- The news media today is like a once-prosperous man about town who now tramps the same streets, shabbily dressed, looking for handouts. It has lost its advertising rivers of gold. It has become increasingly dependent for funding on governments and competitors. It pleads for philanthropic assistance. It must constantly downsize, retrench, remodel.
- Former Fairfax and Murdoch editor and now chair and largest shareholder of Private Media , owner of Crikey, Eric Beecher has written a detailed, thoroughly researched, and absorbing book on the history across the globe of media dynasties. He covers the 20th century in detail and the huge challenges traditional media now faces in the 21st century.
- He doesn't pull any punches on naming and shaming their founders and current owners, and particularly dumps all over the ugly Murdochs and their constant sacking of editors who refuse to arse-lick as expected.
- Australia is not his main focus, which is refreshing. All $ amounts are in US$. He tells a global tale, delving into the moguls' private lives as well as public - their outrageous mansions, properties, estates, boats, etc. Owning newspapers gives them power, political and social, not just massive wealth.
- It never occurred to me, when I resigned as a Murdoch editor, that I had been a member of a cult. But over the years, as I've watched News Corp and Fox News dissolve into propaganda operations that devalue facts, construct and attack lists of enemies, and treat ethics as an alien concept, the resemblance has become striking...these companies have some of the key characteristics of a privately controlled messianic cult: they are led by an authoritarian leader, demand unwavering loyalty from adherents, follow a prescribed dogma, and exist in a culture of 'us versus them'.
- Beecher mercilessly details Murdoch’s anti-climate change propaganda; his privacy-invasion business model, including the relentless hacking of phones and computers of ordinary citizens; the propaganda machine that is Fox News; his huge tax avoidance schemes; the immoral ways they reported on 'enemies'; and the enormous payouts in compensation over the decades that he incurred.
- Beecher not only digs deep into the 'moral swamp' of Murdoch's business, but also tells the fascinating stories of US, British, Canadian, French and other European media empires. William Randolph Hearst, Lord Northcliffe, and Viscount Rothermere (all enthusiastic Hitler supporters in the 1930's), Lord Beaverbrook, Conrad Black and Silvio Berlusconi were all morally deficient thugs and criminals.
- But there were, and still are, reputable publishers that earned respect: Joseph Pulitzer, Edward Scripps, Henry Luce, Eugene Meyer, Lord Thomson, and John B Fairfax. And the news organisations that developed and still have it: The New York Times, Le Monde, Mediapart, The Guardian, Haaretz, The Washington Post, The Economist.
- Now we're in the third decade of the 21st century what does the future look like? Corporate billionaires (the whacky Musk, Bezos) are buying the media platforms. And there is greatly increased government control of media across the world: India, Mexico, Hong Kong, Hungary, Egypt, Turkey, Russia, Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam, Cambodia.
- We're witnessing a massive decline in newspaper revenues and staffing since 2000, and startups who've failed - Gawker, Vice, The Huffington Post, BuzzFeed. What was conceived as a ‘new era' at the turn of the century is already over. Podcasts have become very popular but have aleady hit a commercial roadblock. They're now a niche.
- Facebook and other social media entities, and their massive intrusion into privacy, have enabled precision advertising via cookies which has given them a huge majority of world wide media revenues.
- In Beecher's final chapter we look at AI and journalism’s future. It is now clear that commercial media models are dead. Massive financial subsidies from governments or private trusts are essential.
No comments:
Post a Comment