Crikey publisher Eric Beecher laments the plight of modern media in an argumentative new book, The Men Who Killed the News.
. The great-grandchildren of the first modern media mogul, Joseph Pulitzer, finally sold their ancestor’s company in 2005. Time Inc, the staggeringly powerful magazine publishing built by Henry Luce forBut it is not the latter generations of these families or their managers that Eric Beecher, a former Murdoch editor-turned mini independent media mogul, blames for the demise of the media in his new bookthe news in the first place, especially the industry’s great survivor, Rupert Murdoch.
Beecher’s lament about the press barons goes on. Enemies were and are smeared, minorities demonised, phones hacked and ethics disregarded. Hearst supported Hitler, Beecher writes, and Beaverbrook’s papers backed appeasement. In India, the Jain family’ssells editorial coverage outright. This all left the media with a trust problem when its commercial appeal was challenged by the internet, Beecher concludes.editor Kelvin MacKenzie once said to a reporter.
Step forth social media, delivering free “news” and comment on a scale never seen before and commandeering the ad revenue not already seized by search engines and classified ad sites. “ behaviour is a lot more like an elephant accidentally stepping on an ant – something that has happened while Facebook has gone about its business,” wrotewere the false prophets of the early part of this era, claiming an alliance with technology giants for clicks was the way to build fresh news outlets.
What’s left is a splintered online landscape doing the same to society. Elon Musk is Beecher’s social media Murdoch, spreading misinformation on an industrial scale. “Under ownership, X has been erratic and unpredictable because he isn’t commercially motivated,” he writes. “And that makes him dangerous in a different way .
Nick Bonyhady is a technology writer for the Australian Financial Review, based in Sydney. He is a former technology editor, industrial relations and politics reporter at the Sydney Morning Herald and Age.
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