Politicians Influencing the Media

Politicians and their media advisors use varying techniques to influence the media and therefore the public’s opinions on certain topics. This has been made abundantly clear through the ‘Children Overboard Scandal’ of 2001 and politicians using the media to ‘control the agenda’; both of these examples extenuate how Politicians rely on the media and vice-versa. Politicians and the media have an interdependent relationship leading to Politicians having the ability to influence how the media reports on stories. The ‘Children Overboard Scandal’ in 2001, was one such example that saw the Howard government create false interpretations of the asylum seekers arriving in Australia.

The ‘Children Overboard Scandal’ of 2001 is a prime example of how the government can purposefully doctor pictures and videos that sway the public’s opinion on certain matters. On the seventh of October, 2001, pictures of children being supposedly thrown out of refugee vessels were brought to the attention of Phillip Ruddock, the Immigration Minister. The HMAS Adelaide was the first Australian vessel to intercept the asylum seekers. Upon arriving the Australian navy conducted a rescue operation taking both pictures and videos of the proceedings. The next day, the Prime Minister, John Howard, was made aware of the pictures and commented “I don't want in this country people who are prepared, if those reports are true, to throw their children overboard.” John Howard, October 8 2001, (Weller 2002).This led to doctored pictures of the event being mailed to and then released by the Defence Minister, Peter Reith’s media relations department.

Because of the government releasing doctored pictures about what had happened to the asylum seekers and refusing to redact the ...

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...is strategy to great effect and thus being able to control the scope of what the media reported to the public. Bob Hawke was able to notice the differences between the print media and the electronic media, and their respective impacts on the public. This led to Hawke using

Works Cited

(Dellit, A 2002, How the 'children overboard' lie developed, Green Left Weekly, March 6, 2002.

(Herd, A 2006, Amplifying outrage over children overboard, Social Alternatives Vol. 25 No.2 Second Quarter, 2006)

(Macken-Horarik, M 2003, Working the borders in racist discourse: the challenge of the ‘Children Overboard Affair’ in news media texts, Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, 2003)

(Marks, K 2001, Australian PM Wins Third Term in “Time of Crisis’, The Independent - London, 12 November 2001)

(Weller, P. 2002. Don't Tell the Prime Minister. Carlton North: Scribe Publications.)