It is a long-held tradition in independent media to despise the Murdoch Press. I have, myself, pioneered several mastheads at The Diplomat and MB in part designed to attack Murdoch’s legacy. It is true across other independent outfits as well. At Crikey and The Conversation, Murdoch hatred is a religion, for instance.
But it is not usually the case that the broader left-leaning mainstream media makes it all so personal with the Murdoch stable. Sure, they compete and steal each other’s staff but it’s basically hands-off with little or no mention of each other, even to the point of detriment to the news given they ignore each other’s scoops.
Or they used to. Today, as Nine’s centrist metropolitan dailies battle for bleeding hearts with The Guardian, both have slumped into a kind of Murdoch Derangement Syndrome that isn’t doing them or anybody else any good.
The first driver of this appears to be the siloing of content to support one’s chosen political party. Kevin Rudd is being given free rein as he drives his anti-Murdoch whaaambulance around the leftie MSM with impunity:
A single American billionaire has now seized control of almost 70 per cent of daily newspaper circulation. In my state of Queensland, which determines most federal elections, this monopoly is almost 100 per cent with every newspaper from Cairns to Coolangatta and Australia’s only commercial 24-hour ‘news’ channel.
But Murdoch is not just any old businessman. He’s not just interested in money but also in political power and far-right ideology. For Murdoch, it’s long been his triple-aphrodisiac. And the habits of a lifetime lead him to destroy anybody who gets in his way. That’s why people are frightened of him.
Where would Murdoch like to take Australia? Look no further than Fox News in America, which remains the epicentre of the Trump phenomenon, polluting Americans’ minds with bullshit narratives about widespread voter fraud, climate hoaxes and other wild conspiracies. This parallel-universe model is now unfolding in the pages of his Australian newspapers and on Sky News.
Even Rupert’s previous heir-apparent, James Murdoch, has called out his father’s empire for its hidden agendas, legitimising disinformation and wilfully sowing doubt to obscure facts in public debate. Yet despite this bombshell, not a word of it has been published in Murdoch’s publications. Such brutal censorship of politically embarrassing news is something we’d expect of a one-party state, not a vibrant democracy. Yet in Australia we just brush this off as “normal”, such is the slippery slope we’re on.
Does the internet not work in QLD, Kev? Do they have no phones? There’s nothing “hidden” about Murdoch Press agendas. They are outright obvious, to support the Coalition. End of story.
Kevin07 has run this line of argument ever since he was tipped out of the prime ministership by the mining coup. Weirdy, it was not even Murdoch that did that. It was the independent Business Spectator that did most of the damage (along with Fairfax’s AFR). I know, I worked there on a daily column summing up the news.
I used to worry about Murdoch power but that’s not the problem anymore. The issue has morphed into the internet itself, which has so broadened the options for media sources by crashing barriers to entry that anybody can read anything about any topic. Amplified and exacerbated by social media, facts run a distant second to personal identification.
This is the exact opposite of Murdoch’s command and control media empire. All he has done is carve out a niche in the area of conservative populism. He didn’t create the fragmentation. He recognised it earlier than most as technology did it.
That’s the thing, you see. Now that all media has become identity-based, it’s necessary to perpetually reinforce that psychology with hourly flag-waving or virtue-signaling. Which is why the leftie MSM is suddenly happy to openly bash Murdoch. It’s a sop for its chosen niche of progressive populism. Late to the fragmentation party, it’s now carving out its own identity niche, not in pursuit of the truth, but in pursuit of eyeballs. Ironically, Kevin07 is a part of that, helping destroy the bipartisan conversation he pretends to be championing.
This is absolutely no different to the Murdoch stable he so fulsomely despises. In the one corner, we have the principles of budget management, climate change skepticism, social conservatism, border protection and China decoupling. On the other, we have reform, climate change action, social progressiveness and a paralysing fear of racism.
Neither of these is anything like close to the facts. They are the tropes of their chosen political parties and everything else can go to hell.
In the US, this partisan stupidity has gone much further, reaching the point of intellectual washout. It may be that its libertarian streak made it more vulnerable to fragmentation but we’re headed the same way. Our own conversation is getting more and more stupid as the cheer squads on either side censor the life out of every issue to sustain the identity of their respective masthead. In the last week, this has led to the spectacle of leftie media endorsing the Kevin07 anti-Murdoch campaign, endorsing the genocidal CCP because Murdoch resists it; ignoring its own cult hero in Bob Brown because he demanded an end to population growth in the Murdoch Press and attacking Murdoch media for exposing the lies and manipulation of Dan Andrews that killed 700+ Victorians.
From my perspective, this censorship is every bit as bad at The Guardian as it is at The Australian. Nine’s metro dailies are trying to remain centrist but the struggle with The Guardian pushes them its way and, in truth, the influence of corrupt Domain unjournalism is toxic. Perhaps most poisonous of all is the Australian Financial Review which has become a ‘businessomics’ identity politics disaster zone, divorced from the national interest. The tabloids are mostly boobs and sport with a little Coalition bias thrown in.
There are plenty of lies in the Murdoch Press. But just because something is printed there does not make it a lie. Likewise for the leftie MSM.
