In conclusion...
"It was Fairfax that cracked. Ignominiously, Darren Goodsir, a decent man and a good journalist, was trapped between the devil and the deep blue sea. From the boardroom and the executive suite, his lords and masters were howling for my head on a platter. So was the lobby. They had to be placated, he told me, yet he wanted to keep me writing for the paper. I could see his dilemma, an added distraction he did not need. As the Herald slowly imploded, with more and more of its best and brightest journalists 'taking redundancy' - that cloying euphemism - he had to battle to shore up newsroom morale and to keep the show on the road. Nor was his own job safe: notoriously, Herald editors had the career prospects of a subaltern on the Somme.
"For my part, I was angry that few at the paper seemed at all interested in the filth heaped upon me. Still less was I accorded the courtesy of a face-to-face meeting where I could put my case... Our negotiations were by phone and email. Goodsir wanted to suspend me for a cooling-off period of about three weeks until the end of the month, and he pushed me again to apologise to the aggrieved. I reluctantly agreed, with the proviso that I would not grovel to anyone who had called me Hitler's cocksucker and the like. I thought the deal was done...
"[A]t around ten pm, the phone rang again. It was Sean Aylmer, Fairfax's editorial director, and therefore Goodsir's boss... [H]is voice was cold. 'We've decided to suspend you indefinitely,' he said... The arrogance, the impertinence of this apparatchik calling late at night to relay this decision was bad enough. But Fairfax had broken its word to me. A rank and cowardly betrayal. Weak-kneed, the company had buckled to the pressure from the lobby and the bullying from the Murdoch press. How they would cheer in Holt Street when they heard they had won. I was not going to cop it anymore. 'You needn't bother suspending me. You can get fucked, Aylmer. I've just quit.' I slammed the phone down in his ear." (pp 513-15)
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2 comments:
Impressive by MC. Unfortunately most Australians will never know. They will pick up their copy of Pulp Fiction (aka the Australian) if they are "educated", or SMH/Age if they are "intelligentsia", or Herald Sun/Telegraph if they are among the ranks of the "gilets jaunes" and believe everything they say.
MERC Am aware of your earlier writings on Balfour but this is a timely reminder.
"At the time when Balfour was occupying the post of British foreign secretary, the British colonial project had already produced a solid narrative presenting the Palestinian people as backward savages, justifying occupation and encouraging brutal colonial practices.
That narrative gave Balfour the confidence he needed to declare in 1917 a Jewish homeland in the region with complete disregard for the population that lived there. It also helped Zionists push the ideas that Jewish Zionists are "a people without land for a land without people" and that they are "making the desert bloom" - completely erasing the existence of a native population there."
https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/mainstream-media-palestine-wrong-171230101955202.html
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