Wink as a window into Abbott’s soul? No, but why let the facts get the better of Twitter?
mmmm
FOCUS on the PM’s tic was a media beat-up. But not in the eyes of social media afficionados.
When Kevin Rudd was booted from a strip club; Andrew Bolt recalls on Network Ten yesterday:
THAT was just Kevin being human.
When Tony Abbott winked. Tracey Spicer tweets lastWednesday:
WHAT would possess a person to do that? Un. F. king Believeable. Or not. We’ve always seen his black heart.
Fairfax’s Jonathan Swan on ABC TV’s Insiders yesterday explaining why the Spicers of the world pulled out the pitchforks:
IT’S an imagined window into this supposed black monstrous soul who despises women.
Swan explains why the non-story snowballed:
THIS is the problem with the way media works at the moment. There’s this moment and it’s captured, and then it feeds into social media and social media goes completely berserk — or Twitter goes berserk — and then the mainstream media is watching Twitter, the news directors are watching Twitter throughout the day, and so it feeds back into the news cycle.
Speaking of non-stories, Swan’s colleagues Phillip Thomson and Noel Towell follow up The Guardian’s allegations of favours for members of the Abbott family in the Fairfax Sunday papers:
SOME Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade staff are annoyed Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s daughter Louise is working at Australia’s embassy in Geneva.
The Prime Minister’s Office responds — and adds a question of its own:
A SPOKESWOMAN from the Prime Minister’s Office said: “The recruitment process was merit based and followed departmental procedures. I have nothing further to add except to say, if you have been assured that everything was transparent, above board and merits based, and the appointment was made during the term of a Labor government, exactly what is your story?”
Jonathan Swan critiques the two different yarns on the Abbott daughters:
THE story that I thought was completely outrageous was — and we published it, I’m not going to make any friends by saying this — the story about his other daughter, Louise Abbott, and some unnamed people at the Department of Foreign Affairs complaining about her career progression when she got given the job under Labor. I mean, that’s just scurrilous.
Speaking of jobs for the kids. Steve Lewis in the News Corp tabloids, August 1, 2013:
KEVIN Rudd has placed both his sons in key election roles in an “all-in-the-family” move that has ruffled feathers within Labor’s campaign team. Youngest son Marcus, 20, has joined the ALP’s digital campaign team ... The Prime Minister’s older son, Nicholas, 24, has been on the ALP payroll for several weeks as a key adviser to his father. Marcus has joined ... as a volunteer.
And a lesson in how talkback radio works from Rowan Dean on The Bolt Report on Ten:
IN talkback … there’s a whole lot of hand signals, gestures going on, nods, winks, all the rest of it because you are live on air ... Jon Faine raises an eyebrow, the only way Tony Abbott could have read that was “Do I pull the plug on this person or are you happy to run with it” and the only way Tony Abbott can respond, he’s thinking, he can’t say anything … he winks ... Jon Faine knows this. He knows full well what the Prime Minister was doing was not sleazy ...
Any time that you phone a talkback radio station your number comes up; if you have phoned it before and made comments about a certain thing the producers note it down so that next time your phone rings they know who you are and what you’ll be talking about.
In all likelihood the ABC knew precisely who this person was and what she was likely to talk about.
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