The Australian’s media commentator Mark Day scored a big scoop today on the ongoing bureaucratic support for Sky News to replace the ABC as the vehicle for the Australian Television contract. He also did a terrific job in attempting to put some distance between the Murdoch family and Sky News.
However, it should be noted that Rupert Murdoch’s top Australian executive for the past 11 years is John Hartigan, the executive chairman of News Ltd. As part of that role, Hartigan serves as chairman of Sky News, the equal three-way joint venture between BSkyB (chaired by James Murdoch), Seven and Nine.
Foxtel is in the same building as Sky News in Sydney’s Macquarie Park and News Ltd has direct management control of Foxtel through its unfettered right to hire and fire the CEO. So when Kim Williams eventually decides to leave Foxtel, it will be Rupert Murdoch who ultimately signs off on his replacement, regardless of what fellow shareholders Telstra and Consolidated Media Holdings think.
The Australian’s veteran media commentator has also been mates with Hartigan for decades. They used to own a farm together.
Unfortunately, Hartigan’s position as chair of Sky News and Day’s friendship with Hartigan wasn’t mentioned in Day’s scoop today about the 4-0 panel vote in favour of Sky News being awarded the $223 million Australia Network contract. Instead, Day somehow managed to equate concern about power abuses by the Murdoch family and unethical conduct such as phone hacking to Kerry Stokes having investments in China. This is what he wrote about the tender delays:
“It may have been a propitious time for anti-Murdoch arguments but they don’t stand close scrutiny. News Corporation owns a third of a third of Sky News Australia through BSkyB in Britain. It is managed independently of News. You could just as easily make a case for concern regarding the potential commercial ties between the various arms of part-owner Channel Seven. Kerry Stokes’s Seven West Media owns the Caterpillar heavy earthmoving equipment franchise in China through WesTrac.”
What a load of rubbish.
The principle argument against Sky News winning the contract is that the Murdoch family is unethical and they already have excessive dominance over the Australian media market. Therefore, any further extension of this power and dominance ought to be avoided.
I experienced News Ltd’s influence over Sky News directly after Herald & Weekly Times managing director Peter Blunden apparently expressed concern over me entering the Herald Sun newsroom to appear on Sky.
In order to comply with my contra obligations to receive three free Foxtel connections at home, I now have to pay my own way to appear regularly in the Sydney studio on Business View, a one-hour review of the week in business on Sky News Business every Friday afternoon.
This was never the case when Sky News was based out of Channel Nine’s Richmond studio — an arrangement that ended last year when Sky and News Ltd set up several co-located operations across Australia.
In terms of expanding Murdoch family power in Australia, the two other live issues at the moment relate to Lachlan Murdoch’s management control over Network Ten and Foxtel’s proposed takeover of Austar to create an Australian pay-TV monopoly.
I’ve received word from inside Network Ten that some of the external consultants Lachlan has brought into the struggling business will continue on after James Warburton takes over as CEO on January 1 next year.
The key question here is why should any non-executive director be entitled to have their own consultants sitting at the management table?
Some executives have already received external advice about the sort of sensitive information about Ten’s operations, which should be provided to Lachlan and his hand-picked consultants. This is because there are obvious conflicts of interest given that Ten competes vigorously against Foxtel, Sky and Fox Sports when it comes to news and sports broadcasting. Lachlan is a News Corp director and heir to a $1 billion-plus stake in the company after his father dies.
There may well be an internal investigation over the leaking of such concerns from Ten’s Pyrmont bunker to Crikey, just as there should be an investigation into the leaking of key elements of the Australia Network tender to Mark Day.
The Lachlan Murdoch situation will also make for a very interesting discussion at the Network Ten AGM in Sydney on December 9, just as the use and abuse of power by Rupert Murdoch will be keenly discussed at News Corp’s AGM in Los Angeles on Friday.
Keep plugging away Stephen. Bit tired of the Oz cheerleading for Rupert in all things media related, with rarely a contrary point of view printed. They whined like anything when it seemed that Mark Scott ran a bit of a campaign for the ABC, but are happy to print this sort of propaganda themselves.
The truth is definitely out there but we will never get to read about it or see it if the murdoch mob get control over print, FTA and Pay TV.
People would be complaining if the government they voted for had that much control, but they accept this rubbish from and American pretending to be an ex-aussie, because they can make money out of it.
4-0 would not have cost him much either. A few phone taps here, a bit of blackmail there and the “world” is all good.
It is scary that News Corp could gain effective control over this country’s international broadcasting.
It is disgraceful that Australian public servants would judge Sky’s bid to be better because it was willing to get into bed with China’s propaganda ministry with a deal to provide a censored version of its proposed international service to China and in return broadcast Chinese propaganda channels through Foxtel and Austar.
The ABC should be applauded for avoiding such morally dubious deals. Instead, it is facing the loss of its ability to represent Australia overseas and the $20 million that comes with this. This loss would also affect ABC News and Current Affairs services within Australia as the ABC would have to cut back on foreign bureaux and coverage of Asia and the Pacific.
Other democratic countries use international broadcasting to spread their values and provide unbiased news services to people who live under oppressive regimes. It seems that our bureaucrats see international broadcasting solely as a way to market Australia as a place to invest in and for tourists to visit with no care whatsoever about actually helping the people of our region fulfil their aspirations for democracy and freedom.
This is shameful.
NO!
The information which has been released by main stream media in England and elswhere after the phone hacking scandal is enough to warrent the tar and feathering of anyone linked to Murdocks. Could it be the powerful influence peddelers in Australia do not speak read and write english? The new editor of the Telegraph must be willing to forget about his papers earlier work product, the Telegraph Extrta chief Mark Nolan. Edward James 0243419140