Paddy Manning: the Fairfax watchdog eats one of its own
In this post originally published on The Conversation, RMIT University lecturer and ABC journalist Alexandra Wake, argues that Fairfax Media was wrong to sack Paddy Manning
Sacked Fairfax business writer Paddy Manning appears to have set out on a suicide mission when he wrote for Crikey this week about problems with the plans to merge the BusinessDay sections of The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age with the Financial Review Group.
Just three years ago, The Age showed it still had great integrity when senior business writer Michael West wrote a piece in Fairfax newspapers that contained a similar message.
But times have clearly changed at Fairfax, and an article written without fear nor favour about internal problems was always going to crash and burn.
the Michael West story used as an example of Fairfax’s integrity contains no mention at all of Fairfax – it just bags AMP. Was the reference subsequently removed by Fairfax (making a nonsense of the previous integrity claim), or have i missed something?
i refer to the observation that “there is no such protection in place for fearless journalists who tell their competitors (and more importantly the public) how they are failing”.
Perhaps if journalists thought less of their own opinion, conducted thorough research, and always exercised their considerable power with prudence, the corporate sector would apply far less pressure to them
it may surprise the business media to know that the corporate sector actually don’t want to sanitise business reporting but nor will it stand by and let ignorance and inaccuracy damage the reputations of businesses and the execs who run them
lulz @NS … spoken by a true suit.
The problem is that aggressive companies view everything that’s not a puff piece as “ignorance and inaccuracy”. All the complaints over climate change coverage are an easy example.
No you haven’t missed anything NS. The pieces by West and Verrender were not on the same subject as Manning’s effort. Typical of the rubbish that comes out of so-called journalism schools….