The Oz Kicks An Own Goal

The Australian's Cut & Paste decided today to give a sample of John Hartigan, chairman of News Limited, talking up the diversity of journalists at News Ltd papers. It hasn't appeared on the website for some reason (maybe someone panicked after giving it a good thought) but I tracked down the whole speech. Here's the section that was given:

'I read our newspapers every day. I look at the coverage of politics across the group, the tone and treatment of stories, the leaders, the views of our columnists and our contributors. There is no evidence of a blanket order from the top. Because there simply isn't one. What you will see is our people completely at odds with each other. Piers Akerman giving The Australian a spray and getting one back. Or Malcolm Farr, Denis Shanahan and Christopher Pearson separately taking a different stand from Paul Kelly, Janet Albrechtsen and Andrew Bolt. If we are following a script we are doing a very bad job.'

Geez! Would Rupert even need to give these guys a script!? Sure, they may disagree on minor details here or there but we can rest assured that they'll still all be voting for the Coalition this coming election. They certainly aren't "completely at odds with each other" as John argues, in fact they're pretty much completely behind each other.