Our Media Glass House researchers are prepared to go out on a limb about the future of a longstanding and lucrative feature of the Murdoch media’s Brisbane turdbloid The Courier-Mail, but they reckon they are on solid ground, even while admitting to badly mixing their metaphors.
Every single member of our MGH team believes that someone in News Crap Australia will very soon pick up a phone to break the news to retail fridgillionaire Gerry Harvey that the right-wing fishwrapper will no longer be publishing front-page adverts for his national Harvey Norman homewares chain.
How Mr Harvey will react is anyone’s guess. Will he pull all his ads from the struggling turdbloid?
Who knows? But what our MGH teams are certain about is that shutting down the goldmine that is the guaranteed Harvey Norman front page ads is the only way The Courier-Mail can fit more pro-LNP stories in prominent positions than it’s already publishing.
Short of changing its masthead to The LNP Times – which is a live option – there is little more the Courier can do* to more enthusiastically act as the LNP’s ad agency than it is doing already.
But devoting more front page editorial real estate to LNP advertisements is one extra little bit of help the paper can give the party that’s been rejected repeatedly by voters.
You can see for yourself (main image above) the severe restriction the current arrangement imposes. So Gerry has to go.
Don’t believe us? Check out Wednesday’s edition this week which took the Courier’s pro-LNP campaign to a new level.
It gave front-page prominence to LNP leader David Crisafulli’s policy on the Queensland public service and a big double-page spread inside. (below)
The story was an advertisement to let readers know that David Crisafulli claims he won’t be sacking 14,000 public sector jobs like former LNP premier Campbell Newman did almost immediately after winning the 2012 Queensland election after solemnly promising before the poll that he wouldn’t.
But our MGH teams think the accompanying editorial fully backing (as usual) the LNP and its leader should convince any doubters that the LNP and The Courier-Mail are basically one and the same.
In it the Courier declares: “No doubt Labor will again lie to the electorate next year – as they have every election since 2015 – and claim the LNP is still committed to sacking public servants.” (below)
Our MGH teams point to the word “lie” and ask why the editorial could not have instead said that Labor would again “repeatedly claim” the LNP would sack public servants, or that it would repeatedly “accuse the LNP of having a secret plan to sack workers”? Both would be factual and objective summaries of Labor’s tactics.
Our MGH researchers believe that by using the word “lie” The Courier-Mail is behaving like an anti-Labor party, namely the LNP, and not an independent observer of this specific debate.
Much was made in the Courier’s story about Crisafulli’s statement that there would be no forced redundancies if he wins in October 2024.
Anyone unfamiliar with the saga of the Newman sackings might care to examine the LNP’s public sector policy brochure for the 2012 election (below) which said exactly the same thing Crisafulli is saying now.
Newman went further before polling day and personally told public sector unions that they had nothing to fear from an LNP government.
Then just months into the LNP’s term in office his first state budget cut 14,000 positions in the public sector.
So Labor in a political sense is spot on when it suggests voters might like to ingest a very small quantity of salt when assessing Crisafulli and the LNP’s current promises.
Some readers of The Bug may quibble with the assessment that The Courier-Mail is the Bowen Hills branch of the LNP or its ad agency.
But to that our MGH researchers say none of them can recall The Courier-Mail ever applying the words lie or liar to former prime minister Scott Morrison even after most Australians, including many in his own party, came to instantly recognise the tell-tale sign that he was lying his head off – his mouth was open and he was speaking.
* NOTE: Not to be confused with “Can Do” Campbell Newman
Want to be alerted immediately a new blog hits Australia’s longest running and most offensive satire site? Simply click on the Follow sign or the link below to be emailed new yarns the moment they are uploaded! The very second we go far too far – and trust us we will – you can then quickly unfollow via the three dots!
The Bug Online 