Small snippet of this story it is long but boy its very very interesting. In The New Yorker by William Finnegan March 25, 2013 For billionaires who cannot buy good press, there is the option of buying the press. In late 2010, Rinehart bought, for a hundred and seventy million dollars, ten per cent of a national television broadcaster, Network Ten, and received a seat on its board of directors. (The chairman is Lachlan Murdoch.) She also began buying #Fairfax Media shares—first fifty million dollars’ worth, then hundreds of millions more, until she was, by mid-2012, the single largest shareholder, with nearly twenty per cent of the company. Fairfax owns Australia’s oldest, most respected broadsheets, the Herald and the Melbourne Age, as well as the Australian Financial Review, a leading national daily, and hundreds of smaller papers and magazines. It is the country’s second-largest print-media group, after Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation. Fairfax is in poor financial shape, suffering from the industry-wide decline in print advertising. Until recently, its share price was in long-term free fall. Rinehart’s investment was plainly not a short-term profit play but part of her broader move into media ownership. At Fairfax, she wanted at least two of the nine board seats. She refused, however, to sign on to the company’s charter of editorial independence. As a result, she was offered no seats. Her dispute with the Fairfax board escalated and was amplified by the natural interest of journalists in their own fate. Fairfax cut nineteen hundred jobs and announced that its two flagship papers would switch to a tabloid format. It was all more fuel for the Gina obsession, already raging across the federation. Edited #Rinehart #mining #media #auspol #ausvote William Finnegan: Gina Rinehart, Australia’s Mining Billionaire newyorker
Posted on: Thu, 06 Mar 2014 12:33:06 +0000
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