Media scrutiny can take many forms. Pauline Hanson’s past few weeks have shown how quickly it can backfire

Media scrutiny can take surprising forms, as One Nation and Pauline Hanson are now finding out. It can take the form of a National Press Club lunch at which Hanson is asked only one hard question and receives a round of applause from her table of supporters for abusing the journalist who asked it. It can take the form of a slow burn ignited by a single word – monoculture – that she used at that same lunch and which lodged in the communal memory, a touchstone for what she and the party stand…