Sydney, Australia, July 26 (EFE).- Hundreds of journalists from the publishing division of Nine Entertainment, one of Australia’s largest media companies, began a five-day strike on Friday in the midst of coverage of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, demanding a pay rise in line with inflation.
The journalists at Nine Publishing who are on strike – including those covering the Olympics – work for the Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, The Australian Financial Review, Brisbane Times and WATodaynewspapers and their digital platforms.
“We’d rather be reporting” and “Don’t torch journalism” read the banners and t-shirts worn by the Nine journalists who staged rallies outside the newspapers’ offices in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane and Perth, according to images broadcast by Australian public broadcaster ABC.
Australian Financial Review reporter Hannah Wootton told ABC on Friday that she and her colleagues, whose salaries were frozen during the Covid-19 pandemic, needed the wage hike in order to be able to pay rent and mortgages and cope with the high living costs in Australia.
Wooton also stressed that Nine reported a profit of about AU$150 million ($98.2 million) last year.
For his part, Nine’s CEO, Mike Sneesby, said in an email to staff that the company was “deeply disappointed” by the strike that “unfortunately” affects its coverage of the 2024 Paris Olympics in Australia, the media group published on its news portal on Friday.
In an email sent to staff on Friday morning, Nine Entertainment’s CEO Mike Sneesby said he was “profoundly disappointed” by the strike action, which would not affect Olympic coverage, according to him.
Nine, which has the broadcast rights to the Games for its television channel, has sent 200 employees to cover the Paris sporting event, which begins on Friday night, both on its multimedia and digital platforms.
The strike comes a day after journalists voted against an offer from Nine, which included a “modest” pay rise and the possibility of future layoffs, according to a statement published on Thursday by the Media, Entertainment and Media Alliance (MEAA), the industry union for journalists.
The union said that Nine had already announced the dismissal of 90 workers during the long months of negotiations, in response to Meta’s announcement earlier this year that it would stop paying Australian news publishers for content it publishes on Facebook. EFE
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