- Anthony Albanese, to the ABC, 20th Jun 2011.
How can people calm down if they're constantly being told to worry about it?
Mr Albanese is of course talking about the continuing media stupidity that surrounds Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd and the PM Julia Gillard. Despite repeated attempts to tell the media that there is no leadership spill, no-one seems to be getting it and I think that this is because of a case of bad faith by the people running the newspapers in Australia.
Consider the following:
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/party-wont-stand-rudds-mind-games/story-fn59niix-1226078106992
"both Sydney's The Daily Telegraph and Brisbane's The Courier-Mail featured the same piece on the re-made Rudd. "A year in her shadow" was the sting for the magazine piece in the Telegraph, pushed along by Gillard's unhelpful anniversary interview comments where she repeated why she had, in the words of the Telegraph headline, "knifed Rudd"."
This came from this morning's Australian which is a News Corp newspaper; it speaks of a piece which featured in both the The Daily Telegraph and The Courier-Mail (which are also News Corp newspapers) and basically it admits where its story came from. In case you missed it:
"in the words of the Telegraph headline"
Not a piece of investigative journalism, not a leaked memo and not a press statement. News Corp papers in this case have simply made something up where it suited them to do so.
Fairfax newspapers are just as guilty for doing this. The Sydney Morning Herald, Melbourne's "The Age" and the two online Fairfax newspapers the Brisbane Times and WA Today all ran this story with the following headline:
Rudd muses in church over 2010 sacking
http://news.theage.com.au/breaking-news-national/rudd-muses-in-church-over-2010-sacking-20110619-1g9k9.html
Yet if you read through the article itself we find the following quote from Kevin Rudd himself from the radio station Hope 103.2:
"I was musing in church ... the key thing is not to sit around and mope. The key thing is to get out there and make a difference with the resources that you have at your disposal today.
Whatever your calling and whatever your lot is in life, to take those talents and take those abilities and use them to the utmost. That is what you try and do.
None of us are perfect and we all fall short of the glory of God."
- Kevin Rudd, played on Hope 103.2, 19th Jun 2011.
I was listening to the radio when this came on and this in context had nothing whatsoever to do with a supposed leadership spill. Although Fairfax media may have used an exact quote, they tried to make it say something which it never did.
On one hand you have News Corp openly admitting to just making stuff up and on the other you have Fairfax misusing someone's words. Either way both of the major newspaper companies are engaging in something even older than they are... LYING. We may as well be living in Stalinist Russia because at least everyone knew that Pravda was lying.
Of course it makes you wonder why the media is putting so much effort into trying to destabilise the Labor Party and the Federal Government. What is the real story going on?
The simple thing would be to look at media bias.
Both Fairfax Media and News Corp are roughly right leaning conservative news outlets. Fairfax generally favours the Liberal Party and although News Corp doesn't come out in Australia and directly say it, they do openly support the Republican Party in the US and the Conservatives in the UK, so it follows that they should also do likewise in Australia.
The real issue is what is the biggest concern of right leaning conservatives in Australian poltics at the moment? The answer to that is the Carbon Tax.
To put it mildly, both major newspaper companies have an audience which would oppose any increase in taxation except maybe The Daily Telegraph whose readers have the average IQ of a tin of baked beans.
By openly making stuff up and/or lying about the context of what is going on, the act of destabilising the Government is not only an act of defiance but also embodies another adage which goes back more than two thousand years: Divide et Impera, divide and rule.
Caesar, Napoleon, Sun Tsu, Boccalini and Machiavelli have all written about this law and if it was good enough for them, it is good enough for Fairfax Media and News Corp... but it doesn't serve the people of Australia.
So then, to Fairfax Media and News Corp on this the 20th of June, 2011:
STOP LYING YOU MISCREANTS!
2 comments:
If it wasn't so offensive and not very intelligent or witty I would write "Fuck Off mainstream media and Fuck Off Tony" as it would express exactly how I feel.
But I shall restrain myself and note that if the polls are right and all the rubbish about Asylum seekers and Carbon tax are scaring people into the arms of the Most Fascist Tony Rabid Abbott and his mates then I think it shows that most people have an IQ less than a tin of baked beans.
This morning came a call from Abbott for a plebiscite after the passage of legislation, yet another bemusing statement. Why after the legislation Tony? Is it cos you don't run the country, you don't have the power on the floor of the house? Or the senate. In fact is it cos YOU don't have a mandate.
Mind you didn't someone famous say that a country gets the politicians it deserves?
I found this a little scary:
http://au.news.yahoo.com/a/-/latest/9669077/abbott-moves-for-plebiscite-on-carbon-tax/
Mr Abbott told Fairfax Radio on Monday he would rescind the carbon tax even if the plebiscite came back with a majority "yes" result.
"Yes, absolutely. I mean, my position on a carbon tax is that I am against it in opposition and I will rescind it in government," he said.
Even if Abbott did get a result from a plebiscite, he'd ignore it?
That makes you wonder what the value of a mandate is anyway.
Actually it also wonders what the point of government passing any legislation at all is. If government can not hope to have anything it creates, survive longer than its own 3 year term, then the whole point of government itself is reduced to little more than the mere administration of the economy.
Mind you, that's also a rightist concept.
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