Stephen Mayne
Journalist and Crikey founder @MayneReport
Stephen Mayne founded Crikey in February 2000, and has remained as a contributor since selling it in 2005. He’s a former political staffer and local government councillor who also pursues shareholder advocacy as a two-time former director of the Australian Shareholders’ Association. He also spent two years working for the Alliance for Gambling Reform.
After tipping everyone else overboard, James and Rupert Murdoch are the last two people left to take responsibility for the corruption, criminality, abuse of power and huge multi-year cover-up.
Rupert Murdoch’s leadership could be over in just a few weeks. He’s suddenly out of tricks and out of time, writes Andrew Stephen Mayne-Bolt.
News Corporation strategically released a whole bunch of information in the early hours of Saturday morning and the Australian media has chosen to ignore the s-xiest element.
Bolt’s worst offence over the weekend was to grossly exaggerate the impact of the NSW pokies backlash while failing to disclose his financial association with those involved in the campaign.
Unlike the Americans with Richard Nixon, Australia doesn’t have a contemporary history which has involved the media producing a scandal of such enormity that it forced the resignation of a Prime Minister.
The biggest week of the annual reporting season is drawing to a close and some companies are hacking into their balance sheets like the GFC days.
Shares in the financially struggling Tasmanian timber giant Gunns remain suspended ahead of Monday’s profit announcement and the ongoing clifftop poker around exiting old-growth logging and financing the $2.3 billion pulp mill.
When News Corp shares hit a low of $13.32 on August 9, the overall market capitalisation bottomed at $34.1 billion and the Murdoch family’s 12.65% stake was down below $4.5 billion.
One of the fascinating things about watching News Corp is to observe how the different parts of the empire cover Rupert Murdoch and his family’s commercial interests.
As the world’s largest employer of journalists, Rupert Murdoch sure doesn’t like to answer their questions.
