Fairfax's SMH journalists have been amongst the few to probe the NSW O'Farrell's government backing of James Packer's plan for a new hotel casino in Sydney. Reporter Sean Nicholls broke a story about how the government had changed the rules for "unsolicited proposals" in a way that made it easier for Packer to avoid a competitive tender. So I was shocked when I opened the SMH on Saturday and found a plug for a story by Packer pitching his casino plan labelled as an 'exclusive' and 'news'. There were several independent reports inside the paper, but online, Packer's free promo was number three while other pieces were buried further down the page.
I am not suggesting that SMH should refuse to publish an opinion piece by Packer but this incident which followed Fairfax's Australian Financial Review's pushing of the plan through exclusives and a recent AFR business dinner at which Packer was the keynote speaker.
Concerned about the possible threat to independence of reporting, I wrote another piece for New Matilda: