Rupert’s “The Australian” used to have a reputation as a quality newspaper – one that positioned itself as being beyond the antics of the Murdoch tabloids that masquerade as newspapers across most of Australia’s capital cities.
In Australia as the rest of the world, weekday newspaper circulations are in decline. For the decade to 2005, there was a 6 per cent overall decrease in Monday to Friday national metropolitan circulation. Over the same period, online news and commentary has increased significantly. This has caused a rethink at News Corp where significant effort has been expended on protecting it's traditional media businesses.
News Corp has also invested heavily in new media – for example MySpace, those on-line assets that are expected to grow the eyeballs that view News Corp content with particular emphasis on appealing to young people.
And it has changed the presentation and content of it’s newspapers with more commentary and less reporting. This brings me back to my opening paragraph.
There has been a distinct shift in content at “The Australian” over the last year or so. Where once there was an emphasis on the facts and what can be called reporting. Today there has been a shift to commentary by a small group of right wing cultural and political warriors.
Some of this can be explained by Murdoch's political leanings but more likely it exposes an unhealthy alliance between the Murdoch media and the current Howard government. Almost all of these new “opinion” pieces are favourable to the Howard team. My guess is that one of the key objectives of this government is to buy loyalty via it’s media and advertising spend. If that is the case then the advertising blitz will continue – not just to convince voters – but to keep the media barons onside.
Fortunately, this September 22nd article by Christopher Pearson is comprehensively discredited at the Possum Pollytics blog. Perhaps “The Australian” thinks that this type of extreme and biased commentary will increase it’s circulation – I don’t know. But I do know that it serves to trash it's reputation.
It’s ironic that Murdoch has reverted to Fairy Tales to protect his circulation in the face of an assault by new media and yet it’s those same new media that are now able to expose and discredit those Fairy Tales. Catch 22 – sure looks like it?
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I wonder how The Wall Street Journal will be now that Murdoch has bought it, hopefully there won't be naked women on page 6, maybe there will be bizzare headlines like there are in the NY Post.
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