Unpapering the cracks: sugar, slavery and the Sydney Morning Herald
In 1841, John Fairfax (1804-1877) became the first of five generations of Fairfax family owners of the Sydney Morning Herald, which had been founded in 1831 as the Sydney Herald.
- In 1841, John Fairfax (1804-1877) became the first of five generations of Fairfax family owners of the Sydney Morning Herald, which had been founded in 1831 as the Sydney Herald.
- CSR was founded in Sydney in 1855 by Edward Knox, but it descended from the Australasian Sugar Company, established in 1842.
- Although the Sydney Morning Herald was normally a strong supporter of the White Australia Policy, the paper wanted it suspended in the case of the cane fields.
- The Fairfaxes controlled the Sydney Morning Herald for 149 years, until 1990 when a misguided takeover action mounted by young Warwick Fairfax ended in financial disaster.
- In 1935, the Sydney Morning Herald conceded that “blackbirding” – a practice it had implicitly supported in the 1890s and early 1900s – was actually a “type of slavery”.
- Comment was sought from the editor of the Sydney Morning Herald for this article but no reply was provided at the time of writing.