Thread by @MFWitches

Here’s a thread about the media, prompted by many people seeming to not understand what’s going on RN.

15 years ago I worked for a training org. At one point the @theheraldsun, owned of course by #NewsCorpse, wanted to run a feature on the type of training we were doing.

1/13

They asked the company I worked for to design a quiz, to test people on what they knew about the specific skill set our company trained for.

We were, of course, happy to help. It would not only highlight many important safety issues, but would promote our services, too.

2/13

After doing preliminary work, the young journo working with us to plan the double-page spread sent an email saying it was cancelled.

The reason? One of @theheraldsun’s biggest advertisers weren’t happy about running the quiz. Reasons for their objection were complex ...

3/13

... but basically boiled down to that advertiser believing that us helping make people aware of an important safety issue might damage sales of one of their products.

Yep, you read that right. A large advertiser had the power to veto an action which could’ve saved lives.

4/13

Not only that, but the journo explicitly stated in writing her employer was doing what the advertiser wanted (even though doing it was wrong) because NOT doing so might adversely affect H/S ad sales.

It’s critical to understand this kind of thing goes on ALL THE TIME.

5/13

Every single ad placement a company makes with a media org carries an unstated implication that the company might remove those dollars if unhappy with the way the media org reports the news.

And because most big advertisers are conservative in outlook, it’s extremely ..

6/13

... difficult for commercial media orgs to remain progressive or centrist. In fact, unless orgs are either govt-funded or make most revenue from subs/donations not ad sales, it’s probs impossible.

(This also explains why the ABC is so crucial, but also compromised.)

7/13

It’s why, for example) reporting on real estate is nearly always positive in AUS (income from RE agents is massive).

It’s also why as politics gets more fascist in AUS, the media follows it to the right, so explains why all commercial media orgs are going more right-wing.

8/13

Understanding this is crucial to knowing commercial media are NOT gonna change, particularly during a recession. They have to appease advertisers, even if they lose subs by doing so.

It’s also why complaining to them about their reporting is virtually useless.

9/13

Luckily, there’s a way to force them to change as they won’t do it alone. That’s to remove ad revenue faster than they can replace it with sympathetic or clueless advertisers. This is exactly what we did with Alan Jones.

Now, we’re trying to do this with #NewsCorpse.

10/13

But the problem is most tweeps seem to prefer to yell at journos & bad media companies instead of doing the actual work to remove advertisers.

It won’t work. It CAN’T work. Media orgs will never do what progressive ppl want unless they’re forced to by market forces.

11/13

If just a small percentage of the people on Twitter furious with #NewsCorpse & others chose to contact advertisers & get them to remove ads (or contact cafes to get them to stop stocking their papers) instead of just tweeting their anger, we’d get somewhere.

Promise.

12/13

And if more people could really see that advertisers influence these orgs far more than we do, they’d realise that yelling at journos (while it may be satisfying) is almost always pointless.

We can get Murdoch out of Australia.

Please help:
linktr.ee/MFWitches

Ends.