Murdoch

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

Journalism as a Public Good

The Australian media is one of the least diverse in the world. At what point does the dominance of a single player become so great that our democracy is at risk? How, at a time of accelerating convergence in media and the slow death of traditional business models, can we encourage a multiplicity of voices while preserving and encouraging press freedom?  And why is no-one asking these questions in the mainstream  media space?

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By Mr Denmore, ago

The Truth Test

What responsibility do journalists have to tell the truth? If the commercial or ideological interests of their
employers require them to misrepresent an issue or incite conflict or exploit partisanship, what protections are there for the public against that deceit? And if journalists are the professionals they insist they are, what sanctions do they face for breaching the ethics of their trade? (more…)

By Mr Denmore, ago

The Last Commons

Five hundred years ago, English capitalist farmers began a process known as “enclosure of the commons”, the forced and wholesale appropriation of public land – formerly used by villagers for arable farming.  Now corporate forces, led by Rupert Murdoch, and agents of the political Right are attempting a similar manoeuvre on public broadcasting – the broadcast commons. The ultimate price is our democracy. (more…)

By Mr Denmore, ago

Enclosing the Digital Commons

The great showdown between Rupert Murdoch’s global media interests and public broadcasters looks set to intensify as the News empire joins forces with Apple in launching the world’s first iPad newspaper.

The $30 million tablet-only publication The Daily, whose launch has been postponed a few days from the scheduled date of January 19 while subscription software details are sorted, is being sold as the possible saviour of mainstream media journalism after more than a decade of decline. (more…)

By Mr Denmore, ago

News Speak

A bizarre year in journalism ends with our dominant media company’s flagship newspaper, an outlet that long ago gave up any pretence of objectivity, declaring war on the press gallery, the blogosphere, the twitterverse and just about anyone that wasn’t a Murdoch lackey sitting in front of a terminal in Holt Street.

The Australian is becoming a case-study in wagon-circling institutional paranoia, knee-jerk hyper-sensitivity, stupefying arrogance and an unending Orwellian capacity for declaring that black is white. Christopher Joye puts its increasingly unhinged behaviour down to insecurity, noting that the paper spends “more time defending its own actions in pushing specific agendas and ideological narratives than any other serious media forum on earth”. (more…)

By Mr Denmore, ago