So it begins. Yesterday, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was forced to defend the apparent hypocrisy of his absence from the nation during the flood crisis in New South Wales. Honestly, the nerve of the man — he criticises Scott Morrison for having a Hawaiian vacation during the bushfire crisis in 2019/2020, and the moment he’s in power, he swans off to kick back in *checks notes* war-torn Ukraine and a NATO meeting.
“For those people who might like to say which of the events I have attended on behalf of Australia, that I should not have attended, I have not had a day off for a very long period of time. We can’t separate international events from the impact on Australia and Australians. [If] people want to argue I’m not working hard, then they can argue that case,” is how he put it when he arrived in Perth on his way back to NSW.
The Australian’s Ben Packham further wrote that Albanese seemed “well prepared for photo opportunities” while in Ukraine despite having had the gall to accuse Morrison of being “all photo-op, no follow-up” — yep, if you’re gonna criticise a political opponent for a supposed lack of substance, you’d better not let yourself get photographed while doing your job.
While Angus Taylor and an opposition MP — who amazingly didn’t want to put their name to an incredibly mild quote in The Australian Financial Review (“if Scott Morrison had chosen to visit Ukraine over the floods, ‘I know what [Mr Albanese] would have said'”) — have jumped on the issue, it’s worth noting that NSW Liberal Premier Dominic Perrottet has dismissed the criticism, saying the PM was doing important work and the engagement with the federal government has been “open, positive, and providing anything they can do to assist us”.
So, News Corp and political opponents are being disingenuous with regards to a Labor prime minister — colour us shocked. But the other thing this mini-saga demonstrates is why these confected outrages actually matter — News Corp is such a big player in the Australian media landscape it naturally influences the discussion across the nation. And so Albanese’s response becomes a story in its own right in the AFR and The West Australian, and the matter is a major topic on ABC RN’s Breakfast show — the circular logic that “people are discussing” this reinforces yet more coverage.
Incidentally, opposition leader Peter Dutton is currently on leave.
Would you expect any other response? We need a Royal Commission on News Corp
A commission into media bias altogether. Remember Keane’s greyhound story yesterday about how 2GB went full-tilt to remove Mike Baird? It might also exonerate the ABC from the continued witless claims from News Scrote about perpetuating lefty woke agendas and forcing our precious white Christian children to use unisex toilets.
Baird like Turnbull was far too socially progressive. News Ltd, Jones, Hadley and all the shockers could never tolerate them or any Labor government.
What is needed is legislation like that in the US.
When The Moloch* wanted to control more media in the USA the law required that he become a citizen of the USA…he then did so, therefore is no longer an Australian citizen
Such legislation is needed here in the C of A.
It should be that to control a major part of media in Australia such control must be in the hands of an Australian citizen.
Alsothinking about The Moloch’s rags brings to mind that old Soviet Joke…
В Правде нет известий. в Известиях правды
(There is no news in The Truth, there is no truth in The News).
Both of which The Moloch manages to accomplish in NewsCorpse publication with a compounding of mendacity and propaganda fit for the Soviet era.
*The Moloch became my particular cognomen for Murdoch as the biblical name of a Canaanite god associated with child sacrifice, through fire or war…in this case with the hacking of a dead girl’s mobile and the gung ho chickenhawk and cheerleading for both the Afghan Imbroglio and the Iraq Fiasco.
We need our media ownership and diversity and truth in news reporting and political ads laws overhauled with severe penalties like very heavy fines and revoking licences to print, publish and/or broadcast.
Should send Rupert scuttling off to Trumpville and bring Sky, Stokes, Rhinohide and Costello to heel.
Cleaning out the ABC wouldn’t go amiss, either. Get rid of Ita and the rest of Morriscum’s stooges.
It is time for News Corp to be declared as a Political party, and force them to follow all the requirements and rules, that appertain to political parties.
They’re becoming satire-arguably doing more harm to the mob they support than those they oppose.
It’s time News Corpse was declared a “foreign meddling entity” – like social media pests.
The only difference between Murdoch’s propaganda misinformation agenda m.o. and “social media’s” is Murdoch pays his Muppets, as “professional misinformants” and fomenters of political unrest.
As well as ‘Agent of foreign provencance‘ how about just registering as lobbyists?
The Moloch* had to become a US citizen in order to be able to have a controlling interest in media in the US….Australia should bring about the same type of legislation
There is a picture in the Reagan presidential library of President Reagan meeting with publisher Rupert Murdoch, U.S. Information Agency Director Charles Wick, lawyer Roy Cohn, who was also The Trumps‘s lawyer and taught much of his own chicanery and nastiness and Cohn’s law partner Thomas Bolan in the Oval Office on Jan. 18, 1983.
This was when The Moloch came on side with the Reagan administration and so was then able to rapidly become a US citizen in 1985.
“His media assets were critical to the Reagan administration’s ‘public perception’ program aimed at winning support for an aggressive policy of ‘regime change’ in Central America.
This operation was led by the CIA, with a senior operative running the campaign alongside the National Security Council’s (NSC) Lt-Col Oliver North from a building not far from the White House.
North hit the headlines after it was revealed he had been involved in the illegal sale of weapons to Iran and that some of the profits were channeled to support guerilla fighters (the Contras) acting as US proxies to remove the socialist regime in Nicaragua.
Journalist Robert Parry and Peter Kornbluh, an information analyst with the National Security Archive, were among the first to reveal how Reagan created what amounted to America’s first peacetime propaganda ministry.
“The president and his men realised from the start that to oust the Sandinista government in Nicaragua, they would need to neutralise the public opposition to US intervention in the Third World,” they reported in 1988.
“To win this war at home the White House created a sophisticated apparatus that mixed propaganda with intimidation, consciously misleading the American people and at times trampling on the right to dissent.”
Murdoch’s role was confirmed in subsequent reports by Parry whose investigative website Consortiumnews published details of meetings between Murdoch and Reagan in the White House.
The first, on 18 February 1983, was arranged by Murdoch’s lawyer Roy Cohn who counted Donald Trump among his clients. Also in attendance was America’s propaganda tsar Charles Wick, director of the US Information Agency (USIA), who was keen for the administration to invest in satellite technology to counter Soviet propaganda.’
This is an extract from an article by Marshall Wilson, concerning how The Moloch climbed to prominence in the US
This first appeared in John Menadue’s Pearls and Irritations 30 July 2021
*The Moloch became my particular cognomen for Murdoch as the biblical name of a Canaanite god associated with child sacrifice, through fire or war…in this case with the hacking of a dead girl’s mobile and the gung ho chickenhawk and cheerleading for both the Afghan Imbroglio and the Iraq Fiasco.
Only noticed by those few of the buyers (hardly ‘readers’) with grater than double digit IQ.
Hen’s tooth rare.
Not just News Corp Charles, all the big media players here, all act as neoliberal mouthpieces.
For a minute I thought this Opposition couldn’t be so dumb as to WANT to draw a parallel between Albanese attending a NATO summit and visiting a war-zone where Australia is aiding a friendly country and Morrison sneaking off unannounced on holiday to Hawaii, but there are no depths to which these people are incapable of sinking.
And it takes zero imagination to write the headlines in the Murdoch rags if Albanese had cut short his overseas trip to visit the flood area: “Albo snubs NATO and Ukraine for flood photo-op”. Sheridan and the other Friends of the Pentagon at the Oz would be incandescent…
The zombie apocalypse is here, only we haven’t noticed because it turns out all the zombies are employed by News Corp.
One heartening aspect is that they’ll starve for want of brains to eat.
Well that could be the cause of the behaviour at NewsCorpse a serious outbreak of Kuru.
Yet again, I’m wondering if News Corpse columnists and LNP talking heads, actually believe the crap that they spout? If so, perhaps they all need an extended holiday in war torn Ukraine, just to give them a more realistic understanding of the modern world?
I did like Hamish McDonald’s mild question at the end of this morning’s interview/rant on Radio National – asking if it was true that Peter Dutton is on holidays
So did I!
Me too!
Ditto Joanna! He’s a crafty I/viewer…
Unfortunately ABC24 was all over it yesterday afternoon asking anyone who appeared onscreen their opinion of the News Corp coverage. Why buy into it? It merely gives oxygen to Murdoch rags.
Filthy oily rags and oxygen = spontaneous combustion.
Perfect
Think of the resultant particulate matter pollution as well as CO2!
That would be Greg Jennett, who has well and truly nailed his colours to the LNP mast. Why the ABC still gives him a gig is beyond me. I can only assume that Afternoon Briefing rates so low that they figure they can hide him there.
I don’t know why he doesn’t just get a tattoo on his forehead declaring his devotion ….
The Three Scarlet Letters?
LNP…Lying Nasty Party?
So much ‘news’ is just media commenting on other media output…
In a brain misfire, I misinterpreted the headline “… News Corp’s push for regime change” to be about change at News Corp. It was wonderful for a second or two… Louis Armstrong could be heard in the background somewhere…