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.
The News Corp board met for more than 10 hours over the past two days in Los Angeles in what was the first opportunity for a face-to-face discussion about the hacking scandal and governance crisis that has engulfed the company.
Australia’s three great advantages in this situation are our relatively high official interest, the best ever terms of trade and gross federal government debt of only $195 billion.
It has been a full month since the Murdoch phone hacking scandal blew up and, after more than 30 contributions across various media platforms, Stephen Mayne finally got a rise out of the empire today.
With many companies valued at more than $100 billion, the US has ample corporate firepower to draw on when it comes to servicing government debt.
Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair's first comments about Murdoch yesterday were quite pathetic. If David Cameron is being subjected to enormous scrutiny over his dealings with Murdoch then so should Blair, Gordon Brown and John Major.
Another day, another blow to the world’s most powerful media empire.
Now that Glenn Mulcaire has been ditched by News Corporation and virtually all of those non-Murdochs in the gun are off Rupert Murdoch’s payroll, there is a serious question mark over the future of The Sun.
Seven hours of gripping evidence was the best advertisement you'll ever see for an equivalent federal parliamentary committee to fully investigate the regulation, ethics, relationships and ownership of Australia’s media.
Plenty of advice is being given to the British MPs who will tonight probably end Rupert Murdoch’s 58-year run as CEO of News by simply allowing him to self-destruct in front of a huge global television audience.
For the first time in 58 years, the independent directors of News Corp appear to be stirring. Here’s a profile of all 16 News Corp directors ranked according to potential independence.
