It is tempting to liken the conjugal embrace of the Murdochs’ News Corp and the Liberal Party to that of praying mantises – News Corp playing the female role of consuming the male after getting what she wants.
Murdoch will do everything to protect the family wealth.
Rupert Murdoch’s companies are set to be sued out of existence after Rupert gave evidence under oath that Fox News commentators knowingly lied to their audience about the 2020 presidential election being stolen from Donald Trump and Rupert said he could have stopped the lies but didn’t.
This evidence was released in the US (27/2/2023) in a redacted court filing by Dominion Voting Systems in their $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox Corp and Fox News. (Click here to read Dominion’s redacted filing)
The victim in a case about an alleged sexual assault at Parliament House has finally had her voice heard, saying she has had no-one to turn to, other than the world’s largest news media organisation.
Chief executive Robert Thomson described the challenges facing the media company, which locally owns The Australian, The Daily Telegraph and The Herald Sun as “more ephemeral than eternal”, but said the company was introducing a range of cost-cutting measures, including a 5 per cent reduction in head count – or 1250 positions across the business. This masthead revealed earlier this week News Corp Australia was planning to cut about $20 million in costs by 2025.
We are at a crossroads. The Ultra High Net Worth Individual (UHNWI) class is creating a new international feudal order, assisted by the professional enabler class including politicians in pursuit of their money. One of those enabling mechanisms is the media. In Australia, News Corp serves as the strongest weapon in the creation of their desired world.
We are at a crossroads. The Ultra High Net Worth Individual (UHNWI) class is creating a new international feudal order, assisted by the professional enabler class including politicians in pursuit of their money. One of those enabling mechanisms is the media. In Australia, News Corp serves as the strongest weapon in the creation of their desired world.
Lachlan Murdoch’s own barrister Sue Chrysanthou has thrown him and his company News Corp under a bus, not once but twice, in his defamation claim against news website Crikey.
, the Tories and their News Corp muck-spreaders will prosecute the culture wars to divide and conquer.
Venality unites the Tories. What they cannot understand is that empathy, the fair go, the helping hand unites the rest of us and so they will fail. Big time.
Without Ronald Reagan, there would almost certainly have been no Fox “News.” He paved the way for this abomination, made room for a cable station devoted to spreading lies that served people in Rupert Murdoch’s wealth demographic by monetizing and manipulating the news, offering the nation what was, without embarrassment or irony, a version of the news they promoted as “fair and balanced.”
OMG Lachlan Murdoch is offended by Australia’s Crikey! So much so he’s threatening to sue. Yet, he employs Tucker Carlson et al and allows those hucksters to bullshit the American nation. It’s great to see him being sued by those voting machine corporations for the lies he and News Corp not just reported but actively supported all the way to the violence on Jan 6th in claiming they helped steal the election in 2020 from Donald Trump.
Fox News host Tucker Carlson claimed on Monday that the Biden administration is hiring “87,000 armed IRS agents to make sure you obey,” a wildly inflammatory and false claim that his network’s White House correspondent debunked a few days earlier.
The Murdoch’s claim to be major supporters of “free speech” but only as long as it’s not directed at them it seems. Their company Fox News has never shown it was strongly critical of what occurred that day. In fact they have shown to be major supporters and in no way apologists for what had occurred. Stronger criticism of Fox News was certainly provided by much of American media and in stronger terms but they took no action. Why is Australia the place they are taking their Godzilla like legal stand?
Lachlan Murdoch has threatened online news website Crikey with legal action over an article that suggested he and his media mogul father Rupert Murdoch were responsible for the riots at the US Capitol in January.
It has been almost two years since Kevin Rudd uploaded a video to his social media channels calling Rupert Murdoch an “arrogant cancer on our democracy” and invited Australians to sign his petition for a royal commission into media dive
rsity.It gathered half a million signatures, including that of former Liberal prime minister Malcolm Turnbull, and triggered a year-long Senate committee inquiry that concentrated its focus on the influence of Murdoch’s News Corp empire.
In Fleet Street they used to call it the Reverse Ferret, to say one thing one day then take entirely the opposite editorial stance the next. And so it is with Nine, News Corp and Anthony Albanese. Michael West on media, government and neo-liberalism.
Rugby League Rorts: how Scott Morrison funnelled millions from Commonwealth grant programs into Rugby League
Brisbane Broncos.
One grant contributed $21.3m of the $23.7m. Initially the “Beyond the Broncos Girls Academy” received $8.8m for a 27-month period, a small variation decreased the amount by $200,000 after 11 months.
A second variation then added $13m and extending the contract by 24 months. The initial grant and variations were not allocated by a tender process, instead they were direct non-competitive grants.
The 1936 S23(i) Tax Act making sporting clubs tax exempt still apply to the Brisbane Broncos (Income from non-members are taxable)
Brisbane Broncos is a publicly listed company
News Corp owns 69% of the Brisbane Broncos.
News Corp owns the broadcast rights for NRL
News Corp is foreign-owned and often pays low or no taxes here.
This Australian version of the Big Lie is the first stage of a war for the future of the federal Liberal Party, with the far-right unable to resist the opportunity to exploit the removal of so many more moderate MPs to drive the federal party away from climate action and towards culture wars, division and attacks on women and minorities.
At the centre of it will be the foreign political party News Corp. Despite its irrelevance to mainstream Australia being demonstrated by the election result, the Murdochs will continue to wield significant influence within a purged Coalition, and the company will seize on its status as an opposition party. From yesterday, the Murdoch campaign of regime change in Australia began — it’s just that the campaign extends to the Coalition as well as a Labor government.
This shouldn’t be treated as some sort of sideshow. When Tony Abbott defeated Malcolm Turnbull in 2009 by one vote, with the backing of News Corp, he set the stage for 13 years of climate wars and polarised, toxic politics. He was aided by Kevin Rudd’s failure to seize the moment and go to an election that would have smashed the Coalition. One mistake is all it takes and the course of political history can be very different.
The most stupid was the mouth that was never there. Andrew Bolt put his verbal boot into, not the ALP, but Scott Morrison wishing he was more like Blair Cotteral a “real man” than a real leader. Someone who inspires dogs to fight. One thing is obvious though had the LNP followed Andrew Bolt’s advice they would have been totally obliterated.
Now Sky News after Dark is back and they’re calling for a more divided Australia and mimicking the worst of what the Republicans are currently doing in America. Inspiring mass shooters to kill. Now that’s an original idea, isn’t it? Sky News already inspired the Christchurch massacre.
What is little Matthew Guy going to do now that he only has 6 months to prepare? How far right can Sky make him swing?
And news reporters on Sky News maintained standards on interviewing during the day, although the commentary cohort known as Sky After Dark made little attempt at balance.
But there was a constant rollout of the opinion panjandrums of the News Corp titles tut-tutting uninterrupted over the menace they saw, not just of a Labor government but all those female independents. Some big name writers should worry they look rather silly.
All legacy media might worry as well.
One aspect of the election campaign, anecdotally at least, was that voters knew what they wanted in news and opinion and were open to fresh avenues of information.
They watched press conferences live on the ABC or Sky News, or as they were livestreamed from online sites. Many younger voters didn’t need the newspapers their parents relied on.
Today’s white supremacists tend to wear expensive suits and to work out of corporate or political offices. You will find more than a few at 1211 Avenue of the Americas in New York City, which is the headquarters of News Corp and its subsidiary Fox Corp, and in the big white building that sits atop of Capitol Hill in Washington DC. All these men and women, without exception, are firmly within the Republican Party.
Newscorp ( Murdoch) wants Australian Media Americanised. It’s how it made it’s profit. It wants the UK media well done burnt to the ground and the BBC gone like the ABC too.
What does a democracy do when a dominant news media organisation goes rogue during an election campaign?
In 2022, News Corporation is confronting Australia with this question once again, as it did in 2019, 2016 and 2013, and as it did in the United States in 2016 and 2020.
“Going rogue” here means abandoning any attempt at fulfilling one of the media’s primary obligations to a democratic society — the provision of truthful news coverage — and instead becoming a truth-distorting propagandist for one side.
The evidence that News Corp has gone rogue during the current federal election is plentiful. It can be seen every morning in its newspapers across the country, and every evening on Sky News after dark.
A sample of its election coverage over the period April 27 to May 2 makes the case.
Earlier in the week, I published an article about what I perceived to be blatant media bias in favor of the Liberal Party and Scott Morrison during this 2022 Federal Election campaign. It has been brought to my attention by one of my fellow branch members (named Don) that The Courier Mail (CM) appears to only be publishing letters to the editor which are favoring Morrison and the Liberal Party, and normal progressive contributors like him are not having their letters published, even though he has been a regularly published contributor to the CM for many years before the 2022 Federal Election was called. As you may recall from my above-mentioned article, the CM is owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp Australia (NCA).
This week I witnessed the worst character traits of human behavior play out on my television screen as a Prime Minister in dire straits regarding his, and his party’s, popularity tried to weaponize a death for political gain, assisted by some elements of a partisan media which commenced with an article written by Shari Markson and published in The Australian on Wednesday, 16 March 2022. To my knowledge, Ms. Markson has never written a positive word about the ALP, and of course, the Murdochracy which owns The Australian has pinned its political colors to the mast supporting the Liberal Party since about 2009. To say the article and Mr. Morrison’s behavior was vile and distasteful is an understatement. Some of you may be feeling inclined to say, “Michael, you’re an ALP member”, which I am, and I am proud of it, but hear me out as this is an important statement I make for the future of our entire democracy, including for the Liberal Party.
UK based GDI Index proves itself to be useless, almost conspiratorial as News Corp is. It’s based in the UK where Rupert Murdoch’s media behemoth was proved by Tory government inquiry to be totally corrupt. Where the world saw Rupert Murdoch do an Alan Bond and feign old age and dementia to stay out of jail. He had to close The News of the World and was allowed to keep his lisence. So fled to America to continue what he does best there, PR for the wealthy and powerful, misinformation his product. Currently, he’s spreading it for Russia’s Vladamir Putin. Fox News is even being celebrated by Putin’s State Media. I guess the UK based GDI is too.
The efforts of a self-appointed ratings agency that surveyed Independent Australia and 33 other Australian outlets have shown how you need to be careful in the tricky world of publishing. A report by the group called Global Disinformation Index (GDI) declared that the News Corp publications – Courier Mail, Sydney Telegraph and Herald Sun – were less likely to spread disinformation than Independent Australia.
First, we saw the Ramsey Foundation’s incursion into universities with bribery and their Western Civilisations degree. Now News Corp and Google have moved in on Melbourne University’s Business School. and the L-NP removal of research funding to the commercial sector. What we are seeing is the replacement of an Indpendant Tertiary Institution with the Trump University model being deployed in Australia? We know how well that went. Will shares too be issued sometime soon? The division between private and public seems to have been accelerated by this L-NP.
Why then are we as journalism academics concerned? There are several reasons. The first and most obvious is the incursion of a high-profile and controversial media company into the higher education sector and the extent to which that is funded by a large disruptive digital search company.
My thought for the day In 2011 Malcolm Turnbull didn’t think there was a need for an inquiry into the news media but agreed with the then PM Gillard that Newscorp should stop publishing crap. They still do. ( John Lord )
Murdoch an American, owns 66% of the print media in this country and is the unofficial PR arm of the LNP government so what can we expect. The APC is after all like the ABC are a watered down version of our critical voice. Morrison’s promised an ICAC if and whenever it comes will be another watered down version of what our voice could be. But let’s be fair the defamation laws will be changed and called “strengthened” and MP’s will be allowed taxpayer money to sue us.
Australia’s media watchdog found more than two-thirds of all complaints upheld for violations of the media code of ethics in 2021 were against News Corp, Alan Austin reports. AUSTRALIANS WILL BE SAFER, healthier, happier and much better informed when Rupert Murdoch’s malevolent media empire eventually disappears.
Imagine It’s what News Corp claims to do and all it’s “journalists” “informed commentators” like Andrew Bolt claim to do when calling journalist’s like Maria Ressa “hacks” and award chasers. They tell Australians they are delivering a rational analysis of the facts.
As misuse of communication technology rises, fact-based journalism to protect against abuse of power, lies and war propaganda is under even more attack, writes Lee Duffield.
PUBLIC ADDRESSES late in 2021 by Maria Ressa – the Philippines journalist accepting the Nobel Peace Prize – and by Wanning Sun, a Sydney China scholar, displayed opposite experiences and understanding of the abrogation of media rights. Maria Ressa is self-consciously the journalists’ journalist as she declared at Oslo, on 10 December: “I stand before you, a representative of every journalist around the world who is forced to sacrifice so much to hold the line, to stay true to our values and mission: to bring you the truth and hold power to account.”
This reads as a very uninformed puff piece on News Corp and Sky’s strategy as ” influencers and churnalists”, they are more than just wannabe lap dogs, much more and worse. As far back as Gough Whitlam Murdoch realized his business model was reliant on where the money came from and that was not from Labor. His investment money spent between elections was seen as a necessary expense to insure and modernise where the advertising dollars flowed every three or four years depending on the country. Yes, elections here have always been his tri-annual influencer’s payout for media and he has always wanted the bulk of what was spent. Labor had X5-10 times less money spent on political promotion than the LNP, who had the direct backing of donors, the IPA, and the likes of Clive, Hanson and other sattelite right-wingers. So Murdoch isn’t about to even seem to change horses to attract a lesser payout. His business model is American and it dictates he won’t change too randomly. When Abbott was losing in Warringah News Corp was tossing the Teleraph over fences gratis.
Thus, it’s not hard to imagine that if the polls stay trending thusly or if new scandals emerge around Morrison’s remaining frontbench, that a few more generous pieces about Albanese will start to get published. Perhaps some editorials will explain how Labor had learned the lessons of the disastrous Rudd/Gillard/Shorten years and that they’ve abandoned their nutty leftism and are finally behaving like economically-responsible grown-ups. Whatever threadbare excuse they use to justify switching their support, it’ll be a placeholder for “because they’re going to win and we want to make them think we were responsible for that”. And when that happens, it’ll be all over bar the belligerent Morrisonian shouting — not because News anoints our leader, but because the team at News are masters of jumping on the winning horse and pretending to have been riding it all along.
Andrews’ Government leads the world No other nation or state copped more than 700 COVID deaths in 2020 and then got that tally down to below 70 in 2021. Andrews’ Government alone has managed that. These eight states have comparable populations, demographics and health care systems — all highly advanced. All of them had surges in COVID deaths in mid-2020. Lives lost in the four months from June to September 2020 were: Ireland: 161 Switzerland: 112 Bulgaria: 685 British Columbia (Canada): 70 Massachusetts (USA): 2,610 Indiana (USA): 1,720 Tennessee (USA): 1,948 Victoria (Australia): 778 Scott Morrison to blame for latest Victorian lockdown Scott Morrison to blame for latest Victorian lockdown Victoria is entering yet another lockdown, but Victorians shouldn’t be blaming contact tracers or the State Government. All of them implemented recovery programs, with quite different outcomes. Their COVID deaths over the twelve months from October 2020 to September 2021 were: Ireland: 3,448 Switzerland: 9,199 Bulgaria: 20,057 British Columbia: 1,719 Massachusetts: 9,171 Indiana: 11,488 Tennessee: 12,737 Victoria: 63
“It is unequivocal.” Those stark three words are the first in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s new report. The climate crisis is unequivocally caused by human activities and is unequivocally affecting every corner of the planet’s land, air and sea already.
As has been well documented, the violent incursion of the Capitol by thousands of white nationalists, armed militiamen, and a who’s who of MAGA-faithful was sparked by widespread, yet false claims about a stolen election, promoted for months by the most powerful man in the world in his public pronouncements and his social media channels. These lies found a reliable echo chamber in the right-wing corporate media ecosystem—Fox, affiliates of Sinclair Broadcasting, One America News, and a countless array of local and national voices that rhetorically agitate listeners every day on political talk radio. Nevertheless, it was social media that received the majority of the public backlash after the riot.
Political bias and the lack of diversity in Australia’s media have received increased attention since former PM Kevin Rudd began a petition for an inquiry regarding these issues. Australia’s media is the most concentrated of any democracy in the world. The largest stakeholders (and chairpersons) of the three largest media companies in Australia – News Corp, Nine Entertainment Co and Seven West Media – all have known links to the Liberal Party. The ABC is also chaired by Ita Buttrose, another person with links to the Liberal Party. This overwhelming ownership (and management) of Liberal-aligned persons in Australian media has resulted in obvious bias in Australia’s media content, which is hindering democracy.
However, it does make one wonder how lax things must be at NewsCorp when a complaint like that is mentioned in the PM’s press conference. I mean, who told him? If the Liberals can keep a sexual assault so confidential that Scott Morrison never hears about it, how did he find out about this one? Surely not gossip because he never comments on that, so it must have been official. Still, criticising the culture at a Murdoch operation is a brave move. A very brave move. He’ll be gone within the week!
News Corp’s dirty laundry has been aired in a day of extraordinary Senate hearings, with former employees accusing the media giant of spiking public interest journalism, a toxic workplace culture, and sexist reporting. More than 74-years of combined experience at News Corp was on display in emotional testimony before the Senate inquiry into media diversity on Friday, as former staff exposed how the Murdoch empire’s dominance warps public perception and perpetuates stereotypes.
Asked by senators about the proliferation of rightwing views, Miller said Sky News covered “a range of opinions” and “often asks a range of people to appear”. He was responding to earlier claims by the star witness at the inquiry, Kevin Rudd, who claimed Sky News had the potential to build an “alternative political ecosystem out there on the far right”. There’s the “archdeacon of hard-right conservatism in this country, Alan Jones”, Rudd said. “My concern is: where does this land over time – because I’ve seen the ecosystem unfold in the United States.”
What chance do these two have in the Murdoch’s tabloid world? Division, hate, and salacious gossip sold for profit have always been their product for sale.
Will the interview turn hearts and minds in their favour? In Britain, probably not. Because here’s another “truth”: after the raging success of their 2018 wedding, the couple are now deeply unpopular figures at home.
olddogthoughts 