An NT News political reporter who is suing the paper for unfair dismissal claims the chief minister’s department would secretly copy his editor in on all his queries to the government.

Christopher Walsh says he was sacked after complaining about the deal. News Corp denies his claims.

According to court documents, Walsh claims the editor and the general manager of the NT News came to an arrangement with the head of the chief minister’s department, Jodie Ryan, under which Ryan would blind-copy them into all media queries from Walsh to the Northern Territory government and public service.

The arrangement was allegedly agreed during a discussion about government advertising in the NT News and was attended by News Corp Australia’s chief operating officer.

Darwin is poorly served by reporters (not journalists) working at the only paper (not newspaper) on clickbait churnalism. Not NT, not news. Every other media outlet in town follows the only daily paper, leaving locals with a diminishing pool of real news in a sea of nonsense cut-n-paste clickbait churnalism, designed to satisfy the juvenile short attention span of lazy online readers, while ignoring the fourth estate's responsibilities inherent in their privileged role in society.

American mogul Rupert Murdoch presides over a media empire that has undue influence and control over Australian media. This influence and control has been abused to reduce the fourth estate in Darwin to a pitiful semblence of news, that reflects badly on the esteme to which other tabloid journalism once aspired. The paper, while endorsing the war-and-pollution agenda of its owner's adopted USA home, trivialises real local issues, actively seeks to nurture racist hatred and class division in the local community, and drowns any useful information in a sea of trivia cut and paste from the dullest dives of the internet.