News Corp

‘Freedom’ Versus Truth

 

Judged by the hysterical reaction of the media and its think tank boosters to the modest ideas of the Finkelstein inquiry, journalism’s ultimate arbiter is the market. If the press’ output is no good, the public will not buy it. Or so the story goes.

It’s a neat trick that equates freedom of the press with the notion of an unfettered capitalist free market. Anything that stands between the desire of media companies to make a profit by selling audiences to advertisers must automatically be an attack on freedom. (more…)

By Mr Denmore, ago

The Great Leap Forward

It is 2020. We are on deadline. And the professors are in charge. Seven years since the imposition of the News Media Council – and anti-democratic academics are editing our newspapers. Bookish elites – thinkers not doers – are defining news for the ordinary people. And our freedom – Our Freedom! – lies bleeding to death in the gutter of our dreams. (more…)

By Mr Denmore, ago

Freedom from the Press


  • “There is common ground among all those who think seriously about the role of the news media and about journalistic ethics that a free press plays an essential role in a democratic society, and no regulation should endanger that role”: Opening words of the 468-page report of the independent inquiry into the media by former Federal Court Judge Ray Finkelstein. 
  •  Labor Plan to Control the Media: Headline on Australian Financial Review’s front page splash on the Finkelstein report the following day. 

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By Mr Denmore, ago

The Untouchables

They squibbed it. Given the chance to tackle News Ltd’s stifling  dominance of the metropolitan newspaper market in Australia, the federal government has left ownership issues out of the remit of its independent inquiry into the media.

That was really the only reason for holding an inquiry in the first place. Instead, the inquiry – to be led by former Federal Court judge Ray Finkelstein – will focus on print media regulation, including online publications, and the operation of the Press Council – a body generally considered to be next to useless. This is akin is calling an inquiry into the liquor licensing board in Capone-era Chicago. Until you tackle the gangsters running the show, the Keystone cops appointed to police the precinct are going to prove plod-like in their pursuit of wrong-doing.
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By Mr Denmore, ago

Mr Jones Goes to Canberra

Photo: SMH The media is a sucker for stories about plain-talkin’, grass-roots folk confronting cynical politicians with homespun morality.  Think ‘Mr Smith Goes to Washington’. Brought up on these sentimental tabloid templates and jaded with the daily theatre of covering politics, capital city journalists tend to revel in ‘people’s protests’ Read more…

By Mr Denmore, ago

Freedom Now!

Our freedoms are under attack. And the assailants are wearing drawstring pants. As bad as the heinous actions of the Norwegian gunman were, nothing is as reprehensible as the dire assault by shrieking leftists on the quietly-spoken and moderate Marxist-turned-Libertarian Brendan O’Neill on Monday night’s Q&A.

Fired up on mungbeans and soy machiattos, the Ultra-Leftist 10-stone enforcer Stephen Mayne took time out from shareholder meetings and dodging punches thrown by News Ltd freedom fighters to spew his bile at a man whose only interest is to preserve the legacy of our embattled publishing saint, Rupert Murdoch. (more…)

By Mr Denmore, ago

If the Crap Fits…

What recourse have the public when the nation’s major media company wilfully misrepresents a public policy reform? What safeguards are there against blatantly dishonest journalism that presents opinion as fact and a partisan agenda as straight news?

Take a look at the two front covers above – from the nation’s two biggest selling newspapers and ask yourself, as the ABC’s Annabel Crabb has contended, whether this is merely “aggressive” reporting and that the government’s response to it is paranoid and misguided. (more…)

By Mr Denmore, ago

Strings Attached

Business institutions so large and powerful that they distort the democratic process; frightened politicians in the pockets of large monopolistic companies; a corrupted and constricted public debate and an ever increasing separation between the actions of those large institutions and the generally agreed standards of public decency: The grim pathology of the global financial crisis comes to mind when watching the beginning of the end of Rupert Murdoch’s malignant global media empire.

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By Mr Denmore, ago

Hands Up: It’s a Stitch Up

Hands Up: Gillard Faces Armageddon, Apocalypse The Australian Denis Shamandham The Gillard government is under intense pressure tonight after (insert name of industry lobby group here‘ – ed) released a damning survey which highlights the cost to consumers (‘unspecified, check tomorrow and multiply by four’- ed) of its contentious carbon Read more…

By Mr Denmore, ago