Commentary on the MSM and Election 2010

Is it just me, or has the mainstream media (MSM) been really rather anti-ALP in this campaign? Well, indeed going back further than just this campaign, one can easily get the feeling that some media outlets are distinctly anti-ALP.

Of course, it's never been any real great surprise to anyone that News Ltd, in particular, The Australian, has been extremely anti-Labor for several years now. It's because of this bias that they were nicknamed The Government Gazette when John Howard was in office. I had really hoped that such an attitude would change in 2007 with the election of a Kevin Rudd Labor Government, but so far that would not seen to be the case.

In fact, if nothing else the election of an ALP Government has resulted in News Ltd stepping up their anti-ALP campaign, spreading the opinions further than just The Australian, with most of the News Ltd papers now producing similar sentiments.

The real worry is that we're now starting to see this kind of stupidity infect our national broadcaster, the ABC. Several stories of late have been decidely anti-ALP, with key facts in the stories missing to help present this bias, and yet very few people to give a stuff about this.

It's clear that News Ltd in particular have realised they have a lot of sway over how the people vote, and since they were so pro-LNP when Howard was in office, I guess it makes sense that they would do everything they can to help restore the LNP to Government. Hence the recent run of stories on the BER failures, not to mention the pink bats problems. Both stories have hardly been the disasters The Australian have been key to paint them as, and yet despite there being some extreme positives to come out of these stories, you don't hear much about said positives when you read the front page of The Australian or The Courier Mail.

I guess bias really is in the eye of the beholder.

My vain hope is that this anti-ALP attitude does not have too direct an impact on the outcome of the upcoming Federal Election, although I do suspect it will. Otherwise Murdoch and his team wouldn't be wasting this much energy on such fervour if it didn't have a chance in succeeding.

My question is this, though - how did the media become so powerful? And what on Earth can we do to turn things around in the next several years?