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https://theconversation.com/an-expose-of-whatever-it-takes-culture-eric-beechers-the-men-who-killed-the-news-is-an-idealistic-book-for-the-times-233091>
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Review: The Men Who Killed the News – Eric Beecher (Scribner)
Eric Beecher is a rare beast: a combination of journalist, media owner and
idealist. In 1984, aged 33, he became the youngest-ever editor of the
Sydney
Morning Herald and he has worked around the world as a journalist. He is
currently chair and the largest shareholder in Private Media, owner of several
Australian news websites, including
Crikey.
With
The Men Who Killed the News, he has produced a book that is at once a
cry of indignation at the media’s abuse of power and an attempt to chart a
future for journalism.
The cry of indignation comes first. In a pacey compression of press history
going back to the late 19th century, Beecher vividly illustrates how newspaper
moguls from William Randolph Hearst in the 1880s to Rupert Murdoch today have
cynically debased the profession of journalism in pursuit of wealth and power.
He draws on a wide range of histories, creating a kind of one-stop shop for the
reader who wishes to understand how public trust in the media has eroded to the
point where Donald Trump is able to make the “fake news” label stick.
The men who killed the news belong to two technological ages.
The first belong to the age of industrialisation, which enabled the rapid daily
production of tens of thousands of newspapers and the creation of a vast
monopoly on public access to news and information. These men include not just
Hearst and Murdoch, but Joseph Pulitzer, Henry Luce and A.O. Sulzberger in the
United States, and Lords Beaverbrook, Rothermere and Northcliffe in Britain.
The second belong to the age of the digital revolution, which has created two
behemoths whose power is greater by several orders of magnitude than all the
legacy moguls combined: Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk.
The factors common to all, Beecher convincingly argues, are abuse of power,
manipulation of the truth and distortion of democracy.
The power of the legacy moguls, though eclipsed, remains formidable. Of these,
it is Murdoch who attracts most of Beecher’s attention. He joins the ranks of
former Murdoch editors who have revealed the moral bankruptcy of News
Corporation from the inside."
Disclosure: I was employed by Private Media in the past.
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
