The Melbourne Age newspaper has just paid Australia's leading corruption author Raymond Hoser $10,000 after they admitted to plagiarising material from one of his books.

Taking material from other sources and claiming it to the result of their own "investigations" appears to be a common ploy by journalists at the Age and Herald-Sun newspapers in Melbourne. While journalists from both papers may publicly deny the fact, the evidence speaks for itself.

By way of example, in June 1995 corruption author Raymond Hoser published his book The Hoser Files which publicly named magistrate Hugh Francis Adams as being corrupt and having 'fixed' at least one court case after being improperly approached by Police to make an illegal and improper finding.

Three months later an Age report into a case involving the same magistrate led to re-opening of the corruptly rigged inquest into the murder of Jenny Tanner by bent policeman Denis Tanner. Needless to say Raymond Hoser was not credited with being the first to publicly expose magistrate Hugh Adams. The problem facing a corruption author in trying to get his due credit is that so-journalists with the mainstream papers can claim to have sourced their information elsewhere.

More recently the now editor of the Age, Mr. Steve Harris went on Melbourne radio said that he would not report on material from Hoser corruption books as he said it wasn't credible. However it was Harris who was himself being uncredible. In fact both the Age and Herald-Sun (where he had worked previously) had regularly run material from Hoser's books, although usually without citing him as the source.

In 1998-1999 the Age went one step further by not only plagiarising material out of one of Hoser's books, but they even scanned in and used his photos. This was a clear and easily demonstrated violation of coryright and because no permission had been given to the paper to use the material, Hoser was able to sue the newspaper. As the facts were never in dispute, the Age had no real choice other than to pay up. The matter was listed for hearing in the Federal Court in late 1999, but before it came up for hearing, the Age paid up $10,000 in damages.

Author Raymond Hoser said, "In reality the paper should have paid up heaps more, but even $10,000 is better than nothing...It is a rare case of the David beating Goliath". Hoser also said 'One of the reasons there is so much corruption in Australia is because of the failure of the mainstream media to report on much of this...the Australian media has a lot to answer for".

As of late 1999 Raymond Hoser is subject to an unlawfully issued "D-notice" meaning that neither the Herald-Sun or the Age will directly report on Raymond Hoser or his leading corruption books by name. Instead it seems that they have both apparently resorted to stealing material from the books and claiming the stories as the result of their own investigations.

Meanwhile in late 1999 a correspondent at the Bendigo Advertiser newspaper reported that the Age newspaper had been plagiarising material from the book Victoria Police Corruption and improperly claiming it to be their own investigations. In other words they were running a de-facto serialisation of parts of the book - but without paying the author as usually occurs.

Unlike the Age, the Bendigo Advertiser had given the books Victoria Police Corruption and Victoria Police Corruption - 2 prominent and front-page coverage. This of course was proper considering the importance of the contents of both books.

The level of control of the Age and Herald-Sun in Melbourne by corrupt people in government can be gauged by the continuing censorship of the word "Raymond Hoser" and the titles of his books in these papers in spite of the fact that all five corruption titles have attained "best-seller" status and that people adversely named in Hoser publications have already been found guilty of criminal offences, forced into premature retirement and so on.

The only full account of the Denis Tanner saga ever written is in the book Victoria Police Corruption. The account includes a vast amount of material never published in the media or other books which have referred to the Tanner matters. This includes material relating to further corruption involving the original magistrate Hugh Adams and various other Police officers who corruptly protected Policeman Denis Tanner even though it was known all along that he had committed at least one and possibly a number of brutal murders.

The above was reported in New Australia Times Issue 13, page 7.
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