Nine dumps China Watch monthly insert in SMH, AFR

Nine has stopped publishing a paid monthly insert promoting the Chinese Communist Party.

Nine has reportedly dropped the China Daily insert from its papers.

Nine Entertainment has stopped publishing a paid monthly insert promoting the Chinese Communist Party in its newspapers, including the Sydney Morning Herald and Australian Financial Review.

It is understood the deal with China Daily, which was struck with Fairfax Media in 2016 before Fairfax’s $4bn merger with Nine, ended in June and was not renewed. It is unclear who made the decision to end the partnership.

Nine News political editor Chris Uhlmann, who has written extensively about the creeping influence of the CCP in Australia, seemingly confirmed the media group’s decision in a post on Twitter on Wednesday.

In response to a report on the Guardian’s website that Nine had stopped publishing the eight-page insert called China Watch, Uhlmann said “better late than never is a generous way of describing this”.

A Nine spokesman declined to comment.

It is not the first time Uhlmann has voiced his unease about the publication of China Watch, telling The Australian in February that the insert was “extremely disturbing”.

“Since the moment the decision was made [in 2016] to have the China Daily insert in the Sydney Morning Herald, I’ve made it clear that I’ve found it an extremely disturbing development that Communist Party propaganda has the apparent endorsement of an Australian media organisation,” he said.

“I said that before I joined Nine and I haven’t changed my opinion.”

The decision comes as relations between the Australian government and the CCP deteriorate. Most recently, a senior CCP official posted a fake image of an Australian soldier holding a bloody knife to the throat of an Afghan child, which drew the ire of Scott Morrison.

The Prime Minister labelled the doctored image “offensive” and “outrageous” and demanded an official apology, which has not been forthcoming.

Allen Williams, who ran Fairfax’s Australian publishing business when the commercial printing deal was struck, said it had been approached by China Daily, which was doing similar deals with several newspapers, including The Washington Post.

Mr Williams and then Fairfax chief executive Greg Hywood met with officials from China Daily, who delivered a presentation outlining its inserts in international mastheads.

Mr Williams said media executives noted at the time that Fairfax had done a similar deal in 2013 promoting Russia with a 16-page supplement called Russia Beyond The Headlines.

Better late than never is a generous way of describing this… @9NewsAUS https://t.co/IUHulVl2Kw

— Chris Uhlmann (@CUhlmann) December 8, 2020