Further to my carefully considered comments on the politicians’ credit card “scandal” story last week, I’m following it up with a little less subtlety and somewhat more anger and exasperation.
As this media-driven story runs on, the immaturity of the journalists chasing it becomes more obvious. Chasing Chris Carter around parliament to bombard him with demands that he apologise to the nation (for what, they are not clear), and then casting him in their TV news reports as evasive, having a “hissy fit”, or even in “meltdown” mode, just shows how childish and full of themselves these young journos are.
Watching them in action this past week, egged on by the older but ratings-driven John Campbell and Mark Sainsbury, made me realise just how young these media kids now are. Where are the wiser heads? The ones who can put it all in perspective, who can make the story more about the real issues and less about themselves?
Do they realise to what extent they can now control public perceptions? That they can selectively slant these stories to make them run on? They probably do, which is why they’re loving it.
The story of journos chasing Carter around parliament – justified by their bosses, when they were punished by parliament’s speaker with loss of their parking privileges, as being that they were trying to get information of “national importance” (give me a break!!) – has the appearance of seventh form kids running amok around their school having locked all the teachers in the gym. A sniff of their own power and they become centre of the universe.
I heard on radio that the trawl through the credit card receipts of politicians (which is probably showing that 99.9% of usages were perfectly legitimate, but who cares about them) showed one claimed by Gerry Brownlie when he (rather, we taxpayers) paid for drinks in a bar with some gallery journalists. Will that one come out? No way! Not when the knowing recipients of our public money were the journalists themselves!
