The Greens will introduce a bill to establish a royal commission into Murdoch-controlled media assets and media diversity, with aims to compel Rupert Murdoch to give evidence, and investigate whether fears of retribution in the press have “hampered public policy”.
Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young will introduce the bill into Parliament on Thursday and move to refer it to a Senate inquiry shortly afterwards. It would establish a parliamentary commission of inquiry and would have the full powers of a royal commission, including the ability to deploy resources and call witnesses.
“The revelations in the Dominion case against Fox News were just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the influence of the Murdoch media,” Hanson-Young told Crikey.
“Rupert Murdoch seemed to do everything he could to get out of giving evidence, leaving us wondering what might have been uncovered. It’s now even more imperative that Rupert Murdoch is called to give evidence before a royal commission in Australia.”
The inquiry would set out to probe whether Australia’s regulatory framework is fit for purpose, and investigate the impact of media ownership laws on media concentration in Australia. If the bill gets up, an inquiry would report to Parliament, not the government.
It would also scrutinise the relationship between the media and government, whether fear of retribution in the press has hampered the creation of public policy, and mount a case for establishing a single, independent media regulator to “harmonise news media standards” and handle complaints.
“Pressure is continuing to build to hold the Murdoch media mafia to account for the role they have played in the polarisation of politics and their rampant spreading of misinformation,” Hanson-Young said.
“Australia’s media regulatory framework is not fit for purpose and needs an overhaul. Media regulators in this country are toothless and powerless to act in the public interest under the huge political and market influence of the Murdoch machine.”
The bill arrives amid a wave of renewed criticism of the Murdoch media empire, which in recent months has found itself at the centre of three high-profile defamation lawsuits.
Late last month, Fox Corp sought to abruptly settle its defamation lawsuit with Dominion Voting Systems with a payment of US$787.5 million to prevent claims from going to trial that Fox News had peddled misinformation and conspiracy theories about the 2020 US presidential election. The agreement emerged as one of the largest public settlements in US history.
Days later, Fox Corporation chief executive Lachlan Murdoch dropped a separate defamation case against Private Media, publisher of Crikey, over an opinion article published in June 2022 headlined “Trump is a confirmed unhinged traitor. And Murdoch is his unindicted co-conspirator”.
Former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull, who in late March was tapped to co-chair the campaign for a News Corp royal commission alongside union veteran Sharan Burrow, said the Dominion case filings “considerably strengthened” the case for a royal commission in Australia.
“The reality is that Murdoch [and] Fox News knowingly propagated a lie, which they knew to be a lie. I mean, this brought the country to the very edge of a coup,” Turnbull told Crikey in March.
Fox News still faces action from another voting technology company, Smartmatic, which is suing the Murdoch-controlled cable news network for damages worth $2.7 billion over claims that Fox News accused the company of helping to rig the 2020 election in favour of US President Joe Biden.
A prospective royal commission would move to canvass how best to prevent similar events from occurring in Australia. The inquiry, according to the bill’s terms of reference, would interrogate the “Foxification” of some media outlets operating in Australia, and how they might undermine trust in public institutions and public interest journalism.
It would also analyse the political influence of major media outlets operating in Australia, and the impact of tech companies like Facebook, Google and Twitter on the media industry, and their influence on the way news is shared locally.
“The first recommendation of the Senate inquiry into media diversity in Australia was to conduct a judicial inquiry with the powers of a royal commission to investigate media regulation in Australia,” Hanson-Young said.
“I invite all members of Parliament to support the bill and stand up for public interest journalism and truth in our democracy.”
We will see if Labor has a spine and votes for this inquiry, I suspect Labor and the coalition will vote against it. That will just prove how gutless the laborites are, I hope I am wrong.
How could any party vote for or against this inquiry based on this article, which is based on an interview with one politician, and does not put forward a single question that is to be put to the proprietor in question?
I’m not saying the proprietor in question is a good man, or even a decent man, but if you want someone to be hauled in front of a royal commission, don’t you need a reason?
Hanson-Young claims only that “Australia’s media regulatory framework is not fit for purpose and needs an overhaul”. That isn’t a fault of any proprietor. It is a failing of lawmakers. Now if you want to accuse a proprietor of strongarming or bribing lawmakers into going easy, that’s another thing. But to do so, you have to draw up a royal commission with a framework that allows specific questions, not just a fishing expedition.
I’d like to see such a royal commission, but for it to be something other than a futile waste of time, Hanson-Young or other advocates will have to do some serious research and perhaps persuade whistle blowers to provide evidence of wrongdoing. Without evidence, you can’t have a meaningful royal commission.
With that in mind, what questions would Hanson-Young, or anyone else, like to put to that old man before a Royal Commission?
Why are you so rich and powerful?
Why are you so right wing?
Why are you so tasteless?
Those questions won’t have any effect.
Please put forward specific questions based on evidence of wrongdoing. That would be interesting.
How about,” do you put the profitability of your news above the public’s interests”?
Do you act for corporations and advance their interests at the expense of the public’s ?
Then drag out the the headlines where he has attacked government and individuals that are not conforming
to his political needs.
What is the relationship between his media outlets and business in your own words.
What does he think of Neoliberalism and indeed what does he think it is.
There is so much evidence that proves that this bloke leads a very deliberate push to direct funds into privately owned coffers to the detriment of the public, that he is servicing corporations and parties that advance their mutual profit that there is no way he would turn up.
To suggest that it would be difficult to find evidence he runs a corrupt show is ridiculous Frank, simply because he has been at it so long , his latest stuff with Trump is just the iceing on the cake which this article duly points out.
The issue is political will because of corporate interests he acts for not lack of evidence.
More like, why, given the expectation that the media has been granted a social license and legal privilege to inform the public and serve as a check on the power of the Executive, has News Corp regularly spread disinformation and, occasionally, lied to the public in order to serve the government of the day, or its preferred alternative government?
Why, for instance, did Murdoch’s papers editorialise that evidence of Iraq’s WMDs was incontrovertible? And why, given public opposition to the war, did all 175 titles editorialise in favour of it?
Why did News Corp ‘assets’ spread what it knew to be lies about a ‘stolen election’?
Why has News Corp run ongoing campaigns on behalf of climate deniers, covid deniers, AIDS deniers and election deniers? Why the ongoing historic campaigns here and in the UK to prevent any attempt to rein in the big tobacco companies?
None if its campaigns serve the public interest. Quite the opposite. The interests of governments, political parties and business partners are the ones who seem to benefit.
If there is no public interest served by News Corp, perhaps it needs to have its legal privileges removed? Perhaps, given it so often wraps its identity in the flag of whichever host nation it purports to represent, it needs to actually start paying tax and contributing in some meaningful way to the society and the people it claims to represent?
News Corp always champions the notion of “scrutiny” whenever one of its campaigns hones in on a victim, so what would News Corp have to hide from a Royal Commission?
We the people, have had enough.
I sincerely hope that Senator Hansen-Young succeeds. It’s about time that an enquiry with REAL powers is held into the Murdoch empire. Journalism has become, apart from a very few outlets, a mouthpiece for Murdoch’s views, fearmongering, and hysteria, instead of a source of unbiased information and truth.
Good move. Hear, hear!
The Coalition won’t support this bill because Murdoch is their boss. Labor won’t support it because they won’t want the negative press they’ll receive so I guess it’s just every other person that would like to see a change to our media laws. Good luck Sarah.
Just when has Labour ever received press from Murdoch that’s not negative.
Once. Back 2007 when they endorsed Kevin Rudd (after realising the Coalition had Buckley’s chance of winning the election)…for 5 seconds.
Merdoch appeared to be neutral in 2007. Unusually, he appeared to give his editors free rein to endorse either party. So, the Herald Sun, Adelaide Advertiser and Weekend Australian endorsed the Coalition, while The Australian, Courier Mail, Daily Telegraph, NT News and Hobart Mercury all endorsed Labor.
Gough and Labor were recipients of favourable coverage from the Murdoch press in 1972 in their “It’s Time” campaign.
Murdoch then turned on Gough when he said ‘no’ to his request to be appointed High Commissioner in London.
As I seem to recall Tony Blair and Paul Keating were courted by Murdoch on Hayman Island in 1995.
I’m sure they were discussing more than pleasantries, in return for favourable coverage from the Murdoch press?
I fully support the Greens initiative.
https://thenewdaily.com.au/news/national/2014/10/21/gough-said-rupert-murdoch/