As Saturday’s bloodbath washes through the Liberal corridors of no power, the electoral train wreck has turned attention to other overly cocky players: the Murdoch media.
From the moment the poll was called, Rupert Murdoch’s news culture warriors turned up the heat on Labor, exhorting the brilliance of Peter Dutton’s failed nuclear fantasy and his war on migrants, “woke” schools, people who work from home and Welcomes to Country — while tearing down anyone who dared suggest he and his party were not fit for office.
But on election night none of that mattered. None of the confected outrage, the miles of newsprint, the spin and the bullying had made a jot of difference and was more likely to have worked against the Liberals’ interests. Australians it seems have a finely tuned bullshit radar.
Sky pirates
Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young nailed it when she told Radio National on Monday:
“I think what has happened to the Coalition is they spent a bit too much time hangin’ out with Sky News and they forgot to really hear what people were saying. The other big loser is the Murdoch press. They created an echo chamber for themselves.”
Dr Denis Muller of the Centre for Advancing Journalism at the University of Melbourne said the Murdoch media were “agents of disaster” for the Coalition:
“I see the sun beginning to set on Rupert’s influence in Australian politics. News Corp created a bubble in which their journalists and Coalition politicians cocooned themselves, talking to each other on Sky after dark, persuading each other that everything was going to be fine.”
A setting sun? It’s a big call. Australian politicians of all persuasions famously make the trek to Murdoch headquarters after an election for a ritual known as “kissing the ring”, and Anthony Albanese, Richard Marles and Penny Wong were quick to do their duty in 2022.
Strings attached
Eric Beecher, a former News Corp employee, recalls being sued (unsuccessfully) by Lachlan Murdoch who issued a writ for defamation over an opinion piece linking the Murdoch news empire with 2021’s January 6 Capitol riots:
“The day after the defamation writ was issued, a large Commonwealth government car pulled up outside the Holt Street Surry Hills headquarters in Sydney of News Corp. Three people got out of that car to go upstairs and visit Lachlan in his office: the prime minister, the deputy prime minister and the foreign [affairs] minister of Australia. It’s been going on for 100 years and it should stop.”
The reach of puppetmaster Rupert Murdoch into governments and policy making knows no bounds and there have been countless exposés on unethical business practices. But the machine roars on, a powerhouse of global disinformation and propaganda while pretending to be a news-gathering organisation.
In January, Murdoch was photographed reclining in the Oval Office as Donald Trump signed an executive order creating a sovereign wealth fund. Fox News cable spits out Trump propaganda daily and is credited with helping to return the convicted felon and sex predator to office. Murdoch has called Trump “increasingly mad” and yet publicly admitted he knew Fox commentators were lying when they broadcast falsehoods about a “stolen rigged election” in 2020. But hey, it was good for business.
Nuke the enemy
The habitual process of retribution and vendetta from News Corp is bitter and legendary. The Australian Financial Review reports that Malcolm Turnbull and Kevin Rudd blame Murdoch for their political demise. In 1974, Murdoch famously directed his editors to “kill Whitlam” 10 months before Gough Whitlam’s electoral ousting.
Every day, Murdoch’s media rival, the ABC, is a target of sneering “hit jobs”, and any politician or voice that suggests climate change is real or nuclear reactors are a fantasy or billionaires don’t deserve tax breaks are hounded, possibly for life. The Herald Sun still runs revelations about former Labor premier Dan Andrews and sporadic pieces of condemnation over a car accident his wife had 20 years ago. According to Beecher in his book The Men Who Killed The News, Andrews was the only premier who refused to schlep up to News Corp headquarters for the compulsory kissing of the ring.
In Australia, the power base is the print media, overwhelmingly controlled by News Corp with a huge digital presence and backed by Sky News. In 2020, Rudd and Turnbull joined forces to call for a royal commission into Murdoch’s concentrated media holdings. Rudd claimed his media power is “routinely used to attack opponents in business and politics by blending editorial opinion with news reporting”.
Break the News
How is it that such deep, lasting damage to democracy, businesses and people’s lives can be inflicted with precisely zero repercussions? One part of the answer is the acceptance that democracies cannot flourish without a free press. Section 65A of the Trade Practices Act provides a general exemption to most of the media as publishers of news and current affairs from liability for publishing misleading or deceptive material. Former chairman of the ACCC Allan Fels said concerns around Murdoch’s practices are more likely to be addressed by a royal commission, an idea the government and opposition have not supported.
“I don’t have a view on whether he should be reined in. All media mislead to some extent. It’s not the sort of thing consumer protection law addresses.”
Dr Victoria Fielding, senior lecturer in strategic communication at the University of Adelaide, was bolder. She said legislative change was needed to rein in Murdoch excesses. She agrees a healthy democracy needs an independent free press populated by balanced journalists who hold the powerful to account and publish verifiable information — but that’s not what the Murdoch media are:
“If there was some legislation that said if you want to be a commentary organisation you can only have a particular share of the market — like any competition commissioner can do — you break it up. You say: ‘You can no longer be that large.’ It’s distorting our democracy.”
Running scared
The other part of the answer is fear, fear of taking on a monolithic disinformation machine which countless readers think is a news outlet and being publicly torn down and repeatedly shredded by a media gorilla with few scruples and deep pockets.
Remarkably, after cheerleading the Liberals to disaster on May 3, The Australian leapt back up onto its feet to brush off its flesh wound and lecture the Coalition on “missing the warnings”:
“Of all the mistakes that led to this result, one was fatal: the untested assumption that Labor was out of touch and unaligned with the mainstream values of Australians. There can be no other interpretation that that this is fundamentally wrong.”
This from the paper that tells us pretty much every day that Labor is out of touch and unaligned with the mainstream values of Australians.
Culture vultures
Reports of the death of the Murdoch brand in Australia may well be exaggerated. Like any good parasite it is known to stew and grow before attacking the host again. Fielding reminds us that backed by the Murdoch press, Dutton was on track to win the federal election as recently as January — until the catastrophic reality of the Trump presidency became obvious to Australians.
Murdoch has withstood worse setbacks than crashing an election and, like Monty Python’s Black Knight, his culture warriors rebound after each atrocity and, still bleeding, berate their victims for taking the advice.
I’d like to think the tide is turning on news outlets that amplify bullshit while bragging they are society’s moral pulse and insisting their bullshit is good for you. But if the tide is not for turning, you can always join the Liberals, and learn the hard way.
The servility of Wong and Albanese in joining the right-wing Marles in going to the offices of NewsCorp is astounding
Lets hope they dont repeat
Damned if they do, damned if they don’t.
This is the time for Labor to stand up to the vile Murdoch and his gaggle of lickspittle journalists for the sake of Australian Democracy.
Indeed, and its high time they all found some intestinal fortitude!
As for Rupert Murdoch, well there’s a rather large overdue kick in the pants coming for him as well.
Lachlan will be too busy undermining the family trust to save pennies.
Sickening more than astounding in my view. Let’s hope they don’t repeat it this time.
I would like to see Albanese grow a spine and introduce a Murdoch Royal Commission.
If ever there was a time when he might be able to pull it off, it’s now.
He has the numbers in the Reps and the Greens would back it in the Senate.
Given the disarray of the COALition and the evidence of Murdoch’s incomplete power (at least at the moment) it would be worth investing a bit of political capital for a possible longer-term benefit.
That said, it absolutely needs to be framed broadly and within a context of unquestioned support for Independent media so as not to look – or be – simply vengeful.
I would have thought that the logical – and eminently fair and rational – way to approach it all would be as a review of monopolistic ownership patterns and the need for genuine diversity.
Exactly!
I expect the Greens will become a much more sensible party with the expected loss of Bandt who lacks political finesse. Having said that, Albanese is somewhat twisted in blaming the Greens for the Greens opposition to Labor’s mealy-mouthed policies on dire social issues. Albanese isn’t even a shadow of Gillard when it comes to clarity on issues and the art of negotiation.
Agree!
There’s no question that Labor is far preferable to the coalition of the damned,but I’d be very surprised if much changes on the big issues,climate ,for example,which was studiously ignored in a very forgettable campaign.Look forward to inching along in the peripheries, as usual.
There’ll be no commissions of inquiry into the New York cretin’s voluminous sins against the people,we’ll just take our turn in the queue to kiss the wrinkled ring.
Our best hope is an unexplained affliction that strikes the entire top echelon of Newscorpse dead.
Elsewhere, another travesty has befallen us,with the re election that little IPA bastard, Wilson.Some of the electors of Goldstein need to go to confession…whether you’re Catholic or not.The disease still lurks in the wreckage.
Yeah, Freedom Boy rides again. More thickies in Goldstein than I thought. And, speaking of kissing big fat arses, when Albo goes to Washington he should avoid tRump’s and tell him AUKUS is over and US bases in Oz must be vacated. Obeisance to a fascistic regime is not to be borne.
“Australians it seems have a finely tuned bullshit radar”.
A string of LNP leaders have done an excellent job in honing the filters. Scomo was a master craftsman, bless him.
I can only think of Fox News as the model that is trying to be replicated here by Sky News after dark and some of the Murdoch news agencies. It doesn’t seem to matter how divorced from reality the commentary is. And those spewing the disinformation and crazy notions obviously have no shame when – as what happened at the weekend – it smacked them in the face with a dose of reality. They just happily continue on with the unreality. It’s the business model of Murdoch’s choice.
And there are enough idiots willing to watch, read and subscribe.
Sky commentators/entertainers have racked up the TDS campaign even now as if it is an actual diagnosis. There is money in the rage algorithm.
I think the conundrum is that playing to the base is quite a sensible business strategy (I think it’s precisely what Lachlan has always been doing) but not so clever in politics.
Hopefully that friction will burn enough off both Murdoch and the COALition to soften the wax I’m their wings.
As someone I know once said: If you go into a cafe in the morning for breakfast or even for just a cup of coffee, or if you rid a bus or train to work, or if you sit quietly for a moment on a park bench, and if on any of these occasions you find a copy of the Australian or the Sydney Telegraph within hands reach, then pick it up quietly, take it with you, and put it in the rubbish bin where it belongs. The Muckraking Murdoch Media Mongrels are nothing less than a total Social Disgrace and Social Menace . . . Unkalen
My daughter makes a point of finding free copies daily, so line the base of her cockatiels’ cages.
Rather interesting that Newscorpse boasts about their circulation when the majority of their ‘news’ is given away for free!
Cafe’s (McDonald’s et al), Students have special discounts. The only places I know where you pay is newsagents and online.
Their narrative supporting Dutton was so over the top, they created a bubble of enormous deviance from the truth. It had worked for the referendum on the Voice , as they were tapping into our general racism. It buoyed them up to continue in their bubble, but Trump’s chaos showed the other side of their narrative. Their bubble was so strong that the Coalition believed it. I think the turning point in the election was when Albanese said “kindness is not weakness” and I think a lot of Aussies suddenly saw that the strong he-man bullying was not what they wanted. I just hope that the government can see that what they say now is of no importance, and ignore them, and they will lose that stranglehold on our governments. If only…
Albo “kindness is not weakness”, but refuses to condemn Israel while it starves and bombs 2 million Palestinians. Albo is a hypocrite and a craven US sycophant.
C’noath, Andrew.
Saturday’s election result is further evidence for the proposition that a majority of Australians can identify mugs when they see them.
A recent phenomenon, if it were true. How else to explain Abbott, Morrison as PMs ?
The mug voters are ageing and falling off their perches.
The majority of younger voters have been taught to practise deductive reasoning and critical thinking due to many more going on to higher education.
Conservatives have form negatively interfering with education
Well Philip I’m no mug punter, ageing and have no plans in falling off my perch anytime soon!
Yes, the majority of younger voters have been taught critical thinking however these and former generations have been subjected to plagiarism as well, it’s been rife in higher learning for decades.
Also, many don’t seem to know how to research materials as they only know Google for search engines where there are at least another 120 SEO’s that I know of as follows….
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_search_engines
Depends on which browser you use as well, google will not give you the above results
The Murdochs have a very rocky road ahead of them. Rupert can’t last much longer and Lachlan’s grip on power will be somewhat curtailed because of the Nevada court ruling. This means that Rupert’s other three children, James, Elisabeth, and Prudence, will retain their equal share of control over News Corp after his death. What’s the chances of a hostile takeover and a sudden shift to the left – supporting climate change adaptation, even taking on Trump? Hopefully, they will cut all ties with the crazy, extremist right wingers Howard, Abbott and Dutton. Crikey, they might even return to real objective journalism!
This is the hope and expectation. A change st the top of the dynasty which is not Lachlan and a splitting up of the dark empire and infusion of truth and decency by the heirs. It really appears that print media and TV is dead to youth whilst those that imbibed and rusted on are dying off fairly quickly now. Then there is big tech which also overtakes Murdoch and that with groups like Atlas Network and Advance, Meta and X are the ones to watch out for.
It is a well written article. Reminds of the need for independent media. I really enjoyed this. I saw some of the murdoch press headlines and wondered how they get away with it and how the “writers” of the headlines sleep at night.
They sleep very well. It’s like that if you are a moral vacuum.
I don’t think the Australian public has finely tuned bullshit meters… they bought all the bullshit they were sold about the voice, too large a proportion of the public are anti-vaxxers despite the science and the evidence, people believed Labor’s bullshit that incrementalism will solve our many societal problems. You could detect the Coalition’s bullshit from outerspace, that’s no big achievement. But too many people couldn’t see the two major parties are the problem not the solution… the people of Goldstein re-elected Tim Wilson for god’s sake!
I fear you’re right, Mark.
The COALition’s bullshit was so gross that poor old Blind Freddy would have been dazzled by it
Yeah very sad indeed.
May be wealthy with money but not much else I’m afraid.
Agree. For mine, the issue is not rubbish views, but the deception that rubbish are journalism. Thereby lies a possible solution: hold journalism to inforceable standards and have input by opinion makers clearly (and in advance), illuminated as personal views.
Can’t be that difficult.
So very sorry Tim Wilson was elected..Zoe Daniel’s is a great loss..still can’t quite get my head around this..we are diminished by this..
Murdoch and his Fox News facilitated Trump is now fucking up the world order with hate while enriching his own family.
We don’t need another kleptocracy.
Looking forward to Rupert’s demise.
So sick of his influence in Australia.
Despite what Potato Head says in his attacks on the ABC (including SBS by default?), and The Guardian, we must accept that with the way, they wallow in the mud and excreta of reactionary hypocrisy, the sooner the planet’s capitalist media conglomerates, particularly the Goldilachlan, (previously it was the reprehensible reptile), and the porky packer, internationally and in Australia, and with the porky packer, largely just in Australia, with their minions of 10th-rate, amateurish semi-literate scribblers, and hydrogen sulphide-filled radio and television airheads are all taken down a step or two the better. In fact, I would go further and love to see these media empires completely nationalised, without compensation and operating in the interests of The People, and under joint worker/community control, since they both run them like a 12th-century feudal Norman seigneur. Thinking particularly of the now supposedly retired reprehensible reptile, and his replacement, the Goldilachlan, I wonder if they also claimed ‘le Droit de Seigneur’ if and when any women he employs enter into wedlock.
the australian newspaper 30 years ago was good and now it is a rag a racist nasty rag like sky news after dark and the hearld sun in melbourne In other words it is now the australian newspaper a tabloid
It is way past the time for Murdoch to have his a$$e kicked out of Australia.
NZ has better political discourse as Murdoch has no influence there.
Every politician who pandered to Murdoch should be ashamed of themselves
I believe letters were sent around Goldstein suggesting that Zoe was antisemitic. I have my thoughts on just who would do that… Harry Lime so well said re Wilson. Travesty indeed.
Can’t believe that Wilson has found his way back to the public teet. Anything else I say about him would involve a nasty court case, so I’ll reserve my judgement.
Education, more education, and seriously deep education; that’s the key issue.
We are (as far as we know) a unique instance of sentient life in the known galaxy. Living on a planet with finite resources, with an established biological ecology which enables complex life.
Since 1900, human population has multiplied by 5; now we need to seriously address the balance between sustainable biological systems and human demands.
Heads up – humans are hostage to planetary systems, the key issue is how to protect.
A fine article on a phenomenon that has plagued Australian democracy, since WW1.
A political tragic, Keith Murdoch learned he could have more influence over the Australian people, than any politician, since they very often have short political lives.
Thus he grew his media influence through the 1920s and 1930s, which included b
‘ befriending’ and offering his sage advice to Prime Ministers. This was the antecedent practice before the ‘ kissing the ring’ ritual these last 55 years of almost every federal and state leader (Daniel Andrews being an exception to this,). Rupert learned much from his father about leaning on politicians, and using his media outlets in sensationalist modes to sell newspapers.
With the political capital the Albanese government now has, one major reform would be a Royal Commission into the concentration and the politicisation of Australia’s media, and then to implement the recommendations. Under Lachlan Murdoch, the dynasty continues.
Immediately after the election result was known and the size of the ALP majority became clear I thought this was now the opportunity for a proper labor agenda to be implemented – real action on climate change , no more funding of wealthy private schools abolition of negative gearing and other tax rorts & etc without the government having to pussyfoot around and always looking over their shoulder for the reaction from Murdoch and other malignant influences . Now I’m not so sure – given Albanese’s track record he’s just as likely to reason that it was the softly softly , don’t scare the horses policies of the last 3 years is what won it for him and why change when you’re on a good thing .
Nicole, this is such a fine article, so well written with courage and clarity, you provide me with hope for journalism in Australia. I come alive when I read your articles, I shrug off the shackles of the depressing and appalling same old, same old crushing deceptions and falsehoods constantly regurgitated by the Murdoch press. Thank You!