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I know this guy is popular - but my god I can't stand Jordan Shanks. I absolutely don't get the way parts of the Australian Left revere this guy as a hero and almost a martyr.
Everything I've seen from him was low effort. He goes out and points a camera at people or things while talking to/about them. He does very little background research, and basically just plays insinuations for effect. He presents some vaguely related, easy to find factoids, and then does a bit of 'surely there's something crooked here, wink wink'. His videos are more about his crude humour than anything else - every Honest Government Ad (shoutouts to thejuicemedia) manages to pack more actual and factual information and context into a few minutes than what Shanks does in an hour of waffling. Their clip on the cashless welfare card was highly educational, and that's just one example of many.
Not only is Shanks' work low-effort, it also does investigative journalism - which he has been alleged to be engaging in - a huge disservice. Investigative journalism does more than sling allegations and mire itself in innuendo. Investigative journalism aims to uncover things, these people go to great lengths to dig up material that most people would never know even exists. Again, Shanks rarely does anything like that. His spat with Barilaro always seemed to be more rooted in personal aversion than anything else. And not to be misunderstood: Is Barilaro a corrupt piece of shit? That's almost a given. Has Shanks achieved anything tangible to uncover corrupt activities on the part of Barilaro? Doubtful. And whenever the going got tough, Shanks had to give in.
And once again, not to be misunderstood: I give him full credit for raising bushfire relief funds - that's actually something tangible and highly laudable he has achieved. And I don't wish death threats and arson attacks on anyone, even people I can't otherwise stand.
But no, to me he's not a hero. He's a Youtuber with high visibility who, ultimately, likes to feed the outrage machine, but offers very little of substance. In that sense he's not unlike some of thew well known right wing outrage merchants.
when the going got tough, Shanks had to give in
You mean when his house got firebombed and the cops wouldn't do shit about it? I think giving in is a reasonable response to that
One, that wasn't what I was talking about. Shanks had to pay 100k in legal costs in the Barilaro case, pull several videos, and there are some court matters still open in the aftermath of that. Google had to pay Barilaro 715k, and Shanks was referred for possible contempt of court.
Two, the police investigated the arson attacks, someone was arrested and charged. If that classes as "wouldn't do shit about it" in your book, then I'm not sure what your expectations are.
Shanks was unable to defend himself in the former case because Balilaro invoked parliamentary privilege on evidence Shanks wanted to use.
Which is absolutely fucking ludicrous. Parliamentary Privilege should not be able to be used in that manner. It should protect a politician from any criminal charges against them, and against being sued. It should not be able to be invoked when you are the plaintiff in a case.
It should be a shield, not a sword.
FWIW The videos were edited, not pulled.
Shanks escaped contempt charges. Google settled because they didn't want a precedent to be set regarding their liability.
During the course of the trial, several videos were uploaded referencing Barilaro's legal counsel. [Judge] Rares stated that he was "shocked" by the videos, that suggested Barilaro's lawyers may have submitted false statutory declarations. Rares stated that the videos appeared to be a "calculated" attempt at influencing Barilaro and his lawyers into withdrawing the case, and that he would give "serious consideration" towards referring the case to the Federal Court's registrar for a contempt of court prosecution.
While I also don't like his schoolboy humour (being much older, and not his intended demographic) you are very wrong about him being low effort in his research. On the contrary, that is why him and his producer were physically attacked and not the "serious" journalists.
Content aside, his stand up skills are surprisingly good. Perfect timing and clever audience work.
Do you have any idea how often serious journalists put themselves in danger with their work? Just because you don't hear about them being attacked, doesn't mean it's not happening. They just don't have YouTube channels with a million followers. And these days it doesn't take in-depth research to draw the ire of people. It doesn't take effort to piss off the powerful. Say the wrong thing and you're a target.
I know double Walkley award winner Anne Connolly from Four Corners is gutless.
I'm mostly with you. I absolutely cannot stand Shanks. His whole juvenile attitude really sucks, and it ruins his credibility. And outside of a small range of issues, his political opinions are outrageously stupid. He hates the Greens because he buys into the lies Labor spreads about the Rudd-era climate policy, but even worse he doesn't understand how preferential voting works and pretends supporting the Greens actually helps the LNP.
But I also think you're being unfair to the quality of his reporting. Even if it does nothing else, he definitely does raise an enormous amount of valuable awareness of serious problems. And I think there's also value in some of the investigative work he's done His Barilaro reporting and stuff about NSW clubs was especially strong.
I know this guy is popular - but my god I can’t stand Jordan Shanks. I absolutely don’t get the way parts of the Australian Left revere this guy as a hero and almost a martyr.
I agree. I WANT to like him, I think he tries (with varying degrees of success) to bring to light stuff that maybe doesn't get a mention in any other media and that should be commended. But the guy is just so CONDESCENDING. Everything seems to be such an emotional attack on him, and we (the viewers) are fucking idiots if we don't "Get" his take. That's not journalism, its reporting and opinions. Want me to take you seriously bro? Present me the facts! let me make up my own opinions and don't act like any other opinion is wrong.
But should the guy be attacked? Absolutely not. I haven't been following the story all that closely, but it deffo sounds like the police are failing to take shit seriously (surprise surprise). I don't agree with his take on a lot of things but still stand to protect anyone trying to fight corruption, even if they are a bit of a dick about it.
I don't hate him but I wish people would watch his videos with a bit more critical thinking. I've talked to a few left-wing people that were swayed into voting Labor (or in one instance, Bob Katter) because he did a video before the last federal election that ridiculed preferential voting. I watched this video and it was filled with straight-up misinformation (I've worked as a vote issuer/counter many times before). In my experience he's not actually made Australia more progressive, I don't know any of his viewers that have switched from LNP to Labor, but a few that have gone from Greens to Labor. I don't know if they still do it but he used to have a brigading group on Facebook, which always spread his videos around and filled them with positive comments on Reddit and the like. I know he's popular outside of that but it's hard to determine exactly how organic his reach is.