Last night [17/6/10] the ABC’s ‘Lateline‘ ran a report based on an unethical “sting” conducted by the ‘Sunday Times’:

… Undercover reporters posed as representatives of a billionaire conservationist who was willing to, in effect, buy the votes of those countries to change from pro to anti whaling.

Europe correspondent Philip Williams spoke to one of the reporters involved, Jonathan Calvert, who requested his face not be shown on television. …

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Fiji is a military dictatorship.

A military dictatorship needs a compliant media to run propaganda and keep the people uninformed.  In Fiji, there are three papers: two are basically government controlled and the other, the Fiji Times, is owned by Rupert Murdoch.

In early April 2010 the military dictatorship decreed that all media would have to be locally owned and controlled within 3 months.  It is safe to assume that (the American) Rupert Murdoch doesn’t like that idea.

What a coincidence, then, that we see Murdoch’s Gold Coast Bulletin promoting tourism to Fiji just when he might be trying to sweet talk the dictator into giving him the usual exceptional treatment he has come to expect from governments all over the world when getting around the rules that apply to everyone else.

How are you finding your local ABC’s coverage of local news and issues of late?

Here on the Gold Coast, we wonder who is running our local ABC station – Coast FM – given nearly every day, precious airtime is devoted to parroting propaganda and PR from either the ‘Gold Coast Bulletin’, the ‘Courier-Mail’, or any other News Ltd. outlet.
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