Fairfax Media

Location
Headquartered in Sydney
Politics
Centrist — has argued cases for leaders from both sides of politics, tending to opt for fiscal conservatism and social responsibility as touchstones. Recently disendorsed Tony Abbott as prime minister, but squarely behind his Liberal Party colleague replacement, Malcolm Turnbull.

Money Matters

Fairfax Media Limited is an Australia-based multi-platform media, also operating in the areas of marketing, property, and entertainment. A public company with investors, it also has a 49 percent partnership stake in Huffington Post Australia and 54.5 percent interest in Macquarie Radio Network.

For the financial year 2015, Fairfax Media group reported revenue of AU$1.8 billion (US$1.3 billion) and net profit after tax of AU$83.2 million. As with its traditional rival News Corp, Fairfax Media has been diversifying away from declining traditional media assets, and into other digital ventures, such as online real estate, and its own streaming service In its most recent annual report, Fairfax said it has a "strong balance sheet" with net cash of AU$64 million which provides it the ability to invest in both existing businesses and via acquisition.

Essentials

The journalism division of Fairfax Media Limited, which has existed for more than 180 years, spans across newspaper, radio, magazines, and internet throughout Australia and New Zealand. In Australia, mastheads include the Sydney Morning Herald, the Age (Melbourne), the Australian Financial Review, the Canberra Times, the Sun-Herald, and the Land (agricultural/regional focus). In New Zealand mastheads include the Dominion Post, the Press, the Sunday Star-Times, TV Guide, NZ House and Garden, New Zealand Fishing News and Cuisine, as well as agricultural publications. Fairfax also has a portfolio of digital products, including the online news sites smh.com.au and theage.com.au in Australia and stuff.co.nz in New Zealand.

Key People

Greg
Hywood

The chief executive officer of Fairfax Media, Hywood was appointed interim CEO in 2010, following the sudden resignation of Brian McCarthy. Hywood started working for Fairfax in 1976 as a cadet journalist for national business newspaper the Australian Financial Review (AFR) where he became publisher and editor-in-chief in 1993. He then occupied the same position at the Sydney Morning Herald/Sun Herald and the Age. In 1980, Hywood won a Walkley Award for a behind-the-scenes story on the Australian automaker Holden, where he had previously worked as an economist. Hywood left Fairfax in 2003, but returned seven years later. In June 2014, Hywood blasted rival News Corp for "indulging in a series of speculative lies about Fairfax," after it stated that Fairfax would be walking away from print media.

 

Kate
McClymont

An investigative journalist for the Sydney Morning Herald, McClymont began her career in publishing, writing encyclopedia entries, but says she "hated every minute of it." Before quitting she altered the Nobel Prize for Literature entry, adding her own name to the list of winners.

She joined the Sydney Morning Herald as a cadet at the age of 25 and since then won five Walkley Awards for her investigations. McClymont is Sydney’s top crime reporter and has shed light on some of the city’s most prominent crimes in the past two decades. Threats to personal safety have disrupted her life on several occasions. In 2002 when she and her SMH colleagues, Anne Davies and Brad Walter, broke a story about breaches of the player salary cap by the National Rugby League team the Canterbury Bulldogs, the latter were thrown out of the competition and fined on the eve of the NRL Finals. Fans became so furious that the police advised McClymont’s family to vacate their home.



One of the most sensational was McClymont’s 2012 joint investigation with fellow reporter Linton Besser which alleged that then-New South Wales (NSW) Fisheries Minister Eddie Obeid corruptly won a coal exploration license worth millions of dollars and that an Obeid family trust was the secret beneficiary of three lucrative government leases. The claims triggered inquiries by the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) which found that Obeid had acted corruptly. He was also expelled from the Labor Party.

In 2014, Kate McClymont and Linton Besser released a book titled ‘He Who Must Be Obeid’ documenting the disgraced politician’s web of business interests and political alliances.

 

Nick McKenzie & Richard Baker

Fellow investigative reporters for the Age, Nick McKenzie and Richard Baker are committed to uncovering corruption and often work alongside each other.

McKenzie, who has won the prestigious Walkley Award numerous times began his career as a cadet journalist at ABC, joining the investigative unit there in 2003, breaking major stories on terrorist financing and abuse in immigration detention centers. He also unveiled the first links between Al-Qaeda and extremist networks in Australia. McKenzie published his first book, ‘The Sting,’ in 2012, giving an inside account of one of Australia’s largest organized crime probes. In September 2015, Antonio Madafferi, a businessman with alleged mafia links, was reported to have placed surveillance on the journalist. "I believe that one reason Mr. Madafferi may wish to have me followed is to see [to] whom I speak about his activities so he may silence these persons," McKenzie said.



Richard Baker joined the Age’s investigative unit in 2005, a year earlier than McKenzie, and soon exposed BHP Billiton’s link to the Australian Wheat Board (AWB) Iraqi kickbacks scandal and China’s secret bid to buy uranium mines in Australia.



One of the McKenzie & Baker’s notable joint reports was an investigation of an alleged foreign bribery by two companies owned by the Reserve Bank of Australia in 2009. The report led to Australia’s first-ever foreign bribery prosecution.

In 2012, Crikey website rated McKenzie and Baker the third most-influential journalists/editors, the same year they each won Walkleys for business reporting. In 2013, the team won Walkleys for their reports into the drug trade through Sydney airport.

 

Michael
Stutchbury

Editor-in-chief of the Australian Financial Review (AFR), Stutchbury began his journalism career there. He also worked as a Washington correspondent during the Clinton Administration’s first term and as editor of the Australian before returning to the AFR. Stutchbury is known for his free market point of view, and was a critic of many of the Rudd-Gillard government’s economic policies, particularly its stimulus packages and industrial relations.

In August 2015, Stutchbury received criticism from Group Cpt. Catherine McGregor, the world’s most senior transgender military officer, after former Labor politician Mark Latham referred to McGregor as a "he/she" in his regular column in the Australian Financial Review. Latham was also accused of running a controversial Twitter account abusing high-profile Australian women. BuzzFeed managed to obtain an emailed complaint from McGregor to Stutchbury, to which Stutchbury allegedly replied: "It’s not easy to keep on top of every word of every story that gets into print or online these days." He did, however, say he would look into it. Several days later, Stutchbury wrote in an AFR article that the column had been the last that Latham would write for AFR, but that his departure was "not that sensational" and had nothing to do with McGregor or the abusive Twitter account which some claimed was run by Latham. He added that the choice to leave was Latham’s, and spoke of McGregor’s "erratic" behavior. Although it was never definitively confirmed that the Twitter account belonged to Latham, Stutchbury said it "seems to be more or less connected" to him



In 2014, an editorial at Stutchbury’s former employer the Australian said he was "considered incompetent by staff of this newspaper before his removal as editor." The paper stated that under Stutchbury’s "inattentive" eye, AFR investigative reporter Neil Chenoweth had been allowed to "promote his absurd conspiracy theories, usually involving Fairfax’s chief rival, News Corporation." Stutchbury responded by saying he was "disappointed" in the "personal attacks" thrown at himself and Chenoweth.

In 2003, Stutchbury was condemned for comparing the Media Watch criticism of the Australian’s journalist Janet Albrechtsen to "pack rape." ABC’s Media Watch condemned an article written by Albrechtsen in which she "misrepresented two academics" and "reworked some international articles to support her article for a link between rape and Islamic culture." In response, Stutchbury kept with the theme of rape, stating that the "media pack rape" of Albrechtsen began "when the executive producer of the ABC Media Watch television program sent a series of written questions to selected journalists and columnists" while investigating the facts of the article. Seventy journalists at the Australian wrote to Stutchbury to register their concerns about the article, which they called "offensive and inappropriate."

Controversies

Fairfax apologizes to Abbott adviser in defamation case

In July 2015, the chief Indigenous adviser to then-Prime Minister Tony Abbott, Warren Mundine, secured an out-of-court defamation settlement against Fairfax, for a series of articles published in July 2014 which accused Mundine of brokering a deal that gave a mining company access to traditional lands in Western Australia, and making allegations about the appropriateness of that deal. Fairfax apologized to Mundine, and acknowledged that he had nothing to do with the deal at hand. They also agreed to remove the offending articles and allegations from their online publications, and not to republish them. It is not clear whether Fairfax paid any damages as a result of the settlement.

Treasurer Joe Hockey v Fairfax Media

In July 2015, an Australian judge ruled that a poster headline and tweets which stated "Treasurer for sale" in reference to Joe Hockey, treasurer of Australia in the Abbott government, were motivated by "malice." The judge was also critical of Sydney Morning Herald Editor Darren Goodsir. Hockey’s lawyer had argued that Fairfax was motivated by "petty spite" and revenge for SMH having been forced to apologize for a previous article about Hockey. The former treasurer was awarded AU$200,000 (US$145,000) in damages. However, Hockey lost a bid to have Fairfax cover his costs in the defamation suit, and his legal bill is believed to be significantly more than the $200,000 he received. However, Hockey stated that he does not regret taking Fairfax to court over the matter. He added that although "the cost of this action has been considerable for me, my family and friends, it has been far greater for Fairfax Media."

Accusation of trying to bring down the Abbott govt

In September 2015, Immigration Minister Peter Dutton accused Fairfax of leading what he called a "jihad" against the Abbott government. He stated that there is a "huge move by Fairfax at the moment to try and bring the government down." Dutton added that "regardless of what Tony Abbott does, Fairfax will say it’s bad," and stressed that those in the media aren’t supposed to be political players. "They’re supposed to be objective reporters of the news, and I think many of them have morphed into frustrated politicians themselves," he said. The comments came after Fairfax published stories on divisions within senior ranks of the government, with Dutton stating that he had a "fair idea" of which ministers were leaking, though he did not name them.

Rivalry with News Corp

In September 2015, Fairfax CEO Greg Hywood addressed the company’s rivalry with News Corp, stating that the newspaper industry is doing itself "a lot of damage" with the constant feuding. "We’ve just got to be sensible and practical here, it’s all very well to say let’s work together, but we’ve actually got to get together and work it out," Hywood said. In response, News Corp Australia CEO Julian Clarke said "that was the pot calling the kettle black."

Fairfax’s rivalry with News Corp was mentioned in the autobiography of former Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard, in which she accused both sides of being "like irritable, elderly neighbors, always complaining about the other having the television too loud or letting weeds grow through the fence." She also expressed concern about the two companies’ publications dictating the daily news agenda.

In April 2015, Fairfax and News Corp engaged in a battle over how much tax News Corp pays. Fairfax made the first move, running a story titled ‘Rupert Murdoch’s US empire siphons $4.5b from Australian business virtually tax-free." Two days later, News Corp CEO Julian Clarke appeared before a senate committee on corporate tax avoidance. Calling Fairfax’s claim an "outright attack," Clarke said the comments "are either intentionally misleading or they don’t have a clue what they’re talking about."

In 2014, Fairfax’s Hywood accused News Corp of "mad rantings and ravings" and spreading lies about the company’s future in newspapers. Hywood told Fairfax staff not to believe the "litany of bizarre commentary on the state of the industry" or the "speculative lies," including that it would stop printing Monday-Friday metropolitan newspapers by the end of the year. It came after News Corp’s Lachlan Murdoch took aim at Fairfax, saying "some of our competitors were talking it down in their own products ... that’s just crazy and a lack of leadership that frankly is irresponsible and it’s got to stop."

In what was described as a "riveting tale of the who’s who of corporate Australia," the 2013 book ‘Fairfax: The Rise and Fall’ investigated both the history of Fairfax and the situation faced in June 2012 by Hywood, when he announced a company writedown of over AU$2 billion, 1,900 job losses, the closure of Sydney and Melbourne printing presses, and the introduction of metered paywalls. It was reported in August 2015 that Fairfax was the hardest hit from a decline in print sales, with News Corp faring slightly better.

Mick Gatto’s defamation lawsuit

In September 2015, alleged underworld figure Mick Gatto sued Fairfax for defamation over a Sydney Morning Herald article which he said was defamatory and hurt his feelings and reputation. The lawsuit was seeking an undisclosed amount in damages. The article stated that in the State of Victoria, Gatto was named "as a crime figure who works closely with the Calabrian Mafia while running his own crime syndicate." In September 2015 Fairfax ran a lengthy article on Gatto saying he is known to be frustrated by the media portrayal of him as a type of mob boss. Gatto was charged in 2004 with the murder of suspected underworld hit man Andrew Veniamin, but later acquitted by court on the grounds of self-defense.


Photo digitizing scandal

In June 2015, photographers who had previously worked with Fairfax expressed concern over its decision to send images to the US to be digitized. In return for the US-based company digitizing the photos, Fairfax agreed to let that company make money by selling the original photos. Photographers said Fairfax didn’t have the right to grant such permission, as they only had ownership of the hard copy print in their archive, while the image copyright still belongs to the authors. In addition, it is alleged that some of the photos may have been sold by the US firm before the digitization of those photos took place. Fairfax has filed a lawsuit in the US seeking the return of its images. In a separate case, the US-based Digital First Media which owns dozens of newspapers sued business owner John Rogers for the return of its archive. The owner of the digitizing company who is also part of an FBI investigation surrounding sports memorabilia fraud was arrested in July 2015. Australia’s Culture and Heritage Ministry expressed concern over the issue.

Despite reports that the pictures were in limbo in the US, Fairfax assured readers in June 2015 that the digitization of its photos was actually found to be well advanced, and that it had already received back about 600,000 photos from the Sydney collection of images. Fairfax said that in November 2014, a US court appointed a receiver to take charge of the company. Fairfax did note that it was "aware that a small number of images may have been inappropriately dealt with and we are working with the receiver to recover these." It also stressed that the Sydney collection of 10 million negatives was never sent to the US, and remains in a climate-controlled storage facility.

Columnist resigns after abusive comments towards readers

Former Fairfax columnist and veteran journalist Mike Carlton resigned after the Sydney Morning Herald moved to suspend him for responding to angry readers with offensive language. The readers criticized a 2014 column which condemned Israel’s actions in Gaza. In a tweet, Carlton called one person a "Jewish bigot" after they questioned his position on the conflict. He also told several others to "f**k off." He later said that he had been called a "bag of Nazi slime" and a "Jew-hating racist" for the article and got a fortnight of abuse and threats of violence. "Much of it has been obscene. I suppose, half-a-dozen times, I hit back and told people to get f***ed," he said. The Sydney Morning Herald apologized for Carlton’s behavior, calling it "completely unacceptable."

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