ANALYSIS

WELL, doesn’t this sound familiar.

Embattled One Nation leader Pauline Hanson is taking up combat with news organisations she accuses of wanting to see her demise.

Almost two decades before Donald Trump coined the phrase “fake news” and used media bashing to fuel his election campaign, Senator Hanson was angrily complaining her crowd numbers were not being accurately reported and fabricated stories about her were being printed.

It wasn’t a cynical strategy, but a genuine bewilderment as to why the adoration she received from supporters wasn’t replicated in TV bulletins and newspaper pages.

“I’m jut so sick and tired of them,” she said on Sky News last night.

“It’s like there’s gloating, and they just want to see my demise.”

It’s almost routine now after an election for her to blow her distinctive red top over her treatment by news outlets.

However, Hanson’ biggest difficulties come when she is accurately quoted, such as when she was caught agreeing her home state of Queensland could give GST money to Western Australia.

Her quest or for revenge intensifies after a loss, and considering the number of loses since her first in 1998, that’s a lot of anger directed at the media.

This time Senator Hanson doesn’t consider herself a loser in last weekend’s Western Australia election.

She is rejecting claims her One Nation party was a flop in the west, and said she expects it to get three if not four seats in the state upper house.

“We’re on 7.83 (per cent) of the vote, the Greens are on 7.82. So we are about 400 votes ahead of the Greens in the Legislative Council,” she said last night.

“So we are actually the third highest party in the Upper House.”

While Senator Hanson said she is pleased with the outcome, she made plain she was cranky about how the news media treated her in the poll aftermath.

She has elevated the media combat by banning the ABC from a One Nation celebration all other news organisations could attend.

Senator Hanson said she had done it before to individuals (including this reporter) and whole organisations and was prepared to do it again.

The tone was familiar, and was captured by a 1999 Australian Story edition on ABC-TV which replayed a Hanson rebuke of reporters covering her unsuccessful 1998 campaign.

“I don’t know if it’s the boss behind you that tells you ... that says, ‘Right, we want something here that’s going to put her down, have a shot at her’” she told the reporters.

“If this is the way it is, then please go away from me now. I don’t need you.”

However, Senator Hanson and her party do need mainstream news coverage in addition to her efforts to create her own direct paths to voters via social media. She didn’t take up the gig on Seven’s Sunrise just for the money.

The ABC’s national network is important to her ambitions.

To begin her final-week campaign in Western Australia, Senator Hanson had the interview slot on the ABC’s flagship Sunday morning program, Insiders.

Issues raised in that interview, including her admiration of Russian President Vladimir Putin and her questioning of the need for childhood vaccinations, caused her problems. But that wasn’t why the ABC was excluded from the party.

Queensland One Nation senator Malcolm Roberts explained the party’s reasons for banning the national broadcaster in a tweet:

“1. ABC was not balanced, claims we ‘flopped’ is false “2 ABC refuses our party right of reply so we refuse your right of entry”.

ABC network editorial director Alan Sunderland replied to One Nation: “Throughout the Western Australian election campaign, the ABC has provided accurate, impartial and independent political coverage and all political parties have been the subject of appropriate scrutiny and questioning.

“If the ABC has been denied normal access to political events for simply doing its job, then that is an attack not just on the public broadcaster but on the fundamental role of the media in a democracy.”