Image re-couched

Along with news that Grace Tame is deleting social media posts in support of fellow former covergirl Brittany Higgins, two other ladies have weighed in. In today’s Australian, there is this from Janet Albrechtsen:

…The beauty of the press is that it can’t be controlled. True, the supine, the stupid and the ideological end of the press can be manipulated, but eventually, in a free and open society with a competitive media, if a story is important enough, the press will usually ensure the truth comes out.

That beauty became a problem for Brittany Higgins and David Sharaz. They made a rookie’s error when they set out on a strategy to use the media, instead of the criminal justice system, to press their case.

They appear to have assumed they would always be able to control the narrative, to shape the headlines, to run their preferred lines without critical analysis – with the help of enough supporters in the media.

Perhaps they thought their experience with Lisa Wilkinson on The Project would be repeated over and over again….

And then there is Bettina Arndt, whose thoughts appear beneath the headline, ‘Saint Brittany or scheming charlatan?’:

….Zali Stegall MP has accused the Opposition of using all this to make a “vile political attack” on the government. Get that? She’s charging Dutton with launching a political attack for calling the government to account for Labor’s use of Higgins for the vile political attack which brought down the previous government. And Labor achieved this by falsely claiming a government coverup of the rape allegation – another vile political attack. Enough to do your head in?

With the huge multi-ring Higgins circus bringing new excitement every day, it’s hard to know where to start with this update.  Revelations in Bruce Lehrmann’s Channel 7 interview last weekend could well turf Labor ministers out of their jobs and severely damage the government, plus there’s hope Higgins might be forced to return her multi-million-dollar compensation payment given the messy scandal now threatening major damage to the major government players….