Lachlan Murdoch says black lives matter – but did Greg Sheridan get the memo?

Lachlan Murdoch, the executive chairman of US Fox Corporation, said in a memo to staff this week that “black lives matter” and the events arising from the death of George Floyd have left him “shocked and saddened”.

“Each of you has been in my thoughts as we watch the tragic death of George Floyd continue to cause immense pain and spark important discussions around the country,” Murdoch said. “It is essential that we grieve with the Floyd family, closely listen to the voices of peaceful protest and fundamentally understand that black lives matter.”

Fox News personalities largely ignored Murdoch’s sentiments, as did it seems some of the pundits who work for the Murdoch family’s Australian outpost, News Corp Australia.

The Australian’s foreign editor, Greg Sheridan, a regular guest on ABC programs including Insiders and The Drum, boldly told Sky News the Floyd murder was a one-off and there was no systemic racism in the States.

“Most African Americans are middle class, and they don’t suffer daily, shocking racism,” Sheridan said. “I myself have lived in the United States on four separate occasions. And I never saw any racial confrontation. I never heard anyone make a racist remark.”

“The very fact that America is convulsed over this shocking incident shows that it is not an America in which racial violence against blacks is normalised or accepted, you know, carried out by official agencies or by private private individuals.”

Sheridan was invited back on Insiders despite attacking the ABC’s reporting on George Pell and falsely claiming that the the broadcaster had produced Tim Minchin’s Come Back Cardinal Pell song.

Andrew Bolt scorns ‘supposed racism here’

An incomprehensible cartoon in the Australian by John Spooner was also dismissive of the Black Lives Matter protests, portraying a black protester kneeling on the neck of the Statue of Liberty.

But it was Andrew Bolt who managed to use the tragic events in the US to attack Indigenous women Linda Burney and Brooke Boney and to accuse the ABC of fanning the flames of race resentment.

Bolt said by inviting the Labor MP to discuss black deaths in custody in Australia on RN Breakfast, the ABC was urging Australians “to not just feel rage at the killing in Minneapolis of a black man, George Floyd, by a white police officer, but to rage at supposed racism here”.

He also took aim at Boney, the Today show’s entertainment editor, for daring to point out that Australians condemn the savagery in the US but “sit idly by while the oldest continuing culture in the world is dismantled before our eyes”.

Bolt called on Boney to apologise for her column about the parallels in the Sydney Morning Herald. “It’s a fraud,” he wrote. “Shame on them for so wilfully playing with the fires of race resentment.

“Will the Sydney Morning Herald do the responsible thing tomorrow and publish an article just as prominent as that from Boney that sets out the full facts of this case? Or is it happy to risk encouraging race riots?

“And will Boney apologise?”

News Corp cuts continue

Speaking of the Murdochs, Weekly Beast understands both Al Jazeera English and the ABC’s Four Corners are working on documentaries about Rupert Murdoch and his influence in Australia.

The News Corp global company lost US$1bn in the three months to the end of March and is making massive cuts to its Australian businesses, including this week shutting down two more brands: the horribly named whimn.com.au and Stellar, the Sunday magazine inserted in the papers. Whimn, or “with her in mind”, aimed to take on Mamamia and be “the number one female news and information source in this country” when it launched in 2016. All women’s content will now appear under the Body + Soul brand to create a “premium weekend women’s product”, staff were told.

News Corp refused to say how many journalists were laid off when it gutted its local and regional newspapers but the union estimates the figure is 204, and sources say the staffing for the remaining digital-only mastheads that remain is very low.

The former Media Watch host Jonathan Holmes is reporting the Murdoch story for Four Corners.

ABC triumphs online again

It’s perhaps unsurprising that News Corp Australia attacks the ABC almost daily, given that the public broadcaster now has a far bigger audience for its online news than any of the Murdoch mastheads. For the fourth month in a row ABC News is No 1 in the Nielsen digital content ratings and news.com.au has surprisingly plummeted from No 2 to No 6, after spending most of 2019 at No 1.

Which brings us to the Australian and its gold medal performance in the spin category this week. According to a report in the Australian, audiences are “rushing” to the broadsheet, “which is the best-performing newspaper in the country”.

As the only other national newspaper is the Australian Financial Review it’s a very small field.

In the Nielsen digital stakes the picture for the Oz is not so bright. In March, which saw a huge spike in news across the board, the Oz managed to enter the top 10 digital news sites for the first time since 2018 but in April it dropped out again. With the Oz a no-show there is now only one News Corp masthead – news.com.au – in the top 10 news brands in the country.

Saturation coverage

The Nielsen data for news sites showed a big drop across all publishers in April as interest in the coronavirus waned after a big spike in interest in March.

The protests in the US and the return of live sport has seen coverage of coronavirus drop below 50% of all news articles for the first time in nearly three months, according to data from Streem media monitoring. The Covid-19 media saturation peaked on 24 March when the virus was mentioned in 81% of stories published  that day. In January there was a peak of 36% for the bushfire coverage.

Last Friday the coronavirus content fell below 50% for the first time since 13 March.

Boxing clever

All credit to the Australian’s photographer Nic Walker for giving us this image of 60-year-old box manufacturer Anthony Pratt. But why did the billionaire agree to the ridiculous pose? Note the socks.

Board split on ABC pay

The ABC board met this week and top of the agenda was the call by the communications minister, Paul Fletcher, to defer a 2% increase for all employees scheduled to take effect in October under the ABC’s enterprise agreement.

“This is a time when many Australians are out of work or have had to take substantial reductions in their income, and it’s appropriate that government employees should have a pay freeze,” Fletcher said last month. “The ABC as a government organisation should be part of that.”

Weekly Beast can reveal that the board was split on how to respond to the government and no decision was made. The managing director, David Anderson, has told staff that unlike the Australian public service, the ABC does not have the ability to unilaterally alter their working conditions and “the independence of the ABC from government direction is set out in the ABC Act”.

Pete Evans v 60 Minutes

Just when we thought the chef Pete Evans was moving out of prime time, the former My Kitchen Rules judge pops up in a promo for a 60 Minutes story on Sunday night which asks: “Are dangerous theories just as contagious as the virus?”

“I am sceptical, and I also am suspicious,” Evans says in the teaser. “If I disappear, or having a fricking weird accident, it wasn’t an accident.”

But Nine may regret inviting the conspiracy theorist, anti-vaxxer and Donald Trump supporter on the program. Evans has already subverted Nine by announcing he recorded his entire interview with Liz Hayes and intends to stream it on his Instagram account at the same time 60 Minutes goes to air.

Evans, who exited My Kitchen Rules last month, told his supporters he had only agreed to the interview because he’s a huge fan of Hayes but he’s interested to see how they edit him: “I don’t have free to air tv, but I did tape the whole 2 hour interview so I will be sharing it on the night!”