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!