Margaret Simons writing at Crikey.com.au today provides an excellent perspective on the Bruce Guthrie case against News Limited in the Victorian Supreme Court which was decided last week in Guthrie’s favour. Andrew Crook writing last Friday at Crikey provided excellent coverage of the judgement.
Bruce Guthrie dared to take on News and pursue his rights. While he won, you wouldn’t know it if you read News Limited newspapers on the weekend. In the court of public opinion, publishers all too often act as prosecutor, judge and jury. A publisher concerned about publishing news would have played it straight down the line and reported the facts of the judgement.
Some of the behaviour attributed to senior News Limited personnel and presented as evidence in the case will be familiar to some newsagents. There are occasions when the newsagent publisher relationship is very one-sided. Newsagents don’t have the resources or balls to take on such a large company.
Hopefully one outcome of Bruce Guthrie’s court case is that more people will take on bigger opponents in all areas of business in pursuit of justice.
Time for some better management and a price increase. There will be no newspapers sooner with Hartigan there.
Unfortunately, Ms Simons’ description of management’s attitudes, tactics and behaviours isn’t far off the mark.
Right down to lower middle-management, given our experience of engagements with them. Not all, but the ledger certainly favours the concept.
The culture of bully-boys seems so endemic within their entire structure (even the tiny, sad little six-sheet local rags), that the editorial and reporting bias so typical of their products pales by comparison.
I shouldn’t be surprised, but strangely, I still am, such is my hope that faith in goodwill to all is maintained.