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Australia has given the world two influential and disruptive exports in the media field. One, currently in London’s Belmarsh Prison, faces the possibility of extradition to the United States on charges that could see him serve a 175-year sentence in a brutal, soul-destroying supermax. The other, the argument goes, should also face the prospect of imprisonment for what he has done to politics in numerous countries. But media mogul Rupert Murdoch, the hideous presence behind Fox News and News Corp, is unlikely to be spending time in a cell anytime soon. The same cannot be said for Julian Assange of WikiLeaks.
Gracefully, politicians have made the pilgrimage trip to the not-so-holy Murdoch to keep him in their good books. Unfortunately, although motivated by perceived need, Tony Blair of British Labor courted Murdoch before the 1997 UK general election that he was to win. New Labor’s victory led to a partnership between Blair and Murdoch that, according to the former sunday time editor Andrew Neil, “almost incestuous.”
Blair’s bow did its magic. As a former deputy editor of the Sun, Neil Wallis, recalls in the first installment of the documentary series The rise of the Murdoch dynastyMurdoch was flayed for initially publishing what he called a “pretty standard” cover on the election. This was the same newspaper that boastfully declared on April 11, 1992, that “it is Sun Wot Won It. “Labor, then led by Neil Kinnock, was favored in the polls to defeat the tired and dysfunctional conservatives of John Major. Murdoch and his newspaper did not accept any of that. On Election Day, the The newspaper headline screamed: “If Kinnock wins today, last person to leave Britain, turn off the lights.”
By 1997, attitudes had changed. Wallis remembers walking into his office after editing the first edition. Murdoch called, “I hated your newspaper this morning,” he was enraged. “Two or three minutes later, my door opens, Rupert walks over and says, ‘You’re wrong. You are totally wrong on this. We not only endorse Tony Blair, but we will back the Labor Party and everything it does in this campaign by 200%. You have to do it right. ”
The newspaper’s endorsement of Blair followed, but it came with its pound of tantalizing meat. Blair was asked to write an article for the newspaper promising a referendum if he wanted Britain to adopt the euro currency. Former UK Independence Party leader Nigel Farage, always associated with the Brexit campaign and the Murdoch cult, saw this intervention as crucial. “The price of Rupert Murdoch’s support for Tony Blair was that Blair promised that he would not bring us to the European currency without a referendum, and if Rupert Murdoch had not, we would have joined the euro in 1999 and I doubt that Brexit would have happened. . . ”
In a 2016 study published in Research in Social Sciences, the authors found that SunSupport for Labor in 1997 led to an increase in support of the order of 7%. In 2010, the return of the same newspaper to back the Conservatives increased support by 15%. Even if these figures were significantly lowered, they would still suggest a staggering degree of influence.
It is precisely that power that has become an obsession for former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd. Rudd has never retracted the view that Murdoch was directly responsible for his passing. True, his own knife-wielding Australian Labor colleagues, confused by the negative poll ratings, were happy to do the action, but it was Murdoch who sang the cheering tune. In launching his second volume of autobiography in 2018, Rudd claimed that Murdoch “is ideologically, deeply conservative, deeply protective of the commercial interests of his corporation, and therefore pursues a direct agenda through his newspapers that I have been receiving. [of]. ”
Another former Australian Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, although on the conservative side of politics, is also convinced, as he has become something of a crusader against Murdoch and his foot soldiers. On the ABC Insiders program, he warned of the accrued costs for Australia in allowing Murdoch’s press imperium to dominate. “We have to find out what price we are paying, as a society, for the hyperpartisanship of the media.” He took a look at the United States “and the terribly divided state of affairs they’re in, exacerbated, as Kevin [Rudd] he was saying, on Fox News and other right-wing media outlets. ”
This had led to something of an alliance between the two men at this point, despite Turnbull’s previous description of Rudd as one of those “wretched ghosts” who haunt politics after the fact. A wiser Turnbull understands Rudd much better after his own party launched a coup, leading to the rise of Australia’s current Prime Minister Scott Morrison.
While an online petition against the dominance of Murdoch’s press imperium sounds like nonsense, Rudd’s initiative has gained momentum. His petition, now presented in the Australian Parliament, specifically calls for a royal commission “to ensure the strength and diversity of the Australian media.” Having received 501,876 signatures, it notes concern “that Australia’s print media are overwhelmingly controlled by News Corporation, founded by Fox News billionaire Rupert Murdoch, with around two-thirds of daily newspaper readers.” Australians who hold views contrary to Murdoch’s line “have been intimidated into keeping quiet.” Added to this are the “mass layoffs of news journalists,” the devastating influence of digital platforms on media diversity, News Corp’s closure of 200 smaller newspapers after its acquisition, and “relentless attacks on the independence and financing of ABC “, the picture is bleak.
The presentation of the petition generated great interest in Parliament. While Murdoch is unlikely to break a sweat from the efforts of Australia’s politicians to investigate his scope of influence, any investigation will be irritating. Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young certainly hopes to cause a stir, having pushed members of the Senate to establish an inquiry into media diversity in response to Rudd’s request. “Australians are increasingly concerned about Murdoch’s concentration of media ownership and power and political influence.” The senator also wants the two former prime ministers “to speak frankly and enjoy the protection of parliamentary privilege, which is important when talking about issues of power and influence.
Murdoch’s mercenaries are ready. Unfortunately for Hanson-Young, the News Corp empire is adept at camouflaging inertia against change with promises of activity. The terms of reference of the investigation are also perfunctory, omitting any reference to News Corp Australia and calling for an examination of the “state of the diversity, independence and reliability of the media in Australia and the impact this has on public interest journalism and democracy”.
News Corp Australia Chief Executive Michael Miller was cool in his statement, noting that the company had participated in at least nine previous media inquiries. “As always, we will continue to engage constructively in these important conversations.” Murdoch will hope that the conservative Morrison government, and a number of Labor opposition figures, will not stumble to avoid change. History may well show that he is right. Again.
Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Fellow at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. Email: [email protected]
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