You Don't Commission A Poll When You Don't Want To Hear The Results

Rupert Murdoch's The Australian newspaper couldn't commission Newspolls fast enough when Tony Abbott and the Liberal/Nationals coalition were riding high. Once a fortnight was standard. But when they got really excited, it was every week, sometimes twice a week.

But as the reality of Tony Abbott as prime minister settles over Australia, and unsettles Australians, The Australian newspaper has decided it really don't want to know what Australians think, anymore.

Below is the last Newspoll commissioned by The Australian newspaper, eight whole whole weeks ago. Since then nothing. Did The Australian's editor Chris Mitchell see something in the last Newspoll results he didn't like? Let's take a look:

Oh. The Australian Labor Party was leading the Abbott government by a healthy 2PP margin.

Oh.

And here's a snapshot of how the Abbott government has delivered for Australian families, after just five months of government. Image via @GeeksRulz

The Australian editor Chris Mitchell: 'I Love The Sydney Morning Herald'

The Daily Telegraph's editor Paul Whittaker, Rupert Murdoch and The Australian's editor Chris Mitchell (right)

Well this was unexpected. The Australian's editor Chris Mitchell, that is the newspaper that regularly feasts upon the alleged fetid "Leftism" of Fairfax media actually believes The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald are fantastic newspapers.

Via Mumbrella:

Chris Mitchell: "...the Saturday Age and SMH...remain very strong products with breaking news, a colour magazine, good arts and sport coverage, very strong business sections and lots of heavyweight opinion from people who really move national debate."

Eh? What could have motivated Mitchell to sing the praises of The Australian's key rival in this age of rapidly declining newspaper circulations?

The arrival of a third Saturday newspaper, called The Saturday Paper.

So incensed are Mitchell and Fairfax's Gary Linnell they have supplied some absolutely choice quotes to Mumbrella, desperately trying to hose down any interest The Saturday Paper might be generating.

This quote from Linnell is pure gold, and pretty much sums up far too much commentary content in Murdoch and Fairfax newspapers, beautifully so:

 "I desperately hope it doesn’t end up being a boring collection of opinion writers sifting through each others’ navel lint..."

Mumbrella has the full story here.


Rupert Murdoch Admits He Does Tell His Media What To Print And Who To Back

2007: The Australian Editor Chris Mitchell Claims Pro-Peace Aussies Hate Hearing Less Iraqis Are Being Slaughtered

Chris Mitchell's War On Australian Bloggers

The Australian's Obsession With Twitter Is Just Plain Stupid

The Australian's Obsession With Twitter Gets Plain Stupid - Federal Election 2013 Day 11

Twitter, or even tweets, are not mentioned in this story, anywhere. The Australian's War On Twitter is an embarrasing, hysterical spectacle.
 

The Australian couldn't look any more desperate in its daily attempts to convince older readers Twitter has nothing to offer them. Lest they cancel their subscription to the Australian and go read most of the facts and figures the Autralian hordes behind paywalls on Twitter, for free.

The Australian's earlier attacks on Twitter as being an unreliable medium for distribution of information would be a bit more convincing if The Australian didn't have dozens of Twitter accounts spam-tweeting links to its paywalled content.

Advancing Democracy Through Terrorism

The Australian's editor, Chris Mitchell, has a peculiar take on the terrorist attack that targeted and killed military leaders in Iran over the weekend :

"....no matter how destabilising, the suicide bombing may do little to advance democracy in Iran."

Have suicide bombings advanced democracy in other countries of the Middle East?


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Rudd Vs The Australian....Kind Of

It all seems a bit....staged. It's good for Rudd, and it's good for The Australian :

Kevin Rudd last night attacked The Australian as "right-wing" and less than objective, particularly on the issue of climate change.

"If you cite your source as The Australian newspaper, I simply say this: (It is a) free country; every paper can express their point of view -- the editor of The Australian has said that he edits a right-wing newspaper -- and so he does," Mr Rudd said.

"Let us not pretend that it (The Australian) would seek to present itself as an objective source of information. It opposes the government's actions on climate change, and has done so consistently.

"That's their democratic right; we have a free press. And so they should; that's a matter for them."

The editor-in-chief of The Australian, Chris Mitchell, responded last night: "The actual quote referred to The Australian as a centre-right paper but the PM is loose with his verballing these days."

Tepid.

More than anything else, it shows just how unimportant KevinRuddPM and his advisors think The Australian is as a part of the national debate, or as an influential force on the Australian public, at large.

Kevin Rudd reaches more people, directly, on Twitter, than he does when he gets written up in The Australian. Rudd's 'circulation' on Twitter, is many hundreds of thousands higher than the current newsagent, and free-in-the-foyer-many-city-offices, circulation of The Australian.

He doesn't need The Australian to be on his side.

A disregard for 'The Heart Of The Nation' that would been almost incomprehensible a few years ago.

Rupert Murdoch Admits He Does Tell His Newspapers Who To Back And What To Print

"We Can Change The Way The Public Thinks About These Issues"

By Darryl Mason

Okay, prepare yourselves, and try not to be too shocked by this revelation :

Rupert Murdoch has admitted to a parliamentary inquiry (in the UK) that he has "editorial control" over which party The Sun and News of the World back in a general election and what line the papers take on Europe.

Mr Murdoch's comments were revealed in the minutes from evidence he gave behind closed doors on 17 September in New York, during the committee's inquiry into media ownership.

But the News Corporation chairman said he took a different approach with The Times and The Sunday Times. While he often asked what those papers were doing, he never instructed them or interfered, he said.

The minute stated: "For The Sun and News of the World he explained that he is a 'traditional proprietor'. He exercises editorial control on major issues – like which party to back in a general election or policy on Europe

Which raises the obvious question, how many of the 70% of all Australian newspapers that Rupert Murdoch controls does he instruct to back or attack chosen politicians, political parties or political causes?

Is the Sydney Daily Telegraph as editorially independent of Murdoch's influence as the London Sunday Times?

Or can The Australian newspaper claim that honor?

Was the Herald Sun free to back Howard over Rudd in the elections? Or was the Herald Sun's pro-Howard line more for reasons of 'balance'?

Perhaps the UK parliamentary enquiry revelations explain why Murdoch blogger Andrew Bolt (whose blog features on the main news.com.au portal, as well as the Herald Sun and Courier Mail websites, reaching hundreds of thousands of Australian online readers) was so enthusiastically pumping the fact that, just before the election, the Sydney Daily Telegraph backed Rudd, while the Herald Sun did not, and why Bolt was earlier so vehemently denying that Murdoch's papers went hard after Howard when he refused to step down.

Murdoch's revelation of purposeful editorial control should not be a revelation to readers of The Orstrahyun blog.

As regular readers would remember, Murdoch clearly admitted, back in June during his climate change awakening, that not only did he instruct his newspapers to push a certain reality that he favoured, but he could also muster the entire forces of his internet, newspaper, cable and TV empire to push his belief systems onto the world and change not only what they believed, but how they behaved.

Here's Rupert Murdoch explaining how this would be done on the issue of 'waking up' his readers to the reality of climate change :

"We need to reach (our audience) in a sustained way. To weave this issue into our content-- make it dramatic, make it vivid, even sometimes make it fun. We want to inspire people to change their behavior.

"The challenge is to revolutionize the message.

"We need to do what our company does best: make this issue exciting. Tell the story in a new way.

"Now... there are limits to how far we can push this issue in our content."

"...we can change the way the public thinks about these issues..."

Within weeks of Rupert explaining how effectively his vast media empire can wage a psychological war on its viewers and readers to influence their beliefs and behaviour, most of his dozens of Australian city and suburban newspapers became champions of fighting climate change, launching special liftouts, dedicated websites and awareness campaigns over the next few months, under such Al Gore mantras as 'Saving Planet Earth'.

UPDATE : On September 10, 2001, John Howard had a long, private dinner with Rupert Murdoch in Washington, DC. Howard was suffering some of the worst poll numbers of his career, and the Liberal Party was scoring its worst poll ratings since the mid-1970s. But Tampa was heating up and 9/11 was about to shock the nation.

Murdoch allowed himself to be interviewed by the media when he exited the restaurant, in scenes that were repeated in early 2007, in New York City, with then Labor prime ministerial hopeful Kevin Rudd.

From an ABC Radio report on the Howard-Murdoch 2001 dinner :

For two hours the two men sat alone in the upmarket Oxidental Grill deep in conversation. At 10:00pm local time they emerged and Mr Murdoch was asked by waiting journalists who'd win the next election.

RUPERT MURDOCH: No, we never discussed it.

REPORTER: Do you think Mr Howard deserves a third term in Office, Mr Murdoch?

RUPERT MURDOCH: Mm?

REPORTER: Do you think the Prime Minister deserves a third term in Office?

RUPERT MURDOCH: It doesn't matter what I think. You ask my editors.

REPORTER: Mr Murdoch, how do you think Kim Beazley would go as Prime Minister?

RUPERT MURDOCH: It would be very interesting.

REPORTER: Were they productive discussions with Mr Murdoch?

JOHN HOWARD: Well, we had a pleasant dinner.

REPORTER: Did you talk politics?

JOHN HOWARD: We talked everything.

MARK WILLACY: There's little doubt about that, given Rupert Murdoch's interest in media policy and the extraordinary influence of his Australian print empire. His response when asked if John Howard deserved a third term is well worth another listen:

RUPERT MURDOCH: It doesn't matter what I think. You ask my editors.

Rupert Murdoch was far more forthcoming on Kevin Rudd when he was asked by a journalist in April, 2007, whether or not he thought the contender would make a good prime minister. The reply then was, "Oh, I'm sure..." Big smile.

A note we received yesterday, from a person who claimed to be a former staffer in John Howard's office, said that it was common gossip within many government departments that when John Howard refused to hand over the leadership to Peter Costello at the end of 2006, Rupert Murdoch was less than happy. And that editors of at least two Murdoch Australian city papers, likewise, were less than happy.

The self-claimed former Howard staffer said that when Rupert Murdoch publicly appeared with Kevin Rudd in New York City in April, 2007, laughing and grinning after a long meeting at the News Corp. headquarters, and then dinner together, a climate of doom descended amongst many in the prime minister's department. The belief was that Murdoch had given Kevin Rudd the Big Tick, particularly after the "Oh, I'm sure" quote was aired, which meant Howard was probably finished.

The Sydney Daily Telegraph soon became very obvious champions of Kevin Rudd, and Howard suffered a sustained stream of extremely negative Daily Telegraph front pages, featuring large photos showing Howard looking old, stressed and confused.

But then again, one city newspaper doesn't win an election. Does it?

Murdoch Mouthpiece Barks : Pro-Peace Aussies Hate News That Less Iraqis Are Being Slaughtered

A gruesome example of absurdity from the editor of The Australian newspaper, Chris Mitchell :

The sad fact is that for most of the anti-war Left, the only thing that matters is delivering a defeat to the Bush administration, and in achieving that end the Iraqi people are expendable.

The anti-war, anti-American Left should be ashamed, but precisely for this reason they continue to look away when Iraq doesn't fail in the way they wish.

What absolute twaddle.

Mitchell clearly still believes in the fantasy that only 'The Left' are opposed to war on defenceless people. That means something like 70% of Australians, and even a greater number of Americans, must be 'Lefties'.

This is yet more garbage about the fictional Left/Right paradigm so favoured by those who want to divide the populace into pro-this and anti-that, honing in on what supposedly divides the minority instead of focusing on what unites the vast majority.

Hundreds of thousands of Australians didn't march in the streets of towns and cities across the nation in early 2003 because they wanted the United States to be defeated in Iraq. They marched because they didn't want Iraqis to be slaughtered in an illegal war. They knew they were being conned, by media like The Australian, and they knew that the War On Iraq would lead to massive civilian death tolls and untold suffering.

The 'pro-peace' movement so despised by an ever depleting slice of Australian and American 'conservatives' are now supposed to be furious that the death rate of Iraqis is dropping?

This is maniacal spin of the most chilling kind.

The editor of The Australian, Chris Mitchell, is deploying his version of the fabled "six more months" argument rolled out by so many talking heads on American news shows through the past four years. If we stay "six more months" everything will be just wonderful and dreamy.

To try and now claim that the pro-peace movement is disappointed by the very recent reduction in Iraqi civilian deaths is just plain bizarre, and incredibly insulting to every Australian war veteran (thousands of them) who protested the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq because they knew, from experience, that war simply doesn't work when it comes to solving a problem like that posed by Saddam Hussein and his alleged arsenal of WMDs. The very same veterans who shook their heads in disgust when newspapers like The Australian enthusiastically pumped the fable that the Iraq War would have only a small number of civilian deaths.

It's not the pro-peace movement who have to rethink their positions on the War On Iraq. Their concerns and fears were proven right by the hundreds of thousands of civilians killed or maimed, the appalling insurgency, the horrific humanitarian crisis, the millions more who were forced to flee their homes and their country and the continuing destruction of the nation's infrastructure.

It is the pro-war mob who have to admit that they were wrong to back an illegal war against a mostly defenceless country, in the face of untold warnings about NeoCon lies on WMDs, and of the tribal and ethnic massacres and guerilla warfare that would inevitably follow the invasion.

Chris Mitchell also writes :

It is far too early to declare victory...

Declare victory? Nobody, except Murdoch mouthpieces like Chris Mitchell, is ever going to officially declare 'Victory' in the War On Iraq.

Not even President Bush mentions the 'V' word much any more.

War was not the right answer when it came to Iraq, no matter how much those who were so very involved in dispensing and pumping the BushCo. propaganda campaign in this country, like Chris Mitchell, to try and dupe Australians into backing the Iraq War fiasco, want to believe it all worked out for the best.

Chris Mitchell and the massed ranks Murdoch propagandists failed to get even one-third of the country on side back in early 2003 to support the illegal invasion, and they fail still in their gruesome efforts to find diamonds amongst all the death and destruction unleashed upon Iraq.

Mitchell should be ashamed of himself.


The Suicide Soldier Epidemic : 6000 'War On Terror' Veterans Killed Themselves In 2005

From Minor Scuffles To A Mainstream Death Match...

'The Australian' Vs The Blogstream War Has Begun

The shift from back-alley sniper and tripwire insurgency to full blown street fighting in the war between 'The Australian' newspaper online and the thin ranks of the local political blogstream began yesterday with this post from Peter Brent at Mumble, talking about a call he got from The Australian newspaper :

A courtesy call from Editor-in-Chief Chris Mitchell this morning informed me that the paper is going to “go” Charles Richardson (from Crikey) and me tomorrow. Chris said by all means criticise the paper, but my “personal” attacks on Dennis had gone too far, and the paper will now go me “personally”.

No, I’m not making this up.

All very strange. And - I’d be lying if I didn’t admit - a little stomach-churning.

Why would Christ Mitchell choose to "go" Peter Brent "personally", along with Richardson from Crikey?

Because Brent and Richardson, and Crikey in general, dared to critique the way the editorial team of The Australian newspaper interprets the results of Newspoll, and last Monday's Newspoll in particular:

The latest Newspoll shows Mr Howard has closed the gap on Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd, who is now ahead by just one point, 43 per cent to 42, as preferred prime minister.

However, the opposition leader still holds a greater satisfaction rating, 60 per cent to Mr Howard's 46 per cent, and Labor retains an election-winning lead.

A fleet of opinionists from The Australian openly cheered the polls as showing Howard firmly on the comeback trail, whereas the real truth is that he is still flat-lining. The majority of .Australians don't trust Howard, and they don't want to vote for him or his government again. The Australian newspaper did not reflect, or headline, those very simple facts.

There was the usual barrage of blog posts bagging The Australian. Nothing unusual about that kind of criticism from the political blogstream.

Here was Crikey's take on July 10 :

The front page of today's Australian newspaper and its reporting of the latest Newspoll has prompted a range of reactions, from shock at the sheer mendacity of its main headline ''Howard checks Rudd's march'' to muffled awe at the paper's continuing ability to pluck some shred of glass-half-full optimism from the ongoing cataclysm of the Liberal Party's federal polling. All of which is no more or less than one might expect from the country's unofficial conservative organ.

The Australian shows a clear and undeniable bias towards the Howard government in the opinions, but most particularly in the headlines, which is what most people see and read. Most in the Australian political blogstream accept this. No big deal. Another Newspoll, another bad result for Howard Corp. polished to a dull glow of hope by The Australian's front page and headline writers. Life goes on.

But Chris Mitchell thought the wave of criticism was a very big deal indeed.

This time, for reasons still unclear, the editor in chief of 'The Australian' decided to try a shock and awe attack, decapitation strike on the still-below-the-mainstream-radar political blogstream.

Peter Brent, from Mumble, is a respected commenter of political polling for most political bloggers and dozens of poll addicts, and it is hard to see why Mitchell would see him as some kind of threat worthy of such a response, where at best Brent might be seen as a mild stainer of the newspaper's credibility. Brent's readership online is small, less than a thousand per day.

Well, Brent's readership was small, until Chris Mitchell went into meltdown mode :

Online prejudice no substitute for real work

THE measure of good journalism is objectivity and a fearless regard for truth. Bias, nonetheless, is in the eye of the beholder and some people will always see conspiracy when the facts don't suit their view of the world. This is the affliction that has gripped, to a large measure, Australia's online news commentariat that has found passing endless comment on other people's work preferable to breaking real stories and adding to society's pool of knowledge.

Stunning, and hilarious. Welcome to the blogstream, Mr Mitchell.

Mitchell stayed true to his 'threat' over the phone to Brent. His editorial did get personal :

"woolly-headed critics", "the one-eyed anti-Howard cheer squad", "masquerading as serious online political commentary" "smug" "self-assured" "delusional swagger".

No bias, and clearly cooler heads at The Australian, right?

Well, what about this :

As a newspaper we don't know who we will support at the federal election.

Why, if you are an unbiased newspaper, are you going to support either party? Or any politician, for that matter, running for a seat, or the big seat?

Of course, this editorial is in The Australian, and Mitchell, like so many other opionists in The Australian are still fighting the sort of 'Left Vs Right' battles most adults dispensed with once university was over.

Mitchell can't seem to comprehend that the vast majority of Australians now live in a world where they will vote, and voice their support, for the political party that most often voices their concerns and most actively appears to be looking after their future, and the future of Australia for their children. Labor and Liberal generational votes are all but dead. Left Vs Right? Irrelevant today, as it has been for good decade.

Mitchell should have just called his editorial "Those Bloody Lefties!"

The self appointed experts online come instead from the extreme Left, populated as many sites are by sheltered academics and failed journalists who would not get a job on a real newspaper. We fully expect that if anything goes wrong for Mr Rudd in the campaign this year we will be blamed for Labor's misfortune.

It reflects how out of touch with ordinary views so many on-line commentators are.

...they should not kid themselves they are engaged in proper journalism and real reporting.

That is probably the strangest comment of all. How many bloggers in Australian regard themselves as "proper" journalists anyway? Not many, I would presume.

Most bloggers don't have the time or resources to practice journalism, by whatever standard Mitchell thinks applies here. He misses one of the key missions, and American success stories, of independent political and news blogging - to keep a check on the mainstream media, and to inform the readers of the news they might have missed, or issues they believe their readers should be aware of. It's not complicated, and it's certainly not the big conspiracy that Mitchell appears to believe it is.

Here's Mitchell again :

On almost every issue it is difficult not to conclude that most of the electronic offerings that feed off the work of The Australian to create their own content are a waste of time.

So why go on and on about them, then? Because he's worried.

Why does Mitchell feel so threatened? And if he's right about them being such a waste of time, why are so many of the "electronic offerings" experiencing signs of real growth in readership?

Because Australians, like Americans last year, are bored with the mainstream media and no longer believe that most of what they read in the newspapers is truth. The blogstream allows news followers to see other sides to dominant opinion threads, like those so often found in The Australian, and to pick up links to other news resources, or other blogs, that will expand their knowledge on the issues that interest them.

Plus, bloggers can cut loose in ways that still seem unacceptable or too over-the-top for staid, tired newspapers.

Not to forget, of course, that the blogstream allows readers to instantly voice their own views on a subject, or news story, and to engage in exchange with other readers of the blogs they visit.

Mitchell must have known that by devoting his entire lead editorial to trying to bitchslap the blogstream into behaving itself that he would instead give it new life, new readership, new focus and fresh attention from the mainstream of Australia.

You've got to love the irony, too, of Mitchell complaining about the blogstream calling The Australian a biased media institution. His own newspaper has devoted literally hundreds of editorials in the past seven or eight years to endless whining about the 'bias' on show at the ABC.

Of course, when The Australian is accused of letting its bias towards the conservative government show far too often, Mitchell goes fullcore berko.


But it's all a bit too late for Mitchell to start claiming The Australian does not have a politically-motivated bias towards the Howard government.

John Howard clearly thinks The Australian is biased in favour of his government and its generally unpopular policies. Here's Howard on the ABC in March, 2006 :

"I think back over the last 10 years that this government has been in office and I think of the positions taken by The Australian newspaper. It has been broadly supportive, generously so, of the government's economic reform agenda. And it has been a strong supporter, consistently... of industrial relations reform. Its only criticism of the government is that it might not have gone far enough."

And here's Chris Mitchell himself keelhauling his own 'We're Not Biased' editorial on The Media Report :

I think editorially and on the Op Ed page, we are right-of-centre. I don't think it's particularly far right, I think some people say that, but I think on a world kind of view you'd say we're probably pretty much where The Wall Street Journal, or The Telegraph in London are. So, you know, centre-right. I think that's a good position for us to be....

Well, not if you want to write editorials claiming to be unbiased.


A lot of the anger and venting in the blogstream over The Australian's twisting and reframing of the Newspoll results was stirred up by this column from Dennis O'Shanahan in the The Australian yesterday.

Somebody didn't like the scale of the comments that post attracted, because it was closed down yesterday, by 11.32am, with this abrupt message :

Commenting for this article is no longer available, try one of the articles below for more from the Dennis Shanahan blog.

16 comments appeared on the blog in less than one hour. Most were negative, hammering Shanahan for spinning the Newspoll results to create the impression that Howard and his government were making a comeback.

Today's 'shock and awe' editorial from Mitchell was trailered yesterday in Shanahan's column :

Academics at arm’s length from the political and journalistic worlds can huff and puff about polls and poll reporting but they can’t deny the real world influence of those polls and the real interest politicians take in them.

Journalistic worlds? What does that mean? That journalists from The Australian dwell in a world, a reality, that is removed from the everyday Australian world they are supposed to be reporting on? His defence became his own indictment.

More Shanahan self-defence :

The Australian and Newspoll (and I) have been right about election result after election result. It’s all the vindication we need. Just spare us the amateur and jaundiced analysis that can’t accept the numbers going in the opposite direction.

He ended his column with this :

Cheers to all those who engage in the great, democratic and political exercise of freedom of speech.

Ironic indeed considering they only took 55 minutes worth of comments and then pulled the plug on Shanahan's 'blog'.

You have to wonder why they chose to shut it down.

Too much freedom of speech from the punters?


When Mitchell's badly aimed firebombing of the local blogstream hit online this morning, Tim Dunlop at Blogocracy was one of the first out of the gate :

They defend themselves in the strongest possible terms and attack, specifically and generally, just about anyone who disagrees with them, particularly “Australia’s online news commentariat that has found passing endless comment on other people’s work preferable to breaking real stories and adding to society’s pool of knowledge.”

Dunlop blogs via news.com.au, the corporate homeland for 'The Australian'. For reasons unexplained so far, Dunlop's critique of fellow Murdochians at The Australian disappeared from the net early this morning. It briefly reappeared and has now disappeared completely. So much for freedom of speech, and The Australian being ready to accept criticism.

AB at The Road To Surfdom manned the mortars a short time after Dunlop :

Do these guys at News think their reading public has had a collective frontal lobotomy? Do they expect their customers to just swallow their biased, looney manipulations whole, without even chewing? Do they really despise their blog contributors as much as Shanahan makes out? Are they really so afraid of criticism that they’re prepared to “go” the humble Mumble?

The answer, it seems, is sadly “Yes”. What a pathetic bunch of losers. Their condescending and now outright feral attitude is the best evidence yet that their pet government is going out big time next election. Shanahan should be especially fearful, as it was him who took the credit for getting rid of Beazley and having Rudd installed as leader. That one’s come back to bite you on the arse, hasn’t it Dennis?

The Poll Bludger, one of the blogs that appears to be getting under the skin of Chris Mitchell, built an IED and buried it by the roadside, asking one of the most relevant, potent questions of the day :

The Australian – sober and experienced voice of reason, or craven mouthpiece of the crony capitalist military-industrial complex?

The comments from Poll Bludger's readers on Mitchell's shitfit are well worth a look.

Bryan at Oz Politics asks : "Is it just me, or does this seem just a touch too precious?"

Simon Jackman, another poll analyst and political scientist, comments : "Frankly, I’m surprised that the mainstream media are paying that much attention."

Exactly.

With Crikey, Mumble, Blogocracy, and a dozen other blogs putting in the boot since the beginning of the week, Chris Mitchell must have felt besieged. He was clearly rattled. He didn't write that editorial today for fun. He was trying to undermine any credibility given to the political blogstream, before too many people started paying attention. Like we said, it has already backfired, and badly.


Larvatus Prodeo went for a grind on The Australian's editorial interpretations of Newspoll results yesterday.

LP has been busy popularising the moniker 'Government Gazzette' for 'The Australian,' which is now being used by Crikey as well. That sort of branding clearly annoys Chris Mitchell.

LP commenter Youie noticed an interesting bleed of government spin and editorial echo at The Australian earlier this week :

I couldn’t help but note this remarkable coincidence. Alexander Downer’s opinion piece in yesterday’s [Monday’s] Australian said of Rudd: “He used his trip merely as a media opportunity - all sizzle, no sausage.”

Today [Tuesday], three sentences into his piece, Shanahan says: “But voters drawn to the Rudd barbecue by the sizzle and smell of onions may now be looking for the sausage.”

The howls of 'Government Gazette' only increased after that effort.

For Mitchell, that should have been beyond embarrassing. Perhaps that echo chambering of government ministers also inspired his attack today.


Chris Mitchell made a serious tactical error, by running his rant as the main editorial. American newspaper editors learned all too late never to show your throat to the political blogstream. Now we now how rattled he is, we're not going to forget it.

Through the hundreds of comments up at various Aussie blogs today, it's clear the blog readers believe some serious blows have been landed in recent months against the credibility of how The Australian's editorial team interprets and billboards Newspoll results. Mitchell's throbbing forehead reaction proves it.

But, as pointed out above, there is an underlying theme to the comments : Why does Chris Mitchell give a shit what Mumble or Crikey or LP contributors think about how The Australian interprets the polls? The collective daily online readership of all the main political blogs, including Crikey, would barely crack 40,000. But those numbers are rising every week.

Has Mitchell seen the writing on the wall? That more and more Australians are turning to non-newspaper blogs to get some perspective, or 'alternative views'?

The Australian readerships of Australian blogs are rising, with Crikey and LP probably doing better than most, and it's likely Australian blog readership will blossom during the coming federal election, when the mainstream media begin seriously hyping the power of blogs and the internet to impact on the outcome of the elections. It remains to be seen whether the blogstream will have an impact on the elections, but the media is going to run with this story anyway. It's now part of the election coverage cycle, as set down by the American news channels.

Mitchell gave the rest of the media its starting point today. Is the Australian political blogstream worth being listened to, or not? Mitchell did the blogstream a huge favour by claiming that, for the most part, they're not worthy of your attention. When people read such warnings, the usual response is to think 'Well, why aren't they? Why is this guy telling me not to pay attention them? Am I missing out on something?'


As a multitude of blog comments, on the various blogs linked above, point out, Mitchell allowed himself to come over as "wussy", "petty", sensitive", "sooky" and so on. It was one of the weaker editorials from Mitchell, who can usually frame his arguments with clarity and perspective. He raised an argument against the political blogstream in Australia and failed to make enough relevant points to impact negatively.

He panicked and went on the defensive, and on the attack. And he failed mightily on both fronts.

Again, why does Mitchell even care about a bunch of blogs pulling a few thousand readers a day?


Mitchell not only showed his paranoia and his fears about how the Australian media landscape will be impacted by the political blogstream, he exposed his throat and he sparked a debate he has all but no chance of winning, and in turn, he's given some truth to the widespread belief that the editorial team of The Australian (with the except of Matt Price) simply do not like blogs. More so, they don't like the fact that Rupert Murdoch forced them to shift most of the daily editorials and opinion pieces into a blog format, from which Murdoch knows he will see increased online ad revenue. The more people who comment, the more fiery the arguments and debates under the columns get, the more ad revenue hitting the News Limited bank accounts.

In the past few months, with some of The Australian's columns and editorials ratcheting up 300 and 400+ comments, the actual opinions of the columnist tend to take a backseat to what the commenters are saying to each other. Matt Price gets involved in the ruckus below his own words more than anyone else from The Australian editorial team, and appears to enjoy the exchanges. But most of the rest don't return get involved at all, letting the commenters rock around in a free-for-all.

Digital democracy has come hard and fast to The Australian, and they don't like the fact that on an average Newspoll day more than 80% (my rough estimate) of the comments aired on the boards portray a highly opinionated, often venomous, sprawl of Australian readers who simply do not agree with the way The Australian editorial team interprets the Newspoll results, and regularly claim that the writers are spinning for Howard Corp.

It'll be interesting to watch the mainstream media and blogstream reactions to all this in the next few days.

One thing is now certain.

The Blogstream Vs The Mainstream Media wars in Australia have begun.