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.
China’s Gift to the world, the #CaronaVirus is not yet as severe as what the US gift to the world (Spanish Flu) was, and still signs are clear that disruption to normality is the key theme. In that the light, the Australian Football League (AFL) need to plan for crowd free rounds. Because that’s…
Read More >Potential Impacts of the Carona Virus will cascade across the globe. With deaths on track to climb quickly now that it has reached epidemic proportions of infection, the fat tail extends to the corporate sector. With whole areas of China on lock down, factories are shuttered and with it, Multinational and local firms who’ve…
Read More >Five days ago I tested positive for Covid. Here’s a bit of what the story has been like so far Tuesday was spent moving on of the offspring out of their rental property in country Vic and back down to Melbourne’s suburbs. A hot day of heavy lifting and a fair bit of driving. By…
Read More >Decision making is an interesting field of inquiry. I’m about three months in to a long term contract with an organisation working on enabling its people to be more effective and the thought that keeps popping into my head is ‘Start with the End’ When you start with the end in mind (know your desired…
Read More >There’s a little problem with food production in the world that not many people want to talk about. About half the world is being starved to death whilst we are seeing a spike in obesity due to over-consumption of food. The strange thing about that issue is that both ends of the food consumption divide…
Read More >My most recent long term client contract had me specialise in Employee Engagement, something I’d done consistently at the Senior and Middle Managers level. But this client need was across the board and at a time when major changes were occuring. With a previous survey of their staff in two states and across three…
Read More >Great to see some quality collaboration between the City of Casey and City of Greater Dandenong aimed at addressing or tackling Social Issues and importantly bridging the divide between ‘our area’ and ‘their area’ artificial boundaries. Well done to both Councils Here’s the oveview of what they’re doing. This one looks to be an…
Read More >Most people who’ve been involved in planning and strategy development will have heard of VUCA – Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, Ambiguous. Emerging out of the US War College in 1987, it’s come to be more widely used by consultancies aiming to at least ‘sound smart’. But that’s not the main problem with its usage Instead…
Read More >In short – ‘No’. In days of yore manufacturing data meant jobs being done, employed people being paid, sales being made. But with robotics and off-shoring in many parts of Australian manufacturing, it’s no longer the value indicator it once was. In the US it is an even less reliable indicator because in the…
Read More >I’ve writen a fair bit over the years about the need to move futures thinking out of a theoretical approach and into a more applied model. Recently I’ve come off a 6 month project working with the Asian Productivity Organisation, an entity that brings together 20 member countries and their core government policy…
Read More >