Dear Mr Rudd: Here’s a photo that shows you are a hypocrite

OPINION: I’m still the same editor you met twice as PM, so what’s changed since then?

The Northern Star editor has coffee with then Member for Page Janelle Saffin, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and his wife Therese Rein Cafe Capello. Photo Cathy Adams / The Northern Star

Dear Mr Rudd,

Back off and stop trying to ruin my livelihood and those of my eight colleagues trying to eke out a living in regional journalism in Australia.

We’ve had a challenging year, to say the least, and your campaign against the company we work for is not helping.

Due to many factors, including a recession brought on by COVID-19 and the negative impact of social media giants like Google and Facebook hoovering up ad revenue without giving anything back to local journalism, our beloved 144-year-old paper stopped printing in June and we closed our office.

Like many in our community, we have been working from home since March, and trying to put our best foot forward in the digital era by populating four news websites including The Northern Star, Ballina Advocate, Byron Shire News and Tweed Daily News.

I’ve met you three times Mr Rudd ‒ once on the Kevin 07 campaign trail, and twice when you were Prime Minister and I was editor of The Northern Star.

The last time we met, when this cosy picture was taken at Cafe Cappello in Lismore, it was in the dying days of the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd government.

It must have been 2013, because that’s when you led the Labor Government to a crushing defeat against Tony Abbott.

I’m the same person as I was back then. Many of the staff who work at The Northern Star remain the same.

We do the same work, day in, day out, covering local news, sport and events and chronicling the lives of people on Northern Rivers.

The only thing that has changed since we last met is the ownership of The Northern Star and your one size fits all approach to the Murdoch press.

As a keen believer in the journalists’ code of ethics to “report and interpret news with a scrupulous honesty” I despise partisan politics as much as I do partisan journalism.

So I ask you, to stop undermining the media organisation I work for, because by doing so you are undermining regional communities, undermining regional journalism and putting regional jobs at risk.