliff, at the Oz you’ve never see a global warming denialist idea you haven’t liked.
Ain’t diversity grand? Or is it that you’d prefer it to be like the bad old days when you had the megaphone all to yourself?
In The Blogging Revolution Antony Loewenstein takes us on a personal journey through some of the more difficult places in the world to blog. Iran, Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Cuba and China.
It’s a timely book on the importance and necessity of blogging and the open web given recent un-informed opinions by writers like Christian Kerr.
The book is also important in that it more thoroughly expands on ideas expressed in David Burchell’s clumsy opinion piece in the Australian in July of this year where he attempted to contrast the “pseudo-expertise and vituperation” of Western bloggers with their counterparts in the less democratic corners of the world; using Cuban blogger Yoani Sanchez as an example.
The most impressive thing about Sanchez is her complete disregard for the bad habits of Western bloggers. She refuses to engage in histrionics, vainglory, pseudo-knowledge or personal posturing. Instead she trades in the gentler arts of allegory and satire.
Sanchez is also mentioned in The Blogging Revolution and Burchell is right. She does not engage in the histrionics of so many Western bloggers (mea culpa) but then again our personal circumstances are different to those that live in repressive states.
Are critics like Burchell and Kerr right? Are non-Western bloggers really better than their western counterparts? Are they less vituperative and undergraduate in their opinion? Does living in an information poor society mean that their views can be nothing more than that of a pseudo-expert? What do non-Western bloggers sound like? The Blogging Revolution gives us a peek behind the government filters.
I remain to be convinced that being the best performer at ‘throwing the switch to vaudeville’ does much on its own to attract public support.
Kevin Rudd didn’t defeat John Howard because he had a lot of witty putdowns in parliament. Nor did John Howard win against Paul Keating in 1996 for this reason. Indeed, one could argue that this fixation with Keating’s apparently unchallenged ability to dominate the arena during Question Time was a key reason why so many commentators argued he still had a chance of winning in 1996, well after the electorate had already decided they’d had enough.
As Dennis Atkins observes, Brendan Nelson yesterday took what appeared to be a calculated gamble in breaking the convention that senior pollies don’t comment on the Reserve Bank’s interest rate decisions. Nelson called for a cut of 50 points in the cash rate.
I suspect this was some sort of pre-emptive strike to try to forestall any credit claiming by Kevin Rudd and Wayne Swan if (as expected) the cash rate is cut by 25 points later today. The politics haven’t played out to script, with Nelson’s comments that he wouldn’t make such a call in government playing into Rudd’s hands.
But it was interesting to hear Nelson’s justification on Lateline last night. Nelson argued that he was reflecting what “many Australians” thought. For those who’ve been paying any attention to what he’s had to say since he became leader, that’s typical. He appears to regard himself as some sort of transmission belt. Hence all the emo-ting. It’s an intriguing view of political leadership because it completely eviscerates the notion of leadership itself. Perhaps it’s one reason why his own leadership is in so much trouble.
Yep, Christian Kerr is talking about us. Among others. Guess what, we’re smug, ill informed, prone to conspiracy theories, full of hatred for the noble profession of journalism, divorced from the real world, an echo chamber, too academic, etc, etc. But he couldn’t possibly tell his readers which “certain blog” he’s talking about. Lord no. Even though there is a direct quote from a post at LP. People might come here and make up their own mind. So the impression is left that bloggers are bad and as far as Kerr is concerned, that’s all anyone needs to know. Yet he provides “balance and fact”. Obviously. Btw, you can’t comment on his article. And if you disagree with him here, you just go into the “ill informed” pile, I guess. The irony that he’s ostensibly writing about free speech seems to have escaped him.
Anyway, he was baiting for a link. He’s got one. I hope he’s happy now.
Larvatus Prodeo is an Australian group blog which discusses politics, sociology, culture, life, religion and science from a left of centre perspective. more»
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