Scribner Australia is thrilled to announce the world rights acquisition of The Men Who Killed the News from the publisher of Crikey, Eric Beecher. Publishing August 2024, it’s a work of non-fiction about what has gone wrong with our media. Beecher’s answer? Its owners, from Pulitzer and Hearst to Murdoch and Musk.

Ben Ball, Publishing Director of Scribner Australia, described it thus: ‘Few people know the media like Eric Beecher. He’s been a journalist, executive and media proprietor, and has the rare distinction of having both worked for and recently been sued (unsuccessfully) by the Murdochs.

‘He’s also a keen student of the media’s history. Which means this is a book only he could write: peppered with first-hand insights and with shades of Succession, this is a portrait of the rise of the media mogul over the past two centuries and an analysis of how they have destroyed news and undermined truth by using the shield of “freedom of the press” to cover their quest for personal power. In a year that will see Fox News and Donald Trump fight an election, no book could be more timely and important in our understanding of how the media has become an agent of misinformation.’

Upon the acquisition Beecher said: ‘Throughout my life in the media – as a reporter, editor and publisher – I have been shocked at how power is abused in the name of journalism. How media owners, and many of the people who work for them, have not only exploited their privileged position in democracy, but denied the existence of that power.

‘In this book, I expose the scale and nature of that abuse of power and the damage inflicted on civil society by media moguls and their collaborators. How they manipulate politics, mangle the truth and invade privacy, just to make more money and live extravagant lives.

‘It’s the great paradox of democracy: the people entrusted to protect it are incentivised to abuse it.’

Eric Beecher is chairman and co-founder of Private Media, publisher of Crikey, The Mandarin and Smart Company, chairman of Australian Communities Foundation and a board member of PIJI, the Public Interest Journalism Initiative. Eric has been an editor and executive at Fairfax and News Corp and was co-founder of Text Media.