Saturday 15 July 2017

Business as usual


Eunice Goes and Mustapha Karkouti 

Today's Dateline (with Shaun Ley) had one of those generic Dateline panels that didn't include a single right-winger, only various shades of left-liberal thought. 

And Brexit supporters were also conspicuous by their absence - unlike their EU-enthusiast opponents, painting the "poorer" future we face as a result of Brexit (including Polly Toynbee ranting about how "ridiculous" the Brexit vote and how it will make the UK a "flyover zone for everybody else").  

President Macron also got a wholly positive press from the panel today....unlike President Trump, who was uniformly trashed again. 

So, alas, classic unbalanced Dateline then, almost approaching a parody of itself.

I wonder what Mark Urban would have made of Shaun Ley's framing narrative, summed up in these statements/questions?:
Hello. They're leaders, but are they leading? Donald Trump was treated like - well, royalty - in Paris as the French celebrated their revolution on Friday's Bastille Day. In London, Theresa May was trumpeting a different sort of revolution, publishing the legislation that will take Britain out of the European Union. Yet Mrs May is a much diminished figure after losing her parliamentary majority, and President Trump is distracted by the investigation into links between his campaign - and his family - and the Russians.  
And we have a European leader who's at least giving the impression of that. He sent his Foreign Minister after the Gulf, I am talking about President Emmanuel Macron of France, taking a lot of diplomatic initiatives - one in the Sahel a couple of weeks ago, now in the Gulf - trying to work as an honest broker. Is he filling a vacuum of leadership do you think?

1 comment:

  1. Trump just got serious Saudi and other Arab leader movement against Qatar, something long overdue, and is putting pressure on Iran again after Obama gave them all their billions back with the green light to develop nuclear weapons. There is no vacuum of leadership.

    Ignorance, or mendacious denial?

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