by DAVID DONOVAN & MICHELLE PINI
The deeper you dig into Crikey’s crowdfunding in its defamation case against the Murdochs, the muddier it becomes.
Here at Independent Australia, we are no fans of the Murdoch media’s near monopoly of the Australian political landscape, as can be seen by our fearless coverage for well over a decade.
In fact, we published an entire series of articles from Rupert Murdoch’s News Ltd lieutenant, Rodney E Lever, blowing apart the mythology that has grown up around the ageing tycoon. It’s fair to say, we were speaking truth to Murdoch’s power well before it became cool, as you can see HERE.
Long before Crikey decided to stick its head above the parapet and issue this challenge to Lachlan Murdoch, Independent Australia was being mauled by Murdoch’s minions. We were being attacked, scorned and subjected to almost innumerable legal letters from News Corp, practically all of which threatened our very continuation as a publication. That’s because we were actually broke — not pretend poor, like Crikey.
So, while we support attempts to loosen the chokehold the Murdochs have over Australia’s media and political landscape, we have some serious problems with Crikey’s recent well-publicised crowdfunding campaign, some of which we discussed in an article last week.
That article raised several important questions and suggested many more. Such as, why did Crikey represent itself as a “small” poorly funded “minnow”, when it is in fact owned by millionaires and billionaires? Why did Crikey imply it is not mainstream, when one of Crikey’s senior shareholders is a scion of arguably Australia’s oldest media dynasty, Fairfax Media, and another an offshoot of a prominent Irish media conglomerate?
Why did those behind Crikey not disclose this information in their vast crowdfunding campaign, which included a full-page advertisement in the New York Times? What sort of “minnow” can even afford such an advertisement? What has changed for Crikey, which has previously excoriated other truly independent media outlets for crowdfunding defamation defences? And why does Crikey now contend that crowdfunding a defamation defence – for a lawsuit it openly provoked and is more than capable of self-funding – is acceptable?
Independent Australia for more