Confirmation that billionaire mining boss Gina Rinehart now owns about 20% of Fairfax Media’s shares came as the media corporation announced plans to downsize its major newspapers. The moves spell out the future for Australia’s mainstream media: more corporate-friendly reports and less journalism.
Rinehart’s tilt for three positions on Fairfax’s board of directors sparked defensive outrage from executives and journalists alike, who said the company’s “editorial independence” should not be compromised.
Media
The Australian Council of Trade Unions released the statement below on June 21.
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Fairfax Media has breached its legal obligation to consult its workers, and failed to explain why it plans to sack thousands of workers, unions will tell a hearing in Fair Work Australia today.
Next week, Green Left Weekly will launch its newest project: an internet-based current affairs program inspired by shows like Democracy Now and Julian Assange’s The World Tomorrow.
The first Green Left Report will feature interviews with WikiLeaks supporter and activist Cassie Findlay and Cairo-based Australian journalist Austin Mackell.
Journalists and editorial staff at Fairfax media walked off the job for 36 hours on May 30 in response to an outsourcing scheme announced by management. Workers from the Sydney Morning Herald, the Melbourne Age, Newcastle Herald, Illawarra Mercury, Sun Herald, Canberra Times and Australian Financial Review took part in the stoppage.
Sixty-six subediting jobs at the Newcastle Herald, Mercury and seven associated community newspapers would be moved to a New Zealand office of Fairfax Media.
The Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance released the statement below on June 12.
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Who's the vindictive bastard who made Tony Blair give evidence to the Leveson Inquiry?
This was heartlessly cruel, to all decent people who have tried to put Blair behind us and get on with our lives. But there he was again, tormenting us, making us feel like someone just coming to terms with their years in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp and then the bloke who used to electrocute us every morning comes on daytime television, justifying himself and leaving us screaming and dribbling and eating an eight-pack box of Toffee Crisps as all the memories come washing back.
Rupert Murdoch is a bad man. His son James is also bad. Rebekah Brooks is allegedly bad. The News of the World was very bad; it hacked phones and pilloried people.
British prime ministers grovelled before this iniquity. David Cameron even sent text messages to Brooks signed "LoL", and they all had parties in the Cotswolds with Jeremy Clarkson. Nods and winks were duly exchanged on the BSkyB deal.
Shock, horror.
Offering glimpses of the power and petty gangsterism of the British tabloid press, the inquiry conducted by Lord Leveson has, I suspect, shocked few people.
Press freedom in Sudan is rapidly deteriorating, with confiscation of newspapers by the security agency becoming a norm.
The scope of violations committed against publications and journalists by the Sudanese National Intelligence and Security Services (NISS) is widening by the day.
Since early May, the NISS has confiscated more than 14 editions of different newspapers in Sudan, suspended more than 13 journalists from writing in newspapers, and identified about 20 taboo topics not to be tackled by the press.
Election pundit Peter "Mumble" Brent has accurately summed up Paul Howes as “not so much a person as an ever-evolving script”. He became chief of the right-wing run Australian Workers Union five years ago but clearly has much higher political ambitions.
As the world marked World Press Freedom Day on May 3, an annual day declared by the UN General Assembly, Sudanese journalists had no reason to celebrate.
They spent the day just like many before it, fighting against censorship and calling for press freedom.
Journalists working for Al-Jareeda, an independent daily based in Khartoum, headed to the Sudanese Journalist’s Union to stage a silent sit-in.
On May 1 and 2, Al-Jareeda was taken over by the National Intelligence and Security Services (NISS) of Sudan.
About 240 people attended a forum on “Wikileaks, Assange & defending democracy” on April 19.
Presented in partnership with the WikiLeaks Australian Citizens' Alliance (WACA), the forum argued that conversations about WikiLeaks and its editor-in-chief Julian Assange are about much more than the organisation and the individual behind it. They encompass freedom of speech and the press, whistleblower protection, government transparency, the underlying tenets of our democracy and civil rights.
While WikiLeaks was preoccupied with preparing its new “The Global Intelligence Files”, where we released on February 27 actual documents from the privatised spying world in collaboration with 25 newspapers, Swedish tabloid Expressen was preoccupied with filling its paper with false reports based on thin air.
In late February, Expressen claimed WikiLeaks was preparing a “smear campaign against Sweden” and cited as sources both a WikiLeaks "insider" and a WikiLeaks “internal memo”.
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