Nine Entertainment — owner of the Nine Network, the SMH, The Age, 2GB, 3AW, 4BC, 6PR and more; chairman Peter Costello — “used its historic TV studios in the Sydney suburb of Willoughby to host a $10,000-a-head corporate fundraiser for the Liberal party on Monday night. …[C]orporates paid handsomely for the chance to dine with the prime minister, Scott Morrison, and the communications minister, Paul Fletcher… All the funds raised — at least $700,000 — will go into Liberal party coffers.” This is shameless, but not surprising. As Tim Dunlop pointed out last week, “People often claim, or presume, that there is, or has been, some sort of ideological divide between the Murdoch media and Fairfax, with the former habitually anti-Labor, and the latter more progressive. What [Sally] Young shows [in Paper Giants] is that, in terms of electoral support, ALL Australian newspapers have been virulently anti-Labor. … It is a useful reminder of the hill Labor has to climb at every single election, when the mainstream media is so implacably opposed, almost to their very existence, and at the least, to the idea of them forming government.”
3 September 2019