In Malcolm Turnbull’s various critiques of the toxic role on News Corp in the United States and Australian politics, his most damning indictment extended beyond the traditional arguments that the Murdochs and their outlets were bad for democracy. When giving evidence to a Senate inquiry into the media in April, Turnbull went much further in articulating how the company is a threat to national security and safety. His words are worth quoting at some length:
Look at the way the News Corp tabloids, for example, regularly seek to incite animosity towards minorities, particularly Muslims. It was a huge issue while I was prime minister because everything I was doing was obviously designed to reinforce our success as a multicultural society. What is so frustrating is that these voices on the populist right, particularly from Murdoch’s organisation, are essentially doing the work of the terrorists … Ultimately you’ve got to judge people’s policies and programs by their consequences. I’m saying that it is self-evident that the way the Murdoch press has operated both here and in the US has been absolutely adverse to our national interest. In the US their agenda appears to be effectively the same — I’m not saying it’s co-ordinated or motivated — as that of America’s most trenchant adversaries.
That goes far beyond Turnbull’s other main charge — which is more a statement of the obvious, really — that News Corp is now a political party for the Murdochs, not a media outlet. Turnbull also repeatedly mentioned January 6, and News Corp’s role in inciting that insurrection in the United States — the point being that News Corp’s threat isn’t confined to confirming the narrative peddled by Islamist terror groups, but extends to direct incitement of social division and of violence against democratic institutions.
Perversely, Sky News here was even more extreme in its coverage of the supposed “victory” of Donald Trump than Fox News and immediately began peddling conspiracy theories about his defeat. That Trump boosterism wasn’t confined to Sky but extended to columns in The Australian by the likes of Paul Kelly and Greg Sheridan, who cheered what they initially believed was a surprise Trump win.
Similarly, Sky has proved even more extreme on the pandemic than Fox News, which in recent weeks has publicly changed its tone from scepticism and even hostility to urging its white Republican viewership — the demographic least likely to get vaccinated in the US — to get a jab. Meantime Sky has continued to give Alan Jones a platform to claim the whole pandemic is akin to a hoax, and for others to peddle discredited COVID cures and other COVID misinformation.
Finally, YouTube, which has a lucrative deal with Sky News, has acted to pull down many of those videos and suspend Sky for a week from the platform.
Sky News’ role in peddling pandemic misinformation plays the same dual role that Turnbull suggested in his Senate committee evidence in relation to national security. It has an indirect impact, in undermining health authorities, dividing the community, and promoting extremists, but it has a very direct impact in terms of affecting the behaviour of viewers.
How many elderly Sky viewers have concluded, based on the misinformation peddled by the likes of Jones, that they won’t get a vaccine? That, in fact, the whole pandemic is some anti-freedom plot? How many will become ill or even die as a result? Who’s accountable for that?
Turnbull’s analysis of News Corp raises an intriguing regulatory problem — how do you deal with a media company that has morphed into a political party? But its damage to national security, and to public health, raise another problem: how do you deal with a major media company and political party that is a direct and indirect threat to the security of the nation?
Can Murdoch’s editors be charged under the anti-terrorism laws?
So far as I can tell the definition of ‘terrorism’ has now been stretched sufficiently that almost anybody with a pulse can be charged. So the answer is yes, if there is any will in the government. Sadly.
Another reason for Murdoch to prop up the Federal Government then? Staying out of jail is always a very effective motivator.
I think the power balance is the other way around – the Federal Government dare not threaten him because it is wholly dependent and working for him. The Coalition is the political wing of News Corp in AU.
The IPA is the Liberal Party’s tax exempt ‘charity’ but in effect it is an Associated Entity of the Liberal Party
Very little chance of that. He’s a Yank and doesn’t come to Oz. Chance of extradition would be NIL.
He was here last year, travelling in & outwards on his Australian passport (courtesy of the Rodent), giving his satraps their riding instructions.
One of the many reasons we should not permit dual citizenship.
Yes, and the permanent visa holders are not necessarily what this nation needs, overpopulation and unsustainable population growth a killer, of course business likes the idea as they often have far larger families than old whities.
Oh, gawd, now you’ve done it – a commenter here with all the usual guff on the F7 hot key, every time someone makes that point.
Murdoch’s churnalists were not always so keen to prostitute themselves to their S&D master
Murdoch’s overt interference in the 1975 campaign was so bad that reporters on the Australian went on strike in protest and seventy-five of them wrote to their boss calling the newspaper ‘a propaganda sheet’ and saying it had become ‘a laughing stock’ (Wright 1995). ‘You literally could not get a favourable word about Whitlam in the paper. Copy would be cut, lines would be left out,’ one former Australian journalist told Wright’ (1995).
~ Tony Wright, ‘On the Wrong Side of Rupert’, Sydney Morning Herald, 13 October 1995.
To go on strike over wages and conditions is one thing understood by all, but for 109 journalists to go on strike during a Federal election campaign is indicative of just how bad the editorial interference was. Source: IA
“… how do you deal with a major media company and political party that is a direct and indirect threat to the security of the nation?”
Yes, that’s the essential question. It’s arisen at times various times, in Australia and many other countries, though the perceived threats were not quite the same. For example there is Menzies’ failed attempt to ban the Australian Communist Party. In the USA back in the 18th C Thomas Jefferson looked at the dreadful and damaging lies being propagated in the press of his time and concluded it was very bad but censorship would be worse. And so on. On the other hand, in times of emergency there has been strict control of media by government, and our system of government has survived, at some cost. Typically that emergency is a war.
Given the scale of the clear and present threat posed by Murdoch’s empire against various Western democracies, as shown by it stoking various political fires with its lies and propaganda, and its efforts to prevent any coherent response to existential dangers like climate change, there is a good case for treating this as such an emergency. It is not a war but it is at least as dangerous. I would not object to controls to break up overly large and powerful media empires, even where they fall short of actual monopolies. I would also under these circumstances with great reluctance not object to the use of quite broad sedition laws against those who propagate certain lies.
On the other side of the coin there is also a great deal that could be done by setting up robust institutions to defend our democracy so that the public has more trust in it. A well resourced, powerful and independent federal crime and corruption commission would be an excellent step. No tolerance for any minister who attacks the independence of the judiciary would also help. There’s plenty more. Murdoch would have far more difficulty attacking our system of government if it was not already full of individuals who bring it into disrepute.
Only a tiny group of individuals can point to doing so much evil and so little good in their lives., not though ideology but through greed. Of that group Murdoch stands at the pinnacle.
I don’t for a moment deny the greed but I’m not at all convinced Murdoch lacks ideology. There’s abundant evidence for that going back decades. that he loathes the ruling establishment of AU, UK and USA and the principles of western liberal society as they have evolved over the last few centuries. His ideology looks like a form of nihilism:
… nihilism is most often associated with Friedrich Nietzsche who argued that its corrosive effects would eventually destroy all moral, religious, and metaphysical convictions and precipitate the greatest crisis in human history.
The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
However, I think his power gives his life meaning…
There’s a line between being a deliberate social irritant, and an actual danger to human life, and these people and organisations cross it constantly.
Do we really have to wait til we have our own version of storming the capital, or people dying following their false messages, until something can be done?
No action by anyone in authority sends out a clear message of impotence, acceptance, a kind of inevitability that these crazy propagandists will succeed in getting their message out there and be widely accepted in the general community. And it’s only ever due to a lack of will power, a lazy shrug of the shoulders on the part of those in authority, who just passively stand by and watch these charlatans destroy lives and social cohesion and undermine democracy.
Youtube have stepped in to fill the void that the proper authorities allow to exist. It’s not the preferred way to manage things, and it’s not something you’d want to rely on going into the future. But at least someone is doing something.
YouTube give zero hoots about our democracy functioning correctly. They too are setting a narrative. And it’s not a good one for you and me.
Why?
Bastards!