On IA: Weekly recap — 13 October

IA's digital editor Dan Jensen takes a look back at some of the most important stories through the week.

TRANSCRIPT

Hey, everyone. My name is Dan Jensen, digital editor for Independent Australia and let’s take a look at the week on IA.

After the NSW Government was recently shaken up by the resignations of both Gladys Berejiklian and John Barilaro, the mainstream media didn’t hesitate to give them a hero’s send-off.

Managing editor Michelle Pini talked about how the establishment media shirks the truth for sensationalist headlines in her latest editorial, where she wrote:

Never has the Coalition public relations machine that now occupies the nation’s Fourth Estate displayed more blatant bias and downright negligence than in the media coverage in the days following the implosion of the New South Wales Government. The shameless failure to hold the Premier, Deputy Premier and their entire Coalition Government to account after their respective resignations has been nothing short of breathtaking.

Michelle also took into account the way Victorian Premier Dan Andrews was targeted as a diversion from the collapse of the NSW Government. In a classic defence of “am not, you are”, Andrews was put under the spotlight for allegations of corruption. Several headlines in the Murdoch press criticised Andrews for letting the mental health of his state suffer, prompting Alan Austin to write a rebuttal proving that Victoria’s mental health has, in fact, improved.

After presenting his case using actual facts and statistics, Alan wrote:

‘The data confirms mental health has likely improved in Victoria through the pandemic and is now much better than in other states. The mainstream media are malicious, mendacious and wrong.’

Speaking of media, that of the social variety has been slammed by the nation’s so-called leaders this week after accusations were fired at Twitter and Facebook trolls pointing out the Government’s failures.

Dr Martin Hirst covered it in an article where he talked about the attack on free political speech, saying:

‘Twitter is not a sewer, but it is both the present and the future of the news ecosystem. The sooner everyone realises this and learns to live with it, the better.’

But columnist Andrew P Street brought up some great points in his latest piece where he discussed the hypocrisy of the LNP’s criticism of social media when various members have, in the past, been guilty of social media crimes themselves. In his article titled ‘A brief history of the Coalition’s fake social media accounts’, Andrew lists various politicians who were caught out using fake accounts to promote themselves or just being horrible people in general.

He wrote:

‘Of course, there are those who use fake social media accounts to send abuse and spread scurrilous lies about people. All sides of politics do it because it's a high-impact, low-risk thing to do and frustratingly hard to definitively prove.

But the problem with the Coalition declaring war on such people is that plenty of them are in the Coalition.’

Thanks for watching and don’t forget to subscribe to Independent Australia for more great content, all the links are in the description box below. See you next time!

Written and presented by Dan Jensen.

Follow digital editor Dan Jensen on Twitter @danjensenmovies. Follow Independent Australia on Twitter @independentaus and on Facebook HERE.