ERROL PARKER | Editor-at-large | Contact
All of News Corporation’s 24 000 staff received an email this week that contained directions from the conglomerate’s Chairman Rupert Murdoch about the editorial direction they’d be heading in this quarter.
The emails reveal the inner workings of the South Australian’s crumbling empire as for as long as audiences can remember, Rupert Murdoch has said he doesn’t influence the editorial policy and slant his companies takes.
However, a few hours after The Ashes squad was announced this week, the proud Adelaidean let every single person who works for him know his opinion CA selector boss George Bailey’s hubris.
The crude “meme” shows a man performing autofellatio against a wall while wearing a pair of tasteful sandals.
At the head is the Cricket Australia logo and at the torso, one of Cricket NSW.
Though The Advocate has contacted Rupert Murdoch for comment, it’s not hard to see exactly what the nonagenarian thought of it.
“It clearly shows the bias that the selectors have,” said The Advocate’s sports editor, Imran Gashkori.
“For years, they’ve been scraping the bottom of the NSW Blues scrap bin before they’d even get a look in the One-Day squad. Take Cam Green for example. He had to be labelled the next Jaques Kallis before anyone at Cricket Australia would look at him. Pathetic,”
“I don’t see eye-to-eye with Rupert Murdoch on much but this meme, which he claims is original content he made on his Surface Pro, is pretty bang on if you ask me.”
What this leaked email shows, which was made available to the New York Supreme Court during the Dominion Voting Services trial, is how haphazard the chain of command is at News Corp.
Cross town at our bustling inland city’s News Corp newspaper, The Betoota Bugle, issues with editorial leadership have been evident for months.
A story this morning in The Bugle called for Bailey’s resignation after leaving behind Queenslander Matt Renshaw after a record breaking season in shield cricket. One page over, there’s a story calling for New South Welshman Billy Moore to have his birth certificate officially changed to show his birthplace as “on the pool table at O’Mara’s Hotel in Stanthorpe”.
Make of that what you will.
More to come.
