Australia

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.

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

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.