CANBERRA: Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s closest advisers are this morning strategising how to get him back on the front foot after the press corp tore him to strips during an embarrassing and humiliating National Press Club speech here yesterday.

In what is being seen as Albanese’s first major stumble after his “Albolanche” on May 3, very senior members of the fourth estate laughed openly at the PM and shouted insults at him.

It all began when Albanese declared that vision of a Channel 9 reporter being shot in the leg with a rubber bullet during the Los Angeles civil unrest was horrific.

Laughter rippled around the room and AFR senior newsman Phillip Coorey stood to his feet to explain the reason for that. Visibly shaken, his voice wavering and clutching that famous photo of a young man waving his arms in the air as he was being burnt to death in a refugee tent city, Coorey shouted: “You’ve never said that this image is horrific!”

Veteran scribe Niki Savva quickly joined in, visibly shedding tears and brandishing the image of that young Palestinian girl fleeing the flames along the corridor of a bombed school that was being used as a refugee and who has apparently since been killed by Israel: “You didn’t call this horrific!”

Other members of the gallery joined in – Nine’s Charles Croucher, the ABC’s Jane Norman, Newscorpse’s Samantha Maiden, Michelle Gratten and too many others to name – holding up images of body bags of dozens of Gazan children and other brutal images of burnt and dismembered young bodies.

Albanese then looked down when his phone pinged and tried an argument obviously sent there by his media team.

“Canberra is only 12,000 or so kilometres away from Los Angeles so it’s easier to see horrific things that are happening there,” he argued weakly.

“As Penny Wong has mentioned many times, it’s much more difficult to get a handle on what’s going on in the Gaza strip seeing that is almost 2000 kilometres further away from us than LA.”

As more laugher echoed around the room, Albanese shouted: “Can any of you see things that are 2000 kilometres away with the naked eye?! Of course, you can’t.”

That proved too much for the media throng, with Coorey leading the chant of “Zionist!” that spread quickly around the room.

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