7 News: Murdoch's "Black Day"

E&OE TRANSCRIPTTELEVISION INTERVIEW7NEWS, SUNSHINE COAST28 MAY 2020Kevin RuddTogether with all Queenslanders and I think all Australians from regional areas, we're mad as hell because Murdoch has betrayed regional Australia. Murdoch has a personal fortune of $17.6 billion, and he's used the COVID crisis to walk away from newspapers up and down the Australian coast, in the bush, right across the country because he couldn't make it pay.Journalist(Inaudible)Kevin RuddThis is a dark day for anyone who's passionate about regional Australia. Jobs in regional Australia, journalism in regional Australia and frankly, communities in regional Australia who depend on local news. I grew up in a country town in regional Australia, where we read the Nambour Chronicle and later the Sunshine Coast Daily. Both gone. Okay, here we are in Noosa. Noosa News, gone. Okay. And this is the story now right across regional communities across our nation. I'm from the Labor Party. We don't have a whole lot of political representation in some of these country areas. But I grew up in the country and I know how important these newspapers are. And when you look at papers like the Gympie Times, or the Cairns Post and some of these papers, which have been around in some cases for more than 100 years, just laid dead on the carpet, because Murdoch comfortably sitting over there in New York on a $17.6 billion says 'I couldn't give a rat's'.Journalist(Inaudible)Kevin RuddFor many Australians, both in cities and country, it's part of the ritual to be able to go and pick up your local paper. Because people want their community's news or their city's news, if they're from our major capital cities. And what Murdoch has done in one simple hit, is remove that privilege, remove that expectation, remove that daily ritual for Australians right across our regional communities. I mean, I am just sick in the pit of my stomach that this guy walked in, bought up huge slabs of regional Australian newspapers only a few years ago, and then uses the COVID crisis to kill each and every one of them. His excuse will be 'Oh, we're gonna put some of this stuff online'. If you've at the same time destroyed the jobs of 800 journalists, we all know that's just a PR spin line by the people crafting the Murdoch news release earlier today.Journalist(Inaudble)Kevin RuddI didn't grow up as a paper boy, but the first job I applied for was as a journalist on the Nambour Chronicle. I didn't get the job, OK. My mother used to write a column for the Nambour Chronicle. It was the local Eumundi news section. I understand the role that these papers play, because people want to know what's going on in their part of Australia. And the sheer arrogance of this bloke, sitting on his billions in New York, to simply shaft all these newspapers right across Australia is breathtaking, just breathtaking.