It can be tough to keep your story straight when you’re a prolific polemicist. It’s best if you can stick to black and white – divide the world into two groups, a good one and a bad one, then hit the bad one with every attack you can muster and defend the good one. Introduce some grey and your point can get confused, or your next screed might appear to conflict with an earlier one, or your readers might just not get what you want them to believe. But sometimes in your eagerness to hit one target you really can’t stand, you might slip and introduce some complexity, some nuance, and even some irony – and then your message just might not work.
Here’s Andrew Bolt on the weekend, suggesting that although Laurie Oakes might be bias-resistant his reporting, the doyen of the Canberra press gallery doesn’t acknowledge that others might be more prone to influence:
Laurie Oakes fails to tell the full story – which would actually undermine his defence of the handout Kevin Rudd gave his boss
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Oakes indeed did defy Packer and refuse to check out a story to the detriment of Paul Keating – but one of his colleagues did not. Niki Savva, who was working at the time for Treasurer Peter Costello, tells the story in her new book:
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It was apparently the one and only time Packer tried to heavy Oakes. Oakes did not budge. At that point, (Nine political reporter Paul) Lyneham stepped forward, literally, and volunteered his services.
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Oakes may boast, but the full story tells us the rest of us should worry.
But here’s Andrew yesterday, after Media Watch commented on the same statement by Oakes that the previous post was based on:
Media Watch presenter Jonathan Holmes seems to think Channel Nine’s Laurie Oakes is the kind of person who lets a personal grudge infect his reporting.
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So Oakes would do what unprofessional thing, Jonathan? Explanation, please.
So it appears that implying that the reporting of (unnamed) political journalists might be influenced by the actions of the Rudd government is fine, but suggesting that a (named) political journalist’s reporting might be influenced by the actions of the opposition is not. Or perhaps it’s that suggestions of media bias made by Andrew Bolt are fine, but suggestions of media bias by Jonathan Holmes of the ABC’s Media Watch are not. I really can’t tell.
But those posts were a couple of days apart, and the irony might be lost on most readers. Unfortunately, though, Bolt’s latest post provided his readers with a target-rich environment and it seems they got a bit confused about his point. Bolt wanted Holmes to explain why he would suggest Oakes might act unprofessionally, but his own readers took up the challenge starting with the very first comment, and it continued from there:
The ABC are babes in the woods when compared to Oakes and the question of bias. The guy is so far left I don’t bother to watch his claptrap rantings.
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Whats the worst that could happen? Oakes starts being biased towards Labor? That would be different how?
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In my experience Laurie Oakes, is leaning left and generally is more sympathetic to ALP than to the Coalition.
In other words it looks like he does not need to be bribed to make comments favourable to ALP cause.
Jonathan Holmes’ comments would make no sense except that he may thing that Laurie Oakes as a result of “bribe” would make even more good comments on ALP than otherwise would be the case. Is it possible….?
At any rate, Tony Abbott’s comments should not make any significant difference to Laurie’s performance. On the other hand, is Jonathan Holmes on something smelly?
Amidst all that confusion, what emerges clearly is that the enemy of Bolt’s enemy is not his commenters’ friend. Sometimes, the world just isn’t as simple as a partisan pundit needs it to be.
8 Comments
This is what happens when you are a rigid polemicist and the facts don’t quite fit your two-tone narrative. Curiously, this is the bind that every doctrinaire Communist dictatorship eventually finds itself in: the State is Right, but when the State is Wrong it has to be Right. Who’da thunk Andrew had so much in common with Kim Jong-Il?
It is, of course, the true source of the Bolt Effect: for if you are so doctrinaire that you are willing to defy the laws of physics and say that increasing volumes of denser gases in our atmosphere are actually cooling the place, then you’re heading for the cack-pit on a luge. And down that slippery slide lies the Idiot’s Winter Olympics.
And some say he is the most important right wing commentator in the country!
The average Bolt readers definition of bias is someone who question one single thing about their world view. I.e. is not unfailingly flattering of Liberal and unfalingly condemning of Labor.
The Dutchman would have gone to town on Oakes, but Oakes is a fellow columnist in The Hun. And he’s scared of him.
Lee Harvey, that’s an interesting point. When one actually thinks of Bolt c/w Oakes, the miniscule stature of the former as a political pundit makes it clear he’s scared of the A-listers like Oakes and Kerry O’Brien. He’s always ranting about them, but I can’t recall them ever mentioning him. He probably knows in his heart he’s not a heavyweight.
monkeywrench:
An excellent observation – I can’t either. Deep down that must burn which probably explains all the ranting.
Adding to the irony is that Bolt loves to condemn the tall poppy syndrome.
I think Bolt needs to be more clear about who is and isn’t supposed to be attacked by his commenters. I think that just pick a name he mentions and then rant about how left-wing, idiotic, inbred, corrupt or incompetent they are. Any media figure they no longer listen to because of the above reasons.