Is there an Echo in here? One of the unexpected complications of being a media magnate is when you lose track of just how many publications you own. Byron Shire Echo general manager Simon Haslam got in contact to tell us of “a strange call from a newsagent yesterday asking whether we had started a glossy lifestyle magazine”.
Haslam was confused until someone sent him an Australian Community Media (ACM) press release concerning today’s roll out of the Northern Rivers Review which describes ACM as “the publishers of Newcastle Herald, Canberra Times and Byron Shire Echo“.
“I imagine that [ACM boss] Antony Catalano was sitting there at Raes [the luxury hotel he owns in Byron] and just became a little confused about whether he owned the Byron Shire Echo or was just reading it. I think the same thing happens to Rupert Murdoch when he meets politicians, he probably just assumes he owns them until someone tells him otherwise,” Haslam said.
For the record, the Byron Shire Echo is owned by the Shand family and six other “low net-worth individuals”, all of whom live in the Byron Shire.
UPDATE: ACM have told Crikey they did not produce the media release. For more on the story, go here.
The day the clown cried Bless the Oregon Health Authority (OHA), determined to not let a global pandemic get in the way of some Halloween fun. Led by doctors Claire Poche and Shimi Sharief, the OHA put out a video earlier this month updating Oregonians on celebrating the holiday safely. It’s a nice and useful idea, but the execution is… strange.
Yep, that’s Poche, reporting on the state’s three overnight deaths while dressed as a clown. Appropriately for Halloween, it’s very haunting.
Ruddy hell So there is something that could prompt News Corp to write about former prime minister Kevin Rudd again. After steadfastly ignoring Rudd’s petition calling for a royal commission into Rupert Murdoch’s media empire — signed by nearly 400, 000 people and endorsed by former PM Malcolm Turnbull and ’90s dreamboat Hugh Grant — Rudd has once again made the Oz’s front page.
The International Peace Institute (IPI), a think tank chaired by Rudd, received $650,000 from “alleged but only because he died before trial” paedophile Jeffrey Epstein between 2011 and 2019. Rudd claims to have had no knowledge of the payments and says he never received any remuneration from the IPI. We shall see whether this is the knock-out blow News has been trying to land on Rudd since it accidentally humanised him by telling us he went to a strip club.
Ad it to the bill It’s always good to be kept up to date with how our money is being spent. As a tipster puts it, after famously receiving hundreds of millions in government largesse in 2018, “our beloved Barrier Reef Foundation seem to have decided a lovely taxpayer-funded ad campaign will save the reef“.
Hate to say I told you so Yesterday, NSW Health Minister Brad Hazzard continued the slow trudge towards openly accepting that the COVIDSafe contact tracing app was, among its many flaws, not all that effective.
After tweeting in April that the app was “critical” to keeping the community safe, he’s now conceded that it has “not worked as well as we had hoped”.
So where are the commentators who glugged down the government’s argument that the app would act as some kind of sunscreen against the virus? Peter FitzSimons compared people refusing to download the app to terrorists. Chris Kenny argued they were like anti-vaxxers. Chip Le Grand called them “Twitter cranks and contrarians”.
We’re still waiting on the columns directing similar levels of ire at the app and its designers.
Meanwhile, Murdoch has no problem with fully supporting Trump, a man on record boasting about his sexual harassment of women, & a bloke pictured in the company of Epstein at many of his infamous “parties”.
News Corp managed to report the Epstein donations but seems to have ignored Rudd making sure the donations were not retained as soon as he found out about them. The money has been given to appropriate charities. It’s almost as if News Corp was trying to run a vicious beat-up against someone it does not like… which again proves the point behind Rudd’s petition and the need for some action to bring down Murdoch.
I’m also sure that Murdoch would hate it if we spread around that picture of him with Ghislaine Maxwell ;).
And the picture of his contact details in Epstein’s little black book.
There are some fundamental tests of Murdoch’s influence on the electorates of Australia (Queensland) and the USA in the next few days.
All of his television and print outlets have been urging [demanding] support for the LNP in Queensland and for Trump in The USA.
Let’s just see how that works out for him !
News Corp also probably forgot to mention that Rupert’s contact details are in Epsteins liitle black book, yet Rudd’s aren’t.
So it does get more interesting. I was waiting for Merodach to pop up in that context. And that International Peace Institute and UN-affiliate that wants to help promote democracy in Mongolia. You gotta be kidding me.
Would that be Inner Mongolia or Outer Mongolia? The only thing in and out in Mongolia would be the siphoned-off money.
And you trust the these UN affiliated Institutions? Rudd found this out years ago when they tried to set him up for future cooperation at that strip joint.
Funny how we only appreciate Rudd in hind-site
Re the CovidSAFE app: I’m no conspiracy theorist (except for the real ones, like 9/11 was controlled demolition, Epstein was bumped off, and the LNP are all mentally deranged) but I’d never download any government app in the light of Crikey’s article this very day on Brandis’s lies about its avid intent on our surveillance. If that makes me an anti-vaxxer, we are indeed in a post-truth world.