Sycophancy from Joe Hockey; double standards in the corporate world; one-sided coverage of the plan to force Google and Facebook to pay for news content; quarantine confusion, again… Mainstream media serves up the usual.
Former Liberal Treasurer Joe Hockey turned US ambassador turned US lobbyist was quick out of the blocks to congratulate new President Joe Biden only weeks after insisting electoral fraud had taken place in the 2020 US elections.
“There’s plenty of good reason to have litigation,” he said, a statement that was an effective endorsement of Trump’s attack on democracy.
But with his US-based lobbying work, he no doubt wants to keep his bread buttered.
Then there was the continued one-sided coverage by News Corp and Nine Entertainment of the proposed news bargaining code.
Sir Tim Berners Lee, inventor of the internet, who gave away his intellectual property so we all would benefit, lodged a Senate inquiry submission arguing that the new laws would mean the end of the internet as we know it and would set a dangerous precedent.
It was reported by The Guardian, but beyond that the only coverage seemed to be from media heavyweights The Hindu, Business Insider and NDTV. Elsewhere? Crickets.
We often touch on the politicisation of the media, but equally – if not more – insidious is the corporate influence. To much fanfare from the press Mark McInnes announced he will be stepping down as CEO of Premier Investments:
Buried deep (or, for the most part, not mentioned) was the criticism that Premier Investments had accepted millions in taxpayer handouts, even as the company posted record profits in the second half of the year.
Also buried, if mentioned, was the sexual harassment of Kristy Fraser-Kirk by McInnes 10 years ago. The David Jones publicist has spoken of the “devastating” impact of the harassment. Mr McInnes resigned from David Jones over the allegations, the case was settled out of court, with McInnes maintaining most of the allegations were untrue. He certainly went on to bigger and better things.
Border controls
The Financial Review made my job easy this week. First there was the (once again) conflation of responsibilities, apparently criticising the Victorian government for flying in 1200 tennis players, officials and entourages. This missed the fact that Tennis Australia is footing the bill for the entire exercise, while the responsibility for getting home stranded Australians lies with the federal government, not Victoria.
Further criticism of border closures again allowed the Feds off the hook for having any responsibility for quarantine, even though it is a commonwealth responsibility (Hospital Pass: how Scott Morrison foisted quarantine responsibility on the states – Michael West), lumping it all back on state premiers:
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Double standards?
Soft treatment seemed to be the name of the game or egg beaters hard at work when Karen Maley and the Financial Review stepped in to defend ASIC chair James Shipton, who had stood aside from his role at the corporate regulator after it was revealed taxpayers had coughed up more than $118,000 to pay KPMG for Shipton’s tax advice. ASIC had, in fact, only agreed to pay KPMG $8,000 as part of his recruitment package.
Apparently it even passed the pub test:
Yet, as The Klaxon reports, “the Federal Government is refusing to take the key step in getting to the bottom of the scandal by refusing to actually ‘ask’ the Remuneration Tribunal – the relevant federal body – whether the payments to Shipton were legal.”
Contrast this with the calls for Christine Holgate to quit after giving out $20,000 in watches as a bonus – a bonus approved by the board, following a highly profitable year.
The government is refusing to release the report it commissioned into the affair, with media reports noting that Holgate was cleared of any wrongdoing, with a specific finding she had not breached any rule, policy, procedure or governance requirement – a conclusion not disputed by Communication Minister Paul Fletcher’s office.
The next ripper was an Op-ed in the Financial Review from Sinclair Davidson calling for the privatisation of the ABC.
Omitted was his position as an adjunct fellow the Institute of Public Affairs, the right-wing think tank, one of its key positions being that the ABC should be privatised.
In fact, Davidson himself co-wrote the book End Public Broadcasting: Why we should privatise the ABC and how to do it.
While we’re on the topic of the IPA, it’s interesting to note that of the seven self-styled “research fellows” employed, none has a PhD, the requirement at, well, almost any other institution for being called a research fellow. Including “adjunct” and “senior” fellows brings the ratio of those with a PhD up to a massive 3/15.
But that didn’t stop The Australian writing entire editorials based on two-page briefs of the IPA’s ‘research’.
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In other news….
It seems the Independent. Always newspapers of Nine Entertainment (Fairfax) have hired Liberal Party PR spruiker Parnell Palme McGuiness as a regular columnist, with Opinion articles by her published on January 16, 10, 2; December 27, 19, 13, 5; November 29, 21 and 15.
The Australian Financial Review reckoned ordinary workers won’t mind getting no pay increases for the forseeable future (friendly reminder – Australian billionaires have seen their wealth increase by 50% during 2020).
And News.com.au managed to apportion blame for the US Capitol riot to the Democratic speaker of the house Nancy Pelosi…
But there was some sunshine in the otherwise gloom of the mainstream media. We were treated to an article critical of the federal government from The Australian’s Janet Albrechtsen.
Michael Tanner is completing a Doctor of Medicine/Doctor of Philosophy. His writing explores the intersection of economics, the media and public health. His writing has also been published in The Age. Michael’s Twitter handle is @MichaelTanner_
Comments
8 responses to “Hurrah for double standards in corporate world”
Not fair to insinuate that IPA personnel lack high level academic qualifications to develop policy, conduct research, analysis etc., why?
Because there is no need for originality or locally grounded policy development when they import ‘oven ready’ policy input or draft bills for the LNP via Koch’s AtlasNetwork of radical right libertarian thinks tanks and ‘bill mills’.
ABC RN Breakfast also mentioned Tim Berners Lee’s views but in describing the issue, like som any invested journalists, Sally Sara spoke of Google being expected to pay for news rather than being expected to pay for directing traffic to news websites. Even the Guardian reports says: “to pay for displaying news content”. The ABC is belatedly to share in these news rivers of gold so its independence and its duty to prevent the spread of fake news has been bought.
Great review, Mark. Keep them coming.
As for Hockey, the abiding image I have of that half-witted buffoon is he and the other recipient of free holidays, Cormann, smoking cigars and sharing the smoky shroud of smugness after completing the infamous 2014 budget. And let’s not forget Joe’s ‘lifters and leaners’ – before going on to demonstrate with unwitting conviction to which group he belonged.
A newspaper does not have to agree with its op-ed contributors but can be seen as aligned with those it publishes. Especially if it fails to publish. fpr example, the radical, out of school views of Twiggy Forrest https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-01-22/boyer-lecture-andrew-twiggy-forrest-green-hydrogen-climate/13077070
If the Government does not withdraw its legislation aimed at screwing Google on behalf of the dying mainstream media, Google says it will close its search engine in Australia. Same old story. Government in the grip of losers, turning Australia into poor white trash.
Strange that Murdoch did not try to increase the amount he expects from Google and Facebook, by thundering about their pillaging?
This is the very best weekly round-up in Australia into the rorters of – and the corruption practised by – the current ideologically-motivated LNP régime and its IPA-backers (and policy writers, truth be known) and the Murdoch press hounds cheer squad. I loved that bit about the general lack of qualifications of the IPA – a nasty little lobbyist group paid for by Gina and pals to attack the ABC, to attack ordinary citizens, to praise their former colleagues/gang-members now in the national Parliament – when in fact membership of the IPA should be an automatic disqualification from anything to do with public office and./or its administration to the citizens of this country. It is the Opus Dei of politics! Hidden, secretive, power-wielding – in the dark!
As for the execrable pusillanimous Joe Hockey – may he never ever return to darken or sully our national doors again. What a snake…this below is how I described it in a note to The Age, yesterday (published or not I don’t know…
“Oh, my goodness! The Leaner-Supremo – backstabber best buddy of Trump – singing the praises of the Biden Team – what an obsequious little crawler. By the time I had gagged my way through his first couple of paragraphs in which he proved himself totally ignorant of history I was asking myself why a formerly half-way decent newspaper (The Age/The SMH) would be accepting an opinion piece from this rorter-in-chief! And please note – moderator – this is being respectful. I hope he never returns to Australia – the ugliness of his treatment of ordinary citizens in this country was directly proportional to all the salaries and expenses he was able to amass unto himself – as well as money he won by suing newspapers for defamations – later proved to be the truth! To The Age management – wash this paper out with soapy water before the next edition!
Nice to have a media round up like this and at the same time exposing the hypocrisy, partisanship and half truths.
But of course you never bite the hand that feeds you.