28 March, 2015. 14:45
ERROL PARKER | Editor-at-large | Contact
AN INTERNAL INVESTIGATION is underway at News Corp Australia this afternoon after claims the media giant “forgot there was an election on today” were confirmed by CEO Julian Clarke.
The rumor mill went in to overdrive this morning as subscribers and readers of The Daily Telegraph and The Weekend Australian awoke to a newspaper that is almost entirely void of political analysis, comment or even hard news on the topic.
It’s a development that’s rocked the conglomerate to its core, as elections are typically heavily featured by their papers.
In a statement this morning, Julian Clarke said that “today is one of the darkest days in the history of News Corp Australia and the culprits will be uncovered and punished”.
“Australians look to publications such as The Daily Telegraph, The Australian and The Courier-Mail for the most in-depth and independent political news and analysis,” he said.
“However today, we dropped the ball and for that I’m truly sorry,”
“An internal investigation has been launched to discover where we went wrong and to unveil who is ultimately responsible for “forgetting there was an election on today” in NSW.”
On the flip side, for the first time since 1984, Fairfax Media is set to make a profit today for their ability to remember the election.
The Sydney Morning Herald this morning lived up to its marketing department’s claim that it’s “Independent. Always.” by showing both leadership candidates on the front page.
Placed in their order of importance to Sydneysiders, The Herald has chosen to place coverage of the Germanwings disaster atop the page, followed by election coverage – which is slightly more important than informing readers of an outdoor chair sale.
In recent years, the struggling newspaper empire has struggled to keep in the black.
On 18 June 2012, Fairfax Media announced it would cut 1,900 underpaid junior staff and begin to erect paywalls around the websites of its two main metropolitan newspapers, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.
The move was met by everybody not going to those website anymore.
The outcomes of the News Corp Australia investigations will be made public, hopefully, in the coming weeks.
With additional reporting from AAP.
