Manufactured Shock: The Sydney Morning Herald

06/04/2019

So the Coalition won a third term in government in New South Wales in an election that should have been a clear victory for Labor. Now that Berejiklian has retained power, her government has been quick to make drastic changes that will negatively affect both the State and the country as a whole. And the poor old Sydney Morning Herald just doesn’t know why!

“Departments are being disbanded. Offices are being closed, merged or rebadged with new names. Power is being concentrated within a clutch of ministers and ministries. And all with little explanation.”

This is the first paragraph of a recent article by the dying paper, followed by “a flurry of significant changes to the NSW public service that very few… saw coming.” In truth, you would have had to have been completely disconnected from reality to not know that this was absolutely bound to happen. And I am sure the SMH and their greedy Nine benefactors were fully aware of the damage a Coalition government was going to cause – they just did not care.

For them to turn around now and act shocked at the Premier’s so-called “unexpected” concentration of power is a lie and hypocrisy one would expect from cheap tabloid or commercial news channel… oh wait. Because the Sydney Morning Herald didn’t care about all of this stuff in the lead up to the election. It didn’t question the party dedicated to destroying the environment to make way for massive corporate development projects about its future plans for the environment. Now the Office for the Environment and Heritage has been abolished, with heritage being thrown to the Department of Premier and Cabinet and environment going to Planning and Industry.

How not surprising.

No, instead the Sydney Morning Herald openly expressed support for the Berejiklian government and even ran advertisements for the Liberal National Party on their website. They knew damn well what they were doing, and as such Labor was slandered beyond belief in a vicious campaign on all sides. God forbid a white man says “Asian”, better go and vote for the party that has caused ecological disasters and lined up healthcare, education, and the prison system for privatisation instead!

I do not, for a single second, buy the Sydney Morning Herald’s change of tune. It’s faux shocked comeback after the Coalition did exactly what it promised to do is pathetic. It is all the more transparent when you compare their NSW coverage with their coverage of the upcoming Federal election. They are in full support of Morrison and the Coalition on the national stage. An example from yesterday was Morrison announcing the Royal Commission into the abuse of disabled peoples.

The Sydney Morning Herald portrayed him as heartbroken – holding back tears and a shaky voice – about the topic. Yes, the man who, without a second thought, gutted funding for the NDIS, whose party tore benefits away from people who were not ‘eligible’ for them despite being in no condition to work, the man who invoked his own disabled brother to pretend to care – he was upset about abused disabled people.

Fuck off.

You want to know who is to be celebrated for this Royal Commission? Who deserves all the praise for getting it passed through government? Because it’s sure as hell not the Coalition. It was Jordan Steele-John, a young and disabled Greens Senator who fought for this RC. It was him who, with real experiences and real emotions, brought the public to his side. Not the fake act put on by the current used car salesman masquerading as a Prime Minister. The Coalition does not deserve credit for this RC, just like they did not deserve credit for the banking RC (anyone gone to jail for that yet? No?), and just as they did not deserve credit for passing the same sex marriage bill.

The Sydney Morning Herald has become a shill for the Coalition. Acting all shocked that the NSW government went and did what it’s planned to do for years doesn’t cut it. They supported them outright, and they are doing the same thing for the Federal government right now. You can bet after May, if the Coalition wins another term, that they will be spewing the same hypocrisy about how bad they were tricked and deceived. It is, however, transparent and disgraceful.

We deserve better from our media outlets, and they need to be held accountable for their role is subverting our so-called democracy. The Murdoch press is beyond redemption, but it is a shame to see the Sydney Morning Herald decline so dismally.

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