The Devil In The Detail

On Thursday, April 14, the Fin Review ran both an opinion piece and an article based around Ipsos focus-group work which the Fin said showed undecided voters were leaning toward Scott Morrison. The paper described that voter-group's feeling as "better the devil you know". The Guardian's economics correspondent, Peter Hannam, noticed that no numbers were mentioned. When he contacted Ipsos to check, it turned out that two groups of voters had participated, with each group consisting of... five people. Yes - the work was indicative of the leanings of fully ten individuals.

The journalist responsible for hyping this junk was Phil Coorey, who in recent years has been the AFR's contact-of-choice for leaks and briefings from the Prime Minister's Office, and who memorably penned the fawning "Woman Who Saved Australia" profile of Gladys Berejiklian just 5 months before her exit under a corruption cloud.
The AFR was once a Fairfax publication. Then Malcolm Turnbull scrapped the cross-media ownership rules with the help of Nick Xenophon in 2017, allowing the company's acquisition by Nine Entertainment the following year.
Since 2016, the Chairman of the Board at Nine has been former Liberal Party Treasurer, Peter Costello.

Grubby stuff.



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