Pauline Hanson's intolerance towards reporters on display at National Press Club

Pauline Hanson’s intolerance towards reporters who challenge her preferred, self-crafted reality was on full display at her National Press Club appearance on Wednesday.

Hanson shouted she would never again talk to Guardian Australia after insulting reporter Sarah Martin, who had asked about the employment of the senator’s daughter.

Then the pumped-up Hanson vowed to shred SBS and the ABC.

She was spitting anger.

The media union has condemned Hanson’s attack on Martin, and Anthony Albanese said parties seeking to exclude media organisations or cut public broadcasting were misguided.

This in not just Trump inspired. Control of news items about her has, for 30 years, been vital to Hanson’s political ambitions and her rampant ego.

She has few policies that are detailed and soundly costed because the party she founded, One Nation, is all about her and how she speaks to and for some Australians. Any distractions from her voice – such as the crackling intrusion of facts – deflates her political appeal.

So she gets angry, in the hope her self-protection will be interpreted by voters as a courageous defiance of press “elites”.

Hanson sprang fully formed as a media manipulator at her surprise federal election victory in 1996, instinctively skilled at playing the image market.

The new member for Oxley harnessed the political fairytale of the humble fish and chip shop owner trouncing the Liberal and Labor machines using only her grit and integrity.

There was significant demand for her words and images from news outlets that only occasionally pointed out she had been the Liberal candidate for Oxley before being disendorsed over her comments on race. And there was limited mention of her previous non-fast food roles.

She attempted to prolong the political fairytale at the 1998 federal election, switching from being an independent candidate to the banner of the party she created in her own image, One Nation.

There was engagement and even conviviality between the Hanson team and reporters covering the campaign.

At one point Margo Kingston, then working for the Sydney Morning Herald, and this reporter, then with the Daily Telegraph, found a photo of us with Hanson on a One Nation website, as if we were quite chummy with the candidate, perhaps even supporters.

The photo, removed after Kingston complained, was not a friendly snap, and potentially set up to embarrass us.

Media manipulation didn’t work then and it would be 20 years after the 1996 win before Hanson was again in federal parliament, this time as a Queensland senator.

In the years between victories, Hanson would be dumped by her own party and have to fight to return, would be jailed for 11 weeks on electoral fraud charges later overturned on appeal, and would have to endure a succession of election failures and embarrassments.

All of which were noted, usually with little sympathy, by media outlets.

And there was no sympathy for reporters from Hanson when she was elected to the Senate in 2016. No more nice rabble rousing and joshing exchanges.

She almost exclusively used trusted outlets – trusted not to be hostile – such as Sky News programs, particularly those on “Sky After Dark” . Through them, and fellow travellers in newspapers, she spread the “I’ve Had A Gutful” message and demanded a homogenised Australia.

The National Press Club lunch appearance was her first and suited her aggressive media conflict approach.

There were no pesky follow-up questions from journalists and coverage of her speech was straightforward.

However, the blow-up over Guardian Australia, like her party’s previous attempts to ban the ABC from events, was a clear signal that Hanson, like the US president, Donald Trump, has decided she will approve and disapprove of reporters, and free speech.

The liberties she takes directing news coverage of One Nation and herself is working well for her so far this year but voters will want more accountability in an election year.

Malcolm Farr worked in the Canberra press gallery from December 1991 to December 2019, where he reported mainly for the Daily Telegraph and news.com.au. He has later contributed to Guardian Australia, Crikey, and the ABC