Fairfax: ‘News Corp dress up their bile as news’
Fairfax Media has launched an angry attack on rival publisher News Corp, claiming “they dress up their bile as news”.
The outspoken criticism came after Fairfax’s real estate offerings Domain and Commercial Real Estate were accused by Darren Davidson, media editor at The Australian, of running ads on porn sites to generate traffic.
How The Australian reported today’s story
Fairfax denied Davidson’s claims, but the story led today’s Media section of The Australian, which is published by News Corp.
The story did not offer any evidence that the ads were genuinely posted by Domain or CRE. Fairfax issued a statement, claiming that News Corp uses The Australian’s Media section to attack its enemies, saying:
“The Australian’s Darren Davidson had a story published this morning suggesting Domain has advertising on porn websites. We don’t.
“The screenshots Mr Davidson provided to us late yesterday appear to be links from a porn site to Commercial Real Estate, our commercial site.
“We did not authorise any advertising, re-targeting or redirections and believe it is a malicious scam/bot.
“Our review this morning, and our technical partners have confirmed, that no advertising from us has been placed on porn or illegal sites.
“This obviously damages not just us but all legitimate media businesses.
“We have this morning asked News Limited’s lawyers to provide us with any and all information they have on this matter so our technical people and independent advisors can more fully investigate the matter. This request encompasses all the information, emails and video that they have.
“We will notify the authorities of our findings and fully co-operate with any enquiries that may be launched in relation to this matter.
“We told The Australian it was wrong. We note they printed our quote. But still they had no hesitation in running the yarn.
“News Limited has never had any shame about using their media platforms for attacks on competitors. They dress up their bile as news and bore the rest of the industry with their seemingly endless appetite for gutter dwelling.
“We generally ignore it. Not today.”
Meanwhile, today’s Rear Window column of Fairfax’s Australian Financial Review also attacked Davidson, telling readers he was nicknamed “Lurch” after the butler in The Addams Family “known so for being very tall and very stupid”.
Mumbrella has approached News Corp for comment.
It’s a shame it’s become a race to the bottom for these two. We’d all be much better off with a couple of very high quality leading national digital news brands.
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So we have a Lurch peddling corporate bilge for Miller and a lad who writes about his own erection pushing the line of Hywood.
Is it any wonder the audience has turned away from both?
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Rear Window column should not have said that – that’s a personal dig.
But the rest of the comments from Fairfax are, sadly, quite apt.
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Fairfax do’eth protest too much and in the process lie as well. Anyone with half a brain can conclude that Fairfax ads have been placed on porn sites as part of the network buy where the ad network or their subcontracted network has placed the ads on rotation across may different sites and has not filtered for porn sites properly. Hardly the first time this would have happened either.
And for contacting the authorities? what for? ROFL.
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Was Darren Davidson visiting those sites again?
He has described the REA content deal with News Limited as ‘property porn’
Methinks he is a little too familiar…
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News Corp’s ‘news’ is mostly bile. (The Terrorgraph today was having a good go at ‘muslims’ yet again, as an example of too many bile articles.) Domain is flogging REA in terms of userbility, so that should turn into dollars as users move from REA, whos UX and speed is utterly awful. (I heard an engineer claim recently: if you were worth your weight in salt as a developer or designer why on earth would you work for News Corp when you could work at Google… (Same applies to Domain I guess, although people say it is a very flat structure at Domain.)
In terms of news, Fairfax have gone after the other 50% of Australians who, some do say, have a moral compass, which points to ethical. The Guardian is cleaning out Fairfax, so it could be Domain v REA and News v The Guardian in the not too distant future?
Be interesting if the #stopfundinghate reaches Aussie shores anytime soon? I can only see News getting stripped v Fairfax if it does?
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You’ve got one: http://www.abc.net.au/news/
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Fairfax run their own programmatic though, they’d just have to switch tab to check, not ask anyone.
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I stopped reading the Media section of Oz years ago – it’s all rubbish and a sales section for News Limited businesses . All legitimate independent industry news comes from this site and adnews.
Is this what REA has resorted to?
Curious as to whether Tracey Fellows is happy with this, or if the rumours are really true that this is coming from the top.
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Quite sad seeing these two properties act like children slinging mud, seriously pathetic.
Nice tactic from Newscorp though, showing your competitors on porn sites via exchange buys is a dying art!
Step 1 : go to competitors site, get cookied on as many pages as possible.
Step 2 : go to porn/torrent sites, visit as many pages as possible in the hope of being remessaged by competitor you loath who may have little to no brand safety filtering applied
Step 3 : Take screenshots and publish article
Feels good being back in 2012.
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Ricky Bobby is correct.
Domain know who recorded the videos, the IP of where the fake movies were created, what time they were created.
They also know this is a very deliberate strategy to discredit Domain rather than fix their own plan.
I wonder if the people of REA are proud of their brand today.
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How about adverts in The Daily Telegraph for escorts, massages and brothels?
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Darren Davison’s articles are cringe worthy. Doing the company’s dirty work like no other before him. It really is the outright shameless prositution of journalism.
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Thanks for this clear explanation. You’re the first person to have explained what’s really going on. Really reveals the shoddy tactics by the Oz.
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Two men squabbling about erections – one wood, one brick.
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If you were on Domain or Fairfax’s board, would you go to lawyers at twenty paces? It’s costly, and remediation might be limited to a wrist slap and a page 29 apology in 3point pica.
If they could force an asx block on news shares, or threaten a move in quest, or even wind up causing an editor spill, it’s a win but it won’t win back market share.
Better to take the high road? Also better to get some sage hands in the ad placement department to filter the matches. Open house? Who knew what its a sex code for? (The mind boggles)
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If a competitor is going so out of their way to get you, they have to worried.
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Rumour has it the guy who wrote this for the OZ is still locked in a deep, dark, dank room.
http://www.theaustralian.com.a.....bae4f2a826
Domain, everyone knows what this is. Stay HIGH.
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I don’t think REA have much to fear from Domain. If the figures from https://www.similarweb.com/website/realestate.com.au?competitors=domain.com.au are any indication
REA vs Domain
8:56 vs 2:35 avg visit duration
11.53 vs 2.77 pages per visit
30.95% vs 65.11% Bounce Rate
and tellingly:
1.11% vs 7.41% traffic from display ads
The crappy masthead traffic is evident.
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This is a tactic from News Corp. Just look at The Sun: it is where ‘smear’ was taken to the next level (and phone hacking…).
Domain is pummeling REA. Tis only a matter of time before Domain is leading nationally.
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You’re such a dill, same old tricks Sam Daniels.
Domain is app centric.
You keep monitoring desktop
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