Australia’s wealthiest person, Gina Rinehart has bought shares in Fairfax Media. Should we be worried if she buys a controlling interest in the company that publishes the Age, Sydney Morning Herald and the Australian Financial Review?
I think we should.
It would mean that all the significant newspapers in Australia would be controlled by two very wealthy individuals, Rupert Murdoch and Gina Rinehart. In both cases, they bring with them an overarching political ideology which will inevitably affect their newspapers and through them, influence their readers.
This influence is not some comic book affair of the owner nightly dictating individual headlines and particular articles. Rather, owners choose editors and they in turn shape the coverage day in and day out.
In my recent book, Rupert Murdoch: an investigation of political power, I examine Murdoch’s relationship with his editors. I quote former Murdoch editor Eric Beecher who described Murdoch’s method as “by phone and by clone”.
