Malcolm.

We were musing on just this issue tonite before I saw your piece. About the 24 hour news cycle.

Seems to me that there is a solution. LEADERSHIP.

The right sort of confident leader can push past all this BS. Imagine how a Winston Churchill, a Maggie Thatcher, even a Bob Hawke or a Paul Keating would handle this issue.

All would just press on, doing what they know to be right, and dismiss the superficial, sensation oriented media. They would inspire confidence in their team. Develop robust strategies for coping.

That's the problem. We don't have leaders with the right kind of gravitas/confidence. We don't have leaders who are prepared to stand on principles and sound policies. Who trust the people to support them, whatever the media says.

Where are those leaders? Perhaps they are on the Coalition side. But it would appear not on the Labor/Greens side. Especially Labor seems to be pushed and pulled by the polls.

PS. The best definition of leadership I ever saw was from Charles De Gaulle. He said: "A leader is someone who knows what to do".

Hard to beat.

how a Winston Churchill, a Maggie Thatcher, even a Bob Hawke or a Paul Keating would handle this issue.
Herbert Stencil,
I imagine they'd use in their usual style but like most wit it is lost in the mentality of today's society. In order to get a message through you need a medium & today's society just doesn't have it.

Malcolm, the “laying of blame game” often reflects badly because it is externalized. Much better to hear about “accepting responsibility” because that tells us someone is at the very least, asking the right questions from an internal perspective.

Whether or not the MSM accepts its share of responsibility is not the issue. We have a huge range of local and international issues that suffer the same fate, a partisan perspective reflected in our media. Whilst ever the MSM perceives newsworthy issues as things that either support their perspective or oppose it, we will continue to suffer the outcomes.

Those outcomes are, publish it, censor it or spin it. If this remains as their principle MO, they will continue to inflict self harm and decline.

To blame media pain on politicians for lack of leadership, big oil, banks, or the readership (customers) for lack of intelligence is just “The March of Folly”.

At this point in time the MSM does not deserve to survive in its current form. At one time they sucked, now they really suck