Who would have thought that one of the nation’s most respected media trainers could be so comprehensively hoodwinked by the media he gets paid to manipulate and manage for clients?

The MGH is forced to pose that question after regular ABC News Breakfast “what the papers say” presenter Steve Carey declared this morning that the pollsters had got the Victorian state election terribly, terribly wrong.

Steve, could you please turn to camera 2 and repeat after us: “I’m a fucking dunce. The polls didn’t get it wrong at all. Those that came out in the final week and on poll eve were pretty much spot on, certainly within the margin of error.”

And what did we get from this master media manipulator instead: “How did we get it so badly wrong!”

Steve spent some of his time on air explaining how electors can easily be caught up in the mainstream media bubble of election reporting – sucked in by the hyperbole, the sensationalism and the controversy that media happily craves and creates – without any apparent awareness that he too had lost sight of reality from inside that bubble, conned in a sort of dumb Ron Burgundy way into believing that what the MSM was spreading was not only true but it was capable of swaying public opinion to its will.

Steve, we’re here to tell you that the MSM treated Victorian voters like mugs and has paid a big price for doing that.

Steve, according to his News Flash Media site, has presented ABC News, worked as a foreign correspondent, been supervising producer of Today Tonight and 7 Melbourne news director during a career spanning 35 years. That’s definitely a CV that suggests someone capable of seeing through MSM crap.

For Steve’s benefit, let’s look at two polls. Roy Morgan in the final week did show support for Andrews’ Labor government dipping but still with a 55-45 2PP lead. That’s Danslide territory, Steve.

The Newspoll on poll eve put paid to all the MSM nonsense about polls tightening, with Labor stretching out its primary vote lead to 38 to 35 and a 2PP lead of 54.5/45.5. That’s Danslide territory, Steve. Newspoll got the result at the end of counting on Saturday night pretty much spot on.

Sure, the Newspoll three weeks earlier had the two major sides on similar primary support but the 2PP was still very much in Labor’s favour – 54-46. That’s Danslide territory, Steve.

A respected media trainer/observer would never, ever, be sucked into believing that election contest outcomes can be decided by the Coorey-Uhlmann method, the one that deliberately and erroneously pushes a line that if the major parties are more or less equal on primaries, then hung parliaments and instability are likely and best avoided by voting Liberal. All total bullshit, of course. Perhaps Steve is a devotee of the Coorey-Uhlmann method; that might explain why he appears a little stunned by Saturday’s result.

Poor Steve. The bloke is supposed to be able to see through the media. Instead, he got sucked up inside all those thought bubbles a biased, unprofessional media was spewing out, about Andrews being on the nose – Toxic Dan! – biased and laughable exit polls showing him losing his seat; the LNP in with a shot; Guy coming home with a wet sail; the disgraceful personal attacks on Andrews and his honesty; the desperate push-polling to the very end.

The bottom line is that anyone who could dispassionately view that election campaign and the trainwreck that was the LNP’s campaign needed only their gut feelings and not three-and-a-half decades in the fourth estate to know that talk of an LNP surge in the final weeks simply had to be concocted nonsense from a corrupt, compromised media.

The supposed media trainer expert got sucked into the MSM’s bubble world and somehow missed the glaring obvious, including what the polls were showing and what the result was always going to be.

Steve gave potential clients no sign at all of any ability to see through MSM bullshit on their behalf; instead he disappeared from view under the sheer weight of its putrid pile-on.

Don Gordon-Brown