This is what the great spin doctor Edward Bernays called, “The conscious, intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses”.
Journalists will argue, this is “news”.
I would argue this is an issue deliberately manufactured by the PM & his comm’s team.
Let’s have a look at the amount of “news” dedicated to a trip Scott Morrison did not need to take during a time 2 batches of horror news for the govt were released.
There’s more fluff dedicated to our isolation martyr PM than the news the punters have all forgotten about.
You see, this is highly sophisticated stuff. The PM’s huge comms team don’t all sit around writing media releases.
They work off the data and focus groups and information they buy in.
It tells them which way Scott Morrison needs to pivot, what story he needs to sell this week.
The data/information they buy in will have told them Scott Morrison needs to work on certain areas of his image or reinforce others.
That will then be married with the government’s internal agenda and public opinion generally.
– Morrison needs to do something about China- Morrison needs to shore up our strategic alliances
– Morrison needs to promote Mathias Cormann with the OECD
– Morrison needs to play upon his image as the Covid leader
– Morrison has some negative focus that he isn’t “hard working” enough
-Morrison should reinforce Mr Ordinary
– the Morrison govt has 2 bad news items to dump; Robodebt & war crimes reports.
And what better way to do all of the above than to take a heroically unnecessary trip to Japan.
Why he can even lobby for Mathias with the Japanese as a member of the 1 in 4 OECD selection panel.
Scott Morrison does not answer to the news – he creates the news.
Last night on @60Mins, on his Instagram pages, all the saturation media coverage should tell you everything you need to know: this issue was manufactured by Scott Morrison’s office to meet all of their objectives.
Related
Feature image – Mike Tsikas
“News Corp is easily the most powerful political force in Australia — bigger than the major parties or the combined weight of the unions,” writes 30-year Labor strategist Bruce Hawker in The Rudd Rebellion, his recent book about the 2013 election. Source
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