Will Lachlan Murdoch sue Chris Stirewalt? Of course not! Stirwalt has no problem publicly outlining the intended mis and disinformation broadcast on Fox News and it has nothing to do with Murdoch’s ideology. Their alliance is soley with business and wealthyconservatives whose primary interest was fattening themselves on profiting from others. The Murdoch’s aren’t purveyor’s of news or information but influncers hired guns for sale and nothing offends them more than any drive to reveal or prevent them from that goal. That’s why they have taken to threatening Crikey in Australia and not Stirwalt in the US because the laws say they can and the world gets the message.
Nonetheless, in his memoir, Stirewalt maintains that Fox News’s alliance with Trump and other Republican political candidates has nothing to do with ideology. Instead it has everything to do with delivering ratings and fattening profits, without caring that its top-rated host, Tucker Carlson, endorses conspiracy theories that radicalize violent, far-right white supremacists, including ones who staged the deadly January 6 Capitol attack.
It’s never the racist that is to blame for racism. It’s always someone else’s fault.
Murdoch said, “I think when you’re in the news business, and you’re number one … you get a lot of heat and it just comes with the territory,” he told Axios.
The son of Rupert then ignored what right-wing hate hosts like Carlson, Hannity, and Ingraham are vomiting daily into the airwaves, and gave this lame justification of them.
I think the world is more divided and on edge than it has been, you know, for a very long time,” Murdoch said in an interview last week. “I think on the noise around it, so much of it is politicized … And so, you’ve got to be tough about it.”
Which network is dividing the country?
Which network is acting more like a Republican candidate recruiting station than a supposed news and information service?
Which network allows their airwaves to be used as a fundraising vehicle for pro-Trump lawmakers?
Regardless, expletive laden’ rants are not what those who attended the Sky News sponsored ‘Paul Murray’s Live Pub Test’ interview with Peter Dutton expected to see at the Eatons Hill Hotel on the northern outskirts of Brisbane a week or so ago. Even if News Corp has absolutely no pretence of impartiality and fairness, they have a duty to consider the mental health of their employees.
News Corpse’s business model is that of a paid influencer, not as a News organization. If the ALP wins nothing will change. However, the question of selling a fake product is rarely addressed other than by private defamation action. News isn’t opinion! Yet opinion is constantly on the front pages of News Corp mastheads. Yet, the Herald Sun isn’t sold as an “Opinion Paper”. Their impotence will be felt on their bottom line and editors might be sacked. However, their direction won’t change because they market themselves to those with the money and will continue to do so and they aren’t on the Left of the political spectrum. They will continue to promote fake news and opinion rather than the product they duplicitously promise but never deliver.They are the Peter Foster of Australia’s media without the record of arrests.
News Corporation’s dominance, and its bias, do matter. But they matter less than they used to. The evidence shows naked campaigning and biased reporting undermines trust, and that undermines the purpose of the exercise.
The REAL STORY is News Corpse and the LNP Dirt Brigade. Kitching never complained
Opposition leader Anthony Albanese says the late senator Kimberley Kitching never raised complaints of bullying with him as he labelled political debate about her death “not constructive”. Reports have emerged about the stress the late senator was under within her own party before her death from a suspected heart attack, with Labor senators Kristina Keneally, Penny Wong and Katy Gallagher named in media reports as having ostracised her. In a joint statement released on Friday, the three denied the claims and said it was necessary to respond, given the “hurtful statements” that continue to be made.
News Corp suddenly promoting climate change action is just another example of how Coalition governments and establishment media operate in tandem to create and control the political narrative. Many are viewing this unexpected Murdoch media about-face on the subject of climate change with optimism and relief.
News Corp’s turnaround on climate crisis is a greenwash Ketan Joshi The company won’t change until it understands the grave damage it has done with its ugly legacy of denialist reporting News Corp Australia’s office in Sydney ‘News Corp has played a major role in ensuring a truly catastrophic track record for emissions in Australia over the past decade.’ Photograph: Paul Miller/AAP Tue 12 Oct 2021 16.29 AEDT Last modified on Wed 13 Oct 2021 09.51 AEDT Let’s be straight. The planet is heating because we’re adding gigatonnes of greenhouse gases into our habitat. The consequences get worse for every additional gram we displace from deep underground and send into the sky, through the dual actions of extraction and combustion. We know with certainty that the impacts – inflicted already and inevitably due if we don’t stop fast – are gruesome and visceral. As the world recovers from Covid-19, so too does fossil fuel use. It’s largely unsurprising, considering how little real work was done to decouple human existence from the burning of carbon. Not only do these gases accumulate in the atmosphere, the amount we add each year is itself increasing. That is to say: it’s getting worse quickly
Another example involves News Corp uncritically repeating the greenwashing campaigns of some of Australia’s most severe emitters. AGL Energy has openly decided to breach a 1.5C-aligned trajectory by keeping its coal plants open well into the 2040s. Ditto for Energy Australia and Alinta Energy, both justifying this on the grounds that shutting down coal would cause “blackouts”. It’s the worst of corporate climate delay, but it’s heralded as if it’s a grand turnaround on climate.
Phillip Morris also announced it was to become the world’s foremost Anti-Smoking Corporation far surpassing any government QUIT campaigns
The calculated change of heart within Murdoch’s non-news machine will do little to editorially rein in the likes of Bolt and his merry denialists, many of whom have promised to keep the cannons firing and the fires burning. As they do, climate change inactivism, code to preserve fossil fuel orthodoxy, promises to bloom.
They don’t call it Fox for nothing. This is hardly a shift but a slight move sideways brought on by advertisers and the BCA. Murdoch has joined the Fossil fuel companies that now claim are leading the pack in new decarbonizing technologies. They are the new leaders of science moving forward. The new alchemists as the tobacco companies have claimed for years. Don’t expect any mea culpas from the likes of Andrew Bolt paid to confuse us with slinging bullshit.
But there is reason to be doubtful. Only a month ago, in response to the latest report by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, News Corp commentator Andrew Bolt repeatedly chose to mock it with arguments that would not stand up in a high school science class, including the bizarre claim that “if a warming world is better for plants, why not for humans?” It’s hard to imagine him changing. As the COVID pandemic has shown, listening to the science can save many millions of lives. While there has been no shortage of fringe voices spreading coronavirus misinformation, they have largely been ignored and sidelined by the mainstream media. It’s to the enduring shame of News Corp that, on climate change, those voices were instead welcomed in.
MyPillow is Fox News’ single largest advertiser, after other companies have dropped ads over the years due to the network’s bigotry and conspiracy theories. Media Matters President Angelo Carusone laid out the details, including that MyPillow accounted for 18% of all ads on Fox News’ Tucker Carlson Tonight in the first half of 2021. In 2020, there were periods when MyPillow accounted for 41% of that show’s ad inventory.
Andrew Bolt threads his way through this maze by attacking politicians who he says have “smeared” the people who took part in the anti-lockdown marches on July 25. At the same time he remains uncharacteristically agnostic on whether lockdowns are right. Last year Bolt was calling lockdowns an over-reaction. It evidently makes a difference when it is your side of politics doing the locking down. As Australia enters a pre-election phase, it matters what the Murdoch media do. Its newspapers represent about two-thirds of the nation’s metropolitan daily circulation, with monopolies in Brisbane, Adelaide and Hobart. In August, Sky News will re-enter free-to-air television via several Southern Cross Austereo regional channels, which it claims will give it an audience of seven million. What the Telegraph does is particularly important because it is Murdoch’s main populist political attack dog in Australia. It circulates widely in western Sydney, where there are several ma
The Rupert Murdoch-controlled media company said the performance was due to investment in sectors such as real-estate and book publishing while indicating cost-cutting efforts at Foxtel and its evolution into an online streaming company gave News Corp “optionality and flexibility”.
More than 20 of Rupert Murdoch’s regional newspapers – including the 160-year-old Northern Star in Lismore – have quietly been merged with News Corp Australia’s city mastheads. The media giant would not reveal how many regional websites had been absorbed by the Daily Telegraph and the Courier-Mail but Guardian Australia has counted at least 20 by monitoring their subscription pages as they’ve moved over. The strategy follows the company’s decision to stop printing 112 newspapers last year, including 36 which closed and 76 which became stand-alone digital mastheads. Now many of those are being subsumed by their state-based paper, as a raft of South Australian local Messenger papers were last year. Queensland locals who want to read the Noosa News or the Gympie Times, for example, will have to buy a digital subscription to the Courier-Mail, where their local paper will be a tab behind the paywall on the metro paper’s website. ABC says it cannot fill void created by closure of suburban and regional newspapers Read more The titles that still remain independent include the Toowoomba Chronicle, the Cairns Post, the Gold Coast Bulletin and the Townsville Bulletin. In New South Wales
Former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull says Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp poses a real threat to Australian democracy, claiming it has surpassed the Coalition or Labor as the most powerful political force in the country.
But there is at least one other deal process in Australia that may have piqued Murdoch’s interest. An auction is under way for Australia’s largest listed gambling business, Tabcorp, after the $10 billion firm told the market last month it had received numerous approaches for its wagering business, which includes the TAB and Sky Racing brands.
As the dust settles on News Corp’s Geoffrey Rush defamation battle, Inq put some questions to The Daily Telegraph to find out what, if anything, has been learned.
A new report shows that over the last 12 months — following the Black Summer bushfires — nearly half of all climate coverage in four News Corp publications cast doubt on or completely rejected climate science.
God is more cunning than a sewer rat while he says Biden will win his only son Lachlan keeps boosting Trump. But Trump has now started boosting OANN. It’s crazy shit in America bet Borat and Giuliani don’t make it to Murdoch News (ODT
Media organisations shouldn’t publish allegations unless they believe them to be true, after making appropriate checks. This is a normally uncontroversial principle of journalistic practice, reflected in media law. It forms the underpinnings for the social licence to operate that allows journalists access to the powerful and the freedom to deal with confidential sources and leaked information. Now, that idea is in play on the international stage in a stoush between News Corp and the tech platforms Twitter and Facebook. It’s a crucial moment in modern media, mainly because the tech platforms seem to be trying to heed the traditional responsibility of publishers, while the world’s most powerful traditional media organisation, News Corp, seems willing to overlook it. The battleground is a story published in Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post, the essence of which is an allegation that presidential candidate Joe Biden used his previous position as US vice-president to benefit the Ukraine business interests of his son, Hunter.
Bolt loves the attention he’d be jobless without the ABC. Murdoch Media’s loss of $1,5 billion has resulted in the wholesale sacking of journalists diminishing it’s News content but not it’s opinions and public relation activity yet it continues to falsely portray itself as selling News. Sporting and entertainment maybe but not sufficient to describe it as a News organisation selling news. Peter Foster Australia’s infamous con man was jailed for selling product under false pretences.
Murdoch is an American who has been increasingly involved in interfering with our elections with heavy editorial influence and modelling Sky News on Fox News the USA. When will this foreign interference in Australian Democracy be addressed for what it is foreign interference? After all how does a company run and what is its purpose with a $1.5 billion loss paying no taxes given subsidies but losing readers and viewers but being largest organisation in the country not selling news (ODT)
Mind you the LNP has given them $40mill dollars on a Murdoch Quid pro Quo basis. Funds taken from the ABC who Morrisson like Abbott has echoed fro 7 years faced “no cuts” by the LNP
Revenue from News Corp’s subscription video service segment, which is made up of Foxtel and Sky News, fell US$77m in the first three months of 2020 “mainly due to lower subscription revenues resulting from fewer broadcast subscribers” and the weaker Australian dollar, the company said in accounts filed in May.
Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation is on the slide, once again reporting a loss – $306.7 million for the September quarter – in stark contrast to its $186 million positive result at the same time last year.
Murdoch is the proxy State Media for the LNP government “No questions asked” as long as you slash the funding to the ABC. Today our public media has been reduced ti the equivalent funding it had in 1984. This Government rode into power on the promis of No Cuts to the ABC. (ODT)
Any decent journalist would have asked basic questions such as:
How and when did the extraordinary surge in asylum seekers come about? How big is the problem, really, given the Government is saying it is no big deal? Is the Government really getting on top of the problem or are they just spinning a line? What is the surge costing the economy and the budget?’ Does the Government actually have an effective plan to get on top of the problem?’
But no, Chambers and Kelly just happily ignore such basic questions.
However it will have little or no impact on News Corp, Sky or Fox Corp (ODT)
Last week News Corp Australia commercial finance manager Emily Townsend told senior management she found it “unconscionable” to continue working for the company given she believed it had mislead readers about the cause of the bushfires sweeping across Australia.
James’ intervention shows that such concerns aren’t just held by some outspoken employees and left-wing critics on Twitter. They go to the very top of the Murdoch family tree.
The comments were a clear rebuke of James’ father Rupert, who insisted at News Corp’s annual general meeting in December: “There are no climate change deniers around I can assure you.”
For anyone who has read the opinion pages of News Corp publications or tuned into Fox News, it was a laughable statement – and one Mudoch’s second-eldest son refused to let go uncorrected.
For example, several recent News Corp articles highlighting the role of arsonists in causing bushfires have been used by prominent Fox News hosts to discredit the link between climate change and bushfires.
In an editorial last week The Australian said its bushfire reporting had been “wilfully and ineptly misrepresented by The New York Times and Guardian Australia as climate denial”.
News Corp’s Head writer of Foreign Policy talks Politics (ODT)
No less than three times did Sheridan declare the Greens insane. Which is Entirely Sensible and the way to win over several million Australians to your point of view! And there was this, also from Sheridan: “The Greens party is a party of hatred of Western civilisation and of our economy which wants to deindustrialise Australia and destroy every tradition we’ve been built on.”
Entirely Sensible! Thank goodness for an election campaign that has brought back common sense, and also brought back Greg Sheridan to Q&A.
The most notable recent evidence of this anti-Science drive is Scott Moorison’s and News Corp’s attack on doctors who are not to be trusted because they have sworn to abide universaly to the Hippocratic Oath in their application and practice of the science of Medicine to patients in their care. According the Scott Morrison those universal ar far too dangerous left in the hands of doctors and Peter Dutton is in better position to be trusted with intelligent decisions. Wasn’t he voted Australia’s worst ever Health Minister?(ODT)
Those who question whether scientists are the appropriate people to review the scientific evidence underpinning contested policy decisions may do well to consider who would be better placed to do it and what their motivations for doing it are. Calls for inquiry as Adani confirms it released contaminated water Read more
While the treatment of the scientists involved in the Adani review may seem shocking, it is one of many examples of people with vested interests undermining the role of experts in our discourse and decision making. We are seeing a clear erosion of trust in science around the world, driven by those entities who do not want evidence to be assessed, and do not want the frank and fearless advice that scientists will provide given to the people who ultimately make the decision.
By Eileen M. Ahlin | (The Conversation) | – The accusation of sexual assault against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, made by California professor Christine Blasey Ford, has been met with a variety of responses.
Among those responses has been the idea that what happens when someone is young should not be held against them, especially if they’ve led a commendable life ever since.
My research and that of others on criminal justice shows that, in fact, that’s not the way the system treats offenses committed by minors, especially if they are a person of color. Their crimes often haunt them for the rest of their lives.
ABC election analyst Antony Green predicts the ALP will win the Braddon and Longman by-elections and that Centre Alliance candidate Rebekha Sharkie will defeat Liberal candidate Georgina Downer in Mayo.
Newscorp loaned Foxtel $900M with an interest rate of 12%.
A report by Michael West describes Foxtel was spitting cash (highly profitable) at the time of the loan and there was no requirement for the loan.
The interest repayments from Foxtel to News resulted in Foxtel reducing their tax to the ATO to zero, Foxtel generated $6 Billion in revenue over 3 years and paid no tax.
If Foxtel had no requirement for the loan it can be argued that Newscorp, Foxtel and their tax lawyers and accountants conspired to draw up a loan agreement for the sole purpose to defraud the ATO of taxable income.
News Corporation is struggling to mount a legal defence to its allegations against actor Geoffrey Rush. And then there’s the chilling effect on the #metoo campaign. Hannah Marshall from Marque Lawyers breaks it down. Things are looking grim for the Daily Telegraph in its defence of Geoffrey Rush’s defamation case. The story of the litigation has taken a very distinct turn in Rush’s favour. That story is a courtroom drama and the protagonists are the barristers, lawyers and the judge. Behind the story of the litigation is another story. One that we won’t hear. That’s the story of what actually happened during the production of King Lear. That’s the one with Geoffrey Rush and Eryn Jean Norvill in it. Not the STC, not their co-stars, not the Tele. No-one else really, truly knows what happened. Only them. By commencing this defamation action, Rush seeks vindication; proof that he did not commit the acts of which he was publicly accused. The legal system tries its very best to provide actual vindication and find actual truth. But often it can’t. Cases like the Rush case make this painfully clear. The judge will make his decision based on the pleadings, which document the parties’ cl
Media Matters for America submitted a report to the United Kingdom’s chief competitions watchdog illustrating the havoc that 21st Century Fox and the owners, the Murdochs, would wreak on the British media landscape if their bid to take over Sky PLC is approved. The report was submitted amid revelations that Rupert Murdoch, his sons, and 21st Century Fox attempted to suppress another wave of public scrutiny around Fox News’ sexual harassment epidemic in January of this year.
An interesting dynamic is the relationship between Bill O’Reilly, the superstar of the Fox News Channel and one of the network’s most consistent critics the comedian John Stewart, host of The Daily Show. They appear on each other’s shows and have respectful amusing banter. At one stage in 2011 after a series of encounters O’Reilly seems genuinely concerned that John Stewart may see the Fox News Channel as a “terrible, cynical, disingenuous news organization” operated by Charlatans. In a paradoxical performance just after these encounters, O’Reilly conducts an hour where he is both disappointed at Stewart’s assessment but at the same time seems hell bent on providing a concentrated hour proving him right. The first part of this News Corp Narrative is a detailed look at this particular hour of The Factor. Others who see promise in the mutual respect between O’Reilly and Stewart also see in this hour the operation of a “truly terrible, cynical, disingenuous news organization” featuring selected charlatans. That conclusion is based on a view that trusted and privileged people who make “elaborate, repetitive and voluble claims to skill and knowledge” are really “quacks or frauds.” These trusted, privileged superstars “fail to reveal the full story or whole truth and while appearing to be sincere are in reality false, deceptive and insincere.” Readers, of course, are asked to judge for themselves. The second part of this narrative challenges a Fox defence against accusations of being a propaganda arm of the Republican Party. It stems from another interview John Stewart conducted with Brett Baier who repeats the mantra that, “there are opinion shows and there are news shows” and he concludes that, “I’m a news guy. I do news.” This is despite having little defence when Stewart points to contrasting interviews conducted with the two most recent Presidents. Stewart characterizes the interview with President Bush as, “You were literally sitting with President Bush in a love seat.” Others remember the interview with President Obama being very tense with the young reporter interrupting the Commander in Chief repeatedly as he attempted to deliver the Fox agenda for his viewers. In the shadow of Baier’s claims to be a news guy, a close look is taken at a week of Special Report hosted by Baier and packaged as a “news” program since it is anchored by “news men”. For part of the week the senior “news man” on the network Chris Wallace replaces Baier in the anchor’s chair. When he Chairman of News Corp has been questioned about lack of diversity on the Fox News Channel he has offered Greta van Susteren as an example of a liberal anchor. Others would say that every daily hour with Greta van Susteren is another Republican hour. Part three give three examples of hours with Greta van Susteren. Others believe that any hour taken at random would reveal similar promotion of the prevailing narrative sold with all the talking points of the day with domination of Republican guest given kid glove treatment and whenever a Democrat should wander into the line of fire a grilling can be expected. The final section deals with a variety of broadcasts where readers can decide if they are witnessing civil discourse and rational debate or the efforts of charlatans abusing the privilege that has been offered them by the News Corporation and the trust of good folk. Others may conclude that when News Corporation’s most highly paid on air personality feigns not to understand the comedian’s perceptions of charlatans and a “terrible, cynical, disingenuous news organization,” that perhaps he “protests too much.” Perhaps he is being as disingenuous as his news corporation. This News Corp Narrative is a story of the operations of the Fox News Channel. Another framing of the account may be of the operations of POOPs proselytizing from a place designated by the same comedian whose observation gave Uthers this book title, as “Bullshit Mountain”
“It’s rank hypocrisy really,” the SBS managing director, Michael Ebeid, said of the attack in the Australian. “News Corp, who is running the agenda against us, has received $30m for women’s sport on Foxtel and millions of dollars through Screen Australia to produce drama for Foxtel and Screen Australia money for a crime vodcast on the Australian. But all this content is locked up to 30% of homes who have Foxtel and 70% of Australians can’t watch it. For them to be crying foul when they’re taking money from the public purse is just crazy.”Despite many requests neither Foxtel nor the government has explained what the $30m is for.Ebeid said: “Surely anyone can see that our budget is 10% of Seven and Nine. We spend $130m on TV, Seven spends $1.4bn and Nine $1.3bn. So at 10% how does the little guy outbid them? I think they just enjoy throwing hand grenades over the fence and running. We’re giving audiences content they’re not getting elsewhere and they’re doing the same thing they’ve been doing for 10 years.”AdvertisementIn the same week Handmaid’s Tale dominated the catch-up rankings as viewers binge-watched the show, Seven’s top show was the universally panned reality show Yummy Mummies.
Rupert Murdoch is the ‘great rent seeker’, John Menadue says – labelling the media company a ‘rogue organisation’
“In recent decades his organisation has become a disgrace,” Menadue, 82, said. “It’s trampled on democracy in three continents, it’s damaged the media enormously in three countries.
“He is recently, of course, a supporter of Trump, a supporter of Theresa May, a supporter of Brexit; he supported the Iraq invasion and still justifies it; he’s a climate sceptic; his organisation has been accused and convicted of phone hacking; there is serial sexism at Fox News in the US,” he said.
“He is now seeking in the UK amendments to complete his $20bn takeover of Sky TV,” he said. “It’s interesting to me that his papers in Australia and elsewhere are always attacking what they call welfare bludgers and single mothers yet he uses governments more than anyone else I’ve ever known.”
Menadue said News Corp publications liked to “rip apart” activists and organisations who might be critical of them, including GetUp, the Australian Press Council and the ABC. “They are not content to dominate mainstream media; they also want to silence organisations that might be critical of them.”
Fox News spent 12 hours over 3 weeks on Harvey Weinstein but just 20 minutes over 7 months on Bill O’Reilly
olddogthoughts 