Why One Nation’s media playbook is working | Media Watch

The most watched news program on television, 60 Minutes, has been thrown into deeper turmoil over the last 24 hours.Veteran correspondent Scott Pelley was fired by CBS News late last night.It comes just two days after Pelley sharply criticized management during a tense staff meeting.

Hello, I'm Lynton Besser.Welcome to Media Watch.First tonight, the nuclear detonation inside America's most storied news program with a nearly 60 -year history.Months of tension finally exploding into full public view with the sacking of one of its most legendary correspondents.

Pelly now saying the new owner is making changes, quote, apparently to curry a moment of favour with the Trump administration's.

Upheaval began 18 months ago with the return of Donald Trump to the White House, just 11 weeks after he sued CBS, seeking a US $10 billion remedy over a 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris.Five months into his second term, CBS's parent company, Paramount, cut a $16 million check and beat a hasty retreat.Paving the way for the US government to rubber stamp its $8 billion merger with Skydance, owned by tech billionaire and Trump ally Larry Ellison and his son David.

I believe this kind of complicated financial settlement with a sitting government official has a technical name in legal circles.It's Big Fat Bribe.

Because...Whatever you might call it, it formed the backdrop to the installation of Barry Weiss as head of CBS News, an opinion writer and editor who resigned from the New York Times, claiming she'd been bullied by her colleagues for her views, and ran a conservative -leaning website, the Free Press, also acquired by the Ellisons.Despite, or was it because of, her complete lack of television experience, Barry Weiss's appointment won praise, where, for the Ellisons, it seems to matter most.I think you have a great new leader, frankly.But I hear she's a great person.Wasting no time, Weiss put a scythe to the network, laying off some 100 new staff, including correspondent Debra Patter and London bureau chief Clare Day.

Both had been under pressure over their handling of the network's Middle East coverage.But 60 minutes?Here, Weiss was unafraid too, pulling an episode investigating the notorious Salvadoran prison to which US deportees were being dispatched just three hours before broadcast and demanding more of the Trump administration's voice.But her decision came too late.The episode broadcast in Canada and ran like wildfire across the internet.CBS finally airing the story in America with an additional White House statement a month later.

There was blood everywhere, screams, people crying, people who couldn't take it.

Since November, 60 Minutes has made several attempts to interview key Trump administration officials, on camera about our story.They declined our request.

The correspondent behind that story, Sharon Alfonsi, who accused Weiss of pulling the story for political reasons, has not had her contract renewed and told the New York Times...

It was a deliberate choice to penalise a journalist for refusing to sanitise accurate reporting.

Eleven days ago, Weiss went further, uprooting the program's executive producer, a 27 -year, 60 Minutes veteran, as well as its second -in -charge and another of its most senior remaining reporters.Into the boss's chair at 60, another television news unknown, filmmaker and Vanity Fair writer Nick Bilton, who at his first staff meeting was confronted by an emotional Scott Pelly, who accused BiltonWeiss of murdering the program, saying, She does not love this place.

She was brought in to kill it.And she's been doing exactly that, telling his new boss directly, you have slender qualifications for this job.

Pelly, a long -standing CBS correspondent and anchor, had reported almost every major global story of the past 35 years, from 9 -11 to the fall of Bashar al -Assad, none of which saved him when he was sacked for insubordination.Last night, he told The New York Times Barry Weiss wanted CBS to dance to Donald Trump's tune.My impression at the time was that she was putting a thumb on the scale on behalf of the administration.It's an allegation that CBS vigorously denies.There is no political interference at CBS News, not from ownership, not from Barry Weiss.Meanwhile, next on Trump's wish list, CNN, whose parent company, Warner Brothers Discovery, is now in the Ellison sites too.

The proposed merger facing EU scrutiny and otherwise a likely tick from the US government.Whatever modernisation's 60 minutes might have needed, they pale in urgency against the maintenance of trust that the program built over decades and now, under White House -friendly management, threatens collapse.This is, in real time, the playing out of a not -very -new political game plan.The modus operandi of strongmen from Istanbul to Budapest to Moscow.The concentration of media influence in the hands of an oligarchy.The last line of defence, it seems, the grit and fibre of correspondents themselves.

Now to the remaking of Australian politics, with an earthquake opinion poll one week ago dragging the ultimate outsider into centre lane.

A new poll suggests Pauline Hanson might just blast her way into government.

I'm actually a bit amazed by it, shocked by it actually.

The Australian Financial Review poll, dubbed a marmalade dropper by one of the paper's columnists, elevating Pauline Hanson's One Nation to Australia's most popular political party, overtaking Labor with 31 % of the primary vote and booting the coalition out of the conversation altogether, making this boast just one day earlier a real possibility.

Do I want to be prime minister?Well, I tell you what, I believe that I have the ability to do it.

And if there were any doubts about these tectonic changes, they were dispelled this morning with an historic news poll.One Nation's rocketing numbers have come despite shunning sections of the media, recently ejecting the ABC from a critical press conference.Goodbye to the ABC.With Hanson later declaring...

If you're going to give me unfair reporting in your stories, why would I put myself up to be interviewed by you?

In fact, these knee -jerk bans on the ABC date as far back as this episode from 1996.

It was this story that has led her to ban all contact with the national broadcaster.Just yesterday, this portrait made for her office was unveiled, depicting her as a martyr, burned at the stake of political correctness by a cardinal of the ABC.

At times, it really is.That's just how I feel, as if I've just been crucified.

Seven months later, Mrs Hansen is still steadfastly refusing to speak to the ABC.

The difference now, 30 years later, is the world has radically changed and a ban on the ABC no longer prevents her from connecting to huge numbers of viewers.Having raised an army on Facebook, YouTube and TikTok of more than 1 .2 million people.Trouncing the PM's 870 ,000 and blitzing her rival for the Conservative vote, Angus Taylor enjoying only a tiny fraction of her numbers across Facebook and YouTube and none at all on TikTok, where remarkably, he is altogether absent.Hanson's output like this.

I'm over it.I'm so angry about this.And 25 cents a bag.

And this?

There's another cohort of ISIS brides.And the children.on their way back to Australia.

And this...

You keep voting for these bastards that actually don't have pride in our country and our Australian flag.

Firing the algorithm's lust for our basest instincts, racking up a combined 8 .5 million views and almost competing with this heartwarming and spontaneous moment of rapport with Angus Taylor.

Oh, these are amazing photos from the 70s, by the look of it, when I was growing up.

That moment by Angus's campfire not viewed by millions.The zenith of One Nation's online strategy, a pseudo South Park cartoon, now in its fourth season, pumping up Pauline and taking the piss out of everyone else.

Matthew Canavan.

Uh, here.

Barnaby Joyce.

Yep, here, meth.

Anthony Albanese.

Yes, miss, Anthony Albanese is here.Which leans heavily on One Nation's favourite themes.Lakemba, your new home!But I thought Australia was beaches and babes and barbecues.Not anymore.This is the newest!

Sometimes funny, often offensive, but finding so much traction that earlier this year, One Nation released a movie version, which the Sydney Morning Herald declared comedy poison, but conceded...

Pauline Hanson's short Please Explain cartoons are usually a scream, the sort of political satire Australia used to do well.back when sacred cows weren't protected species.

Simon Welsh, a pollster at Redbridge, says One Nation's approach to the media is working.People in our focus groups invariably talk about Pauline as if they know her.

It is actually helpful for her to shun the media because the media fall into the elite category, and every time the media cries about it, it then reinforces what people like about her.It is a tactical win.

Which helps to explain why One Nation told us...

After years of being ignored and deplatformed by mainstream media, social media has enabled One Nation to engage with a large number of Australian voters.

So how should the media respond?One word, scrutiny, as the doyen of political reporting, Paul Kelly, recently wrote.

who wants to become our PM.

Her best ever numbers, this surge in voter approval, means Pauline Hanson really can no longer avoid the full glare of the media.Indeed, in two weeks' time, she'll address the National Press Club in Canberra.But we must dispense with any nostalgia for the politics of the past.Social media has done it in, along with the default primacy of the professional press, which, ironically, only increases the pressure on it to report the story of politics that politicianslike Pauline Hanson would rather we not.And now to the beautiful game.

And in the countdown to the World Cup, some beautiful work by Nine's breakfast team to line up an interview with a Socceroo great.

Aussies back home already gearing up to cheer on the green and gold.For more, I'm joined by Socceroo's legend Donna Aloisi in Sydney.

Though when Today crossed live to Mr Aloisi, there was less green and gold than blue and yellow.Plenty of questions.One look at that live shot and there are no questions at all, or none that are very polite.Because this isn't the launch of the World Cup, but the launch of Sportsbet's profit season, with the brekkie show and a socceroo for rent going through the motions.Replaying his iconic 2005 penalty and celebration, with Aloisi offering a not -so -subtle plug.I would take off my top, but Sportsbet said I'm not allowed to.

And once today, and Aloisi dispensed with a 30 -second remark about the prowess of the current Socceroo squad, they got back to the real business at hand, that burning mystery.

What is happening behind you?That is one almighty statue.

Well, Sportsbet wanted everyone to start talking about the World Cup.

And what Sportsbet wants, Sportsbet gets.Like tens of thousands of dollars worth of publicity for the price of a 40 -metre tall inflatable, apparently resembling Aloisi himself, but most resembling a nauseating display of disdain for the intelligence of viewers, which did just the trick.Also enticing, seven.

Aloisi reunited with the great Mark Schwartzer at a tournament launch.in Sydney.

And 10.And John Aloisi's been supersized ahead of the World Cup.It looks like me, doesn't it?

Meanwhile, another walking Sportsbet billboard, UFC fighter Alex Volkanovski also scored an interview on 10, as well as Triple M and SEN Radio.You know, Sportsbet, they don't muck around with these types of activations.They've done a great job.Oh, haven't they just?And why is Sportsbet going to the great effort of pumping up a giant inflatable toy and dressing it in primary colours?It told us it was but a mere celebratory activation.

But plain to you and plain to me is that Sportsbet is simply grubbing for the largest share possible of some $50 billion to be waged on the World Cup.Anti -gambling campaigner Tim Costello was scathing.

The media are either gullible or shameless in running this story.This is as harmless and innocent as advertising Marlborough cigarettes.

Nine, however, was unashamed, telling us it did not discuss odds during the segment, nor encourage viewers to visit a gambling site.

Today grabbed the opportunity to speak with a socceroos legend on the eve of the World Cup.During this interview, there was incidental sports bet branding.

So incidental, we barely noticed.And that's all from us tonight.Be sure to check us out on ABC iview as well as YouTube and Facebook.You can find full statements on our website.And don't forget to send us your tips.See you next week.