By MICHELLE GRATTAN
It’s hard to imagine Rupert Murdoch sitting on Twitter, isn’t it? But tweet he does and today Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and his deputy Anthony Albanese tweeted back. For “tweet” and “tweeted” in that sentence, substitute “punch” and “punched”.
The brawl started with Murdoch’s: “Oz politics! We all like ideal of NBN, especially perfect for Foxtel. But first how can it be financed in present situation?”
This prompted Albanese, now in charge of NBN, to tweet “Our #NBN plan will deliver affordable high speed broadband to every home and business and produce a solid rate of return”.
This had Rudd (who incidentally has 1,309,250 followers to Rupert’s 456,452), chiming in: “100% agree @AlboMP. That might be Mr Murdoch’s view in New York. Here in Oz I want high speed NBN for all, not just some.”
Murdoch and his News Corporation and Rudd are at war in this campaign.
As he tries, against the odds, to survive this election, Rudd has every reason to be worried about the potential impact of the Murdoch press, especially the Daily Telegraph in Sydney, where the ALP is desperately attempting to hang on to seats and the Courier Mail in Queensland, where Labor needs to win them.
The Telegraph’s headline after the election was called – Finally, you now have the chance to … KICK THIS MOB OUT – spurred an enormous amount of debate. But there have been plenty of other in-your-face headlines in the tabloids.
The Australian has been relentlessly critical of the returned Rudd.
This is despite the once-close personal friendship between him and Australian editor-in-chief Chris Mitchell.
(Rudd has hired as his adviser on media strategy the well-respected former chief political correspondent of The Australian, Matthew Franklin, who must find the drop-in on the News stable somewhat character-forming as he does his press gallery rounds.)
Media watchers predicted that Rudd was in for extra tabloid fire when Col Allan, Murdoch hard hitter who is editor-in-chief of the New York Post, returned recently to help out editorially. (Allan was the one who took Rudd, then opposition leader, for a drunken evening to the Scores nightclub in New York.)
Conservative commentator Paul Sheehan wrote in Fairfax Media a couple of days ago that there were not just political but commercial motives afoot. News Corp viewed the NBN “as a threat to the business model of its most important Australian asset, Foxtel, jointly owned with Telstra. The company much prefers the Coalition’s less costly but also less ambitious national broadband strategy”.
Rudd didn’t hold back today. “Mr Murdoch is entitled to his view. It is a democracy, it is a free press. He owns 70% of the newspapers in this country.
“I think he’s made it fairly clear … that he doesn’t really like us and would like to give us the heave ho and would like to get rid of us and get his mate Mr Abbott in.
“The bottom line is – it is for others to ask the question why Mr Murdoch really doesn’t want the National Broadband Network to be connected to everyone’s homes and everyone’s small business premises. Does he sense it represents a commercial challenge to Foxtel which is a major cash cow for his company or not”.
The PM added a sarcastic slapdown – he was sure Murdoch saw things “with crystal clear clarity all the way from the United States”.
News in a statement today quickly denied the interests of Foxtel were having any influence on coverage. “Any suggestion that the editorial position of our newspapers is based upon the commercial interests of Foxtel demonstrates a complete ignorance of both our business and of Foxtel.
“The general News business would benefit from faster national broadband speeds and Foxtel will benefit as it is be able to offer more choice and new services to consumers.”
Labor has has some dramatic fights with the Murdoch media in the distant and near past. Murdoch (well known for his interventions in British politics and US politics) was a great supporter of Gough Whitlam’s election in 1972; in 1975 he ran a trenchant campaign against him – journalists on The Australian went on strike because of the coverage.
Fast forward to Julia Gillard, who got a rough time from the Murdoch stable. This probably led her to go in harder than was good for her in the wake of the British phone hacking scandal, when she said “I do believe that Australians watching all of that happening overseas with News Corp are looking at News Ltd here and are wanting to see News Ltd answer some hard questions.”
Her government set up an inquiry into the newspaper industry which made some strong recommendations. Communications Minister Stephen Conroy later brought in legislation with much watered-down provisions. Late and ill-prepared, the bills failed to get crossbench support. But News and other sections of the media reacted with a massive campaign.
Rudd calculates he has nothing to lose in his attacks on Murdoch. If he thought he could win him over, you can bet he’d be mounting a charm offensive. Rudd can only hope that he can deliver his message adequately via TV and social media.
But he is using strictly small arms fire against the mogul. Labor learned tough lessons from Conroy’s sortie with even mild proposals to stop further concentration and beef up the newspaper industry’s voluntary watchdog.When a journalist from The Australian today asked whether he had any plans to change the media laws if re-elected, Rudd was categorical. “We have no such plans at all”.
There will be many policy issues in this campaign, but they won’t include media policy, despite the serious and continuing shrinkage of diversity in the newspaper industry.
This post was originally posted on The Conversation, click here to view it.
Do you care who Rupert Murdoch thinks you should vote for? Do you think media outlets should endorse one side of politics over the other, this far out from an election?
Top Comments
What a bad time for journalism in Australia. We have a none australian trying to dictate who should be elected in this country no matter who it is. Be it for financial reasons or retribution for something, murdoch has no right to interfere with australian affairs. Murdoch you left Australia and became an American citizen. Worry about America and leave us alone. I have voted LNP for 28 years but thanks to you and Newman and Abbott I will now vote labour and have stopped my subscription to your newspaper. I have also stopped the Murdoch papers from my office as a protest to bad journalism.
This nation is now quite litterally at the fork in the road, down one path is the road of Welfarism, big government, crushing taxation, carbon taxes, where policy is guided by envy, laziness and greed.
The other path is road of Indivudual liberty, invidiual responsibility for ones own welfare, smaller governmetn, lower taxation, where policy is guided by a view of what is best for our people and their freedom.
I fear that Australia has already chosen the former path and will continue down that road.
Welfarism has corrupted our Democracy, we are now doomed to eternal deficits, increasingly tribal arguments where one half of the populace wants nothing to do with the ohter half and the government is used as a bludgeon to be used by the 'winner' in a so-called 'election' to attack the side that 'lost' the latest round of so-called 'elections'.
You see it every day...
Inner city vs suburban
Cars vs Bikes
Gays vs Straights
Indigenous vs Non Indigenous
'Progressives' vs 'Conservatives'
Global Warmists vs Skeptics
Unions vs business
Poor vs Rich
Left vs Right
Government vs private sector
In the last six years our society has been shattered and fragmented, I have never seen people who were once so civilised so ready to tear into each other, I have never seen so much anger and hatred based on identity and ideology.
Countless friendships have been destroyed, extended families broken apart, people can no longer have disagreements without them turning into raging arguments. People now decide their social circles based on identify and political alliegiences, those who do not fit into their clique are now viewed with suspicion and growing hatred/jelousy.
I remember a time when we were all AUSTRALIANS first and foremost, we could debate, argue even but that one thing held us together.. now.. we are a people divided and at each others throats!
If we do not change .. we are doomed to an eternal hell.
The anger and hatred started with Mr Howard and is continuing even more under Abbott, using his mates in the media to demonize refugees, trade unions and anyone that cares about the environment.
everyone needs to slow down and smell the roses, we haven't got it so bad if we live within our means. people these days want huge houses and expensive cars, and want it all now, then cry poor and blame the government when they can't pay the bills.
the media are to blame for the anger and hatred, spreading doom and gloom through there papers, that's until the Libs get into power, then the news will tell us everything's fantastic, no matter how bad things get. Just take a look at how bad public transport is, shootings, drive bys and murder in Sydney's west everyday, if Labor were still in power in NSW they would be getting crucified by the media.