Politicians telling us to ‘turn the temperature down’ is peak hypocrisy – Amy Remeikis

Submitted ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨zero_gravitas@aussie.zone⁩ to ⁨australianpolitics@aussie.zone⁩

https://www.deepcutnews.com/p/politicians-telling-us-to-turn-down

Legitimate democratic dissent and pushback is not the fire, it’s the alarm. Suppressing alarms doesn’t put out the fire, it just leaves less time for us all to act.

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Nath@aussie.zone ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Pages 1-2 of The West Australian carried a similar message to this. ‘We are the press and it is our job to criticise the government’.

No. It is your job to inform people. Tell us what is going on. Tell us when there are other/better options than what the government is doing. But let us make up our own damn minds.

The press has had a history over the last 15-20 years of trying to engage the audience, rather than informing it. And nothing engages us better than plucking the outrage. Make 'em mad and keep them coming back for more. So we see article after article criticising specific members of parliament and nothing about choices faced by the government.

In the days of newspapers, you could get a decent impression of what most articles were about by the headlines. After all, the paper had already been sold - there was no requirement to get you to buy. Today, you need to click to get information. Headlines are all “pick me!” bait and not simply “This happened”.

So, after years of stirring up outrage, while providing limited information and zero solutions, we get journalists saying ‘We are fire alarm; not the fuel’.

Horseshit. You are absolutely a part of the problem, if not a major contributing factor to it.

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- NigelFrobisher@aussie.zone ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  That’s not what this says though.
  
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- zero_gravitas@aussie.zone ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  
  So, after years of stirring up outrage, while providing limited information and zero solutions, we get journalists saying ‘We are fire alarm; not the fuel’.
  
  Horseshit. You are absolutely a part of the problem, if not a major contributing factor to it.
  
  I don’t think the article is a defence of the media or journalists. The only mentions of media and journalists are critical of them.
  
  Remeikis, it seems to me, is defending protesters and dissent movements.
  
  In the minutes after the news broke of the alleged (someone has now been charged, and so language must change with it) attack, blame was ascribed by commentators, and later the broader political class, to people who had protested a genocide, those who wanted more climate action, and the Left in general.
  
  We’ve normalised police bashing peaceful protesters.*
  
  We are a nation who will tone police people protesting racism, but not the racists.
  
  A group of protesters sitting outside an MP’s office, demanding higher standards of their leaders, is not the same as death threats and violence. But in criticising the legitimate threats, the political and media classes will point to democratic dissent as an example.
  
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