The dark cloud of Murdoch has no silver lining
News Corp, Sky after dark, Fox News … they spew lies and propaganda around the globe, and the evil empire’s tentacles keep wrapping around the fearful and the ignorant.
by Nicole Chvastek, 7 May 2025, https://thepolitics.com.au/the-dark-cloud-of-murdoch-has-no-silver-lining/
As Saturday’s bloodbath washes through the Liberal corridors of no power, the electoral train wreck has turned attention to other overly cocky players: the Murdoch media.
From the moment the poll was called, Rupert Murdoch’s news culture warriors turned up the heat on Labor, exhorting the brilliance of Peter Dutton’s failed nuclear fantasy and his war on migrants, “woke” schools, people who work from home and Welcomes to Country — while tearing down anyone who dared suggest he and his party were not fit for office.
But on election night none of that mattered. None of the confected outrage, the miles of newsprint, the spin and the bullying had made a jot of difference and was more likely to have worked against the Liberals’ interests. Australians it seems have a finely tuned bullshit radar.
Sky pirates
Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young nailed it when she told Radio National on Monday:
“I think what has happened to the Coalition is they spent a bit too much time hangin’ out with Sky News and they forgot to really hear what people were saying. The other big loser is the Murdoch press. They created an echo chamber for themselves.”
Dr Denis Muller of the Centre for Advancing Journalism at the University of Melbourne said the Murdoch media were “agents of disaster” for the Coalition:
“I see the sun beginning to set on Rupert’s influence in Australian politics. News Corp created a bubble in which their journalists and Coalition politicians cocooned themselves, talking to each other on Sky after dark, persuading each other that everything was going to be fine.”
A setting sun? It’s a big call. Australian politicians of all persuasions famously make the trek to Murdoch headquarters after an election for a ritual known as “kissing the ring”, and Anthony Albanese, Richard Marles and Penny Wong were quick to do their duty in 2022.
Strings attached
Eric Beecher, a former News Corp employee, recalls being sued (unsuccessfully) by Lachlan Murdoch who issued a writ for defamation over an opinion piece linking the Murdoch news empire with 2021’s January 6 Capitol riots:
“The day after the defamation writ was issued, a large Commonwealth government car pulled up outside the Holt Street Surry Hills headquarters in Sydney of News Corp. Three people got out of that car to go upstairs and visit Lachlan in his office: the prime minister, the deputy prime minister and the foreign [affairs] minister of Australia. It’s been going on for 100 years and it should stop.”
The reach of puppetmaster Rupert Murdoch into governments and policy making knows no bounds and there have been countless exposés on unethical business practices. But the machine roars on, a powerhouse of global disinformation and propaganda while pretending to be a news-gathering organisation.
In January, Murdoch was photographed reclining in the Oval Office as Donald Trump signed an executive order creating a sovereign wealth fund. Fox News cable spits out Trump propaganda daily and is credited with helping to return the convicted felon and sex predator to office. Murdoch has called Trump “increasingly mad” and yet publicly admitted he knew Fox commentators were lying when they broadcast falsehoods about a “stolen rigged election” in 2020. But hey, it was good for business.
Nuke the enemy
The habitual process of retribution and vendetta from News Corp is bitter and legendary. The Australian Financial Review reports that Malcolm Turnbull and Kevin Rudd blame Murdoch for their political demise. In 1974, Murdoch famously directed his editors to “kill Whitlam” 10 months before Gough Whitlam’s electoral ousting.
Every day, Murdoch’s media rival, the ABC, is a target of sneering “hit jobs”, and any politician or voice that suggests climate change is real or nuclear reactors are a fantasy or billionaires don’t deserve tax breaks are hounded, possibly for life. The Herald Sun still runs revelations about former Labor premier Dan Andrews and sporadic pieces of condemnation over a car accident his wife had 20 years ago. According to Beecher in his book The Men Who Killed The News, Andrews was the only premier who refused to schlep up to News Corp headquarters for the compulsory kissing of the ring.
In Australia, the power base is the print media, overwhelmingly controlled by News Corp with a huge digital presence and backed by Sky News. In 2020, Rudd and Turnbull joined forces to call for a royal commission into Murdoch’s concentrated media holdings. Rudd claimed his media power is “routinely used to attack opponents in business and politics by blending editorial opinion with news reporting”.
Break the News
How is it that such deep, lasting damage to democracy, businesses and people’s lives can be inflicted with precisely zero repercussions? One part of the answer is the acceptance that democracies cannot flourish without a free press. Section 65A of the Trade Practices Act provides a general exemption to most of the media as publishers of news and current affairs from liability for publishing misleading or deceptive material. Former chairman of the ACCC Allan Fels said concerns around Murdoch’s practices are more likely to be addressed by a royal commission, an idea the government and opposition have not supported.
“I don’t have a view on whether he should be reined in. All media mislead to some extent. It’s not the sort of thing consumer protection law addresses.”
Dr Victoria Fielding, senior lecturer in strategic communication at the University of Adelaide, was bolder. She said legislative change was needed to rein in Murdoch excesses. She agrees a healthy democracy needs an independent free press populated by balanced journalists who hold the powerful to account and publish verifiable information — but that’s not what the Murdoch media are:
“If there was some legislation that said if you want to be a commentary organisation you can only have a particular share of the market — like any competition commissioner can do — you break it up. You say: ‘You can no longer be that large.’ It’s distorting our democracy.”
Running scared
The other part of the answer is fear, fear of taking on a monolithic disinformation machine which countless readers think is a news outlet and being publicly torn down and repeatedly shredded by a media gorilla with few scruples and deep pockets.
Remarkably, after cheerleading the Liberals to disaster on May 3, The Australian leapt back up onto its feet to brush off its flesh wound and lecture the Coalition on “missing the warnings”:
“Of all the mistakes that led to this result, one was fatal: the untested assumption that Labor was out of touch and unaligned with the mainstream values of Australians. There can be no other interpretation that that this is fundamentally wrong.”
This from the paper that tells us pretty much every day that Labor is out of touch and unaligned with the mainstream values of Australians.
Culture vultures
Reports of the death of the Murdoch brand in Australia may well be exaggerated. Like any good parasite it is known to stew and grow before attacking the host again. Fielding reminds us that backed by the Murdoch press, Dutton was on track to win the federal election as recently as January — until the catastrophic reality of the Trump presidency became obvious to Australians.
Murdoch has withstood worse setbacks than crashing an election and, like Monty Python’s Black Knight, his culture warriors rebound after each atrocity and, still bleeding, berate their victims for taking the advice.
I’d like to think the tide is turning on news outlets that amplify bullshit while bragging they are society’s moral pulse and insisting their bullshit is good for you. But if the tide is not for turning, you can always join the Liberals, and learn the hard way.
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