… while David sneers!

Do you know what’s really a horrible, horrible place right now, David Speers?

It’s not Twitter. It’s Australia’s mainstream media.

Over recent decades, it’s eschewed all the basic principles of journalism, becoming a heavily biased, rightwing place filled with overpaid, puffed up pretenders pushing rightwing ideology.

I’m now ashamed of the craft I hope I tried to ply with integrity my entire working life.

And if you can’t see the woeful current state of our mainstream mediocre for what is sadly is, you spent too much time working at SkyNews Australia or have held strong rightwing views yourself for quite a while. It’s likely both, of course. You wouldn’t have got a gig at Sky otherwise.

If you and your Insiders panellists the other Sunday – caught out by a hot mike delighting in bagging Twitter, and in the process telling red hot and easily debunked lies about the character of those who tweet and the numbers involved – think the nation’s MSM is in a rosy and healthy state and you are all God’s gifts to peerless reporting, then you’ve all spent too much time under hot studio lights.

Answer us this, David. And the countless MSM scribes who have joined in on the pile-on of social media and not just Twitter over quite a while now can file their responses too.

Do you really think that with the firing gun about to go off to start the Victorian election campaign, the likes of The Herald Sun, The Age, 3AW and other shock jocks and sadly, yes, even elements within the ABC, are going to give Daniel Andrews, as Kevin Rudd might say, a fair shake of the sauce bottle?

Matthew Guy is clearly heading for a Danslide-level defeat of possibly historic levels – and rightly so because he’s an embarrassing lightweight who would probably botch selling a good policy if he could come up with one – yet the MSM is going to be doing its damnest to get him over the line.

If you doubt that’s going to happen, David, your thought processes are well and truly muddled.

Do you think the coverage across its news pages over the past three Queensland state elections by the LNP’s Bowen Hills branch, The Courier-Mail, has been fair and balanced, David? Shining examples of top-shelf, rolled gold journalism?

If you do, David, you’re a deadset goose.

If you thought the MSM’s performance during the last federal election campaign was exemplary, David, I’d humbly suggest you really have lost the plot.

Weren’t you amongst the countless MSM scribes totally convinced that Albanese’s first day “gaffe” on the hustings had basically cost him the election?

Ah, such collective wisdom from countless, supposedly unbiased and objective media observers skilled in the analysis of politics!

The Bug’s two twitterfeeds and its Facebook platforms got it right. Nonsense, countless Twitterers and Facebookers said. Not just a few hundred, David. A large, large, number with total followers in the many hundreds of thousands. Certainly a lot more than your current viewer numbers that appear to be in free fall.

The Bug‘s social media platforms got the effect of that first “gaffe” right. The first Newspoll after that first “gaffe” got it right.

But not the MSM. Albanese’s finished, the MSM choir continued to sing in full voice with each new Albanese “gaffe”.

Bullshit, The Bug’s social-media feed and particularly our Twitterati continued to argue.

Did you nod in agreement, David, when Nine Entertainment Co’s resident LNP apologists Phillip Coorey (the AFR) and Chris Uhlmann (Channel 9) repeatedly and wilfully pedalled a lie during the federal campaign that the polls pointed to a hung parliament when they did no such thing? Not at any stage.

Twitter called out these disgraceful attempts by these two rusted-on Tories to panic voters towards re-electing the Morrison government.

Is this the MSM you have so much time for, David?

Is this why you and your panellists sneer at Twitter and have such faith in themselves to bring to Australians a fair and balanced reports of political issues?

Sure, Twitter has its faults. It’s got its trolls, left and right. But even the worse of Twitter comes nowhere close to the bullshit LNP talking points pedalled by far too many MSM scribes across all media platforms. I won’t run a list of their names. It would take too long to read. Maybe it would be better to list the very small number of journalists in the MSM still trying to ply their craft the way it’s supposed to be plied, with a fierce adherence to the principles and ethics of journalism, rather than a fear of losing their well-paid jobs.

I gravely doubt, David, that you or the vast majority of the scribes you invite onto Insiders have any ability to push aside your arrogance and hubris and unwarranted self-confidence and at least try to see merit in what the Twitterverse is observing about modern-day Australian journalism and the criticisms it offers.

I’m very proud of the role Twitter played in the last federal election and continues to play in trying to bring some much-needed balance to an Australian MSM that’s currently fucked beyond repair.

Don Gordon-Brown

Speers: Ah, terrific. Let’s get a photo for those lovely folks on social media.

(panellists laugh)

Female panellist: Hi guys!

Speers: It’s a horrible, horrible place….

Another female panellist: Hi guys.

Speers: After years of copping it …no .. you just have to tell yourself there are hundreds of thousands watching and a few hundred tweets and you just have to remember…

Female panellist: It’s all anonymous accounts … it’s a very bad place with 40 people basically…

Speers: Forty people ….