An article from ABC's opinion page The Drum on how the front page of the paper tells us what to think about and what to think about what we are meant to be thinking about.
Rudd's demise had a large amount to do with the extreme, unecessary, and unprecedented media pressure on his mining policy, and subsequently on his leadership. That good-old-fashioned national broadsheet bastion of conservatism and agression... The Austrlian... was the main culprit, apparently.
The evidence stacks up pretty well in favour of The Australian beating up the mining tax storm in a teacup. It also shows fairly convincingly how THE OZ helped to turn the issue into a battle for the Labour leadership instead of a piece of policy.
The Australian ran 12 front page leads on the mining row in 13 days. Such a run of Page 1 leads on just one issue is rare. By comparison, The Age and the SMH each ran just one front page lead on the issue during this time. The Herald Sun and Daily Telegraph ran no front page leads on the mining tax row in June.
You'd have to go back to Whitlam's sacking or the Vietnam War to come close to such a run of Page 1 leads on one issue. Even then, it's doubtful there was such a run. Was Rudd's tax on mining profits as big a story as the Vietnam War or Whitlam's sacking? Of course it doesn't come close.
Poor Widdle Wuddy...
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