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August 10, 2012
Backed by their own wing of think tanks that increasingly function as public-relations agencies, Australian conservatives are in the process of building a whole alternative ideology system, with its own facts, its own history and its own laws of economics. Their politics around the pricing of carbon is a good example.
We have entered a “post-truth” era in politics, and Tony Abbott has actually campaigned that way for the past two years. Everything is seen a political opportunity to use the tactics of fear to show that the incompetent and distrusted Gillard Government just staggers from one crisis situation to the next.
David Rowe
What is disheartening is that political reporters in the mainstream press have shown that they are incapable of figuring this post truth campaign out; or if they have, then they have not informed us of the mass deception. What appears to matter for the insider journalists (the political media) is not what’s true, but whether the tactics of the campaign strategy work.
The judgment is that Abbott's fear campaign is spectacularly successful, that of the Gillard Government is a disaster, and so the Gillard Government is going to be wiped out in 2013. This representation, we are confidently informed, is the basic structure of the world. There has been a remarkable silence around the truth content of that fear campaign.
So much for the whole idea of a watchdog press which is meant to help expose the lies of the fear campaign.
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I fear it's too late for the MSM to change course. They have been doing fact-free dumbed-down "reporting" for over a decade. To change direction now risks confusing and alienating the masses.