Meet the Friendly Affable Face of John Howard’s New PR Firm: Anna Coren and the Crew at Today Tonight

The Focus – July 11th, 2007 by Don

And its official the Australian Liberal party has just added more firepower to its stable of paid flack catchers.

Dodgypress isn’t exactly sure when the decision was made, and by whom, however Dodgypress, like you the uninformed voter, was not personally aware of this change, until he flicked on the Tv sometime last week, insearch of some quality journalistic viewing on commercial television. An Oxymoron I know. Was scanning the channels when I came across Today Tonight on channel 7.

It was here that one noticed two of my favourite redneck commentators, who are normally seen or rather read, gracing the pages of print publications. One, Piers Ackerman is normally published, in the murdoch press, whilst the other Gerard Henderson, writes a column in the Sydney Morning Herald. At the time, they were both shamelessly putting the boot into Germaine Greer, without the usual right of reply. You got to love the tabloid press, nothing like whipping up the masses into a frenzy just before a lynching

So I thought to myself okay, maybe its a one off, event, that is seeing today tonight publicly defending john howard’s policies, by way of putting two of his biggest lovers on a prime time, public platform and then giving them a free kick, at putting the boot into a lady, typical.

Then this week, a New Zealand politician rightly labelled John Winston Howard, a “racist bastard”. I spotted the article in the fairfax press online and thought nothing more of it. A day or three later was home, and going through the same exact exercise of scanning the channels, and I come across Today Tonight’s host Anna Coren, who was busy attacking or rather haranguing a New Zealand mp, for correctly labelling John Howard a “racist bastard” over his treatment of aboriginal communities in the northern territory.

Anna Coren put in the finest Naomi Robsonesque type performance of her career to date. Her venom and horror mock, or otherwise in John Howard’s defence was simply of hollywood like proportions. It was then that the penny dropped, and I realised that hey this is becoming a regular theme on Channel 7’s Today Tonight, and maybe, just maybe they are now officially part of Australian Liberal Party, and its public relations arsenal, together with those other PR industry heavy weight’s Crosby Textor.

The Only Caveat, one would state for the record to the likes of Today Tonight, is Do Not Insult Our Intelligence, please State for the record where your public political preferences lie, and we the viewers can then decide, whether we would ourselves prefer your brand of televison politics or not, especially in an election year.

For the final word on the matter, I shall go to a man I consider, one of this country’s handful of visionaries living or dead. Check out what he had to say. Go on you know you want to.

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One response to “Meet the Friendly Affable Face of John Howard’s New PR Firm: Anna Coren and the Crew at Today Tonight”

1. Democracy, Blogging and the Waning Influence of Corporate Media Part 1 » dodgypress.com.au

   August 18th, 2007 at 7:51 am

   [...] The other constantly irritating factor was pro-john howard rhetoric on commercial Tv. Just to ram home, the point that the Corporate Media, and the Conservatives/Liberal party were in bed together, Piers Ackerman and Gerard Henderson, were given prime time televison gigs. And they both took to it like the proverbial pig in mud. Read about it here [...]

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