Press at the Ballot box

With the UK set to head to the polls in about 12 hours, the nation’s newspapers cast their votes long ago.

The ABC’s Emma Alberici – embedded, so to speak – with several contingents over yonder, said that the political alignment of Britain’s major broadsheets had shifted last week.

‘Rupert Murdoch’s Times newspaper, which has backed Labour since Tony Blair’s winning campaign in 1997, has switched its support to the Conservatives.

The Guardian, a long-time ally of Labour, is now publicly supporting the Liberal Democrats,’ she said on ABC News online.

The question is: should our Fourth Estate be hangin’ out at the ballot box?

There are those who say better to disclose inevitable alliances as they have done in the UK.

Alternatively, News Ltd’s The Australian almost single-handedly ran Turnbull out of town in favor of the Mad Monk last year, and has since turned it’s sadly hither-to divided attention to the resource-sector-hating-talks-like-a-computer-uses-a-hairdryer-has-a-nose Kevin Rudd. All the while claiming no allegiance to an ideology much less a political party.

Hmm. Dubious approach at best I’d say. At worst, a stinkin’ way a doin’ business.

But online news site Crikey.com’s (traditionally progressive) editorial policy leaves much to be desired in this light too. The issue is not one of how these outlets align – but that they align at all.

Sarah Ellison, author of The War for the Wall Street Journal had a little somethin’ somethin’ to say about this issue on PM last night. Introducing her, presenter Mark Colvin gave a little back ground on ye olde Rupert Murdoch’s interests there:

‘In 2007, Rupert Murdoch fulfilled a long held ambition by buying the Wall Street Journal. In 2008, despite Mr Murdoch’s assurances of editorial independence, the paper’s editor resigned amid credible reports that he was squeezed out.’

But the guts of the issue is summed up in this comment made by Ellison:

‘The kind of intervention that Murdoch has in his newspapers and that he has currently at the Wall Street Journal, it just manifests itself in daily if not multiple conversations a day with his editor; is that intervention or is that just involvement of a publisher in his newspaper?’

Food for thought me thinks. Especially in a year packed with state elections and one tickler of a federal election too. Will you be voting with your paper or your concience? And who can tell the difference anymore?