RSS Feed
For the nation’s media to report last night’s Rooty Hill RSL town hall meeting as anything other than the farcical nonsense that it was is worrying. Galaxy poll’s undecided audience was pegged so far to the right that in Dr Hewson’s words, it was at risk of falling off. This was a classic Fox News style setup (they’ve done similar in the US), and Julia fell for it. Princess Julia, up there on the high pedestal, with Lord Abbott down on the level with the people showing his true ‘charm’.
Abbott was faced with a line-up of Dorothy Dixers, with known Liberal members such as Joel Scazi of Big Brother fame (and son of a former state Liberal politician) standing up to giving him a free run. The mainstream media has failed to adequately report this, with articles across the board talking about Abbott’s success and affinity with the people. One journalist, Dylan Welch, even had the gall to quote the Joel/Abbott exchange without mentioning Joel’s history.
Joel even commented on his facebook after the event: “Well what a hilarious night at the Rooty Hill RSL with my mate Billy! Doing work there for Jonesy and Amanda, i think i invited Tony Abbott over my place to watch The Notebook lol!!!”
Twitter was full of comments by people who claimed to know audience participants, such as:
sspencer_63 Not another one! RT @perspicuousness: I know Dean. He does not live in north-west Sydney, he lives in south-east and is a Liberal supporter.
DT84 from PollBludger posted this morning: Geez, you’ve got to burn the candle at both ends to keep up with this media of ours. After watching the ‘outing’ of Young Lib questioner Joel last night, I wake up to hear Fran Kelly on ABC Radio National Breakfast playing the clip between ‘Joel’ and Mr Abbott, with it all sounding very palsy, talking about cds and how Joel can trust Tony to do a great job.
I think that says it all.
That it was a blatant set-up was obvious for all to see and knowing “who” set it up should’ve been warning enough to Gillard. But tragically a large number of Australians will fall for yet another weaselly conservative strategy and actually believe something fair and real happened yesterday. I can’t help think Australia deserves a conservative government if only for their gullibility.
I wonder how many actually watched it. When Abbott is actually outside the stage managed events any more than 10 words and he looks stupid. I think he is more a man of Warringah than a man of the people.
Channel 7 was reporting the crowd as being partisan to Abbott this morning – even before the “discussion” with Graeme Richardson! The upshot was that while Abbott might have been perceived as the better performer on the night – if he didn’t perform well he was really in trouble.
It seems not everyone fell for it.
It’s insulting enough that they stacked it with partisans, but it’s even more insulting that they thought no-one would notice.
If they stacked with partisans how did Gillard get 59 votes out of the 130 cast?
Some people are just paranoid
No-one suggested 200 stackings. It only needs 20 or 30 – sufficient to make plenty of Pro Tony noise and to ask loaded questions. It was apparant for all but the “blinkered” to see. I, for one, felt let down by Sky News and their misreprentative pre advertising.
Meh I just think we are all just generally used to things like q&a and the worm audience being stacked in our favour.
I know it has been alluded to already, but it should be made absolutely clear Radio National Breakfast ran that entire Joel/Abbott exchange without mentioning who Joel was.
Didn’t see the advertising as we have enough problems with free to air tv – however if Skynews was promoting it, I would have been instantly suspicious of its “lack of bias”.
From what I’ve read and heard today – for Gillard to get 59 in that crowd was a good effort.
What happened in the forum was bad enough with the bogus undecideds being the majority of those carefully selected to ask Dixers of Abbott and Gotchas of Gillard.
However, the tv broadcast was also straight from the FoxNews Playbook. Mark Arbib’s Backroomers are responsible for not, before consenting to the forum, locking in exactly who would be on the before and after panels, how reliable the process of audience selection could be, how the cameras would make use of head shots (Gillard’s were always smaller than the questioners/Abbott’s were always larger, which is basic cinema technique to show authority in a dialogue), where the candidates would sit/stand, whether the person going second would have an advantage, how and by whom would the “winner” be determined etc.
In the last US election, some Democratic Governors were going to put on a debate/forum paid for and broadcast by FoxNews. The howls of protest from the blogosphere that FoxNews would pull precisely the same cheap tricks that it did last night at Rooty Hill forced the Governors to cancel the event. This is but one example of many famous FoxNews tactics to support, at all costs, right-wing candidates.
That Labor’s Backroomers could not see this ambush coming from a mile away, is astounding. No wonder Gillard decided to stop listening to their advice after they blew her opening poll lead. Obviously, now she needs to just stick with being sensible, well-spoken and reasonable for another week. And above all, think twice, make that thrice, before listening to anything that the campaign genius, Mark Arbib, recommends.
I agree with all previous post that the ABC and some of the other media coverage of this Daily Telegraph/Skynews stunt has been beneath contempt. At least the Sydney Morning Herald and AAP have reported the criticisms of it. Fortunately, with only SkyNews already 80% Coaliton-supporting demographic actually getting to see it, the moronic media reports will have negligible impact on the election result. Hence, no movement today on Iasbet, which still has Labor’s odds unchanged since yesterday arvo at 1.36 (it was 1.60 on Monday).
Did any of those 59 get a question. If it was only about the outcome for the people in the room, then no-one would be talking about it.
Remember this next time you see a Galaxy poll.
Face it though, and you have to, If Gillard has not won over the media with her “hew Julia” image, it’s probably because the media already know exactly who Julia is, and to whom she is beholding for her rise to the Prime Minister ship.
Paranoia is evident in this piece as a previous commenter says, there questions had to differ because one leader is in government and the other is not, it’s really that simple, not any of the Labor biased conspiracy theories.
Tony Abbot appears to work well in a one on one situation, Gillard want to remain aloof and in control, that’s just the difference between the two, and unfortunately it’s not working for the PM and sadly that is the fault of the power brokers within Labor who put their agenda ahead of the party and most certainly of Labor itself who put winning ahead of good government, loyalty, and the wishes of the electorate as a whole.
So we should trust the Liberals why?
The Rabbott knows this young Lib & his father. What peeves me is that the Rabbott pretended he didn’t know him. That can only mean that he was privy to a favourable set up.
Buggered if I know why anyone should trust the Libs. In particular their leader.
It seems that the Rabbott telling porkies is par the course. Shrug your shoulders and sigh, oh well, that’s our Tony.
It is an interesting backdrop – however it is also worth noting what’s at stake with Labour re-elected, the rollout of a potentially industry threatening technology. The main players in this standoff have done well to shelter themselves from any airing of the MSM downfall once a high bandwidth communications network is rolled out.
Imagine the exponential rise in the freeflow of communication between community groups such as unions and the rise of live web community based reporting of events involving a very wide range of activities that are largely ignored by MSM (and the ABC).
Who doesn’t support a NBN that will relegate MSM to a backwater? – libs, who is currently recieving preferential treatment at the moment in MSM? – the libs. The inverse is also true. The $300M windfall from Conroy just wasn’t enough. Make no mistake, there is a lot more at stake here than just whether Julia gets a fair run in the media – NBN scares the crap out of all the MSM owners and they just don’t want it in their backyard.
[WORDPRESS HASHCASH] The poster sent us ‘0 which is not a hashcash value.
Poor Warringah
I’m sure Labor also had stooges in the crowd, and maybe they just didn’t do a very good job, quite a bit like Julia really, just not up to the job.
To be honest I don’t have any time for Abbott despite my center to center right leanings, the man lost me many years ago when he as health minister opposed some funding for minority surgeries or medications due only to costs, I don’t rate bean counters very highly. However Labor have no better answer, for anything except to try to copy what policies are being used in the US or pass the blame when ever they stuff up. If Labor had done the job and had their stooges better placed in the Rooty Hill venue, we may have had some real tough questions (to be honest Julia never got even one hard question either) and that’s what the viewers and the voters really want.