at the same time you starve independent or “hostile” journos of interviews or stories, constantly give them flak and spread rumours about them.

Eventually the independents are ground down and the compliants move up the scale.

Its a sad fact our societies are on the downward slope thanks to churnalism

there’s no money to hire investigative journalists at NewsLtd because Uncle Rupie found out he could sell papers with rewritten press-releases just as easily.

Look inside any NewsLtd newsroom for a small smattering of overworked dogsbodies usually under 30, half of them work-experience kids.

6 stories a day, not uncommon. At least two of them page leads.

5 days a week.

Time for probing? reading reports? going out and talking to people? forget it.

And all the time the hugely well-funded PR industry can hire 5 ex-journos to every 1 that is still slaving in the newsroom. If they think a journo is hostile to their interests they run a campaign to blacklist them.

Destroy them professionally is the strategy. Ring their boss and complain about any trivial thing you can find in their articles or questions. Drive them out of business, ruin their career. Harrass them and call at all hours of the day to demand explanations for their actions.

Physically block them at press conferences, getting in the way so “preferred” journalists can ask the questions first.

Australia now has a poorer media landscape than Kenya, Tanzania or South Africa. I’ve been in all three African countries and was amazed by the depth of their reporting, braveness in publishing and the information they could dig up.

The main difference: the PR industry is not so well developed yet and Africans still think they have freedom of speech, unlike Australia.