Isentia Index: disasters from Forbes to Aleppo

Many of the flood images from Forbes and nearby areas this week have come from professional media, as they had plenty of time to get set up before the river peaked a couple of nights ago, and Parkes locals perhaps focused a little more on either evacuating or preparing their homes than taking the best smartphone snap to send to the media. Have we passed the peak of amateur images being used by professional media? Naaah.

The media didn’t find too many new things to say about the ongoing Syrian disaster, mainly focusing on the terrifying images coming from Aleppo, without too much focus on the reality that ISIS will eventually be, if not totally defeated, then at least rendered a fringe player in the longer fight between the Russia-backed Assad Government and the West-backed non-ISIS rebels.

Plenty of blowback for both the Government and Opposition in professional media and social media as the terms ‘debacle’, ‘dragging on’ and ‘political gameplaying’ were used widely this week to describe the continuing uncertainty over whether there will be a plebiscite on same sex marriage next year. If the fundamental aim was to minimise any potential harm of a drawn out debate and/or uncertainty, then it ain’t going so well so far.

Plenty of Twitter spikes and a reportedly massive audience for the first Presidential debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, with almost all the pundits saying Hillary won, with most of the focus in the latter stages on Trump’s tax returns, and statements he has made in the past about Iraq, climate change, etc. But even the pundits were pretty cautious to impute any real effect on voting intentions.

Another deal has been done by our new gold standard in pragmatic government (apart from the same-sex marriage issue), this time the Treasurer doing a deal with the Deputy PM to significantly soften the backpacker tax that had so many fruit and veg farmers up in arms.

The impending divorce of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie cracked the 10,000 items and was the fifth biggest story of the week (not counting the footy). We thought you’d like to know.