Fair Play or Out Of Bounds
January 28th, 2010 by Dennis
The ability of the media to ‘spark’ a controversy, and that of social media to ‘fuel it’ has rarely been better illustrated than the histrionics raging in Australian over the comments made by the new Leader of the Opposition, Tony Abbott, when asked the question: what advice would you give your daughters about sex before marriage.
The question was posed by The Australian Women’s Weekly when doing a personality piece on Abbott. His response [not to give away their virginity lightly] is, I would have thought on face value, acceptable enough fatherly wisdom.
However, when you are a politician, nothing is taken on face value.
As would be anticipated, the reaction to his comments has been as diverse as ‘a brilliant answer’ to ‘yet another self-acknowledged one-time drug-taking, Vatican roulette-playing, shagabout, white, middle-aged male telling young women not to do what he did when he was their age’ (an Australian comedian).
Now Abbott is an experienced politician, and his media minders are hardly likely to be lightweights, so it’s not unreasonable to assume he knew what sort of reaction he was likely to generate. The decision to answer the question the way he did had to be deliberate, and was designed to achieve a specific result.
Post coverage analysis will tell him whether he obtained what he set out to achieve.
By and large, New Zealand politicians have steadfastly refused to allow or inject their families into media coverage to raise their profile. In Australia, some at least are obviously not so reticent.
I think the Kiwi approach is the wiser.
What is of real interest to those of us who work in the media world is the power social media has to take the initial story, and fragment it into stories about politics, parenting, morality, religion, feminism, manipulation (of the media), hypocrisy and personal choice, to name a few.
For those who have doubts about the power of social media, have a read.
One only hopes that the media does not seek to prolong the controversy by asking Mrs Abbott and her three daughters as to their views on Mr Abbott’s musing. Enough is enough!
1. Where did the man on the street go?
In Ypres, 1914 a Christmas Eve ceasefire became the stuff of yuletide legend.
While the media still can’t get quite enough of the story, some quarters have gone quiet on Tiger Woods.
It’s been interesting to watch the sports media trying to take the Tiger Woods story to new levels – despite his almost complete silence on the matter, until this morning, that is, when he offered further comment. Until now, in the absence of any new information, the story had become one about him not talking to the media.
We’ve all heard plenty about the potential threat to the reputations of business and brands posed by new online tools.
Google’s Sidewiki, an application that appears as a browser sidebar where you can read and write entries along the side of a webpage, could become the ultimate platform for those who like to share their views and opinions. Brands and business had better sit up and take notice of this development.
First off, I need to state that I am a complete fence sitter when it comes to GMOs and Nuclear power. The way I see it is that in an ideal world, we would enjoy the potential benefits while we fully manage the risks. But reality is always less simple.
There is a fascinating story in today’s National Business Review about some alleged liquidation hi-jinks. Basically it is about the suitability of a parade of possible liquidators, but our interest is not in the substance of story but the issue of over-disclosure.
When a child does something they know is a bit naughty and are likely to get found out, we call this attention seeking behaviour. So could it be that the Hon Rodney Hide was seeking more than a suntan when he took his partner on the now contentious trip overseas?