Howling at Fairfax, the Labor party and the moon, in exclusive Oz style ...

(Above: hold the front page, another exclusive exclusive. Screen cap, no active links).


There's been a long-running joke in Crikey about the number of hot "exclusives" that litter the front page of the lizard digital edition of The Australian.

Any stray, innocent reader on the prowl today would stumble across four devaluations of the word (at time of writing), and perhaps take the word literally in its original sense, as opposed to its tawdry, devalued meaningless use in the rag.

Take the two exclusives co-joined at the hip and featured in the screen cap above.

References to the shipping of breeder cows to Indonesia being halted can be found on the ABC - under the header Export cattle stranded by dispute with Indonesia - back on August 14th, and that's with a few seconds googling.

Exclusive? New? Only in Chris Mitchell's tabloid heart.

As for Dennis "the tie" Shanahan talking to David Marr, what's so exclusive about that? It's one hack nattering to another hack, and that's about as exclusive as men peddling nonsense to each other in the front bar (or public bar if you will in your singleted, 'do they allow women into pubs and shearing sheds these days' way).

The other two "exclusives" on today's front page are equally risible. One's headed Industries want solar subsidies dumped, which seems to suggest that hacks scribbling on behalf of industry lobby groups is now an "exclusive" activity.

The other, headed Pub linked to money laundering, is a risibly badly shot and recorded "on the spot" interview regarding suspicions that a pub owned by Bruce Mathieson might be involved in money laundering through its gaming machines.

It's so exclusive it turned up on the HUN at the very same time, with an attribution to The Australian (and if you want a laugh, and to see a production that's almost as inept as the film that outraged the Muslim world, you can head to the HUN here, and view The Australian's exclusive exclusively on its sister rag. It's as dynamic as watching a top loading washing machine go about its business).

That's the trouble when you're in the grip of Kim Williams' new strategy:

A key step has been installing a "one city, one newsroom" strategy across our daily, Sunday and community products to produce and share content not just locally, but across the group nationally, and ultimately internationally. This is delivering high quality, relevant journalism to every audience we connect with on every device. (Remember the dream? Pdf via the AFR here).

It makes the concept of exclusivity to a single rag completely and exclusively meaningless.

At best there's an exclusive to the hive mind nationally and internationally, as the "exclusives" are rustled up and then shared around by an organisation that daily is down-sizing.

What the word really implies is the dull echo of a lost tabloid art rushing up from the depths of Chris Mitchell's tabloid mind.

Naturally all the "exclusives" attract the fickle paywall gold bar finger of fate, thereby proposing that punters pay or don't get an "exclusive" read - though they might be so teased and tantalised that they are driven by the "exclusive" tag to cheat and google their way around the Oz paywall.

That said, it completely escapes the pond why anyone would pay for a badly shot video with terrible sound which shouldn't even find a home in a Murdoch suburban rag.

Likewise the Shanahan on Marr chit chat completely ignores the elephant in the room. According to Shanahan:

The alacrity of the media to pursue the "gotcha" moment with Abbott and ignore the complex assessment of his character and prospects in Marr's essay sits oddly with the reluctance to pursue Marr's central finding in his earlier Quarterly Essay, "Power Trip: The Political Journey of Kevin Rudd", that the then Labor prime minister was driven by anger. Marr won a Walkley award for that essay.

Dammit. The pesky rotten "media" gets it wrong again!

But who is this "media"? Let the plot thicken:

 The first news report of Marr's 33,000-word Abbott essay in The Sydney Morning Herald on September 8 went straight to "the punch" incident and described it as a "hugely damaging allegation" for a political leader "still struggling to gain traction with female voters". Marr's remaining 32,650 words of thoughtful analysis and conclusion that Abbott was an "unlikely leader" heading to a "magnificent victory" were secondary to the new expose of his trouble with women.

Yes, it's that damned bunch of Fairfax conspirators, possibly aligned with the cardigan-wearers at the ABC, and almost certainly involved in a conspiracy with the ALP to do the modest, never exultant Tony Abbott as he heads to an unlikely but glorious victory:

Labor ministers Anthony Albanese, Tanya Plibersek, Nicola Roxon and Penny Wong all piled in as the media filled with stories and opinion pieces using Marr's essay as a platform but without any real reflection of its contents. One SMH opinion piece said Abbott would never get the trust of women because he would roll back abortion laws - yet one of Marr's considered conclusions is that "nothing will be done to roll back abortion rights because Politics Abbott knows that's simply not possible".

Not a word about the Murdoch press, or its reaction, or the simple-minded defensiveness that littered the pages of The Australian as it dawned that the glorious leader might have taken a hit from an unexpected quarter, and so it must mount a vigorous, way over the top defence, delivered as the pond wandered back to Australia, and realised it was trapped, trapped by the vicious bleating hive mind.

The result? Well it's a bit like the way the Islamic hordes have done more to publicise a completely useless and unwatchable video on YouTube than its original creators could ever have managed or anticipated.

The uproar about the wall-punch has dominated the Murdoch press, as their darling takes a hit, and they still can't let it, the essay or Marr go quietly into the night. There's still blood to be let, upper cuts to be delivered, scoring punches and haymakers to be flung.

And so in his inimitable way, Shanahan uses the chance of an "interview" with Marr, to yammer on about Anthony Albanese, student days, naughty "student" politics by the ALP, and a press conference where all fifteen questions to Tony Abbott were about that fatal wall-punch.

Which begs the question. Were there no intelligent News Ltd journalists in the room that day, and if there were, was not one of them capable of asking an alternative, intelligent question on other matters? And if there were, why doesn't Shanahan name and shame them for the inept News lackeys they are?

Instead Michelle Grattan gets a mention in this reminder that the wheels of News Ltd journalists grind slowly and excessively minutely, and old grudges are remembered and treasured and wheeled out like smelly old socks tucked under the bed:

Caught in the whirlwind of Labor's bad polling earlier this year, Michelle Grattan called for Gillard to resign as Prime Minister for the good of Labor yet last month maintained Gillard had nothing to answer over the establishment of the union slush fund.

What on earth does that have to do with a story about David Marr and his essay about Abbott and that fatal punch?

Absolutely bloody nothing, and it's such a gratuitous detour that Shanahan doesn't even bother to try to work back to the main theme of his piece. Instead he baldly produces a bald closing par:

Marr remains optimistic, telling The Australian: "An essay of this kind is a thoughtful and complex work and it takes time to be absorbed."

Not if he keeps talking to The Australian it won't. Shanahan has already drunk so much kool-aid he's incapable of absorbing anything, and as for contemplating issues or an essay in a thoughtful or complex way, reading this "exclusive" by Shanahan will set you straight right away.

It's just more resentful brooding about the way Fairfax has failed to hail the conquering hero, and it's lead to all sorts of consequences.

Try this one on for size:

It's fair to assume the garbled and damaging reaction to Marr's essay was at the forefront yesterday when Mr Abbott decided to act decisively and send a message to his frontbenchers by sacking long-time ally Cory Bernardi for ill-discipline.

At the forefront? As opposed to say reading Senator Bernardi's actual disgraceful speech?

How does Marr feel about the proposal that his essay led to the sacking of Cory Bernardi for proposing that gay marriage would lead to people getting married to their cats, dogs and possibly their canaries?

Who knows, but if you've paid hard-earned cash to read this sort of speculative nonsense, you must either be rich enough to burn money, or dumb enough to think howling at Fairfax, the ABC and the moon is somehow an exclusive activity ...

(Below: speaking of kool-aid, kids, there's heaps of fun to be had with Kool-Aid Man defeating the thirsties. More here).