Nine Entertainment, the parent company of Australia’s leading newspaper The Sydney Morning Herald, has quietly discontinued its monthly propaganda “inserts” for the Chinese Communist Party.
The eight-page “China Watch” story, produced by China Daily, the official English-language mouthpiece of the Communist Party, had been published monthly for several years in The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and The Australian Financial Review. It’s part of a deal that Fairfax Media, the owner of the previous titles, struck with China Daily in 2016.
The Guardian first reported Wednesday that Nine Entertainment had decided not to renew the lucrative contract six months ago. This follows similar decisions by global media organizations in the COVID-19 pandemic, including the decision by the U.K.’s Daily Telegraph in April to end its advertising partnership with China Daily for inserts.
News.com.au attempted to contact Nine Entertainment, but a spokesperson declined to comment.
Nine Entertainment’s political editor Chris Uhlmann has publicly criticized his boss for running the insert, posting a tweet in February with the headline: “It’s always exciting when the monthly China Daily insert appears in the Sydney Morning Herald. As aptly labeled, “This is all you need to know.” ……
Ullman told The Australian at the time that the China Daily insert was “extremely disturbing”.
“From the moment the decision was made (in 2016) to insert the China Daily into the Sydney Morning Herald, I made it clear that it was a very disturbing development that Australian media organizations were supporting Communist Party propaganda.”
“As I said, I didn’t change my opinion before I joined Nine Entertainment.”
The promotion of “China Watch” has greatly increased the influence of the Chinese authorities.
In February of this year, a story titled “China’s Fight to Contain Virus Wins Wide Acclaim” praised the Communist authorities’ response to COVID-19. According to the article, “China has adopted the most comprehensive and stringent containment and mitigation measures, many of which go far beyond the requirements of the International Health Regulations.”
According to The Guardian, when Fairfax Media began promoting the China Daily in 2016, the company justified the move by calling it a reasonable commercial printing arrangement, noting that other newspapers around the world had also promoted it, including The Washington Post in the United States and Le Figaro in France.
A disclaimer issued at the time said: “This supplement written by China Daily does not involve the news or editorial departments of the Sydney Morning Herald.
As relations between Canberra and Beijing hit a new low, lamb is the latest Australian product to be targeted by China, and the Australian federal government is increasingly “concerned” about Beijing’s trade attacks.
Last month, Chinese diplomatic officials tweeted a doctored image of an Australian soldier holding a bloody knife to the throat of an Afghan child. Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison slammed the image as “offensive” and “outrageous” and demanded an apology from the Communist Party.
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