Miranda’s unique recollections.
Miranda Devine thinks that Gina Rinehart is exactly what Fairfax needs, and takes a trip down memory lane revisiting her own time at the Sydney Morning Herald to point out why.
When I arrived at the Herald it was controlled by a handful of hard-Left enforcers who dictated how stories were covered, and undermined management at every turn.
Another former high-ranking executive described the newsroom collective as “sabotaging the paper and some very good journalists. It’s a crying shame”.
A former editor said: “They love acting like politicians act. To them it’s a war, to the great damage and detriment of the newspaper.”
Another former executive described the world view of the collective as, “inarguably Left-leaning, and anti-business”. It was also anti-religion – especially anti-Christian – and hostile to bourgeois family values.
“The tragedy was that [Fairfax’s] core audience was a conservative audience. You’ve never seen a paper more disengaged from its core audience. Particularly The Age.”
While editors in morning conference decided which stories should be covered, the collective decided how those stories were framed – and they were ruthless enforcers.
Seems rather damning. Although, not everyone remembers things the way that Miranda does.
Former Fairfax employee Neil McMahon:
Worked at SMH in every role from sub to writer to night editor at time @mirandadevine writes of. This is pure fiction. dailytelegraph.com.au/news/opinion/g…
— NeilMcMahon (@NeilMcMahon) June 24, 2012
Miranda’s column also didn’t ring true to Eric Campbell:
How strange. When I worked at Fairfax, it was nothing like Miranda Devine claims. Not that she’s making s&$t up … dailytelegraph.com.au/news/opinion/g…”
— Eric Campbell (@ericcampbellfcp) June 24, 2012
To which McMahon replied:
@ericcampbellfcp That Devine column is fiction from top to bottom. Extraordinary.
— NeilMcMahon (@NeilMcMahon) June 24, 2012
It’s not that I doubt Miranda’s assertion that Fairfax is practically a cross between Pravda and the People’s Daily, but it’s so confusing when even people who have escaped the totalitarian regime at Fairfax won’t corroborate her stories of Leftist indoctrination. I guess that the recollections of everyone who’s ever worked at Fairfax, with the exception of Miranda, should be regarded as suspect; the groupthink is just too strong.
She specifically says the “evil ones” were not journos. Who the hell are they?
The collective, or “nomenklatura”, as one of my Fairfax colleagues described them, were not household names. They rarely had bylines because they did very little of what you might call journalism. They were too busy policing what the real journalists did.
The sub-editors? The cleaners? The tea ladies? I need help here guys. I don’t know who to hate anymore. Were the cadet journos evil? Print setters? Truck drivers?
Remember, anything that isn’t self-flaggelatingly conservative must, by definition, be from the authoritarian left. I mean, it’s not like there’s anything in the middle, is there?
I used to buy the Sydney Morning Herald to read on the train to and from work. If I had time I read Miranda’s columns. I found them interesting and entertaining, although I mostly disagreed with her. In my experience the SMH was always conservative-leaning but mostly balanced in its reporting and interpretation of facts. Its editorials and columnists praised and criticised the actions of governments of both sides. No doubt if you were to dig you might find instances of apparent bias going either way, as you could with the ABC or most other media organisations (of course, for Murdoch media over the past four years, the bias is strictly one way). If you were to look up the SMH’s election-eve editorials, I am sure most would have supported the Coalition.
But only someone who thought that a media organisations’ job was to support a pro-business, pro-religion, pro-’middle class respectability’ world view could possibly think it was biased to the left. Indeed a hard-left media outlet would never have given Miranda a soapbox.
Is pitching to “a conservative audience” in Fairfax’s charter or something?
Presumably “the collective” was pitching Fairfax more to (I dunno) inner city hipster ‘elites’. Why shouldn’t they now be considered Fairfax’s “core audience”?
Hell, why should Fairfax be pitched at any “audience” in particular? Maybe “the collective” were attempting to diversify its appeal, but were stymied by “high-ranking executives” to the “detriment of the newspaper.”
Are all “good” newspapers pitched, in Mandi’s opinion, at a “conservative audience”?
I agreed with only one column ever written by Miranda – her story about Simaplee Phuothang dying in a pool of her own vomit in Villawood after being cast off by rapist slavers on the north shore.
If Miranda is so smart how come her own newspapers circulation is going down hill? Why wont someone put Miranda in charge?
Honestly, I think people engaging with the substance of the article are being too charitable. Because the quotes are obvious {Snip – we can’t assert that}, which is pretty clear even without Campbell’s and McMahon’s denials.
Anti-business, anti-family, anti-religion?
Pity I hadn’t noticed, otherwise I would have subscribed.
I wish The Age was actually as left-wing as trollumnists suggest.
Comedy in the Herald has never been the same since the elitist family-trough Devine was there. Although Gerard and Sheehan come close (possibly a bit too predictably dull however), nothing beats the rattling rantings of the Mosman tank captain.