This morning, Queensland Premier Campbell Newman called a snap early election for January 31. Today’s front page of The Courier-Mail, printed long before the Premier’s announcement, shows the News Corp rag is as well-connected as ever to the Coalition — rumour has it some government MPs even found out about the election by reading this morning’s paper.
And given yesterday’s front page, which screamed “Bikies back Labor for power”, it’s not hard to guess how the tabloid will lean over the next four weeks.
It’s far from the first time a Murdoch tabloid has attempted to smear the Labor party through a tenuous connection to a socially undesirable group. In the recent Victorian election, the Herald Sun ramped up coverage of the union heavyweights it claimed would run a Daniel Andrews government (the campaign against now-Premier Andrews clearly didn’t work). And in the last federal election, The Daily Telegraph didn’t shy away from putting Labor MPs in Nazi uniforms.
A few years back, we might have been concerned about the effect this kind of one-sided, smear-based coverage could have on the election outcome. But these papers hold less sway than they used to. Their circulations are falling, as is their public standing. After the last federal election, the Tele saw a precipitous drop in its measures of reader trust, according to iSentia surveys published in Crikey, which it recovered only as its election coverage faded from memory.
Yes, Brisbane is a one-paper town, but that doesn’t mean what it used to. Fairfax and The Guardian join the ABC as alternative sources of information this election, and provide some competition to the tabloid. If The Courier-Mail stretches credulity with one-sided reporting, we suspect its reputation will be what is most damaged.
Queensland’s Murdoch-only tabloids are going to be central to the LNP’s campaign. There’s plenty of money in the LNP kitty so the tabloids will be stupid if they don’t help themselves to as much as they can get.
The ALP’s problem will be convincing the electorate that its privatisation agenda from last election has been changed. Remember, it was a union campaign that mostly undermined Anna Bligh. Expansion of coal mining and CSG/LNG is very strongly supported by unions so there’s no way Labor will go soft on that – or the resulting environmental carnage at Gladstone and Abbot Point. The LNP government only looks bad compared with some imaginary Labor government from sometime around Peter Beattie, who, let’s face it, conned the pants off everyone, including old Joh Bjelke Petersen and half the National Party.
Labor voters left the ALP in droves at the last election. There’s no reason to assume they’ll ALL come back into the fold this time around. I’ll be amazed if PUP does anything much, Katter’s party maybe in the droughted bush, but maybe the Greens are poised to take a parliamentary seat in Queensland – because all the rest are just so hopelessly compromised.
Oh, Crikey, I do hope you’re right about the influence of Murdoch’s press!
“The sophistication of the electorate”? Check out Tips and Rumours – S.A. Greens Fisher by-election “How to Vote”?
[That Curry or Maul reputation? How much more can such a one-eyed politicised partisan hate/cantmedia player (with it’s couple of token progressives – for balance) be compromised?]