Has The Age Editor called for the wrong resignation
I flag from the outset that I haven’t been a regular readers of newspapers for almost a decade, only slightly less than my giving up on mainstream TV News shows. As such you should take this with a grain of salt, coming as it does from someone who reads maybe a paper a week and even then only to delve into the puzzles as my preferred section of the newspaper. That said, on Saturday I read The Age editorial calling for Julia Gillard to stand aside.
Which depending upon what your political leanings are, may or may not be a fair call. But what clearly was NOT a fair call were the reasons justifying the editor making this claim. To justify this claim the editor of that piece (whom from the 2nd page of that edition I believe may have been the acting editor Michael Short), suggested that the Prime Minister Julia Gillard needed to resign because without it: ‘The Age’s overriding concern is that…voters will denied a proper contest of ideas and policies – and that would be a travesty for the democratic process’.
And herein then is my dliemna – If The Age can report on any details it cares to, who exactly has been focusing its attention on alleged leadership challenges inside the ALP and ignoring reporting any details of the policy and ideas?’
My understanding is that it is the editor of each paper that sets the direction and focus for the newspaper. My understanding is also that The Age is owned by the Fairfax Group which is under significant financial challenges.
For an editor of an independently run newspaper to claim that the only way they can focus on policy and ideas is for the sitting PM to resign is I feel an admission that the editor has been failing to do their job. If the Editor of the paper sets the focus and direction, the ONLY one stopping The Age from focusing on ‘policy and ideas’ is well, the EDITOR. The Editor claims that ‘The Age is more despairing of the vacuum in policy debate’ which begs the question – why instead have you been ignoring the policy position of all parties and choosing to focus on the much less important issue of leadership?
It seems to me that the failing resides not with the PM’s unwillingness to resign (whether warranted or otherwise) but with the choices made by The Age in perpetuating the focus on the trivial at the expense of the important. One must wonder to what extent the troubles of the Fairfax Group have been influenced by its major papers inability to focus on what readers may want? Maybe if The Age began reporting on policy positions of all parties and independents it may foster the very discussion it claims it is currently unable to undertake?
But one thing seems clear to me – given the Editorial in Saturday’s The Age, the only one who ought to be resigning their position is the Editor who wrote that piece.
Sometimes when you look at enough assorted pieces of information a clear pattern emerges. In a previous role I was tasked with looking at the Future of Education, a topic I delved deeply into for almost 3 years. And in 2003 in a piece titled ‘The Future of Commercial Education’ I predicted that by 2015,…
Read More >Tomorrow I’ll be at the State Library of Victoria as part of the #V21 Digital Summit. In my futurist, pragmatist role I’ll be presenting few ideas about why ‘Your Future is NOT an App’, then later in the day facilitating an onstage debate about Disruption’s role in Innovation. And if it is anything to go…
Read More >I’ve been having a think lately about whether the use of Interest Rate movements by the Reserve Bank is actually too clumsy an instrument for effective economic management. The potential weakness has emerged only in recent times as the signs of a world-wide economic melt down have begun to expose one of the limitations of…
Read More >There’s a few problems with the successful leadership lists that bounce their way around the internet. In my opinion they lack context – the reality check that only comes by having a full appreciation of an individual organisation’s particular circumstances. Unfortunately many of these lists of ‘required leadership behaviours’ offer shallow quick fix advice that…
Read More >There’s no doubt that coal has a legitimacy problem with large swathes of the public around the world. Once a darling of energy and still in relative abundant supplies, Coal provides significant levels of energy per gram consumed. Yet the end outcome is now known to be incredibly harmful to localised communities needing to breathe…
Read More >At almost every stage in a shift in the way societies and organisations operate, there comes a period of extreme ‘unsettled-ness’. This period may show itself in the form of the doldrums (where things seem unusually calm but nothing seems to be happening) or in busyness (where there’s lots of activity but nothing seems to…
Read More >Sometimes when we have the chance to say something, we don’t. About two years ago one of my uncles died and I should have spoken at his funeral. This personal post is what I should have said to the public gallery that attended ‘Hi everyone. I’m Marcus and Jim was one of my three uncles.…
Read More >I’ve just posted a quick overview on LinkedIn called The ‘Loud Secret’ – Underestimating your internal skill sets which you can find at the link below The ‘Loud Secret’: Underestimating Your Internal Skill sets. If you have any troubles accessing the story let me know and I’ll see what I can do
Read More >Health Care costs in Australia are rising and are likely to continue doing so as our population both grows and ages. Which means attempts to address this issue are warranted. Equally warranted is an assessment of the impacts for addressing or ignoring the issue. If, as has been mooted, the Australian Government introduces an $8…
Read More >We’ve been getting far more effective at understanding the way our brains work especially as they relate to the idea of ‘mind’. Simply, the idea that we make decisions based on our conscious understanding, appears limited at best and highly flawed at worst. And now, the step towards longevity, perhaps even the fountain of youth,…
Read More >