Andrew Bolt went in to bat for Prime Minister Scott Morrison again on Tuesday night. Picture: SKY NEWS.
The Federal Government is in full-scale damage control over the Christian Porter and Brittany Higgins scandals. And its apologists on Sky News can be counted on to be the front line of their defence.
“Again today we’ve seen supposedly impartial journalists blurring the lines entirely between opinion and news,” said Rita Panahi, attacking other media personalities for expressing disgust at rampant misogyny, masturbation and alleged rape behind the walls of our own Federal Parliament. Aren’t all those things objectively disgusting?
With their backs to the wall over a scandal which shows no sign of subsiding, government politicians are utilising a pulldown menu of survival tactics, from attacking the credibility of accusers to dredging up supposed instances of bullying in news organisations (otherwise known as ‘shooting the messenger’).
To this end, the government has been relying, among others, on the stable of glorified coalition spin doctors known as the Sky News primetime commentator line-up. Chris Kenny, Peta Credlin and Alan Jones have been counted upon as reliable foot soldiers in that cause, but Andrew Bolt is the general, having been accused (among others) by The Shot‘s Dave Milner of “providing cultural cover for every rapist that ever got away with it”.
So it was during tonight’s primetime broadcast, with Sky hosts utilising a variety of smokescreens.
Chris Kenny used ‘whataboutism’ – pointing out Labor’s hypocrisy on the issue without actually refuting its arguments – by citing the case of retiring Liberal MP Nicole Flint, who claims she was harassed out of politics by the Labor side.
“(Labor) is using this (scandal) to portray the entire Liberal Party as anti-women”, but there’s plenty of blame to go around, he added. Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese has repeatedly emphasised that misogyny and sexual misconduct are problems across all parties, and conceded Flint was treated poorly by Labor.
Next up was Panahi, filling in for Credlin, who proceeded to ‘shoot the messenger’ by blaming the leftist mainstream media for selectively inflaming the situation.
“(It’s been a) disgraceful performance from some members of the media pack that has lost any semblance of balance and objectivity”, she said.
“The same media is responsible for the Christian Porter witch-hunt (after) selectively releasing details from a dossier alleging he raped a woman when he was 17 years old”. The ABC denies cherry-picking the 31-page dossier.
This brings us to Andrew Bolt, who tonight employed that longtime favourite of propagandists, the ‘straw man’ argument.
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Bolt attacked one element of the debate – the call for gender quotas in Liberal pre-selections to help redress the party’s blokey culture – as though refuting that one ‘straw man’ would magically vanish the bigger problem he largely ignored: the crying need for an end to sexual misconduct within the walls of Parliament House.
“Scott Morrison … is now giving in to the whole agenda of the Left. Maybe yes to female quotas for politicians after all, maybe no to Christian Porter staying on as Attorney General,” Bolt said.
“Female quotas … have been anathema to the Liberal Party (which) believes in individual merit. (Morrison is) giving in, and what good is it doing?”
In case you were distracted by the above, here’s a reminder of what are currently the four key issues in this ever-developing scandal:
1. Rape allegations against Attorney General Porter surrounding a 1988 incident (which Porter emphatically denies happened) and against a government staffer by former colleague Brittany Higgins following an incident two years ago;
2. Accusations that the head of the Prime Minister’s department is trying to “cover-up” his inquiry into who knew about Higgins’ rape allegation and when by delaying it;
3. Masturbation on the desk of a female Liberal MP in Parliament House by a now-sacked staffer;
4. Prime Minister Scott Morrison tearfully citing his credentials as a family man who cares about women before, moments later, launching a false equivalence attack on News Corp (of all targets) over the bullying of a female employee. Don’t bite the hand that feeds you, Scott.
Other news organisations gave all four of these issues plentiful coverage – including, today, some News Corp outlets perhaps enraged by Morrison’s gratuitous attack on them.
Between them, Kenny, Panahi and Bolt acknowledged three of the four key issues above – ignoring, tellingly, the alleged “cover-up” of the ‘who-knew-what-and-when’ inquiry into Higgins’ allegations – but muddied the waters with their predictable use of ‘whataboutism’, ‘straw man’ arguments and ‘shooting the messenger’.
Encouragingly, other Australian media seem determined to bring government and perpetrators alike to account, and to promote change. That is, for the moment.
Therein lies the rub. If the government can ride out the news cycle and move on to more palatable matters with the help of its media enablers, Australia will have missed a rare opportunity to rectify decades of systemic misogyny and sexual misconduct. That can’t happen, and some in media, thankfully, seem determined that it won’t.
