The unbiased view of journalism – Press start

After pocketing the trail of money laid by desperate publishers that led them into newsrooms, many a digital consultant would have told the printing press-deafened hacks that “old” media does not “get” or “understand” social media.

I’d say it is at least equally, or perhaps more, true that many on social media do not “get” or “understand” the way the old media works in Australia.

So, I am writing some explainers and for this first one I wanted to look at who owns what, concentrating on the written word.

While this might seem an invitation by some to suck the hard-shelled reproductive capsules of chickens, I will try to correct some of the frequent errors I see on Twitter and Facebook.

This is making the heroic assumption that it is not wilful ignorance.

There’s nothing I can do for that – so for anyone in that category and who is very happy being there – yes, you are completely correct, Rupert Murdoch is the devil.

For those less interested in theology, Murdoch does not own all the newspapers in Australia, despite what you might have heard, especially from an “Angry Santa” up north.

While Murdoch has the majority of “dead tree” circulation, the ABC found if you added digital readers News Corp is only just ahead of Nine Entertainment for readership.

As Nine also owns the “Nine Network” it would be fair to say they are the largest private media company in Australia.

They also own some of the highest-rating metro radio stations.

News Corp also owns Foxtel, which has Sky News but it rates a fraction of what even the ABC does.

But purely in terms of print and digital journalism, it would be more correct to talk about a “duopoly” than monopoly, depending on how precise you want that definition.

Strangely, I believe many of the same people who tell us how omnipresent Murdoch is in shaping Australians’ attitudes also like to quote the survey finding that the ABC is “the most trusted news source in Australia”.

If it is true that you the things that you read ain’t necessarily so, the ABC is perhaps a bigger concern in terms of what they might get wrong or mislead with.

That’s unless they just take Murdoch’s lead and if that is true, what point is public broadcasting?

What about newspaper monopolies in certain centres, especially the big metro capitals?

Again, this is quite outdated thinking, when we have everything from the New York Times to the Benalla Ensign at our Smartphone fingertips but as some would say “all news is local”.

Both News Corp and Nine Entertainment publish national papers, The Australian and the Australian Financial Review respectively.

Obviously the “Fin” is aimed at a more select business audience but it is also influential in its political and national news coverage.

For a paper that serves the “captains of industry” and the laissez-faire let-it-rip greed-is-good Gordon Geckos of the banking world it sometimes lets the side down dreadfully.

Arguably their biggest name political columnist is that staunch lover and defender of all things Liberal and National, Laura Tingle.

BTW do Nine and the ABC have a copy sharing agreement? Her weekly columns in the two outlets sometimes seem to be slightly reworked versions of the same piece.

In Melbourne and Sydney, Murdoch’s biggest two tabloids compete with Nine’s The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald.

Murdoch also owns the big general news portal news.com.au, but some might find its definition of news a bit of an anti-climax.

In the other state capitals, such as Darwin, Hobart, Adelaide and Brisbane Murdoch owns the only major print product, although Nine runs a local news website in Brisbane and Perth.

In Perth, the only major print newspaper, The West Australian, is owned by Kerry Stokes (Seven West Media), although News has a website.

In Canberra, the seat of power, The Canberra Times, which is owned by Australian Community Media, what used to be called Rural Press, and they have about 140 rural and regional titles.

Got all that?

While we are on the subject of ownership, former Liberal Treasurer Peter Costello does not “own” what was once called Fairfax, he is chairman of the Nine board.

Nine is a publicly listed company, meaning it is owned by shareholders, the largest one being the owner of the WIN regional TV network.

A board chairman’s roles can differ from company to company.

In big listed companies, such as Nine, they are more likely to be top level “strategic” decision makers.

For that matter, Murdoch does not “own” News Corp, it too is publicly listed in Australia and the US, but the Murdoch family has preferential “controlling” shares.

The day-to-day job of deciding what goes in a paper is normally the job of the editor.

In the case of The Age, which has obviously always had it in for Victorian Labor and hates Dan Andrews, the editor is Gay Alcorn, formerly at that terrible right-wing reactionary rag The Guardian.

The Guardian Australia might be considered Australia’s major non-newspaper newspaper.

It is a digital offshoot of the UK’s Manchester Guardian.

Malcolm Turnbull helped set up the local version, which they are a little defensive about.

Who knows why Turnbull helped find the finance but it could have been to have somewhere to place his opinion pieces after he left office.

Oh, I almost forgot, there is also the Australian digital version of UK tabloid the Daily Mail but if you’ve read the other news sites the chances are you have read its stories.

The only other print product that might be considered a national paper, and not published by the “big two” is The Saturday Paper.

This is published by Swartz media, which is owned by mega Melbourne property developer Murray Swartz.

He is also the publisher of The Monthly, which has nothing to do with women’s sanitary products, despite some calling the periodical a “rag”.

There are sundry other websites that claim (with varying degrees of merit) to do journalism.

Two of the most prominent are the union super-backed The New Daily and Crikey, published by Private Media, which is the vehicle of journalistic wunderkind Eric Beecher.

Fun fact – as a too-precocious teenager Eric Beecher dreamed up what most distinguished judges would say is Australia’s finest ever print publication, the now tragically defunct Rugby League Week.

All the smaller players I mentioned skew left, so the idea that Australia is dominated by right-wing journalism is hard to sustain.

And that’s not counting the publicly or mostly publicly funded journalism of the ABC and SBS.

The main thing that drives commercial media is being commercial, in other words making money.

In the next part of the Unbiased View of Journalism I will look at how that influences the way outlets cover stories.