a) an industry which creates thousands of (very well-paid) jobs, brings in billions of dollars in export earnings, massively boosts economic growth, contributes greatly to the government's tax revenues and furnishes the world with an incredibly useful product.
b) an industry which depends for its survival on spreading fear and panic around the world--poisoning the minds of children, warping the outlook of adults--using a mix of junk science and propaganda with a view, ultimately, to slowing economic growth, rationing consumption, stealing your freedoms, increasing taxes and regulation and subverting the democratic process.
Hmmm. Yes, I think so too.
As Question a) I present to you the Australian Iron Ore industry.
As Question b) I present the environmental industry, as embodied by publicity stunts like Earth Hour (see a previous posting) and anti-jobs, anti-growth activist organisations such as Earth Hour's co-sponsors the World Wildlife Fund and the Environmental Defense Fund. Now which of those two industries would pose the greater threat were it to gain any kind of conrol over a large and influential media organisation?
Yep, assuming your answer was b)...I totally agree with you. The mining industry is bound by any number of regulations and corporate and social responsibilty strictures. It is legally bound to behaving honourably. Furthermore, if ever it were thought to be exploiting its media power by unduly printing thinly disguised propaganda, there would be a bunch of left-leaning, anti-capitalist bastards to jump on it like a ton of bricks (count Julia Gillard in on it too).
On the other hand, the environmental industry, is completely unregulated and, as it has shown time and time again, feels no obligation towards truth, decency or transparency -- not the least because of its sanctimonious belief that its cause is so just that however many lies it tells the noble end more than justifies the means. We have seen examples of this in everything from its exaggeration of the (non-existent) threat to the polar bear population, to the killing of the Great Barrier Reef.
Good. Now we've sorted that one out we're in a better position to understand the significance of Gina Rinehart's move on Fairfax Media. The Australian billionaire, a staunch conservative has branded herself as a "white knight" trying to rescue the ailing---and leftist-leaning Fairfax newspaper group. She has bought a 19% stake in the company and is rightly vying for 3 board seats but the directors want her to sign the company's charter of editorial independence. A statement from her lawyers said, "It was hoped the Mrs Rinehart would be viewed by the board as a successful business person and necessary invigorating force with a mutual interest in a sustainable Fairfax."
The reality is that Fairfax Media really doesn't have a leg to stand on here for ar least three reasons:
1) Fairfax Media is Broke. The days of publishing two of Australia's biggest papers as a route to profit are long since over. Also its readership seems to have lost interest in its politics and its ass-kissing the Greens ideaology.
2) In any business, if you buy the controlling interest...you buy the controlling interest. It's your property to do what you will. The idea being put by the Fairfax management and its journalists that there is something unnatural about Gina wishing to have some say about her property would only make sense if you were of the Marxist persuasion.
3) How can Fairfax possibly strive to present itself as a bastion of unbaised reporting standards when with the World Wildlife Fund it has preached their activist retoric and acted as co-owner and demented cheerleader of Earth Hour? This isn't journalism! This is political activism of the grossest, most embarrassing kind. It's precisely this kind of hippy-dippy, anti-growth, anti-free-market campaigning and scaremongering which led to the hated Carbon Tax, which from today will be doing its bit to hamstring the Australian economy.
The Way I See It....we are seeing our country turning so ignorant, self-hating and wrong that not just thwarted lefty journalists but a host of stupid celebrities actually believe there is some merit in the argument that a failing left-wing media organisation should be permitted by some special dispensation to go on spewing drivel regardless of the bottom line or who owns the business or whether the readership gives a damn anyway.
The fact that we live in the Land of Stupid is precisely what makes Gina Rinehart's move on Fairfax so brave, heroic and so very necessary. It's heroic because so few business people put their money where their mouth is these days, never championing free markets when they can do better via cosy regulatory "stitch-ups" with big government instead. And it's very necessary because the world economy is on the brink of a precipice.
The things that have brought us to the edge of the precipice are getting more and more obvious to the man-in-the-street. It's these things that Gina has spent her business career opposing: over-regulation; destructively high taxes; bureaucracy; government meddling; and insane overspending by the state.
Gina Rinehart is a totally bloody heroine -- and Australia should count itself very lucky to have her. As should those wretched ingrates at Fairfax Media.
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