Three times a Wikileak
The Australian’s media diarist Caroline Overington this morning puts forward the argument that it’s against the spirit of freedom of information that The Australian isn’t receiving the leaked cables from Wikileaks. Instead they’re going to rival Fairfax Media titles.
It’s clearly an argument that the Australian gives some weight to – Overington’s item appears no less than three times on the front page of the media section of the newspaper’s website.
Caroline, who owns the Australian Newspaper? Newscorp. And who runs Newscorp? Rupert Murdoch. Yes, that champion of free speech and “fair and balanced” journalism .
And that is why in the spirit of freedom of information that The Australian isn’t receiving the leaked cables from Wikileaks.
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@Gordon Whitehead
Presumably you’re unaware that Assange wrote an op-ed for the Oz a few days ago. he even started with a quote from Murdoch himself
http://blogs.theaustralian.new.....s/julian1/
So in summary, probably not the reason after all!
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Read somewhere that the strategy may have related to the idea that if a news org feels that it has an exclusive, it will put more effort into reporting and spruiking the story, potentially without having to focus so much on the only element of competition being who can sensationalise the story the most.
Obviously it also provides Wikileaks with some leverage over the orgs they choose to give the access to (although it didn’t work so well with the NYT, since they ended up getting access anyway), so they may have some ability to enforce their views on how the leaks should be reported. Something to that effect anyway (not sure that I agree, but…).
In any case, the strategy doesn’t seem to have hurt their goal of maximum media impact…
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Overington and News are hypocrites and plain wrong on this.
1. They’re hypocrites (a) because they would never share an exclusive story with their opposition simply because it’s in the public interest and (b) because they’d do exactly the same thing as Fairfax given the opportunity.
2. They’re wrong that there’s nothing new in the revelations from WikiLeaks.
There was an hilarious episode last Thursday when on the front page of the first edition of the Oz they ran their line that there’s nothing new in the leaks Fairfax is getting; they reckoned any reader of the Australian would have seen them all before. There was an inside feature pointing to examples of the paper reporting the same “news” appearing in the leaks, complete with tearouts from the articles.
But in the second edition — clearly prepared AFTER they saw the newest leaks being published by Fairfax — the front page item about this stuff all being old news was replaced with a report of the leak revealing that Labor power broker Mark Arbib had been briefing the Americans for years on internal Labor and union politics. Yet they still pointed to their inside feature saying it’s all been reported previously in the Oz (no mention of the Arbib connection, though).
Odd that they suddenly thought the “no-news leaks” were worth reporting on page 1 — even though it directly contradicted the inside feature they pointed to off the front.
Even if the essence of these leaks has been reported previously (and Fairfax has also published the broad facts oo a lot of this, too), there’s a difference between vague reports of (for example) Kevin Rudd being a micro-managing anal retentive control freak who makes missteps based on whispers from his staffers and colleagues, on one hand, and secret diplomatic cables from our most powerful ally saying that on the other. So get a grip, Overington.
This is just sour grapes from News, and from Overington in particular. Her Media column is little more than a propaganda dept for News’ anti-ABC, anti-Fairfax bile. Any chance she gets she does her master’s bidding and hooks into the opposition.
There’s a word for people like that.
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Hello Mr Mumbrella,
There’s quite a bit of: Caroline says this and Caroline says that in your comments here.
What the Diary actually said was: behind the scenes, much lobbying is going on, and the following arguments are being used (not necessarily by the Oz): Wikileaks should give them to everyone, it’s only fair; does Wikileaks really want only the centre-Left press to have them; and so on.
As to what I think of those arguments, well, that’s my business.
As to what I think of Wikileaks, I think: I wish I had those cables. Because it’s absolute agony being scooped.
Merry Christmas,
C.
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