Greens Derangement Syndrome, part V. Amidst this war-of-attrition election, spare a thought for the foot soldiers, such as Tim Lyons (@picketer), Percapita gunslinger and ex-union honcho. Back in Fitzroy, he tells Twitter, he is horrified to see Adam Bandt posters, “Kim Jong-un” style, all over the joint.

“Yes, the hood is now full of folks who vote Green … and I find it alienating,” he laments. Da ‘hood’s been that way for a long time, Tim. The Green voters aren’t an influx, they’re a shift, from Labor, on trees, refugees, uni fees, and much more. What makes it all the more piquant for @picketer is that his TL is a stream of arch jokes about Baudrillard, mondo culture shots trolling Q&A, snaps of his book collection (“lots on political violence”) and sloppy use of the word “hermeneutic”. He’s a one-man cultural studies seminar, circa 1995. Ah, the tragedy of Labor intellectuals: their lives, loves and mental habits are so Green you could use them for movie back-projection. Their own party does not particularly want them, and they cannot bring themselves to admit what they have become. No wonder he doesn’t like Adam’s posters — they are staring deep into his viridian soul. Before the era is out, he will love Big Bandt. — Guy Rundle

Trumpslaught is the media’s fault. According to a new study by the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University, the rise of Donald Trump is, in fact, the media’s fault — at least in part. The study tracked how much media coverage each candidate got, and estimated how much “free advertising” that was worth.

Unsurprisingly, Trump came out on top, with a whopping $55 million in free coverage. According to the study’s authors:

“When his news coverage began to shoot up, [Trump] was not high in the trial-heat polls and had raised almost no money. Upon entering the race, he stood much taller in the news than he stood in the polls. By the end of the invisible primary, he was high enough in the polls to get the coverage expected of a frontrunner. But he was lifted to that height by an unprecedented amount of free media.”

And what’s worse, the media did not cover Trump critically — the coverage was overwhelmingly positive or neutral. Says The Washington Post‘s Chris Cillizza:

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“All eight of the major news outlets that the Shorenstein Center studied gave Trump a majority of neutral or positive coverage. That’s remarkable. The chart above also calls into question the long-standing argument that cable news might have ‘gone easy’ on Trump but digital outlets were far tougher on him. (Worth noting: The way this study defines ‘neutral’ coverage is, by its very nature, somewhat subjective. It’s possible then that the numbers above could be moved around somewhat. But the general thrust seems clear.)”

— Cass Knowlton

Exclusive watch. Crikey used to get a lot of mileage out of pointing out which daily “exclusives” you could, in fact, read in several papers. But we’re not as diligent about it as we should be. Which is really unacceptable (sorry, readers), so here’s something from today’s papers.

Consider this page 2 exclusive …

firefighterexclusive

… and this, on the front page of The Age. 

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Of course, only the Oz claims it’s an exclusive. We hope that dubiously applied red ink helps move some papers!

SMH whittled down. The strangulation of the Thursday edition of The Sydney Morning Herald continues with this morning’s business section reduced to just three editorial pages, plus a page of sharemarket and finance tables in this morning’s 40-page paper. Monday’s 44-page paper had six editorial pages, and no tables.

Tuesday’s 44-page paper had six editorial pages, but no share or finance tables. Wednesday’s edition had five editorial pages and a page of sharemarket and finance tables (which must make it hard for anyone following the sharemarket and reading the print edition of the SMH). What is notable is that the business section in the SMH no long appears as a standalone liftout, but is now just in the paper as a whole.

The dropping of the finance tables on some days is a sign of confusion at the SMH about the planning of each day’s paper. With Thursday’s SMH the lowest-selling edition of the week (with just over 95,000 copies), the future is definitely finite.

As Crikey pointed out last week, the moving of the popular columnist Elizabeth Farrelly from Thursday’s paper to Saturday’s bigger-selling edition (around 191,000 copies), was the first sign Fairfax is starting to prepare to close the Thursday paper. The confusion over the inclusion of the finance tables is another sign of the lack of interest in meeting what readers want in their paper. Fairfax management just don’t care as they slash costs. Fairafax is limiting the Monday-to-Friday papers to a maximum of 44 pages (and the Financial Review as well). — Glenn Dyer

Cognitive dissonance. There was this morning’s edition of The Australian Financial Review, cheering infrastructure spending, especially roads, with a four-page wraparound promoting yesterday’s National Infrastructure Summit (which was a stunt, sorry, profit-making event, promoted by the AFR). And there, front and centre was NSW Premier, Mike Baird talking about his Coalition government showing “a steely determination” in ripping up great parts of Sydney’s inner west for cars and the $17 billion West Connex project. And he was supported by that well known Sydney identity Lucy Turnbull (aka Mrs Prime Minister). And on page four of the AFR proper there was columnist Jennifer Hewitt extolling the virtues of Baird, who, she said, “puts infrastructure to work”.

But what’s this? On the back page of the paper proper, in the daily Rear View column, columnists Joe Aston and Bryce Corbett had a very different take on Road Builder Mike. Under the headline “Baird’s ethanol crusade defies all logic” the Dynamic Duo detailed the decision of the NSW government under Baird in extending what they called the “epic rort that is the NSW Government’s biofuels mandate”. The column detailed the less-than-edifying growth of the ethanol policy of the government, which has mandated that 6% of all fuel (petrol) volume sold in NSW be ethanol.

They pointed out that the NSW Treasury had criticised this policy in 2012, the competition watchdog, the ACCC in 2013 and the late NSW Greens MP John Kaye. More specifically, NSW’s Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal conducted a review of the ethanol mandate and reported in May 2015 that “no option would achieve the 6 per cent mandate and result in a positive net benefit to the NSW community”. But Rear Window points out that instead of accepting the tribunal’s finding, Baird announced last March that he was extending the ethanol mandate, loading tens of millions of dollars of extra costs on the industry and on drivers.

And no recognition of this in the rest of the AFR. — Glenn Dyer

Front page of the day. Agreed.

Boston Globe fpod