Gotti whines about fake news

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The loons are running wild today, from Gotti:

Here is an invitation for you: Send a dollar “to help stop Westpac from financing the destruction of the Great Barrier Reef’’.

That’s the invitation that has gone out via email and social media to at least 1.5 million people most of whom now believe that Westpac is a very evil company determined to wreck the reef.

The fact that Westpac is not financing the destruction of the reef is of no relevance at all. The communication illustrates the way “news” is now often transmitted in our country.

Step by step small and large corporations plus governments are discovering that social media and emails not only change the communication rules but can be used to damage business customer bases.

…The point is that the activists have decided that this project should not go ahead. They are entitled to have that view. But such is the power of the new communications mediums that very few projects can proceed against the power of a social media/email campaign.

…That’s the new game and it’s not going to change quickly. Accordingly we need corporations and governments to recruit young people who have the skills to play the game. We need politicians who get the best outside advice and determine what is right for the community and then argue their case via every outlet possible including skilled use of social media.

Sure we do, Gotti, which will mean bi-passing yourself.

Day after day Gotti pumps out material that favours business over public interests, usually in the form of support for this monopoly or that. I’ll never forget nor forgive his extraordinary performance during the RSPT debacle when Business Spectator played a key role in destroying national interest policy.

So it’s no surprise that he’s upset when his own monopoly on information is threatened.

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That said, media campaigns of this nature ought to be accurate!

About the author
David Llewellyn-Smith is Chief Strategist at the MB Fund and MB Super. David is the founding publisher and editor of MacroBusiness and was the founding publisher and global economy editor of The Diplomat, the Asia Pacific’s leading geo-politics and economics portal. He is also a former gold trader and economic commentator at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, the ABC and Business Spectator. He is the co-author of The Great Crash of 2008 with Ross Garnaut and was the editor of the second Garnaut Climate Change Review.