Who wrote this?

How many newspapers – online newspapers – are the same? How many print the same as the other online newspapers print? Are they owned by the same company? Why? 

I did a little bit of research the last couple of days and found out something fairly interesting. If you already know this, don't hold it against me – I didn't know about it because I didn't really want to if Murdoch's name popped up. I've had a long beef against him and his “fake news” papers.

The first onliner I looked at was ABC. Their journalist Michelle Brown had started her article with the title “WestConnex contractors seeking $1b in compensation, according to documents leaked to Labor” and her first paragraph started with “Contractors on Sydney's WestConnex have handed the Berejiklian Government a $1 billion compensation bill, the New South Wales Opposition has said.” She'd written it about 2 hours ago – around 1.20pm.

The second was News.com.au, which published an article by the Australian Associated Press writer Dominica Sanda at 1.38pm, titled “ WestConnex $1b claims budgeted for: govt”, which started with the paragraph “Sydney's WestConnex motorway will be completed on time and within budget despite a $1 billion compensation bill from companies tasked with building the multi-billion dollar project, the NSW government says.”

The third was The Australian which printed exactly as News.com.au had printed; theirs was printed at 2.08pm. 

The fourth was Daily Telegraph – exactly the same as the last two. They said theirs was printed about “an hour ago”. My time was 3.20pm so they must have printed their copy around 2.20pm. 

The next story I looked at was ABC's article titled “Flammable cladding: Baillieu, Thwaites to head taskforce to 'accelerate' investigation of Victorian buildings”, which started with “The Victorian Government has appointed a taskforce to fast-track the investigation into flammable cladding on the state's buildings in the wake of the deadly London tower fire.” No writer quoted.

The second, News.com.au, printed at 11.57am the article written by an apparent Australian Associated Press writer Christopher Talbot, titled “Vic cladding task force examines fire risk” and started by saying “Former Victorian premier Ted Baillieu will spearhead a new cladding task force assessing fire safety in buildings across the state following the deadly Grenfell tower fire in London.”

That, of course, was picked up by The Australian (1pm) and the Daily Telegraph (also 1pm) – and by Sky at 2.24pm.

So why were News.com.au, Daily Telegraph, the Australian and the Sky printing the same stories? Who owns them?

If you know this it's very old news, but News Corp Australia over the years bought Daily Telegraph, News.com.au, the Australian and many more, and very recently also bought Sky. News Corp is Murdoch.

A story from the Sydney Morning Herald interested me. SMH was from Fairfax. This story explained a lot: until 2015 Gina Rinehart owned more than 14.99% of the shares for Fairfax, which she had to sell. According to Wikipaedia, “Rinehart was denied a place on the board because she would not agree to Fairfax's charter of independence, and sold her stake in 2015.” That was reported in SMH (Sarah Thompson, Anthony Macdonald and Jake Mitchell), Reuters (Byron Kaye), Mumbrella (Nic Christensen), Business Insider (Sarah Kimmorley), Crikey (Paddy Manning and Myriam Robin), ABC (Pat McGrath), the Guardian (Sean Farrell) and many more.

AAP reported this through News.com.au with no name of the original writer.

Now, as you probably know AAP (Australian Associated Press) was a Murdoch agency which had been started by Rupert Murdoch's father in 1935. It's the back-up of Murdoch newspapers, printed or online.

Back in 2013 The Conversation wrote an article about a query made about something that Kevin Rudd had said before he lost his PMship. Rudd had said that Murdoch “owns 70%” of the newspapers. The Conversation found that incorrect, but that Murdoch's papers counted to nearly 60% of the total sold newspapers. They also said:

the overall number of newspaper sales is declining... The major reason for this decline is the migration of news consumption to the internet, where news.com.au and other News Corp sites face stronger competition from ninemsn, Yahoo!7, Fairfax Media, the ABC, and other sites such as The Conversation, Crikey, On Line Opinion and Guardian Australia. The extent to which some of these sites either gather original material, or have the influence of the News mastheads, is certainly debatable, but the online news environment is far more diverse than that for print newspapers.

The Conversation is a non-profit trust which started in 2010 and provides good information about them. Read this.

Fast-forward to 2016 and say that Murdoch companies own 70%, according to Gizmodo. Gizmodo is owned by Fairfax. 

Gizmodo writers – or readers - it seems are as much against Murdoch as I am. This year, one comment from Silverdrone for Charles Pulliam-Moore's 15 May article said that he would “want to watch it but I have a moral objection to funding anything that benefits Murdoch.” Hugh Manatee, commented on the article on 3 May by Rae Johnston, said that his ISP is downgraded, which “I feel is in accordance with the Murdoch government's wishes.” Oh dear... Murdoch government? Libby Watson's article on 18 April said that “RT, Australian news site News.com.au, and British tabloids Daily Mail and The Sun, ran stories on Monday suggesting that the recently revealed jobs site would allow employers to see users' search history.” Lee578 responded with a very short comment: “Rupert Murdoch as ever the first with the fake news.” Straight out of the anti-Murdoch online papers' mouths.

I've been reading online newspapers that I feel comfortable with, not newspapers owned by Murdoch. Why? So many people feel the same way I do. These articles have been back quite a while ago:

• The biggest media scandal in the modern age is exploding and the world's most powerful family is under siege, yet some key players in Australia still don't understand that the media power game has changed forever. ABC, Stephen Mayne, 28 Jul 2011
• News Ltd's capacity to influence the opinions of the vast majority of less engaged citizens - whose political understanding is shaped directly by the popular newspapers and indirectly through the commercial radio and television programs that rely on newspapers for content and, more deeply, for the way they interpret the world - is unjustifiable. The Sydney Morning Herald, Robert Manne, 2 September 2011 
• Make no mistake: Murdoch’s press is waging class war on behalf of the extremely rich, and it’s being done in the name of a phoney popularism. It takes quite some nerve to push a distortion of this magnitude down the throats of the people on whose behalf you’re supposedly speaking. More to the point, it takes power and money. Global Comment, Chally Kacelnik, 6 September 2011 
• Free reign to control every last newspaper, TV and radio station in Australia - Rupert Murdoch’s fantasy could become a frightening reality unless we stand in his way right now. Independent Australia, 19 January 2012 
• Murdoch(s)... newspapers had spent the past three years waging a relentless campaign against the government of Julia Gillard and all its works. The Monthly, Mungo Maccallum, September 2013 
• Not only do newspapers have a shrinking readership, they also have an ageing readership. Older people, already disproportionately Coalition voters, are more settled in their political preferences and outlooks. The key to a Labor victory will be how the younger age groups, perhaps especially those under forty, will vote, and these groups are not reading Murdoch’s newspapers. Inside Story, Rodeny Tiffen, 23 June 2015 
• Ever since Rupert Murdoch decided to enter the television game in the early 1980s, his newspapers have waged continuous war on public service broadcasters... The Conversation, Julian Petley, 26 August 2015
• The competition watchdog has raised concerns about Rupert Murdoch's News Corp gaining a monopoly on print newspapers in Queensland if allowed to buy its rival's mastheads. Brisbane Times, Lucy Battersby, 6 October 2016

and continue this year:

• As this new year starts – one in which Parliament will debate changes to Australia's media ownership laws – News Corp and the Murdoch family have set about expanding their level of control over media in this country. The Sydney Morning Herald, Lucy Battersby, 14 January 2012 
• Opponents of Rupert Murdoch’s bid to take full control of Sky have called for it to be blocked because the mogul’s family are not “fit and proper” owners following the phone-hacking scandal. The Guardian, Mark Sweeney, 8 March 2017 
• Only a tiny fraction of voters would have read The Australian newspaper’s editorial on Friday in which the paper implored West Australians to vote for Colin Barnett’s Liberals... Rupert Murdoch’s great vanity project, which for decades dominated the nation’s journalistic landscape, has lost the plot. The West Australian, Ben Harvey, 13 March 2017 
• Even though phone-hacking is now a dark part of its history, Murdoch's media empire continues to churn out partisan and sometimes highly abusive content. Independent UK, Neena Gill, 29 June 2017

There are comments from a blogger:

• These results are very disturbing because effectively the biggest Australian newspapers are lying to their audiences although journalism is supposed to be about reporting as truthfully and accurately as we can. News Corp is responsible for most of the articles that don't accept the consensus. Desmog, Graham Readfearn, 1 November 2013

and a reader:

• Rupert Murdoch's media empire is a negative force in the Western world, poisoning the politics of the US and the UK especially. tjefferson Jun 28th 2012, 21:21

So much of what is written and published online is against Murdoch's politically penetrating, immoral, vicious and malicious ownership of media empire.

When I started this blog I titled it Who wrote this? That's my problem – I don't trust, don't enjoy and would never buy any newspaper in the Murdoch harem if I knew that whatever I was reading was Murdoch's. There are many others which I can read, can enjoy and can trust. I hope that every reader of this blog will read all this, read every link, find truthful information against Murdoch, and feel that same way.

Have a wonderful life away from such an evil media empire!