No one is seriously comparing the ethics of the media (run by sales) and doctors hopefully run by more a more altruistic agenda?
Gillard was pushed to the forefront to get votes. She got enough to just get in, thanks to the indies.
Rudd announces a some weeks ago he's had an epiphany, same sex marriage is okay by him, and it's taken this long for the labor *power players* to realise he's their best hope at the next bite of the cherry, because Tony ain't going to budge.
They just keep jumping to the next best thing instead of sticking to policies and their Labor agenda.
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The article discussing the journalist ethics in relation to Gillard, that's all.
It's an interesting and accurate take on what happened. That'a all.
The media can say that it is their job to impartially report what people say and do. This is true. But it is a failure of impartiality to suppress relevant available facts – in this case the known nature of this office-packing activity.
Impartiality is not achieved by passive neutrality. It is achieved by giving as full an account as possible, fairly and on the basis of an independent-minded assessment that gives due weight to all the available evidence.
The News Limited newspapers, especially The Australian, long ago gave up any pretence of impartiality in the coverage of national politics. They provided a regular diet of content calculated to turn voters against the former prime minister.
The Fairfax newspapers generally tried harder to be impartial, but there was a remarkable turnaround last week. The Age – as if its own pre-occupation with polls and personality politics had nothing to do with it – came out with a vacuous and hypocritical front page editorial saying that Gillard had to go, otherwise the voters would have no chance of focusing on the issues. Really.
While the mainstream media were thus engaged in their own systemic failings, elements of social media were sordid beyond description, wallowing in pornographic depictions of the prime minister and making slurs of the most degrading kind.
Fortunately the mainstream media kept well away from this material, but it showed how the licensing of vulgarity in public debate can lead to magnified crudity in social media. This, in turn, can create an atmosphere in which even lower standards of public debate are tolerated.
The media’s role in the demise of Julia Gillard as prime minister was complex. Part of it was a consequence of the media just doing its job. But part of it also was the result of ethical failures. These included crude abuse and incitement to hatred on commercial radio talkback, while among other mainstream media the failure of impartiality, failure of contextual accuracy, and the willingness to exploit rather than challenge debased public discourse.
