<
https://theintercept.com/2022/05/30/rupert-murdoch-australia-election-anthony-albanese/>
"Rupert Murdoch, who oversees a global media empire that includes Fox News,
doesn’t like losing, but he just tasted defeat in Australia’s election. Despite
years in which Murdoch’s media properties vociferously backed conservative
Prime Minister Scott Morrison, Labor leader Anthony Albanese won the May 21
contest. Australia saw a wave of climate-friendly, independent candidates and
Greens politicians take power in a thorough rejection of the culture wars
around trans rights and “religious freedom” unleashed by Morrison and his
backers in the Murdoch media.
Morrison lost for a range of reasons, including the basic fact that he’d become
a deeply unpopular and unsympathetic figure after his Liberal Party had been in
power for nearly a decade. He routinely mismanaged cases of sexual abuse and
rape of women at the Australian Parliament House in Canberra. No amount of
support and scaremongering from media outlets owned by Murdoch, who controls a
stunning 65 percent of newspaper circulation in the country, could persuade
voters to keep Morrison in power.
Despite daily attacks on Albanese and the other candidates who won office, the
Murdoch campaign failed spectacularly. This shows that the power of the Murdoch
empire isn’t enough when it’s selling rotten goods. More importantly, it shows
the effectiveness of loud voices taking on Murdoch directly. Nobody does it
better than former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, who has spent years
publicly condemning the mogul’s right-wing agenda. Rudd has urged politicians
to reject Murdoch’s divide-and-conquer tactics, to name and shame the
journalists and editors who produce Murdoch’s confected culture war poison.
Albanese has been treading carefully, embracing a pro-business agenda and
softening some of his previously more left-wing positions, but he mostly hasn’t
taken Murdoch’s bait on race, climate, gender, or Covid-19. The majority of
Australians simply didn’t like what the Murdoch press was selling."
Via Clarice Boomshakala Bouvier.
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
