Friday, March 30, 2007

Modern Political Myths - a follow up

Yesterday I spoke of the myth that oppositions needed to play the media game, setting out an alternative path.

Oddly, this morning I listened to a radio discussion on Kevin Rudd, the leader of the Australian Labor opposition in the Australian Parliament. I was going to give you the audio, but ABC has the wrong material linked to to the download facility.

Anyway, the presenter (Fran Kelly), commentators (Malcolm Farr from The Daily Telegraph, Mark Reilly from the Seven Network and Michelle Grattan from The Age) and indeed the Government were struggling with Mr Rudd's low target approach. Essentially, Mr Rudd was refusing to make negative comments (this conflicts with the need for an attack dog approach) and was leaving it to his shadow ministers to make comments on issues (this conflicts with the simplified presidential approach).

Dear me, how sad. Fancy not playing the media game. Do you know, if you don't play by the rules, the media has to play by yours. And that was part of my point.

2 comments:

Lexcen said...

Obviously Mr Rudd doesn't realize that the media control public opinion.

Jim Belshaw said...

I do not kmow who Mr Rudd's media advisers are, Lexcen, but its a very clever prime ministerial approach.