I might not go as far as saying it necessarily robs people of democratic franchise, but certainly there is an impact and on occasion that characterisation would be right. CT has never been particularly reliable on such issues. The possible link between what it reports and where it sources revenue is worrying. I don’t know enough to comment but I’d be interested to hear from other rioters.

I don’t know what “Government contracts” are being referred to – the latest round of “efficiencies” in late 2011 removed newspaper advertising for jobs. This says nothing about recruitment agencies advertising on their behalf, but it’s a long bow to draw to say that this influences editorial content in any way.

gungsuperstar said :

I don’t know what “Government contracts” are being referred to – the latest round of “efficiencies” in late 2011 removed newspaper advertising for jobs. This says nothing about recruitment agencies advertising on their behalf, but it’s a long bow to draw to say that this influences editorial content in any way.

Talking about ACT Government, not federal, and not about job ads.

I do like the inadvertent link of ‘WELCOME THE SNAKE’ with ‘Coe set to lead the ACT Liberals’. Top work. Wrong snake chaps, but still funny.

No. 1.

Quite unbelieavable that they can be so wrong so often.

Seriously, they are not even close, ever….

On the plus side, this does demonstrate the importance of the old paper media. They were quick to remove all trace of the headline and story online, but ink and paper lives on to reveal the folly of their efforts.

Conspiracy theories aside, I assume someone pressed the wrong button – this is the headline they meant to run in about three years time, when the Liberals prepare themselves to throw another election.

To say that newspapers’ narratives can rob ‘participants’ of their democratic franchise is a bit rich.

I’m not entirely sure who you mean by ‘participants’, but I’m guessing you mean the electorate. In the case of this prediction, the electorate has no say. It is up to the Liberal Party and the Liberal Party alone who they wish to follow, so a leadership change, speculative or not, is no one’s business but members of the Liberal Party until after the fact. This is a democratic process in which most of us were never enfranchised in the first place, so we’ve hardly been robbed of an enfranchisement.

And if by ‘participants’ you mean members of the Liberal Party, who are indeed enfranchised, even they are not robbed of their enfranchisement. They will still, just as the other half of their insipid little duopoly did at the federal level in 2010, vote on whichever dim-witted freak of nature they would like to follow, regardless of how many black marks on bleached dead trees tell them how they will vote.

Does, or would, the RiotACT refuse to accept government advertising if it was offered? I assume it would have to, given the many times that JB has suggested (without evidence) that government advertising buys editorial intervention.

c_c™ said :

On the plus side, this does demonstrate the importance of the old paper media. They were quick to remove all trace of the headline and story online, but ink and paper lives on to reveal the folly of their efforts.

Well I found the article within seconds:
http://www.canberratimes.com.au/act-news/coe-set-to-lead-the-act-liberals-20130210-2e6v8.html
How is that “remove all trace”?

Not defending their article, but this assertion is a lot like the “cattle guard” hoax doing the rounds on Facebook…

Oh we’ve had the odd dribble of government advertising.

But it’s a very tiny proportion of our income, and we don’t go making bold assertions at the expense of other democratic mandates while getting it wrong at anything like the same rate.

I think a conspiracy is a bit over the top for pathetically poor journalism. The journalist has tried to hit back identifying sources within the Liberal party that gave her the information. She took their word as gospel instead of treating it as one source of information that warranted checking. The fact that democracy on this occasion and at the election ignored the CT says it all.

grass said :

I think a conspiracy is a bit over the top for pathetically poor journalism. The journalist has tried to hit back identifying sources within the Liberal party that gave her the information. She took their word as gospel instead of treating it as one source of information that warranted checking. The fact that democracy on this occasion and at the election ignored the CT says it all.

Lisa Lisa Lisa…admit that you got it wrong and move on! Blaming someone else is obviously what you’re trying to do here, but you’re the reporter. It’s your responsibility to, in the Prime Minister’s words, not write crap!

It is the size of the market and size of the subject that are the problems. When there are so few sources and so few votes counting toward the internal leadership election outcome, it is very easy (or necessary) to inflate the importance and reliability of any one source.

In Federal Parliament, you could literally contact hundreds of pollies and gain an idea of what has been said in Caucus. When you are dealing with so few, any info will be skewed.

MTK said :

It is the size of the market and size of the subject that are the problems. When there are so few sources and so few votes counting toward the internal leadership election outcome, it is very easy (or necessary) to inflate the importance and reliability of any one source.

In Federal Parliament, you could literally contact hundreds of pollies and gain an idea of what has been said in Caucus. When you are dealing with so few, any info will be skewed.

Don’t make excuses for them. The size of the market and the size of the subject are not the problems. The problem is that the “journalists” working at the CT are not good at their jobs, plain and simple.