Stephen Mayne Tries To Stop Murdoch

News Corporation held its annual shareholders meeting in New York on Friday. The 'New York Times' had an interesting piece about it.

On the subject of their increasingly obvious, embarrassing and unhinged bias, Murdoch and the board were unapologetic:

The shareholder also asked Mr. Murdoch and the chairman of the audit committee, Sir. Roderick I. Eddington, if the company “weighed the reputational risk, given that this is a media company and there are very clear concerns about the objectivity of news reporting and the perception that such sizable contributions” would compromise the company’s news gathering activities.

Mr. Eddington said, “donations of this type are also evaluated and reviewed by our general counsel, to make sure they’re appropriate in that context as well.”

Stephen Mayne was there and has posted about his contribution to the shareholder question and answer session. It's worth checking out the whole thing, especially the parts about the phone hacking scandal and Murdoch's attempts to pretend he's never heard of Jon Stewart, Bruce Guthrie, Bruce Dover or any of their writings.

But our favourite laugh was right at the end when Mayne congratulates Murdoch for firing Glenn Milne:

Mayne: ... Well done for firing Glenn Milne, that, ah, journalist of yours who drunkenly pushed me off the stage at the WalkleyAwards in 2006 live on national television. It was a disgrace. You defended him at that last gathering we had. But you fired him since, and I'd like to say congratulations for finally doing that, and thankyou for your time today.

Murdoch: Thankyou, I'm not responsible for firing him, but that's fine. I didn't know anything about it.

Do Mayne and Murdoch know something we don't? Sure Milne has been spending the last few months as a kind of Murdoch Fifth Column spouting his rubbish at their ABC, but is there something we missed?

Do you know if Milne has really been 'fired'?