Eventually it had to happen that things said by the media become mere noise and make no impact on the right side of the political divide. There is a Politico article today, commented on by Jonathan Tobin, in which the author cannot believe Republicans not only haven’t already conceded the election, but will moreover continue to fight it out to the end. And this is so, even though the media have already, and on more than one occasion, declared some statement by Romney as a blunder that has finally finished his run for president. Here is Tobin discussing this media syndrome:
Let’s get this straight: The media decides that Romney’s gaffe about the 47 percent defines the election while Obama’s gaffes about the murders of Americans being ‘bumps in the road’ isn’t worth discussing. They push this line about Romney’s incompetence relentlessly; accept speeches filled with misstatements and distortions at the Democratic National Convention at face value after treating GOP convention speeches as ‘fact-checked’ lies and help manufacture a post-convention bounce; and then declare the race (which is still largely within the margin of error in most polls) over and consider it a ‘curiosity’ that Republicans still like their chances and understand tying their fates to Romney is a lot smarter than writing him off. In other words, if the GOP doesn’t accept their narrative and give up, they are in denial. It never occurs to the chattering classes that about half the country still plans to vote to turn President Obama’s incomplete into an ‘F’ in November and that his wife shouldn’t be fitted for her second inaugural gown just yet.
Journalists are not the arbiters of right and wrong, good and bad, true and false. Unless they are recognisably identifiable as not being of the socialist, collectivist tribe, the virtual certainty is that they are – just stand-ins for the parties of the left. Why anyone on our side should pay attention to what they say or report is beyond me.
Here’s a poll Politico should actually pay attention to:
They can bloviate all they like. People no longer trust them so they are not listening.
Token
26 Sep 12 at 3:14 pm
Old riddle: what is ugly, has few teeth and an IQ of 100?
The crowd at a wrestling match.
New riddle: what is attractive, has good teeth and an IQ of 100?
The main stream media; especially the ABC.
cohenite
26 Sep 12 at 3:17 pm
I cant quite get my head around the tactics. Why would the Left overstate their level of confidence if that probably creates complacency in their voter base? Like in Oz, the US Left is good at bringing out the rent a crowd Occupation mob, but not so good at mobilising voters on polling day.
They have either won already, or are a lot more stupid than I thought possible.
Jannie
26 Sep 12 at 3:18 pm
Jannie, cults of personality have a hard time dealing with loss.
Token
26 Sep 12 at 3:23 pm
Remember back to the last federal election when the Australian had a story about Labor faxing list of questions and suggested subject matter to report on? They did this every night to prepare the Fairfax “journalists” for the next day’s news.
Good times.
Gab
26 Sep 12 at 3:38 pm
“The three-fold process by which the noise machine inflicts its idiocy on us works like this. First the narrative is invented, then endless streams of experts are brought in to comment on and reinforce the narrative, and finally there is a hysterical denunciation of those who reject the narrative as ignorant vermin barely worth of being clubbed on the head on the shores of the Atlantic Ocean.”
The media is becoming a parody of its former self. I just can’t decide if its incompetence, inevitability or something more sinister. Anyway the quote above is from an article well worth a read
http://sultanknish.blogspot.com.au/2012/09/the-great-media-noise-machine.html
Adam Diver
26 Sep 12 at 3:49 pm
Jeepers Token, I am lost for words. I really did not know he was so well loved by the plump and attractive cadres and the selfless offspring of the party elite.
Its what the ABC journalists and staff are going to do when we sell the joint for the copper wiring and scrap metal.
Jannie
26 Sep 12 at 3:50 pm
The luvvies at Fairfax & ABC know that if the ALP get turfed out they’ll have to start writing their own stories again.
Top and tail baby…top and tail
Rousie
26 Sep 12 at 4:11 pm
I don’t know whether anyone else has posted this, but it makes absolute sense.
Nanuestalker
26 Sep 12 at 4:12 pm
I’m fascinated to see whether it is possible for the liberal US press, from the NY Times down, to buy the election for Obama by lying about what is being said and done in the campaign. This will work if people think the media are truthful and largely unbiased. I believe the public is way ahead of the media and the politicians and see exactly what is going on with the media’s covering and lying for Obama. People have never taken notice of newspaper opinions about elections and politics; the question is whether they will discern that they’re being lied to on critical matters of fact. I can’t wait for November 6 to find out the answer to these questions. If what I suspect is happening is, in fact, true, the shock of the leftist political self-delusion will be volcanic.
Tom
26 Sep 12 at 4:51 pm
“the plump and attractive cadres”
what a nice turn of phrase! Thanks Jannie!
Ripe to be plucked and stuffed?
NDT (Not a Death Threat).
Rafe
26 Sep 12 at 4:53 pm
A lot of journalist do think that they are
Just watch those promos for CNN etc where the precious thing opines that they are making a difference. Journalism went downhill when it became a uni degree and journos started thinking that they should write opinion rather than news. The ABC should be made a news organisation under its charter, not an opinion forming organisation.
Samuel J
26 Sep 12 at 5:00 pm
Non-partisan journalism was an anomoly of the 20th century which is now being corrected.
I love reading stories from the 19th century in the US when they didn’t try the facade everyone knew which paper backed which party.
Token
26 Sep 12 at 5:11 pm
The abc is the archetypal example of media bias. The abc was ignored by Finkelstein and has demonstrated time after time that it is an outlet for left and especially green ideology; examples of this abound:
Tony Jones.
Pro AGW scientists.
Trioli
Incidentally, why does Trioli still have a job?
There are literally thousands of examples of abc bias; it is entrenched; why does a Western democracy have a taxpayer funded, essentially socialistic, media outlet?
Any pretence of balance by the abc has been shredded; yet there is no political party which has a policy to deal with this scandal; except one; the NCTCS.
cohenite
26 Sep 12 at 5:34 pm
As for AGW hysteria in the msm; it is not new.
cohenite
26 Sep 12 at 5:36 pm
With the media, in the past fiction imitated life: The Spike is a 1980 spy thriller novel by Arnaud de Borchgrave and Robert Moss (New York: Crown Publishers, 1980).
Now Life imitates Art Its most notable proponent is Oscar Wilde, who held in his 1889 essay The Decay of Lying that “Life imitates Art far more than Art imitates Life”.
The media seeks to have their lives and ideas imitate the art of reporting. They all have a Watergate fixation where they dictate who is the villain and who is the hero. FDR did more illegal actions then ‘history’ records.
stackja
26 Sep 12 at 5:38 pm
Yes, its absurd, but… Where does Obama’s address to the UN leave the mainstream right? I’ve seen Karl Rove’s response and find it unconvincing. I don’t see more appetite for ante’d-up neo-Connery.
It is as if the Left has taken over the right. As student Commies, the term we used was ‘co-opted’.
Big Jim
26 Sep 12 at 5:48 pm
Well in a way I have found them to be.
For example if ABC claims wrong, I know it is probably right. If Fairfax say bad I know it’s gonna be good…. and so forth. I don’t need to know all the detail, I’ll support whatever they hate, works out fine.
Chris M
26 Sep 12 at 6:53 pm
cohenite
Gerald Henderson makes one of the best arguements about the ABC’s bias when he points out that the ABC does not have a single recognised conservative/liberal/right wing regular presenter with a high profile spot anywhere in the ABC.
If they actually cared about their Charter, then they would be actively seeking out and developing such talent. They could learn how to do from Fox in the US or The Oz here. It’s not that hard.
johno
26 Sep 12 at 6:59 pm
I can’t see so many in the media fuss about Media Watch ..its seen by a tiny minority and is as predictable as the sun rising and doesn’t make any sense …..Gerard Henderson has some fun with it ……that’s all it worth IMO ……
The MSM generally is lazy and incompetent …..
Gerry
26 Sep 12 at 7:07 pm
Non-partisan journalism that is fair and puts a premium of new information that advances the public interest is an exacting and very satisfying professional skill. Its deliberate decimation by Fairfax staff indulging their political prejudices and their idiot savant masters has needlessly destroyed a $1 billion-plus company. FXJ deliberately exported the intellectual capital needed to keep the basic operating rules intact in order to cut editorial costs. The whole disaster has been a monument to human stupidity.
Tom
26 Sep 12 at 7:12 pm
Abc charter, and editorial policy.
Compare that with Jone’s interviewing technique.
The bias is well documented and persistent; the charter, statements of balance and complaint process ridiculous.
I think it is fair to say that this criminal government is only clinging to power due to the abc; and it is beyond doubt that AGW is still kicking due to the abc.
The damage to the community from the abc is incalculable. Most insidious is that it gives a legitimacy to the feral loons of the world who used to stand on street corners or harangue people in the domain.
But while giving a platform to these weirdos it has similtaneously taken away the consequence of being able to reply; thus enboldened the abc creatures who combine the uselessness of the Eloi with the viciousness of the Morlocks have obliterated the social standards of discourse.
It’s fucked.
cohenite
26 Sep 12 at 7:31 pm
Blankets can destroy careers with impunity.
lotocoti
26 Sep 12 at 7:39 pm
Leigh Sales on the 7.30 Report tonight demonstrated why she is unfit for the job. I have never seen such a spittle-flecked attack on what only today’s Labor party could call “a rat in the ranks”. He has made some good points (just like numerous other ex-pollies from that party), and she was ropeable, wanting to cast him and his pension into whatever circle of hell that such things cease to exist in.
Her anger was so palpable it overshadowed the whole segment. Tanner did well to retain composure in the face of it. This was not journalism, she was like an avenging fury out of ancient Greek drama. Compromised. Or maybe not. It is the ABC.
blogstrop
26 Sep 12 at 8:44 pm
I’m a libertarian conscripted to subsidise propaganda to confirm the prejudices of wealthy socialists.
The worst part is the Liberals(sic) won’t fix it.
Forester
26 Sep 12 at 8:50 pm
Tanner made some good points but he also made some bad ones, like how magnificently they handled the GFC. But of course he was one of the gang of four who masterminded that.
Rafe
26 Sep 12 at 9:02 pm
Yes, blogstrop, Sales was disgraceful, as she was with Abbott. She was close to losing it and bursting into tears. The real teller was when she desparately asked how Tanner could be doing this just as the polls were starting to look good (for us).
Lazlo
26 Sep 12 at 9:36 pm
They really are getting ever more frantic, aren’t they? I can imagine their thought processes now: “What? Why is he bothering? Why does he think he’s still in the race? How can he possibly still be in the race? GET OFF THE TRACK, YOU MORMON BASTARD! THE ELECTION IS OURS BY RIGHT!!!”
We haven’t heard those last two sentences yet, but eventually I suspect we will. And if we do, that will be the end of Obama, the MSM, and the Democrat party, hopefully for at least four terms: Romney-Romney-Ryan-Ryan.
perturbed
26 Sep 12 at 10:00 pm
Yes – at one point she was actually shouting over his attempt to reply.
Viva
26 Sep 12 at 11:16 pm
If your concept of handling is managing to put off the day of reckoning for another few years – and politically, what else matters – then he has a point.
You can time shift, and only time shift, from the demand side.
Driftforge
26 Sep 12 at 11:19 pm
The ABC saleable assets include not only scrap metal. The socialists that inhabit it contain large numbers of saleable organs. Abbott needs to be planning now for an orderly selloff that does not flood the market, depress prices in the short term and so reduce the total sales revenue.
It needs a great deal of finesse and dry ice.
WhaleHunt Fun
27 Sep 12 at 12:07 am
So many, like Leigh Sales, have abandoned any pretence to being part of the “first drafters of history”. They are now prepared to be attack dogs for the governing party and its spinmeisters, rather than keeping them honest.
Why does anyone take any notice? Well, many of us have jobs to do and need to have the events of the day related to us by news services. Increasingly, we need to merely note what the MSM says and file it for further analysis. This is because the likelihood of accurate reporting has diminished to such an extent that other sources have to be consulted every day.
Last night’s 7.30 report was a stark illustration. It was two Labor people , one very bitter, one reasonably calm, arguing as if they were off camera!
Given the ABC’s track record, Sales probably got the gig because she’s the way she is. It would have been no oversight in the selection process, and will in all likelihood not impede her career. That’s where we’re at, and nothing short of the nuclear option will change to ABC.
Blogstrop
27 Sep 12 at 6:34 am
It is good that Tanner is speaking out…
…but I think it is unwise to lionise Tanner, look at his speeches when he was in government. He was very happy for a lapdog media at that time.
The man is an opportunist, that said happy to him to use himself as a battering ram against the Reactionary forces of the Hard Left.
__________________________
The ABC does not serve the purpose it was set up for, and their support of the NBN has bewildered me as it will make digital tv/radio from over location around the world accessable to 90%+ Austrlians.
Token
27 Sep 12 at 8:14 am
Who was it who said that the ABC is “our enemies talking to our friends”.
I am so jaundiced with the ABC, I dont even watch the Sunday Night BBC frockups any more. Its not only their politics, economics, arts, and comedy is skewed to the Left, the dumbarses deny it and the smart ones are proud of it.
Jannie
27 Sep 12 at 11:18 am
Heard someone talk about the ABC the other day. He’s been watching the ABC for forty years and cannot believe how blatantly left-wing it has become in the last decade but more so now. People are not dumb, they have long memories despite what the ABC and Fairfax proclaim.
Gab
27 Sep 12 at 11:23 am
Gab, was that a Minnie Mouse in a freedom-sack avatar in your first post?
Aqualung
27 Sep 12 at 2:31 pm