Australian Community Media confirms it pulled story on 11,500-signature greyhound racing petition

WA's Busselton-Dunsborough Mail was set to publish a story last month about a community petition and protest against greyhound racing, but pulled it after intervention from ACM senior management

A news report on an 11,500-signature community petition imploring the Western Australian State Government to ban greyhound racing was pulled last month by one of Australia’s largest media companies, Australian Community Media (ACM), at the instruction of the company’s senior management.

The story was due to be published by the Busselton-Dunsborough Mail in June, but was cancelled unexpectedly after higher management at ACM intervened and stated its journalists would no longer be permitted to write about the greyhound racing industry, a senior staff member at the Mail says.

Greyhound welfare advocates across Western Australia managed to collect 11,500 local signatures for the petition over 11 months, despite the ongoing disruptions of COVID-19 and the requirement of WA Parliament that all signatures collected be hand-written, original signatures, not online or electronic.

The petition requested that the Government ban greyhound racing, allowing for a 2 year phase out period in which industry participants could be assisted to re-skill and racing dogs could be re-homed. The petition also supported a provision for several breeders to remain registered in order to provide greyhounds as pets only.

The petition was presented to the Hon Alison Xamon MLC on May 12, and tabled in Parliament the following day. A group of 50 supporters of greyhound rights and welfare gathered at Parliament House to attend the petition handover and show their support for a ban on greyhound racing.

Supporters of a ban on greyhound racing in Western Australia gathered outside WA Parliament House on May 12, 2021.

Exactly whom at ACM gave the directive to pull the Busselton Mail story is unclear, but a senior reporter at the Mail confirmed it had originated from management staff on the east coast, and that Busselton Mail staff had been told by senior management they were “not allowed to write about greyhounds anymore.”

The article had been cleared for publishing at the time it was cancelled by ACM management, according to the senior reporter who worked on it, Emma Kirk. Emails show the reporter had met with a local community greyhound advocacy and rehoming group, Busselton Greyhound Awareness, in late May as part of her work on the story.

“I had it all ready to go,” Kirk says, “I had the story all ready to print, I’ve done heaps of stories with the group in the past.”

“It’s a bit disappointing,” Kirk continued, “because our [Busselton greyhound] community group, they do a lot of work around rehoming greyhounds and all that sort of stuff, so we were told that we can’t do anything with them anymore.” 

Kirk states that the intervention from ACM higher management was not standard editorial practice. “It was really weird,” she says, “because you don’t often hear from management that you can’t publish a story on a particular topic or anything, it was a bit off guard.”

The editor of the Busselton-Donsborough Mail, Jemillah Dawson, was contacted for comment. She did not respond. Dawson’s profile on several ACM websites reads “I believe we are the voice for the community but also we inform the community of what they need to know.”

Adopted ex-racing greyhounds at the petition handover at WA Parliament House on May 12, 2021.

Antony Catalano, the millionaire owner of Australian Community Media, was contacted but refused to comment on the Busselton Mail greyhound article being pulled. Catalano would not say whether ACM held a pro-racing and pro-gambling editorial position, nor whether ACM reporters would continue to be subjected to censorship when writing about local community issues.

Both Catalano and the co-owner of ACM, billionaire Anthony Waislitz, have demonstrated their corporate support for dog racing for several years in Western Australia through another of their publications, the Mandurah Mail. For at least 6 years, ACM—which was was owned by Fairfax until 2018, and Nine until 2019—have ensured the Mandurah Mail brand name has been placed on individual greyhound races at the Mandurah dog racetrack as an advertising ploy. ACM continues this practice today under Catalano and Waislitz.

ACM continued its corporate relationship with Greyhounds WA throughout 2015, promoting the brand at the Mandurah dog track even in the wake of the Four Corners report aired earlier that year that exposed live baiting in the industry and thousands of Australian greyhounds being exported internationally to meet cruel deaths overseas.

Catalano did not answer questions regarding ACM’s placement of company advertising with the Western Australian racing industry, and would not say how this affected his company’s stance on journalistic ethics and coverage of the racing and gambling industries.

The Busselton-Donsborough Mail is not expected to publish a story on the community petition for a greyhound racing ban in WA in future.

ACM owns over a hundred mastheads across Australia, including The Canberra Times, The Newscastle Herald, The Examiner and the Illawarra Mercury.

The Hon Alison Xamon MLC (standing with greyhound) listening to a speaker at WA Parliament House on May 12, 2021.