Media organisations, glass houses, and ‘cancel culture’ stones
In this outtake from the Weekend Mumbo, Mumbrella's editor Shannon Molloy reflects on the drama between Qantas, the AFR and Nine Publishing, reminiscent of 2015's Great Media War.
The spirited defence launched by News Corp Australia of its main competitor Nine Publishing was about as unexpected as an on-time Qantas flight is these days.
It certainly wasn’t on my bingo card for this week, my first as editor of Mumbrella.
But someone daring to challenge a major media organisation is enough to unite even the fiercest of commercial foes. Just ask Meta.
The drama began when the national carrier ripped copies of The Australian Financial Review from its airport lounges and blocked free access to the masthead within its digital entertainment app (as of Friday, this has apparently now been overturned).
Ongoing criticism of outgoing Qantas boss Alan Joyce by the AFR’s famously salty columnist Joe Aston seems to have sparked a bit of a dummy spit.
If I was Joyce, I’d probably be more concerned with my inevitable legacy of trashing a beloved brand, or busy rolling around in huge piles of undeserved cash, but that’s just me.
The churlish boycott became even more jaw-dropping when News Corp Australia boss Michael Miller gave an interview – to the AFR, no less – dubbing Joyce’s actions “corporate cancel culture”.
“As someone who people attempt to intimidate when they don’t like coverage, I take exception to the pressure put on journalists and the media to stifle free speech,” Miller said to the paper.
I was astounded.
Not just because the consolidation of the news landscape means Rupert Murdoch’s empire has fewer and fewer enemies, and thus faces much higher competitive stakes.
But for me, on a personal level, it triggered a trauma flashback to what was known among a small group of reporters as the Great Media War of 2015.
Unless you were either in that cohort, one of about four television publicists, or a senior News Corp editor, you won’t have heard of this bloodless but brutal conflict.
Back in 2015, I was writing about the TV industry for News Corp’s national stable of print and digital mastheads.
My job, while hardly noble in the grand journalistic scheme of things, was to inform readers in the broadest possible way of all things small screen, from shows to stars to the bigwigs away from the cameras who make it all happen.
Suddenly, my colleagues and I found ourselves forced to abide by a rigid and absurd ban on writing a single word about anything to do with Channel 9.
Not a single story about a show, a personality, an executive… nada. Everything to do with the nation’s second-biggest broadcaster was off limits, significantly shrinking the scope of our coverage.
A single story on tabloid news show A Current Affair was to blame. It took a shot at the much-reported modest amount of tax paid by News Corp. It made someone furious.
Is that not an example of corporate cancel culture? Is it not an example of the powerful disliking a valid news story and doling out a bitter punishment in response?
It’s worth pointing out that Miller wasn’t the boss of News Corp Australia when the tantrum over the A Current Affair segment was thrown.
But the ban on any favourable coverage of the TV network and its interests extended well into his tenure, before a turnover of senior editors saw it eventually forgotten entirely.
Nine Publishing is far from squeaky clean on the cancelling front either. I’ve experienced it myself first-hand.
When my first book was published, it hit shelves in the shadow of the acquisition of Fairfax and its newspapers by Nine.
The early aftermath was plagued by sensitivities at outlets like The Sydney Morning Herald, which proudly declares itself to be ‘independent always’, about what stories might upset the new owners.
It’s why an interview and photoshoot I did for the SMH was dumped when someone up the editorial chain realised I worked at news.com.au at the time.
“Sorry, but it’s got to be killed,” I was told.
Am I a victim of corporate cancel culture?!
It’s just the way things go. Commercial realities at play in this modern and insecure landscape inject various shades of grey into the veins of a craft that was once very black-and-white.
Grandstanding when it impacts someone within your industry, and therefore perhaps you one day, is just a tad rich.
“This sort of shit is why people hate us,” a frustrated colleague remarked to me during the Great Media War of 2015.
That’s a reference of course to the dramatically low levels of trust Australians have in media institutions these days – a rating that continues to plummet annually.
Perhaps that fact provides some small comfort to media bosses of all stripes.
Shannon Molloy is editor at Mumbrella.
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