Business as usual

Eunice Goes and Mustapha Karkouti 

Today's Dateline (with Shaun Ley) had one of those generic Dateline panels that didn't include a single right-winger, only various shades of left-liberal thought. 

And Brexit supporters were also conspicuous by their absence - unlike their EU-enthusiast opponents, painting the "poorer" future we face as a result of Brexit (including Polly Toynbee ranting about how "ridiculous" the Brexit vote and how it will make the UK a "flyover zone for everybody else").  

President Macron also got a wholly positive press from the panel today....unlike President Trump, who was uniformly trashed again. 

So, alas, classic unbalanced Dateline then, almost approaching a parody of itself.

I wonder what Mark Urban would have made of Shaun Ley's framing narrative, summed up in these statements/questions?:

Hello. They're leaders, but are they leading? Donald Trump was treated like - well, royalty - in Paris as the French celebrated their revolution on Friday's Bastille Day. In London, Theresa May was trumpeting a different sort of revolution, publishing the legislation that will take Britain out of the European Union. Yet Mrs May is a much diminished figure after losing her parliamentary majority, and President Trump is distracted by the investigation into links between his campaign - and his family - and the Russians.  

And we have a European leader who's at least giving the impression of that. He sent his Foreign Minister after the Gulf, I am talking about President Emmanuel Macron of France, taking a lot of diplomatic initiatives - one in the Sahel a couple of weeks ago, now in the Gulf - trying to work as an honest broker. Is he filling a vacuum of leadership do you think?