In the Sydney print media there is basically two different camps.
In one corner you have Fairfax, they own the Sydney Morning Herald.
In the other corner, you have News Limited. They own the Sydney Daily Telegraph.
They have always been at each others throats in a petty game of back and forth snide remarks.
News Limited is the big, bad corporation with unlimited funds and media reach. They are trying to cover everything up, pull the wool over your eyes and feed you an agenda.
Fairfax meanwhile are the whingers, they don’t know whats going on, don’t listen to them. Bunch of idiots over there!
That’s what you can expect from both camps when they get stuck into each other.
The two organizations were never locked in a more bitter war than during the Super League War.
News Limited obviously had a certain spin on everything they wrote in regards to what was going on. Fairfax tried to play the good guy, but the fact is, there was not anyone in any sector of the media at that time that didn’t have an interest to protect when it came to what they were writing.
At the end of the day, they were both as bad as each other. You had to read through the cloud of spin to get to the bottom of the real story.
In recent times, this war has been heating up again. It had been on a slow simmer, but the Independent Commission and Melbourne Storm Salary Cap saga have seen things heat up.
The thing to remember is that, the vast minority of opinion pieces you read in both papers, they hold an agenda. For instance, you can’t be employed by the NRL Television Rights holder, and one of the newspapers, and then throw your hands in the air and say what you are writing is completely and totally unbiased.
I write here on what is undoubtedly the greatest web site on the Earth, and the thing that makes this site is the opinions I hold and stick by. I don’t try and hide agendas, I don’t try and bamboozle readers and then slip in an opinion I want them to end up holding.
If I have a side to take, its as plain as day what that side is. I don’t hide it.
That is not the case with this rubbish that goes on in the print media in Sydney. The writers don’t tell you they are mates with an interested party or that they don’t like someone at the other organization.
Does it cloud what they write? Well, you can be the judge on that. At the very least its not a good look, and when you are going to put your name to something you have written, your integrity is all you’ve got at the end of the day.
I’m lucky, I’m independent. I am what I am, a bastard that likes Rugby League. You come here and you know what you are getting yourself into.
The major media players in Sydney right now, well, that’s another story.
Everyone has an agenda.
