Do We Want Lies & Disinformation In Our Media Downunder?
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It is time to rid our shores of the Murdoch controlled News Corp and their unbalanced political fiction factory. Do we want lies and disinformation in our media downunder? For too long Rupert Murdoch has held sway over our newspapers, radio networks and TV news. News Corp sets the agenda in Australian current affairs and yet is the most right wing biased news source in the country. Most recently, Australians rejected the Temu Trump led Coalition of Libs and Nats at the federal election. Australian cities voted in droves to reject the Donald Trump inspired politics of hate and divisiveness.
“What is that saying about cutting off the head of the snake? The Australian people have been busy rejecting the version of the Liberal Party embodied by these hard Right idealogues. They have done this in response to what they and their party have done to the nation whilst in government. John Howard has been responsible for the taxation changes which have made residential property in Australia so inflated and unaffordable for many, especially younger Aussies. Slashing the capital gains tax with a 50% discount.”
Dumbed down by neocons for being too progressive
News Corp Peddling Right Wing Media Bias At Every Opportunity
Why then do we still put up with our most prominent news platforms in print, on air, and to a lesser extent online spouting hard right rubbish like climate change denialism? For pity’s sake, we are living in the 21C, but the News Corp platforms still champion fossil fuels and endlessly denigrate renewables. Tony Abbott and Peta Credlin dominate the Sky News Australia agenda with their Trumpian politics of grievance for the old white men downunder. Not content with having ruled the roost for centuries, these thin skinned folk are so sensitive about any slights to their status as top dog. Bring back the 1950s!
News Corp, the LNP & A Neutered ABC
We do not have a progressive media network in Australia. There is no left wing equivalent of News Corp. The ABC was harangued and bullied by the LNP for being so without foundation. The organisation’s funding was checked and right wing appointments to the ABC’s leadership were put in place by Coalition federal governments. The result has been an ABC News thinned and emasculated of courageous intent. Q & A has just been axed. The Drum was canned a couple of years ago. Light entertainment is the ABC’s metier these days. These editorial prunings have been made despite the progressive direction of the nation’s vote at the last election. We are left with a national broadcaster with no balls and the News Corp edifice still stretching across our cities but largely no longer supported by the majority of Australians in its political and cultural biases.
“Since then, however, The Australian, and News Corp as a whole, have become more like outright propagandists for the Liberal-National parties and less like conventional news providers. This was seen, in particular, at the federal elections of 2016, 2019 and 2022.”
Fox News & The Commercialisation Of The News
Do we want lies and disinformation in our media downunder? Fox News is the worst of Rupert’s right wing Frankensteins. This American chop shop of conspiracy theories and fake news has been single handedly responsible for the bitter polarisation of politics in the US. There is a complete absence of journalistic standards and editorial regulation in America. Anything goes and truth is a rare commodity indeed. Making money is the only priority, it seems. Rupert Murdoch said in an interview about Fox News and I paraphrase here – “it is not about red or blue for us but greenbacks.” This is a manipulation of the truth because Fox News is all about GOP red in that it mines that side for its advertising revenue to the exclusion of any concern for the facts. Murdoch was one of the first to champion the op/ed, to put opinion above investigative journalism in his tabloids and programs. He made news into entertainment by exploiting our human love for gossip and slander.
Screentime Controls Reality in the 21C
We live in a world right now where human beings have been alienated from the centre of human activity by machines and the few running those digital machines. The average folk watch stuff on screens 10 hours a day or more. Controlling the content that is shown on these screens is a position of power. People’s reality is a mish mash of what they see on these screens and some banal stuff closer to home. Donald Trump’s success is predicated on his screen celebrity and constant use of social media. Disengaged and dumb folk are easily fed misinformation and fictions. Everyone is used to deriving their info from screens these days. Reality has morphed into a digital half world. Controlling the screens is a very big part of controlling the world. How we relate to events in the ‘so-called’ real world is imbued with part fantasy from all the digital entertainment we partake in. During the global pandemic I realised just how much of our modern lives are taken up with recreational pursuits. Many of us only work when we have to at jobs that don’t inspire us or count for much in our lives. Recreation is more important on the scale of stuff in our lives. The borderlands between what is real and what is fantasy are less distinct in the current era. This makes what we watch on our screens, the content, more influential than ever before in our history.
Don’t Trust The New Without Checking Your Sources
He or what controls the narrative is king!
Do we want lies and disinformation in our media downunder?
You cannot trust what is said and or reported on Fox News or Sky News Australia.
You have to realise that what is reported in The Australian or Daily Telegraph, Courier-Mail, Herald Sun, The Advertiser, The Mercury, Northern Territory News or Sunday Times is put through a right wing filter to favour this side of politics and its cultural stance on things. Mining interests, the fossil fuel sector, and conservative business groups fund much of the advertising in these newspapers and they buy editorial favour on this basis. Rupert Murdoch himself has long been a strident right wing voice and publisher. Lachlan Murdoch has stepped into these shoes, as chairman of News Corp.
Stupid people unquestioningly read and listen to the views put forward in a news source without investigating that news source itself. Plenty of folk do just that with long established newspapers and TV shows. It is like the Bible and people giving it credence on the basis of age. Old lies, however, are still lies, its just that they have been around longer. Indeed, why do you think Christianity grabbed hold of the Jewish Torah as its First or Old Testament? Because age bestows credibility in the minds of many.
I am a historian and the first rule in history is check your primary sources. We all need to investigate the sources of our information. Otherwise you are a fool in the hands of those that seek to manipulate you.
“Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation has misled the Australian Parliament. In a submission to the Senate, the company claimed, “Foxtel also pays millions of dollars in income tax, GST and payroll tax, unlike many of our large international digital competitors”.
However, an MWM investigation into the financial affairs of Foxtel has shown Foxtel was paying zero income tax when it told the Senate it was paying “millions”. The penalty for lying to the Senate is potential imprisonment, although ‘contempt of Parliament’ laws are never enforced.
The investigation found that NXE, the entity that controls Foxtel, paid no income tax in any of the five years from 2019 to 2023. During this time it generated $14 billion of total income. The total tax payable across this period is $0. The average total income is $2.8 billion per year.”
Robert Sudha Hamilton is the author of Money Matters and America Matters: Pre-apocalyptic Posts & Essays in the Shadow of Trump.
©MidasWord
