Nine News Poll Fails on Australia Day
The Australian mainstream media’s progressive ideological push, its disregard for objective reporting, blatant slander and contempt for their consumers has been on stark display this year.
No mainstream media outlet has done more promote the leftists’ worldview than Nine News. Coincidentally the network’s shift to the left in its news reporting has come after it’s parent company Nine Entertainment Co. merged with Australia’s most left wing newspaper publisher Fairfax Media.
Exibit A of Nine News journalistic crimes is its misreporting on the return of Melbourne’s summer African youth gang crime wave. Its Current Affair program twisted the story Vietnamese shopkeepers defending their businesses from Sudanese youths as ‘a race war’ brewing in the city, implying both ethnic groups were equally to blame.
The reporter also labelled Neil Erikson and Ricky Turner, two of the organisers of the St Kilda Beach Political Meeting who filmed African youths being directed by police to move along at the beach as ‘unhelpful’ were ‘racist’ for calling the youths ‘uncivilised’.
Following the St Kilda Meeting Senator Fraser Anning was attacked by all the mainstream media for his attendance at a so called ‘Nazi’ and ‘racist’ rally. No journalist was more triggered than Today Show host Lara Vella who demanded Anning explain why he hung out with ‘Nazis’ and people allegedly giving the Nazi salute and billed taxpayers for it.
She gave her agenda away when she asked Anning “Surely we should be celebrating how rich our multicultural community is rather than (using) that divisive language?” and finished by directly asking him “Senator, do you consider yourself a racist?”
Vella’s aggressive interview with Anning appeared to have the backing of her Nine News bosses who thought it was worthy to ask their Facebook followers, given that Senator Anning’s attendance at St Kilda was condemned by all major party politicians including the Prime Minister, should he be ousted from parliament? (With no elaboration on how that would work).
In a clear indication Nine either was not aware of the views of its own customers, or viewed them as easily manipulated, the loaded poll question backfired on Nine with 68% of the nearly 100k votes cast voting no. Nine was savaged in the comments with many posting ‘Fraser Anning for PM’.
Clearly not taken any lessons from the results of it’s Anning poll Nine News decided to promote the annual #changethedate of Australia Day push by the leftist activists.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison has decreed in an effort to defend the date that local councils must hold citizenship ceremonies on Australia Day or he will strip them of that authority.
Nine News ran another Facebook poll asking should that stay on January 26, even though many believe it is offensive to Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islanders?
Given that a recent poll found 75% of Australians support January 26 as Australia Day, and the results of the its Anning poll then it not should surprise anyone that 78% of the 148k respondents voted Yes to keeping the date.
Then this week even more astonishingly it asked the same question about changing Australia Day, albeit worded differently when former Victorian Premier Jeff Kennett called for Australia Day to be changed for not being inclusive to Ingenious Australians.
This poll was done on the Nine News Melbourne Facebook page which has a significantly smaller following than its national page. But this poll had an even greater percentage of 91% voting no Kennett’s call to change Australia Day with 28k votes cast.
The idea of running internet polls is to either (a genuinely try and gauge the views of your followers on a particular hot topic, or b) to try and push poll your followers to vote the way would like them to so, to help advance your particular view or editorial line.
In the first poll Nine might have been genuinely curious about their audiences views’ on Senator Anning, though the way the poll question was worded Nine clearly were hoping for its followers to be against Anning.
But the second and third polls on Australia Day, given that we go through this debate every year, and underneath all leftist raging against the date polling consistently shows that a overwhelming majority of Australians support keeping it on January 26, Nine was very foolish to think these polls would go any other way than keep the date.
If Nine News doesn’t want to die a slow death, or be forced to merge with another struggling news company, it would be wise to take heed from these poll results, and conclude that the current leftist political narrative it is pushing is not shared by its consumers or the Australian community at large. Is a mainstream media outlet capable of this type of reflection over its editorial line? So far Nine News as shown no ability to do so.