Tamed Estate
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Tamed estate: Debt and deficit disaster? Not when it comes to the Coalition
The coverage was positively glowing. Debt projected to be four times higher than at any point under Labor but nothing could silence the cheerleaders. Continue reading »
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Tamed Estate: Cosy circle receiving Coalition’s ‘drops’ widens to include Rupert’s tabloids
And in true Orwellian Doublespeak, Prime Minister Scott Morrison used the war footing to paint himself as the champion of peace. Continue reading »
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‘Exclusive survey’ from company with strong links to Liberal Party provides great fodder for Nine’s newspapers
While countries around the world are targeting green hydrogen production, Energy Minister Angus Taylor is spruiking clean hydrogen, which keeps fossil fuels in the game. Continue reading »
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War footing groupthink; subsidies and socialism; glasshouses and stones
Upside down, inside out and black is white. Journalists fall over themselves to paint Scott Morrison as a courageous leader, the Financial Review lauds the “very affordable” housing market, in defiance of just about every expert in the country, and Tax Office attacks from an employee of Murdoch’s News Australia, whose approach to tax surely Continue reading »
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Hit jobs from the inside and News Corp attacks free speech of citizens
Coordinated attacks on the Reserve Bank, free speech for the Courier Mail … but not for citizens, and digging up dirt on Josh Bornstein. Continue reading »
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Light relief after a tawdry, desperate week: ‘Floods prove weather’s not broken’
Media coverage of “solo lewd acts’ diverted focus from the real game – was there a cover-up of the alleged rape of Brittany Higgins?; no apology from Scott Morrison for fabricating an harassment claim; and there’s always room for climate denialism in The Australian. Continue reading »
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Orwellian media manipulation: PM’s answer to ‘Dorothy Dixer’ published before he uttered the words
Look over there, mate. Should we really ignore a rape allegation against the first law officer of the nation because Labor also has skeletons in its closet? Continue reading »
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Sexual violence an issue of ideology? The Australian then stopped digging
The recovered memory line took hold after being given an outing in Crikey, although coverage showed some fundamental misunderstandings. Meanwhile the Australian Financial Review lamented the fact that Scott Morrison wasn’t receiving the glory of the vaccine rollout. Just as well, actually, because it is occurring at a snail’s pace. Continue reading »
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Porter allegations: Accusations fly of ‘trial by media’; AKA journalists doing their job
There was an outpouring of grief for the “trembling, tearful wrecks” of Cabinet Ministers forced on to sick leave, having to experience such ‘humiliating’ and ‘devastating’ claims. Some particularly callous commentary equated Porter’s life with that of the “ruined” life of the woman who died by suicide. Continue reading »
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Tamed Estate: Facebook 1, Australian government 0 but no mainstream media mastheads ran that line
And the miserly $3.57 a day rise in JobSeeker was ‘fair and affordable’, ‘pragmatic’, and ‘fiscally responsible’. The mainstream media tripped over themselves to support the government’s line in the face of widespread condemnation from eminent economists that the huge cut to the unemployment payment rate would cost jobs and hit the recovery. Continue reading »
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Tamed estate: the PM has to ask his wife how to feel empathy yet Labor is on the hook?
Gladys’ cheerleader in chief at the Sydney Morning Herald finally comes out swinging – at the NSW Opposition Leader. And editorials from The Australian get oh-so-close to touching on the failures of the federal government in aged care and vaccine rollout. Continue reading »
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Tamed Estate: IR reforms ‘dangerous’, ‘extreme’ but let’s go with Christian Porter’s description – ‘modest’
When tabling the omnibus Industrial Relations bill in early December, Christian Porter described the changes as “modest”. The mainstream media duly followed suit and in no time at all had even dropped the quotation marks. Continue reading »
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Confected outrage all in a day’s work for News
A lesson in skewing the conversation; Morrison’s gloss wearing thin?; promoting US election conspiracy theories; and kid-glove treatment for Gladys. Continue reading »
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Hurrah for double standards in corporate world
Sycophancy from Joe Hockey; double standards in the corporate world; one-sided coverage of the plan to force Google and Facebook to pay for news content; quarantine confusion, again… Mainstream media serves up the usual. Continue reading »
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Copying and pasting government drops?
Spruiking the Coalition’s 2020 tax cuts; Australians’ ‘$200 billion’ war chest; Google’s experiments; free speech; and even a Liberal Party self-congratulatory piece on the NBN. Continue reading »
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The ALP – the Australian Liberal-lite Party
When Labor leader Anthony Albanese dumped his party’s franking credits policy, the mainstream media duly trotted out the “retiree tax” line. “Subsidies to wealthy superannuants to continue” doesn’t have quite the same ring. Continue reading »
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Tamed Estate: News’ and Nine’s PR and the plight of the (Liberals’?) media
Old media caps off annus horribilis 2020 with its traditional horrible week. Michael West, standing in for Michael Tanner, looks at the fall of Fairfax, PR masquerading as journalism, who guards the Guardian, Seven News’ calls for war with China and how Scott Morrison’s media team has the game sown up. Continue reading »
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Tamed Estate: youth excoriated for their behaviour, not so senior citizens
On the journey of Covid-19 and “enemies of the state”, hotel quarantine, sycophancy, the vaccine, MPs’report cards, and Reds under the … somewhere. Continue reading »
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Tamed Estate: IR changes good for workers. Really? The fine print is buried.
With workplace reform winging its way towards the Senate, the mainstream media’s coverage of the changes was predictably unbalanced. Continue reading »
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Tamed estate: War crimes and China tweets
The biggest story in town? That all depends – it might be the Brereton Report on the killing of Afghan children by Australian soldiers. Then again, it might be a China tweet. Continue reading »
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The Tamed Estate – cover-up of the Queen‘s role in the Dismissal by the National Archives and The Australian
The release of the Palace letters was pure theatre. Every element was meticulously stage-managed: the set, the props, the narrative. (From the Palace Letters pp 168-172) Continue reading »
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Tamed Estate: stop the presses; the Prime Minister took a barre class!
No holds barred? Kid-glove treatment for the Prime Minister, climate change denial, Murdoch media appears desperate and breaches of hotel quarantine. Continue reading »
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Tamed estate: “And on the second day, he said: ‘Let it be forgotten,’ and it was.”
The federal Coalition’s PR team clearly forgot the Streisand effect: the phenomenon whereby attempts to suppress information lead to far greater exposure than the information would have generated intrinsically. Continue reading »
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Tamed estate: Australian media conservatives applaud Trump’s ‘victory’
Two former Australian prime ministers have joined forces to speak out against the power of Rupert Murdoch’s media empire, calling for a royal commission. But why do they have so much power anyway, when they get it so spectacularly wrong, so often. Michael Tanner explores the bizarre antics of Murdoch’s pundits during the US election. Continue reading »
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Premier kept his side of the bargain but the media didn’t want to know
An easing of restrictions in Victoria was predicated on two criteria: a rolling 14-day average of fewer than five cases per day; and fewer than five mystery cases over the preceding two weeks. Continue reading »
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Tamed estate: ‘no holes in Gladys’ story’ … give or take 152 moments of amnesia
The Premier then went on 2GB to discuss with shock jock Kyle Sandilands her relationship. Not a sentence I thought I would ever write. This one doesn’t really require further elaboration. Continue reading »
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Tamed Estate: Poor Gladys
Last week in the Tamed Estate, ICAC’s inquiry into former politician Daryl Maguire whose revelations about NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian completely overshadowed Kevin Rudd’s spectacular petition to set up a royal commission into the Murdoch press. Also, international propaganda efforts by the UK and US are being swept under the rug. Continue reading »
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Tamed Estate: Budget Week
This week has been dominated by the budget. And that means the traditional pre-budget leaks dutifully reported by the media. These were followed by post-budget revelations that the budget announcement was full of already announced measures. Continue reading »
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Tamed Estate: Albanese follows Morrison’s lead
This week we see that Albanese is following in Morrison’s footsteps, with Morrison following the same path as usual. Meanwhile, Frydenberg is refining his dark arts, with Thursday night’s drops receiving no critical coverage. We also have a brief look at abortive biased coverage on behalf of the Courier Mail. Continue reading »
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Tamed Estate: Low Emissions, Insolvency Reforms, Responsible Lending and NBN Privatisation
Following on from the opener to the Tamed Estate released in both Michael West Media and Pearls and Irritations, we will be conducting a rolling watch for media failures and manipulations. Continue reading »
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