Antinuclear

Insider’s critique of Murdoch Press in Australia

What went wrong at The Australian: an insider’s account  The man who helped Rupert Murdoch establish The Australian, Rodney E. Lever, feels some regret about a newspaper he says “remains the idiotic plaything of rogue amateur journalism”.  Independent Australia  30 August, 2012 I ALWAYS CRINGE whenever I read an intelligent critique of The Australian and the way it has shredded the once proud standards of Australian journalism — because perhaps, only in a minor way, I feel responsible.

It is the most ill-conceived newspaper ever produced in this country, even worse than John and Ezra Norton’s Truth because The Australian had presumptions that Truth never had. Its conception arose one Saturday in Melbourne, when I drove Rupert Murdoch to the Caulfield races and we spent the afternoon together…. At that time, Rupert was particularly disappointed at having been rejected as an applicant for a television licence in Perth and was moaning to me that he had lost out because he had no political influence. … Rupert had recently spent a few weeks driving alone around Australia and buying any provincial newspaper he could get his hands on. His technique was simple: he would bully the owner into selling his paper with a threat that he would start a competing paper in the town. He had some successes, notably in Mt Isa and Darwin. (His Mt Isa paper lost a long battle with the mining company, but his Darwin paper survives.)

Previously, he had acquired the afternoon Sydney Daily Mirror and the scandalous Norton weekly Truth …..
Rupert needed political influence if he was going to fill his television ambitions……
The Australian was to go through many dramas in its half-century of existence. First was a long procession of editors — more, perhaps, than any other newspaper in the world has experienced. Among the best were Adrian Deamer and Walter Kommer.  Deamer was sacked because he persisted in running some articles sympathetic to the Indigenous owners of this country. Kommer had serious doubts about the Vietnam War; doubts shared by millions of Australians, but not permitted by Rupert Murdoch, who was by then opening gates towards his US ambitions.

The flow of editors continued for years, until he finally found some who could steer a careful course through Rupert’s business enthusiasms and political preferences of the moment — a skill required of people who are dull, unimaginative, timid or simply fiercely ambitious…… The newspaper industry has existed in Australia for 200 years, dominated by a few families: the Finks, the Murdochs, the Symes of Melbourne, the Fairfaxes and Packers of Sydney and the Nortons — all having been prominent in our history. (Theodor Fink was the founder of the Herald and Weekly Times company in 1900, succeeded after his death in 1940 by Rupert’s father, who died in 1952.)

The days of newspaper wars are finished now. The Australian attracts some attention, mainly through rival media, including television, the internet, radio and other newspapers revelling in reporting some of its more outrageous – and often false – proclamations.

The paper may continue, but only as long as Rupert Murdoch’s wealth and ego can support it.

Beyond that, it may also have some practical future on the national scale — with better reporting. But not while it remains the idiotic plaything of rogue amateur journalism and an owner who rarely reads it and does nothing to change it.  http://www.independentaustralia.net/2012/business/media-2/why-the-australian-has-always-been-rubbish-an-insiders-account/?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=IA+Newsletter%3A+Little+boxes&utm_source=YMLP&utm_term=Read+the+story+on+IA

September 2, 2012 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | General News