Australia’s news media face a difficult choice in this election: how much longer are they going to go along with the pretence of News Corp mastheads that they’re all part of the same club?
It’s time for news media to ’fess up to what everyone knows: News Corp is not a normal news organisation and does not act like one. And it’s time for the rest of the media to stop treating the US company as though it were.
In its mastheads, in its Sky after dark commentary, the company has adapted the practices of its US Fox sibling to its Australian ambitions. It’s a particular type of propaganda that steals the semiotics of journalism — the look and feel of the news — and shapes it for virality in the social media age. (Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society called it “Network Propaganda” in its 2018 study.)
In conservative infrastructure, think of it as an arm’s-length outrage meme factory. It’s proving particularly useful in this 2022 campaign as a voice for saying the quiet bits out loud about those nice-but-nasty teal independents stealing the Liberal Party’s well-heeled voters in its traditional suburbs.
Treating News Corp seriously is hurting the fact-based news media, particularly the ABC. It pays the price in its own credibility every time it provides space to the News tabloids and The Australian as legitimate media voices.
The payments can come in small doses, such as the inclusion of News’ mastheads in regular “what the papers say” round-ups (and the usual simultaneous exclusion of rising independent digital news media), even with a “did they really say that?” raised eyebrow. The price comes a bit higher whenever it recognises the News commentariat with guest appearances, from metropolitan talk radio to flagship programs such as Insiders.
The highest cost is when it follows on from the agenda set by News mastheads, from “gaffe-gate” to “tough on borders or taxes”. Or, worse, when it acts safe by downplaying the agendas News Corp disdains, like the climate crisis.
Election by election, the mastheads have slid down the groove carved by Sky News (particularly in its after dark manifestation) as it followed Fox.
Through this election, the four major metropolitan tabloids in Melbourne, Adelaide, Sydney and Brisbane have splashed politics on their front pages about twice a week. Uniformly, those splashes have been anti-Labor, such as “Wannabe Westies” in The Daily Telegraph or, in The Advertiser in Adelaide’s “Iceberg Ahead” (which required a kicker explainer “ALP’s cost of living attack a limp lettuce leaf”). Or it’s been Liberal-friendly: Morrison’s no new tax’s pledge got front-page treatment in both the Herald Sun and The Courier-Mail.
This week the mastheads have pivoted to focus on the existential threat to their party posed by the teal independents, with attacks on individuals (such as the “Dyer Straits” splash in The Advertiser) or puffing Liberal candidates under threat like Warringah candidate Katherine Deves in the Tele and Treasurer Josh Frydenberg in the Herald Sun.
The Australian, meanwhile, provides the talking points memo for the thinking person’s Liberal Party supporter. The independents? They’re a News Corp three for “extreme and destructive and incoherent”.
The election has shattered a common complacency about News Corp’s political dominance — no need to worry: “Rupert backs winners”. Well, maybe once. Over the past two decades its support for centre-left candidates has been, at best, sporadic. Even a rare editorial endorsement (like the NT News in 2019) is drowned in the torrent of propaganda.
The experience out of the US is that the election of a Labor government is likely to make News’ behaviour worse. As Lachlan Murdoch said in response to the election of Joe Biden, it reckons there’s money to be made out of being the opposition. And the sort of outrage that dominates Fox will be the product on offer for Australian audiences.
Not all News Corp products, of course. Where it depends on mass audiences for advertising (like news.com.au), market forces demand it be more journalistically respectful. But where it’s built a paying audience for its subscription mastheads, it has to give the grumpy old audience what it’s paying for.
For the rest of us, that’s good news. It means the worst of News Corp is safely sequestered to small audiences behind its hard paywalls, delivering homilies for the already converted.
Here’s a tip for the rest of the news media: how about we leave it there?
Completely agree. The most positive spin that you can put on News is that it is an entertainment company devoted to capturing eyeballs and making money. The public good of journalism has been missing for many years from their pages and shows.
That’s what Murdoch lawyer argued in a defamation case in USA. Murdoch employees are entertainers and do make up lies and fake to entertain the audience and no reasonable or rational person would believe what they say
The Judge being a rational and reasonable person agreed with the lawyers
So now there is a legal precedence that Murdoch employees are lies
Bravo Christopher! This piece is a total slam dunk. Would love for you and Crikey to write more on this. Absolutely past time for the rest of the media to stop treating News Corp as a legitimate news organisation. They are attempting to cash in on the increasing partisanship in society (as well as shamelessly helping to fuel it, which brings in yet more cash). Time for the real media outlets to extinguish News Corp’s only remaining power among those who aren’t angry old men – the legitimisation and promotion of their propaganda in the actual mainstream media.
Agree. And given that Yank Rupert’s army craps on ABC at evrry opportunity, why can’t the ABC give Media Watch a nightly half-hour show following 7:30?
And maybe Mr Cannon-Brooks could throw us a lazy few hundred million to help level the playing field – at least get him on the board here at Crickey! – and help us stop this democratic rot once and for all.
Plenty of old women buy into News’ propaganda
But are they “grumpy” old women? (3rd last parag). Because I know some of those, and they’re very grumpy about Mrdoch’s trash.
I for one, am a very grumpy old woman, aged 82, at the very existence of Murdoch’s media.
Do you have a source for that?
Yes I think that when Labor get in they should investigate media diversity. There is a swing to Labor Australia wide except regional Queensland where Sky news is free to air and limited sceptical discussion to Limited News claims.
Labor might as well revisit the Royal Commission Rudd and Turnbull were calling for. News will eviscerate them either way. Be like the LNP and News – prosecute your enemies. In this case, News does have a case to answer. Are they good for Australian democracy??
Sky is also available in country Victoria. I watched some ‘After Dark’ stuff while staying near Warrnambool for a month, and it’s an eye opener. Seriously, even Goebbels would be ashamed of this lazy, sledge-by-numbers propaganda. I encourage everyone to have a look at it, particularly the hours of Paul Murray, Bolt, Rita whats-her-face, and Chris Kenny. This is the media standard at whose alter the Liberals pay homage. An investigation into bias is a no-brainer, for there are few brains on offer at Sky.
I believe it’s also available in regional WA. A colleague blames Sky for her parents refusing to be vaccinated.
The Moloch and His minions have much to do with this, for NewsCorpse, FauxNews and their spawn here in Australia, including The Sky After Dark Comedy Show are culpable in their support of such mendacity across Australia , UK and USA.
Here in Australia The Sky After Dark Comedy Show appears to be like some strange US sitcom.
Set in a TV station where the inmates appear to be mendacious, paranoid, scared of the other, black/brown/yellow/aliens of any sort, people who have the temerity to present facts and question them and are all very shouty at such and that even at their own cohort.
The inmates consist of right wing to libertarian current and ex politicians, their enablers, media hacks of no particular worth as well as the odd RWRNJ, the second R being for Religious.
Out in regional Australia Sky has been inflicted on FTA , in a desperate attempt to increase its dismal ratings, so no need to subscribe to the stupidity it pops up while going through to other channels.
Defitinitely. Bring it back to the way it was before Howard gave Murdoch a free run.
So many of us so where that would lead, and it has. There was good reason for limiting
media ownership.
Rupert Murdoch and his minions have suborned or cowed all other journos in the MSM here into believing that the tabloids matter and the “The Australian” is a serious newspaper – it lost that mantel in 1975, propagandising for the coup leaders and plotters in the Liberal party. Sky/Fox should be banned outright as foreign malevolent media agents, no better than Russia Today or CGTN from Beijing…
The thing is, tabloids did used to matter. Whilst they have always been lurid, they often picked up stories about the rich and powerful that more ‘respectable’ news outlets wouldn’t touch. John Pilger has written about this quite often.
People usually don’t believe me when I tell them this, but the late news outlet, The Truth, supported abortion rights well before anyone was talking about them. I know this because when I was doing research for a history I was writing for an old organisation, I was given their files to look though. There were articles about this organisation in the The Truth, and on the back of them were articles about the evils of illegal abortions and how women were dying because of them. I wish I’d taken copies of them. There is a famous cartoon from The Truth about women dying because of illegal abortions, although not so famous that I can find it on the net! It’s also well documented that they wrote about Vietnam and Agent Orange and Maralinga before any other news outlet.
In Britain they used to be really good at skewering the upper class and reporting on their hypocritical behaviour.
Once Murdoch bought so many tabloids here and in Britain became a different proposition altogether. There may be some who would say this was his way of protecting his rich mates from the scrutiny of a scruffy, rude, impolite, and intrusive tabloid media.
Meanwhile, over at our last hope of a fair daily newspaper, The Age’s Opinion pages are being infiltrated by Murdoch spies like Chris Uhlmann and Parnell McGuiness
As well as the woman Liberal Melbourne City Councillor who appears on the opinion pages and has nothing informative or insightful to say.
Roshana Campbell is the spouse of Herald Sun employee James Campbell, and also failed Liberal pre-selection candidate for Casey.
Don’t forget David Crowe, Chip le Grand and Anika Smethurst – all from The Australian.
Parnell McGuiness can be quite good at times. There needs to be some contribution from the centre-ish right otherwise it would be no better than a News Corp rag
Perhaps she took PP’s life as an example that there is no virtue in concrete consistency?
From Trot to Narodny Bank to gadfly before finally settling on the Turdoch’s rump rags?
Costello runs that paper now, so just another Liberal propaganda, misinformation
waste of paper.