Does the Canberra Times have a political bias?

I never said she had total control, merely that she is the majority shareholder. She has made it clear she is getting into media to have her voice heard.

Fairfax’s board is putting up a stoush about “editorial independence”, which is over the right to remain squarely centrist instead of being pushed to the extreme right wing by Gina the bloated corporatist megalomaniac.

SnapperJack said :

I’ve given up hoping that one day The Canberra Times will look at the climate change issue objectively rather than simply regurgitating the latest nonsense from Flannery and his disciples in the universities. I’ve also lost patience with the constant publishing of drivel by David Marr, Crispin Hull, Rosslyn Beeby and the other leftist/greenie sob sisters. And if I see one of their writers adopting the elitist position of rubbishing Tony Abbott and “shock jocks” again I’ll scream.

This thread had nothing to do with climate change until you brought it up. I’d appreciate it if you kept your nutty conspiracy theories to yourself, but I suppose you are just the ‘yin’ to Truthiness’ ‘yang’.

The group’s majority owner is Gina Rinehart,
the world’s wealthiest woman. Rinehart has
appointed Bell Potter Brokerage to increase
her total share to 19.99 percent, the
maximum allowed before a takeover offer
must be made.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairfax_Media
——————————————
Good old Wikipedia, eh?

How about the press reports last week that Rinehart just tried to sell a chunk of her small stake in the ever-diminishing Fauxfacts, but couldn’t find a buyer?

Cheer up, ‘truthiness’. At this rate, you’ll be able to buy the whole company yourself with your next Social Security cheque.

The group’s majority owner is Gina Rinehart,
the world’s wealthiest woman. Rinehart has
appointed Bell Potter Brokerage to increase
her total share to 19.99 percent, the
maximum allowed before a takeover offer
must be made.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairfax_Media

Maybe you and the three other people who read the CT could fund some sort of study.

c_c said :

Here comes the left bashing again.

I mean anyone who still sticks to left-right dichotomies is horribly past their use-by anyway. And their arguments are often wrong. ‘Lefties’ didn’t seem to have a problem getting the US into surplus pre-2000. The hawks on the ‘right’ though quickly screwed the budget though.

I would agree that the left/right scales aren’t really that useful. There are a couple of different scales for different aspects really. For economic libertyand social liberties at the least, because these are interchangeable. Often one party can have very far reaching laws on exactly what the people are allowed to do and when, independently of whether they believe in a free market economic approach or not.

But it is true, especially in the US case that politicians tend to say one thing and do another and/or just generally be inept. Their system seems to force a compromise on everything as well. And since they have so many lobby groups and special interests that have so much influence, they keep having to pour out more and more money into side projects just to get their main objectives achieved. In the end, the side projects add up to cost more than a lot of the other things.

Here comes the left bashing again.

I mean anyone who still sticks to left-right dichotomies is horribly past their use-by anyway. And their arguments are often wrong. ‘Lefties’ didn’t seem to have a problem getting the US into surplus pre-2000. The hawks on the ‘right’ though quickly screwed the budget though.

Gina is the majority shareholder? I think she owns about 11%, worth around $8.50 at current prices.

Left wingers are innumerate – it’s one of the reasons their economic policies are invariably disastrous.

The Crimes editorialises in favour of every fashionable left wing cause, whether it be human rights legislation, gay marriage, permissive asylum seeker policies or more public expenditure on just about everything. That is their right, of course. But, just as conservative governments have to fix up the overspending of their Labor predecessors, the Fairfax press bias, which is comparatively recent, has helped to put the share price in the toilet.

The SMH in its glory days used to be known as ‘Granny’, before the hipsters took it over and alienated a big chunk of its audience. It was solidly middle-of-the-road. The Crimes used to break national stories because of investigative reporting on the Federal bureaucracy and Federal Parliament, for which it was uniquely placed. Nowadays, they are both mostly low rent lifestyle journals about baristas, celebrities and local trivia (with a few honourable exceptions).

I don’t follow local politics, but in its national coverage, the Crimes never saw an anti-Coalition story they didn’t like, and the occasional bit of whimsy from the eccentric Barnaby Joyce is not exactly balance. The use of so much syndicated material from the Fairfax groupthink political reporting pool is one of the reasons for this. They lost their way a long time ago. Readers and the share market are voting with their wallets accordingly.

Why is anybody even asking this? Everybody knows that The Canberra Times along with the other Fairfax publications is totally left wing. Fairfax does this simply because they believe the Murdoch papers are right wing and they believe they have to go against everything Murdoch does.

I’ve given up hoping that one day The Canberra Times will look at the climate change issue objectively rather than simply regurgitating the latest nonsense from Flannery and his disciples in the universities. I’ve also lost patience with the constant publishing of drivel by David Marr, Crispin Hull, Rosslyn Beeby and the other leftist/greenie sob sisters. And if I see one of their writers adopting the elitist position of rubbishing Tony Abbott and “shock jocks” again I’ll scream.

The declining circulation figures and worsening financial position of the Crimes and the other Fairfax publications shows how out of touch with community sentiment their writers are and as long as they continue to operate in a little bubble under the guise of journalistic independence the sooner it will be before The Canberra Times and the whole Fairfax Media group ceases to exist.

I for one will not mourn their passing.

Truthiness said :

The Crimes is a centrist capitalist rag, saying they support labour would be saying there is a difference between labs and libs. The Crimes is owned by Fairfax, and the majority stakeholder in Fairfax is Gina the scumbag billionaire, who is certainly less than left wing.

Ah yes – Gina – another well-known leftie!