Do you ever look at the way the mainstream media constructs its headlines and shake your head? I think they call it ‘agenda setting’. Here’s some agenda setting we could have had, but didn’t.*

Cyclone Pam: Climate Change in action

It’s scientifically indisputable that climate change is causing ocean warming, and that warmer oceans lead to more intense cyclones. But how many of the stories about the devastation caused to Vanuatu by Cyclone Pam have even mentioned climate change, let alone given it prominence in a headline? Oh, I forgot. It’s bad manners to play politics so soon after a disaster. And anyway, there’ve always been cyclones. Rising sea levels? Poor countries bearing the brunt of global warming caused by rich countries? Nah. Not interested.

And while we’re on climate change – or rather not on it – how about Labor fights to Save RET, instead of ‘Renewable Energy Target: Negotiations between Government and Labor over future of target break down’ (ABC 12/11/14).

Victory over unaffordable university fees

Oh that irresponsible Senate! Now the Vice Chancellors will have to find some other way of funding higher education. How about we reverse that, and acknowledge that the defeat of university fee deregulation – for which the LNP had no conceivable mandate –  is a victory for common sense, and that this is a problem caused by the LNP which should be solved by them restoring the 20% funding cut imposed in last year’s budget? No doubt a case could always be made for increasing funding for universities, now that uncapping student places has led to a significant increase in the number of higher education students. We are already not particularly generous to higher ed; in 2011 Australia ranked 30 out of 31 OECD countries for public investment as a percentage of GDP. Australian university students already pay high tuition fees by international standards, so further milking them doesn’t seem a good idea. But defeat of the LNP solution – ‘ideology in search of a program’, as Stephen Parker, the dissenting Vice Chancellor of Canberra University put it – deserves media acknowledgement. What do we actually get? ‘Abbott Vows to Push on with Uni Reforms’ (Advertiser 18 March, paywalled.)

Liberal Policy Fail

This could be an alternative to the above headline. It could equally well apply to the Abbott government’s various back-downs on the Medicare co-payment, or the ditching of the Paid Parental Leave Scheme. For a short period when it seemed that Abbott might be toppled from the leadership, some criticism of policy failings was allowed to creep into the mainstream press, but that has all but disappeared in the wake of single improved opinion poll. I don’t think we ever got ‘Leadership Chaos’ or ‘Liberal Party dysfunction.’

Federal Health Cuts Hurting State Health System

The 2014 budget announced that the Coalition will dramatically shrink the Commonwealth’s share of hospital funding, cutting its annual contribution by $15billion by 2024, with the deepest cuts beginning in 2017. I’m not sure where this measure is in legislative terms, but State governments have no alternative but to plan to cut health costs on the assumption that that they will now have to bear more of them. But any attempt by the SA State Labor government to rationalise hospitals is met with angry headlines from the ABC as well as the Murdoch press and the leader of the opposition. I’m not arguing for or against specific proposals in Labor’sTransforming Health plan, but it’s obvious that whatever cuts a state government has to make will be unpopular with someone.  Today’s ABC headline was ‘SA Government response to health plan feedback dismissed Repat concerns, veteran says’. Where is the federal LNP government’s responsibility in all this?

Abbott Fluffs Budget Emergency

We’re hearing that the 2015 budget will be ‘dull and routine’, and without the major expenditure cuts that marked the 2014 budget. This is of course an exercise in expectation management, and not to be taken too seriously. But even so, what has happened to the budget emergency? Are we supposed not to worry about that anymore? Since we know that headlines set the agenda, is it OK to quietly change the conversation we were supposed to be having? That there never was a ‘budget emergency’ is irrelevant. Whatever one’s personal view of the state of the budget and its role in the economy, most commentators have argued that it needs some structural adjustment – like raising more revenue.  We’ll see what Hockey produces this time, but whatever it is I’m betting against a headline like ‘Contractions in Government Spending Weaken Economy’. On the other hand, I do have to pay the Australian Financial Review headline of 19 March: ‘Abbott loses the plot on debt’ (pay-walled).

Corporate Crook Rorts System

read more: http://theaimn.com/the-headlines-we-should-have-had/

Last week, we saw one of the biggest political stories of the year has broken, but The Weekend Australian has buried it on page 9.

This is not even original reporting. It’s a cobbled together story based on cribbing quotes from other news outlets.

It’s only in the paper because the editors know that if The Weekend Australian ignored it completely, its credibility would suffer even more.

It is an astounding example of skewed editorial judgement.

Why?

Because, the story is highly damaging to the Abbott Government and the News Corp leadership has firmly nailed its flag to the mast of what is more and more looking like a pirate ship of fools.

The framing of the story – carried in the headline and lead par – set the tone: The Weekend Australian is right behind Abbott on his denials.

read more: https://independentaustralia.net/business/business-display/paying-people-smugglers-news-corp-ignores-the-story-of-the-year,7826

See also: 

our dope in charge says sorry about the wrong position of the door...

And suddenly, yesterday, (06/04/2022) the Murdoch media showed us a renewed Turdy Abbott — thoughtful in quiet English Rhodes scholarly farts with historical inaccuracies, telling the world about whom we are (may be not) with a statement of simplistic brush peppered with stupid illusions of greatness which would make a fat Yankee envious of our status... Can we trust Tony to tell us the TRUTH AT LAST? Unfortunately no... As a "historian" he is as useless as a mouldy dead turd under a hot rock.

And Tony may be one of the most stupid people... He seems to fit the five criteria...

Stupid people are the most dangerous type of people.

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