Unfortunately the issue of Murdoch’s grooming of politicians on both sides of the Atlantic and on all sides of politics, has been supplanted by the Pay TV scandal.
The latest disclosures about corporate skulduggery by News Corporation against its pay TV rivals comes hot on the heels of information showing that so pervasive and dominant was the influence of Murdoch’s media empire that senior British Ministers and Prime Ministers desperately sought Murdoch’s patronage and were fearful of his retribution if they did not give him what he wanted.
Lance Price, one of Tony Blair’s media advisers, has stated;
“I have never met Mr Murdoch, but at times when I worked at Downing Street he seemed like the 24th member of the cabinet. His voice was rarely heard … but his presence was always felt.”
Tony Blair and David Cameron in the United Kingdom and George Bush in the USA were invited into Murdoch’s tent while Tony Abbott has clearly received the blessing of News Limited in Australia. Gordon Brown and Julia Gillard have clearly failed the compliance test.
Politicians and other elites inside the Murdoch bubble are treated gently and favourably by News Limited but those outside Murdoch’s circle of power are constantly harried and heckled by News journalists who beat up nothing stories to look like major crimes.
Carl Bernstein in an article “Murdochs Watergate”printed in “The Daily Beast,” wrote:
Murdoch associates, present and former—and his biographers—have said that one of his greatest long-term ambitions has been to replicate that political and cultural power in the United States.
In the same article Bernstein went on to say;
“Then came the unfair and imbalanced politicized “news” of the Fox News Channel—showing (again) Murdoch’s genius at building an empire on the basis of an ever-descending lowest journalistic denominator. It, too, rests on a foundation that has little or nothing to do with the best traditions and values of real reporting and responsible journalism: the best obtainable version of the truth. In place of this journalistic ideal, the enduring Murdoch ethic substitutes gossip, sensationalism, and manufactured controversy.”
The Australian adherence to the above Murdoch methodology is well documented with Prime Minister Julia Gillard being put to the sword at every opportunity by “The Australian”, while the leader of the opposition, Tony Abbott, is portrayed as “having what it takes” as one simpering headline put it.
Equally those supporters of genuine action on climate change like “Australian of the Year” and ecologist Tim Flannery and the highly regarded peak scientific bodies like CSIRO and the IPCC, are ridiculed in articles in the “Australian”, usually by a series of long retired geologists who sit on mining company boards and economists with less knowledge of the environmental costs and impacts of global warming than primary school children.
It is clear that their unhealthy level of power combined with their unethical and biased reporting and criminal hacking activities has marked News Corporation a malevolent force in our society and democratic system. They should not be allowed to control the media industry here or in any country that values truth and justice.
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