How Main Stream Media Fomented the Latest Victorian #Covid19 Outbreak

There’s a lot not to like about the latest spike in Victoria’s #Covid19 numbers. And the most culpable are mainstream media companies who created the social response

The latest spike in #Covid19 infections can be directly attributed to Channel 7, Channel 9 and the ABC with lesser blame attributed to Channel 10 and SBS. In the print area it’s just normal Murdoch press – Gladys good, Dan bad. But the most recent thread began when the #FakeTradies and right wing nut jobs infiltrated what was arguably, a ridiculously petulant display by the building sector complaining about vaccine mandates. This sector has been allowed to work while thousands of others have been stood down, forced to take holiday leave or lost their jobs.

What the health advice said was clear – around half of recent infections were coming out of a non compliant construction sector. The CFMEU and others complaining about keepnig their workplaces safe on site with social distancing (you know, the VERY OH&S ‘safety’ thing that the CFMEU used for years to shut down sites) created just the opportunity that the state opposition and media had been unable to create – a good decent swing at Dan Andrews. The CFMEU saying ‘stuff you’ to the Andrews’ call for better compliance, staged an amusing if childish lock down via a ‘lunch room out in the streets’ protest and then cracked it when the State Government shut the sector down for a fortnight.

And here’s when Mainstream media and a flaccid state opposition finally got traction. A show of numbers was so easily taken over by the right wing nutters with their racist, sexist, anti-vaxx rubbish, created just the kind of story that had been lacking. We know the take over by the march was supported by the state opposition by what they chose NOT to do – condemn the march. The Black Lives Matter and Indigenous Rights marches were roundly attacked by both state and federal Liberal party members. Past large scale union marches have been attacked in the same way. But not this one. Absolute silence..

Except in the mainstream media. Finally a chance to develop a story that might puncture the Dan Andrews armour – multiple days of protest, significant use of varying levels of force by the Police and an MSM promoted message of carnage, that talked about the anti-lockdown backlash as ‘reasonable’ and even interviewed known offenders to give a platform to the FreedomRally bullshite.

At the same time, Nurses, contact tracers, doctors, hospitals, aged care staff, running clinics, doing testing, keeping infected people alive, KEPT DOING what they do on behalf of us DESPITE their increased workload. And what did the mainstream media do for that? Nothing, preferring instead to push the ‘out of control’ message, condoning the protests as reasonable response to the lockdowns. No they were not reasonable and even CFMEU workers who turned up on day 1 started to drop off after day 2 when they figured out they’d been played by the #FakeTradies organisers. Those #fakeTradies who chose to protest on the site where multiple union workers lost their lives with the collapse of the West Gate Bridge. No union member worth their pay would desecrate that site with a protest about not wearing masks or needing to get vaccinated. No union member would have gone to The Shrine and urinated at the site as an act of protest. And NO union member would have stood in front of that special memorial and launched a Nazi salute. This is what the MSM have given us. Not encouragment to stay the course, not tips for staying safe and looking after your health and dealing with lockdowns. No, they disgracefully gave a platform to legitimise white supremacists pissing on The Shrine of Remembrance.

And the State Opposition leader (now the new old one) and the man derisively known in some social media platforms as #BubbleBoySmith, the would be Attorney General said NOTHING to condem these actions. That’s how we know it was not a Union led protest.

Keep in mind that Victoria had gotten to this point because the NSW Premier did not do her job to keep #Covid19 out of her community, an infection that spread across Australia and to New Zealand. Which brings us to the next phase. A public tired of lockdowns, hoping for a window and relief, now had a comparative story to think about. A bunch of real tradies who’d been allowed to work through lockdowns, and fake tradies who spotted a chance to get out from behind their keyboards, whingeing about masks and vaccinations like the rest of us had to deal with. go out on protest ‘…and I have to sit at home?’

And now the perfect conditions congealed upon us. Two Victorian clubs make it to the Grand Final, in Perth. Dan Andrews’ failing at this point was a big one – allowing the Grand Final Friday public holiday to go ahead. With no crowds coming to the city to be involved in a GF Parade, the justifcation for that Public Holiday had evaporated. A social psycholgical state of people tired of lockdowns but mostly doing the right thing, had been given a comparison to what they were going to do just a day later. If thousands of imbeciles can protest for days, attacking police, testing stations, being infected whilst rioting, how bad could it be for me to have a GF BBQ with a few mates?

As it turns out, pretty bloody bad.

A jump in daily case numbers tracking at the 800s to 1400+ a week later has been DIRECTLY linked to people gathering outside their family homes with others and getting infected. The mistake Andrews made was not using the REMOVAL of the widely popular but now redundant GF public holiday as a strong amber light that no, we are not ready to party.

Mainstream media’s message, pushed by Sunrise, Today, various ABC programs, supported by shock jocks and the vile Sky with lovely pictures of protest footage from very DIFFERENT Protests YEARS Earlier, promulgated the fear and loathing. And what we have seen and will now see BECAUSE of MSM willingness to do harm, is increased infections across all age groups and increased deaths. Kochie and Karl know exactly what they’re doing. They need and want more infections and more deaths to try and undermine the ongoing public support Dan Andrews has in Victoria. Especially to try and tarnish a very bright light compared to the culpability and arrogance of Glady Berijiklian willingness to infect her state. So far it looks like the population haven’t fallen for the ruse. But the infections that will occur, the massive workload and stress placed on health care workers and the #Covid19 deaths that will result, are on the heads and hands of those shrill journalists, reporters, and presenters who have CHOSEN to perpetuate harm

What the Weather Bureau can do to help this Drought

Aug 17, 2015

I’m going to come back to an idea I first floated back in 2004. By and large it is hard to change societal perceptions. Doing so requires on going effort, time and often resources like money to create marketing campaigns of some description. Unless you have a crisis. And right now it might be fair…

Read More >

How to Stop Japanese Whaling in its Tracks

Aug 17, 2015

Whilst I appreciate the efforts that Greenpeace, Sea Shepherd and the various Australian Governments have given regarding their aims to have the Japanese cease their annual whale harvests, I’m not quite sure they are tackling the issue through the best means available. Sure the confrontational approach of ramming ships, climbing aboard vessels, getting in the…

Read More >

The Quick Low-Down of Corporate Visions and why they Fail

Jul 2, 2015

I’ve just read an article about Corporate Visions and getting employees on the same page. And as happens so often, I shook my head because it offered the same flawed advice about what a leader needs to do to get their employees to buy into the Vision. And therein lays the fatal flaw You CANNOT…

Read More >

How California can Learn from the Australian Experience of Drought

Jun 3, 2015

As the drought in California continues to bite hard on the lives of millions, a recent article on Triple Pundit suggested that many people want to help save water, they just don’t know what else to do. Which is why California needs to look beyond its borders to the driest inhabited continent on the planet…

Read More >

Will a Change in Greens Leadership make the Nationals Redundant?

May 5, 2015

With the moderately surprising news that Christine Milne had decided to step out of her current political life, Dr Richard Di Natale moved into the driver’s seat for the Greens. And I flag that this spells trouble for the National Party because this shift, this change in voice and style, connected to similar passions, will…

Read More >

Why most Strategic Plans are little more than wish-lists

Apr 21, 2015

In fact I’ll go one step further and say that many Strategic Plans are DELIBERATE methods for NOT Progressing. In far too many organisations, the process of Strategic Planning is about compliance to a process of ‘having a plan’ and typically it has nothing to do with achievement of the outcomes listed in the Strategic…

Read More >

Why Battery Technology will force Power Companies to embrace domestic supply

Mar 11, 2015

Around Australia and parts of the world like the USA, some governments and especially many large scale power utilities, are pursuing a campaign to prevent domestic solar from being fed back into (sold to) the grid. I’m assuming that the (fundamentally flawed) thinking is that by denying additional energy production points, they’ll prop up or…

Read More >

Men, What Will Your Legacy Be?

Feb 23, 2015

I’m male. You may like to take that into consideration with the rest of what you read as, a) I’m part of the problem b) Whatever I say cannot, no matter how well intentioned, be in anyway able to represent women     I’m prompted to write this particular piece following on from the ABC’s…

Read More >

The Future of Energy

Feb 19, 2015

  On a day when The Age front page ran a story of mass disconnections of householders struggling to pay their domestic electricity bill, Futurist Marcus Barber and ABC Goulburn Murray’s Joseph Thomsen discuss the future of energy – what’s happening now, what are we going to see in the future and what can consumers…

Read More >

Eat OR Extract? You CANNOT do Both

Feb 5, 2015

With Farmland across NSW, Queensland, & the Northern Territory under pressure from the mining sector, the quality of discussion as to which land use is of best outcome or most suitable seems to go astray. I’ve been flagging the ‘Eat’ OR ‘Extract’ challenge for a few years now and this radio interview is one example…

Read More >