The Quest to End Rupert Murdoch's Australian Media Empire
Rupert Murdoch’s hold over politics and the media is especially extensive in Australia, where he owns close to 60% of the country’s newspapers. Source: AP News
Malcolm Turnbull, the former prime minister of Australia, is leading the charge to curb Rupert Murdoch’s monopoly of influence around the world. Turnbull is heading a campaign that calls for a royal commission -- Australia's highest form of public inquiry -- into Murdoch's media dominance.
Murdoch's hold over politics and the media is especially extensive in Australia, one of the most concentrated media markets in the world, where Murdoch’s News Corp owns close to 60% of the country's newspapers. The size and influence of Murdoch’s media empire has led Turnbull to accuse him of undermining democracy, with a rigorous inquiry into Murdoch's News Corp deemed essential.
This is further exacerbated in the wake of a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News in the United States. Pressure is mounting on Murdoch after the 91-year-old conceded that some of his Fox News commentators knowingly spread falsehoods about the 2020 U.S. presidential election.
Turnbull believes that the Dominion lawsuit case against Fox news strengthens the case for a royal commission in his native Australia, which also has the power to subpoena documents and compel people to give evidence under oath. This is because the media magnate's influence on Australia's political landscape has critics blaming Murdoch for helping ousting several Australian prime ministers whose agendas he disliked, including Turnbull himself. There are also further accusations of Murdoch’s networks fuelling climate denialism and right-wing populism.
Turnbull will take over the campaign from another former prime minister, Kevin Rudd, who stepped down after he became Australia's next U.S. ambassador. Rudd has called Murdoch "an arrogant cancer" on Australian democracy who uses "mafia"-like intimidation tactics against dissenting voices.
This led Rudd to launch a petition calling for a royal commission into his empire in 2020, which generated so much interest over the weekend that it overwhelmed the website’s cyber-defences and shut down access to the document. It eventually attracted half a million signatures and prompted a parliamentary inquiry into media concentration in the country.
In essence, Turnbull will inherit Rudd’s role: chair of the Murdoch Royal Commission lobby group to urge advertisers to boycott the mogul's media outlets. This is consequential given the fear politicians have over the wrath of media organizations. If Fox News can be deemed to have an extraordinary political impact in the United States, Murdoch owns a much larger proportionality of the media in Australia. The stakes are simply that much higher.
Former US President Barack Obama tells Sydney audience that Murdoch’s media empire has fuelled polarization of society Source: The Guardian
At a sold-out address in Sydney last Tuesday, Barack Obama seemed to have a lot of agreements with Turnbull with regards to the media’s role of undermining democracy. He said the media empire has led to greater polarization in Western societies with news coverage designed to “make people angry and resentful,” with the Murdoch’s News Corp part of the “dissolution of the monopoly of a few arbiters of the news and journalistic standards that came out of the post-world war two era.”
Obama claims that we are in the realm of identity politics, and it would be very difficult to compromise around such issues. There needs to be an ability to really examine how News Corp is operating as a propaganda vehicle, with the United States capitol attack being an example of the severe consequences from this type of media operation. There is an undermining of democracy here, and in Obama’s exact words – “there’s a guy you may be familiar with, first name Rupert, who was responsible for a lot of this …”
Turnbull, who has just launched a podcast examining whether Western democracies are in decline, recently conducted an interview with the Nikkei Asian Review. In it, he states the profound impact of Murdoch’s media monopoly on the future Australian elections which are a "two-horse race" between his center-right Liberals and the center-left Labour Party.
After all, Australia's electoral system is designed to bring politics to the center. This sort of consensus building and compromises between coalitions are the lifeblood of parliamentary democracies. To have a news organization that is more propaganda than news and is pushing an extreme line brings about real danger. Turnbull’s attempt to challenge Murdoch's vast influence over the Australian media and political landscape can only be seen as favorable.