The media shifted the royal household right into a publicity carnival of particular person movie star. However with Queen Elizabeth’s dying, will the present proceed?
The British monarch lengthy performed an odd position in Australia’s media: by way of the reward of knighthoods and heraldic honours, it lent an imperial legitimacy that institutionalised the nation’s newspapers whereas reworking its rambunctious media barons right into a bunyip aristocracy of sirs and women.
The previous Fairfax, in fact, went furthest, with three generations of knights ending solely with the deaths of Sir Warwick in 1987 and Sir Vincent in 1993. To mark Fairfax’s one hundred and fiftieth anniversary, midway by way of the reign of Queen Elizabeth, it persuaded the School of Arms to recognise each the corporate and its main mastheads with their very own antipodean heraldic arms.
Not simply the Fairfaxes in fact: there have been knights and women amongst Melbourne’s Symes and Sydney’s Packers and the founding father of the Murdoch newspaper dynasty, Sir Keith Murdoch.
