It seems that someone in the Morrison Government may have laid a complaint........
Showing posts with label News Corp. Show all posts
Showing posts with label News Corp. Show all posts
Tuesday 4 June 2019
On 4 June 2019 federal police raided home of Newscorp journalist over story detailing an alleged government proposal to spy on Australians
It seems that someone in the Morrison Government may have laid a complaint........
Braidwood
Times, 4 June
2019:
Federal police have
raided the home of a journalist over a 2018 story detailing an alleged
government proposal to spy on Australians.
Australian Federal
Police officers produced a warrant to search the home, computer and mobile
phone of Canberra-based News Corp Australia journalist Annika Smethurst, The
Daily Telegraph reports.
The story in question
had included images of letters between the heads of the Home Affairs and
Defence departments, discussing potential new powers for the Australian Signals
Directorate (ASD).
The powers would have
allowed the ASD's cyber sleuths to monitor Australian citizens and businesses
on home soil, rather than being limited to gathering intelligence on
foreigners, the story said.
The AFP said the raid is
in relation to "alleged unauthorised disclosure of national security
information" and that no arrests are expected on Tuesday.
"Police will allege
the unauthorised disclosure of these specific documents undermines Australia's
national security," the agency said in a statement…...
BACKGROUND
Sunday Tasmanian, 6 May 2018, p.13:
The Federal Government
has “war-gamed” scenarios where our cyber spy agency needed to be
given the power to investigate Australian citizens.
Last week the Sunday
Tasmanian revealed a secret plan to increase the Australian Signals
Directorate’s powers to allow them to spy on Aussies.
Department bosses
claimed there was “no proposal to increase the ASD’s powers to collect intelligence
on Australians”. But letters between Home Affairs secretary Mike Pezzullo and
Defence Secretary Greg Moriarty reveal the departments of Home Affairs and
Defence allocated staff to war game a raft of scenarios where the ASD would
need to spy on Australians.
The list of scenarios
were compiled in two attachments and sent to the heads of both departments
under the headline “scenarios proposed by Home Affairs”.
The document explains
how ASD could be used to disrupt “onshore and offshore online threats” such as
“disrupting child exploitation networks and terrorist networks” and “illicit
drug importation, money laundering and serious crimes”.
Last week’s Sunday
Tasmanian exclusive has prompted calls for MPs to have greater oversight of
Australia’s intelligence agencies…..
Sunday Telegraph, 29 April 2018, p.5:
Australia’s intelligence
watchdog has warned the Australian Signals Directorate against any moves that
would change the agency’s focus “to people and organisations inside Australia”
instead of focusing on activities overseas.
The veiled warning came
in March during a review into new laws which established the ASD as a statutory
body.
In her submission,
Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security (IGIS) Margaret Stone, a former
Federal Court judge, said under the current laws ASD is not permitted to access
digital information located inside Australia.
“Accessing data located
inside Australia is properly an action that requires an ASIO or police
warrant,” she said in her submission.
“Nothing in the
Intelligence Services Act would allow ASD to access restricted data on a
computer physically located inside Australia — even where doing so would assist
in gathering intelligence or disrupting crime,” she said…..
Sunday Telegraph, 29 April 2018, p.4:
Two powerful government
agencies are discussing radical new espionage powers that would see Australia’s
cyber spy agency monitor Australian citizens for the first time.
Under the plan, emails,
bank records and text messages of Australians could be secretly accessed by
digital spies without a trace, provided the Defence and Home Affairs
ministers approved.
The power grab is
detailed in top secret letters between the heads of the Department of Home
Affairs and Defence, seen by The Sunday Telegraph, which outline proposed new
powers for Australia’s electronic spy agency — the Australian Signals
Directorate (ASD).
The Sunday Telegraph can
reveal the Secretary of the Department of Home Affairs Mike Pezzullo first
wrote to the Defence Secretary Greg Moriarty in February outlining the plan to
potentially allow government hackers to “proactively disrupt and covertly
remove” onshore cyber threats by “hacking into critical infrastructure”.
Under current laws the
ASD — whose mission statement is “Reveal Their Secrets — Protect Our Own” —
must not conduct an activity to produce intelligence on an Australian.
Instead, the Australian
Federal Police and domestic spy agency ASIO have the power to
investigate Australians with a warrant and can ask ASD for technical advice if
they don’t have the capabilities they need.
The Attorney-General is
responsible for issuing ASIO warrants, but the agency’s operations will fall
under the umbrella of Home Affairs.
Under the proposal, seen
by The Sunday Telegraph, Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton and Defence
Minister Marise Payne would tick off on orders allowing cyber spooks to target
onshore threats without the country’s top law officer knowing.
Last month the proposal
was compiled in a top secret ministerial submission signed by ASD boss Mike
Burgess. The proposal outlines scenarios where Canberra-based cyber spies would
use offensive tactics to “counter or disrupt cyber-enabled criminals both
onshore and offshore”.
“The Department of Home
Affairs advises that it is briefing the Minister for Home Affairs to write to
you (Ms Payne) seeking your support for a further tranche of legislative reform
to enable ASD to better support a range of Home Affairs priorities.”
But The
Sunday Telegraph understands Mr Dutton has not written to Minister Payne and no
formal proposal for leglslative amendments have been presented to Government.
“The Australian Signals
Directorate has not prepared ministerial advice seeking permissions to allow
ASD to counter or disrupt cyber-enabled criminals onshore,” a spokesman for Ms
Payne said.
An intelligence source
said such reforms would allow cyber spies to secretly access
digital information on Australians without detection, including financial
transactions, health data and phone records.
“It would give the most
powerful cyber spies the power to turn on its own citizens,” the
source said.
The letter also details
a proposal for coercive “step-in” powers, meaning the intelligence agency could
force government agencies and private businesses to “comply with security
measures”.
The intelligence source
said ASD could be able to compel companies and government agencies to hand over
data or security information…… [my yellow highlighting]
The
Guardian, 25
January 2018:
Proposed changes to
Australia’s national security laws that could see journalists and
whistleblowers jailed for up to 20 years will “criminalise” reporting and
undermine the media’s ability to act in the public interest, the nation’s major
news outlets have warned.
In a joint
submission, 14 major media outlets including the ABC, Fairfax Media and
News Corp said sweeping changes to national security laws proposed by the
federal government would place journalists at “significant risk of jail time”
for doing their jobs.
The reforms,
tabled just hours after marriage equality became law in December, would
increase tenfold the maximum penalty for anyone who communicates or “deals
with” information which could potentially “cause harm to Australia’s
interests,” where that information is obtained via a government official
without authorisation.
Labels:
AFP,
intelligence,
journalists,
media,
national security,
News Corp,
spies
Friday 17 May 2019
Has U.S. citizen and media mogul Rupert Murdoch overplayed his hand in this Australian federal election cycle?
“It sounds unreal to
say that News Corp is not a media organisation. It sounds outré to say that it
is instead a political propaganda entity of a kind perhaps not seen since the
19th century, one that has climbed to its pedestal through regulatory
capture, governmental favours and menace, and is now applying its energies to
the promotion of white nationalism, even as white nationalists commit scores of
murders.” [Journalist Richard Cooke wiring in The Monthly,
May 2019],
It is your judgement that counts because the right and responsibility to elect the next Australian Government rests with you, the Australian voter, not with an elderly authoritarian U.S. billionaire who rarely visits this country.
Australian society is not as tolerant of Murdoch's sense of entitlement as it once may have been......
— 💧🐟 Lotta Cheek (@lottacheek) May 11, 2019
March 2018 to March 2019 year-to-year data shows News Corp's principal mastheads are losing readership over the 7 day circulation period, according to Roy Morgan.
By its own admission News Corp has been lobbying local government to keep its community papers afloat in South Australia.
Monday 13 May 2019
This move by Murdoch’s News Corp has Scott Morrison’s political paw prints all over it
Standing in
the shadows pulling the strings of those willing to make spurious or defamatory
claims about a political opponent worked so well for the interim Prime Minister
and Liberal MP for Cook Scott Morrison
in the past that he appears to be doing it again.
Last time the
efforts of his political puppets cost News
Corp tens of thousands of dollars in legal costs and like last time The Daily Telegraph is the
Liberals vehicle of choice.
The smear campaign
revealed……..
The
Saturday Paper,
11 May 2019, excerpt:
Midweek, Murdoch’s
Sydney tabloid The Daily Telegraph went for broke. On page one, it
ran a story under the headline “Mother of invention”, and set out to destroy
what it said was hailed as Shorten’s “election-winning moment”. It accused him
of omitting the fact his mother went on to enjoy an illustrious career as a
barrister. The paper said he had failed to disclose that his mother graduated
law later in life “and [practised] at the bar for six years”. It said the Labor
chief had only told half the family story. If that were the case, however, he
left out the half that gives even more potency to his mother’s legacy.
One senior Liberal wondered who was the genius on their
side who thought it a good idea to prompt the Telegraph’s ill-considered
and cockamamie attack. Gallery journalists confirm the “Libs were shopping the
story around on Tuesday”.
Melbourne’s Herald Sun, unlike its Brisbane
stablemate, The Courier-Mail, refused to take it. Scott Morrison played
the innocent bystander.
He told reporters it was a “very upsetting story” and he can understand that
Shorten would have been “very hurt by it”. That was an understatement. The
opposition leader was furious.
For 10 minutes during a
half-hour press conference on Wednesday, Shorten spoke of his mother’s
achievements. Fighting back tears, he told of a woman in her 50s with grey
hair, who, even though she topped her law school, could not get a law firm to
take her on for articles. When she eventually got to the bar, she struggled for
briefs – “she got about nine briefs in her time”. Far from fulfilling her
dream, as the Murdoch hatchet job claimed, she went back to education. The
partisan attack on the Labor leader opened the way for him to hit back at one
of the Liberals’ biggest vulnerabilities: their failure to promote more women
through their parliamentary ranks. Their most high-profile and credible woman,
Julie Bishop, has quit. She won’t be at the party’s Mother’s Day launch on
Sunday to support Morrison, the man who blocked her run for the leadership.
Shorten says the experience of his mother – “the smartest woman I’ve ever
known” – is why he believes in the equal treatment of women.
News Corp sources say the Tele has another
story on their news file to throw at Shorten. It is highly defamatory and
legally dubious.
The desperation that led to the attack on Shorten and his mother’s memory may
give them pause to think about running it. As one Labor campaign worker says,
“It’s difficult to know where the government ends and News Corp begins.” [my
yellow highlighting]
Phase Two of the smear campaign.......
A scurrilous, below-the-radar whispering campaign has broken through onto social media.
News Corp cries poor - wants local government funding
The comment of tweeter @Greg_MarineLab says it all:
"How very NewsCorp!
Begging for a taxpayer handout while never paying any tax & subverting
democracy...."
News Corp unsuccessfully lobbied a number of South Australian councils and, like the City of Tea Tree, Campbelltown, Playford and Salisbury councils didn't want to prop the Murdochs up when in all probability it would mean raising rates.
InDaily, 3 May 2019:
InDaily has confirmed with several sources a senior delegation of
News Corp executives, including South Australian executive general manager Ish
Davies and Messenger Newspapers editor-in-chief Nadja Fleet,
approached four north-eastern councils in March requesting significant
investment – totalling at least $1.6 million over two years – to keep the print
run of the local North Eastern Weekly afloat.
It has only taken the Murdoch's 32 years to run this once independent group of community newspapers into the ground.
Labels:
begging letter,
funding,
local government,
News Corp
Saturday 11 May 2019
Bypass the Murdoch press and read Labor's policy costings for yourself
Going on the behaviour of Murdoch's News Corp mastheads during the 2019 federal election campaign to date, by 6am the headlines will be misleading at best.
Scott Morrison & Co have already begun their scare campaign in response to the policy costings Labor released yesterday.
Therefore I invite readers to bypass political posturing by both the Coalition and a large section of the media and look at the policy document for yourselves.
It is your judgement that counts because the responsibility to elect the next Australian Government rests with you, not with an elderly U.S. billionaire who rarely visits this country.
2019 Labor Fiscal Plan by clarencegirl on Scribd
Monday 29 April 2019
Scott Morrison and News Corp need fact checking - again!
The Australian Labor Party released its
dividend
imputation policy in 2018 and began to come under sustained political
attack by the Morrison Government and News Corp with claims that there was a
$10 billion dollar hole in Labor’s costing of its policy.
On 18 June
2018 the Parliamentary Budget Office issued
a media release:
Imputation
credits policy costing
Earlier today, comments
have been made about the Parliamentary Budget Office (PBO) estimates of the
gains to revenue that may flow from the Australian Labor Party’s (ALP’s) policy
to make imputation credits non-refundable.
“The PBO brings our best
professional judgement to the independent policy costing advice we
provide. We have access to the same data
and economic parameters as The Treasury and draw upon similar information in
forming our judgements,” Parliamentary Budget Officer Jenny Wilkinson stated
today.
“We stand behind the PBO
estimates that have been published by the ALP in relation to this policy,
noting that all policy costings, no matter who they are prepared by, are
subject to uncertainty.” In its advice,
the PBO is explicit about the judgements and uncertainties associated with
individual policy costings.
The PBO confirms that it
always takes into account current and future policy commitments, as well as
behavioural changes, in its policy costings.
In this case, as outlined at the recent Senate Estimates hearings, these
included the superannuation changes announced in the 2016–17 Budget and the
scheduled company tax cuts. In addition,
the PBO explicitly assumed that there would be significant behavioural changes
that would flow from this policy, particularly for trustees of self-managed
superannuation funds.
The PBO was established
as an independent institution in 2012 with broad support from the
Parliament. A key rationale for the
formation of the PBO was to develop a more level playing field, by providing
independent and unbiased advice to all parliamentarians about the estimated
fiscal cost of policy proposals. The
purpose of establishing the PBO was to improve the public’s understanding of,
and confidence in, policy costings and enable policy debates to focus on the
merits of alternative policy proposals.
Ten months later on 25 April
2019 News Corp’s The Daily Examiner ran an article on page 8 concerning Labor’s
dividend imputation policy which stated:
The independent
Parliamentary Budget Office has estimated Labor’s plan would save $7 billion
less over a decade than the party expects and that it would affect 840,000
individuals, 210,000 self-managed super funds (SMSFs) plus some bigger funds.
Now the
Parliamentary Budget Office publishes
the requests for information it receives, including requests for policy implications and
costings, however there appears to be no new request for information and
costings on Labor’s dividend imputation policy on its website.
Morrison
& Co have been caught out misrepresenting the source of their costings
before and even flat out lying on occasion, so one has to suspect the veracity
of their latest attack on this particular policy.
It's just as likely costings and other figures were done on the back of an envelope by Morrison or Frydenberg.
Monday 22 April 2019
News Corp mastheads back Big Coal during 2019 federal election campaign
These were News
Corp mastheads on 18 April 2019.
Images found @JennaCairney1 on Twitter |
Apparently we
voters don’t understand the role mining has in our country and Murdoch journalists
are eager to pressure politicians on the subject of mining jobs and
taxation revenue which they fear are on the line because these same
politicians might “go weak-kneed at the sight of Stop
Adani hashtags, earrings or stage invasions” [Townsville Bulletin, 18 April 2019, p.2].
I on the
other hand think rural and regional areas know the mining industry rather well
when it comes to jobs and taxes.
According
to the Australian Government Labour
Market Information Portal as of February 2019 the Mining Industry in this country“employs approximately 251,700 persons (ABS
trend data), which accounts for 2.0 per cent of the total workforce. Over the past five
years, employment in the industry has decreased by 5.4 per cent”.
Employment
growth in the industry in the five years to February 2019 was in fact minus
14,400 employees.
Projected
employment growth in the five years to May 2023 is predicted to be 2.4 per
cent.
Not
all mining industry employment is new jobs created by a mining venture either. The
Australia Institute points to the fact that economic modelling done by
Waratah Coal in 2011 found that a single Qld mine would displace 3,000 jobs in
other industries and crowd out $1.2 billion in manufacturing activity.
Australian
Tax Office (ATO) data
for 2013-14 to 2015-16 show that almost 60 percent of corporations in
the energy and resources sector paid zero tax in that period.
This
percentage appears to be something of an industry norm as in 2007-08 ATO data indicated there were
4,290 mining companies operating in Australia and 68.3pc of all these companies
paid no tax.
It is worth
noting that in 2007 the Business Council
of Australia (BCA) calculated corporate tax (as a percentage of profit) at
20pc for the mining industry.
Interestingly,
BCA also stated “taxes collected are negative for the mining industry group
because as major exporters survey participants reported a significant GST
refund which more than offset other taxes collected”.
In 2016-17 BHP Billiton Aluminium Australia Pty Ltd with a total income $1.81 billion for that year paid no tax. Neither did Whitehaven Coal Limited with a total income of $2.39 billion, Claremont Coal Mines Ltd with a total income of $1.01 billion and Ulan Coal Mines Limited with a total income of $1.03 billion - to name just a few examples for that financial year.
In 2016-17 BHP Billiton Aluminium Australia Pty Ltd with a total income $1.81 billion for that year paid no tax. Neither did Whitehaven Coal Limited with a total income of $2.39 billion, Claremont Coal Mines Ltd with a total income of $1.01 billion and Ulan Coal Mines Limited with a total income of $1.03 billion - to name just a few examples for that financial year.
So there we
have it.
An
Australia-wide industry sector which in February 2019 employed less people than
sectors such as Health & Social Assistance (est.1,702,700 persons), Retail
(est.1,284,700 persons), Education & Training (est,1,032,400 persons) and Manufacturing
(est. 872,500 persons) and, has a future growth
projection which makes it unlikely to return even 2015 employment levels.
A sector which also regularly takes tax minimisation to an extreme.
Yet for some
reason voters are supposed to ignore the ramifications of continuing to allow open slather to fossil
fuel mining corporations as climate change impacts begin to bite.
The mining
industry has pulled this sort of stunt before when it fought the proposed Resource Super
Profits Tax which would have applied to mining companies involved in the
extraction of non-renewable resources. It talked up inflated figures for mining employment and tax revenue and quoted the same in industry media releases.
The stakes
for present and future generations were not quite as high nor as urgent then as they are now and it’s time the rapacious mining industry is firmly put in its place by concerned
voters on 18 May 2019 – right at the back of the queue along with those political parties and candidates who blindly support Big Coal and Big Oil.
Australia can't afford politicians of that ilk anymore.
Labels:
coal,
election campaigns,
elections 2019,
mining industry,
News Corp
Monday 8 April 2019
"USING 150 INTERVIEWS ON THREE CONTINENTS, THE [NEW YORK] TIMES DESCRIBES THE MURDOCH FAMILY’S ROLE IN DESTABILIZING DEMOCRACY IN NORTH AMERICA, EUROPE AND AUSTRALIA"
With Murdoch’s
News Corp mastheads dominating the local newspaper landscape in the NSW Northern Rivers region this should interest readers…….
Rupert Murdoch, the
founder of a global media empire that includes Fox News, has said he “never
asked a prime minister for anything.”
But that empire has
given him influence over world affairs in a way few private citizens ever have,
granting the Murdoch family enormous sway over not just the United States, but
English-speaking countries around the world.
A
six-month investigation by The New York Times covering three
continents and including more than 150 interviews has described how Mr. Murdoch
and his feuding sons turned their media outlets into right-wing political
influence machines that have destabilized democracy in North America, Europe and
Australia.
Here are some key
takeaways from The Times’s investigation into the Murdoch family and its role
in the illiberal, right-wing political wave sweeping the globe.
THE MURDOCH FAMILY SITS
AT THE CENTER OF GLOBAL UPHEAVAL.
Fox News has long
exerted a gravitational pull on the Republican Party in the United States,
where it most recently amplified the nativist revolt that has fueled the rise
of the far right and the election of President Trump.
Mr. Murdoch’s newspaper
The Sun spent years demonizing the European Union to its readers in Britain,
where it helped lead the Brexit campaign that persuaded a slim majority of
voters in a 2016 referendum to endorse pulling out of the bloc. Political havoc
has reigned in Britain ever since.
And in Australia, where
his hold over the media is most extensive, Mr. Murdoch’s outlets pushed for the
repeal of the country’s carbon tax and helped topple a series of prime
ministers whose agenda he disliked, including Malcolm Turnbull last year.
At the center of this
upheaval sits the Murdoch family, a clan whose dysfunction has both shaped and
mirrored the global tumult of recent years.
The Times explored those
family dynamics and their impact on the Murdoch empire, which is on the cusp of
succession as its 88-year-old patriarch prepares to hand power to the son whose
politics most resemble his own: Lachlan Murdoch.
A key step in that
succession has paradoxically been the partial dismemberment of the empire,
which significantly shrunk last month when Mr. Murdoch sold one of his
companies, the film studio 21st Century Fox, to the Walt Disney Company for
$71.3 billion.
The deal turned Mr.
Murdoch’s children into billionaires and left Lachlan in control of a powerful
political weapon: a streamlined company, the Fox Corporation, whose most potent
asset is Fox News…..
The Murdoch empire has
also boldly flexed its muscles in Australia, which was for many years Lachlan’s
domain.
In Australia, Lachlan
expressed disdain for efforts to fight climate change and once rebuked the
staff at one of his family’s newspapers, The Australian, for an editorial in
support of same-sex marriage (He says through a representative that he is in
favor of same-sex marriage). He also became close to the politician Tony
Abbott, whose 2013 election as prime minister was given an assist by Murdoch
newspapers.
The Murdoch family
changed Australian politics in 2016 when it took control of Sky News Australia
and imported the Fox News model. They quickly introduced a slate of right-wing
opinion shows that often focused on race, immigration and climate change. The
programming became known as Sky After Dark.
Last year, Mr. Turnbull
and his staff accused Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch of using their media outlets
to help foment the intraparty coup that thrust him from office in August. Mr.
Turnbull, a moderate and longtime nemesis of his friend Mr. Abbott, was replaced
by the right-wing nationalist Scott Morrison.
The Murdochs have denied
any role in Mr. Turnbull’s downfall.....
The night after his
arrival, Lachlan invited a small group of Sky employees and managers to his $16
million mansion in Sydney for drinks. With its new prime-time lineup of
hard-right opinion hosts, Sky had become a force in Australian politics. Its
audience was still small by American standards, but it was the network of
choice in the capital, Canberra, and it was finalizing a deal to expand its reach
into the Australian Outback — demographically speaking, the equivalent of Trump
country.
It was a mirror of Fox
News, with its fixation on race, identity and climate-change denial. Night
after night, Sky’s hosts and their guests stirred anger over the perceived
liberal bias of the media, “suicidal self-hatred” of Western civilization and
the Australian equivalent of the Central American “caravans” that were dividing
the United States: asylum seekers coming to the country by boat from Indonesia
and Malaysia, many of them Muslim. Days before Lachlan’s arrival, a national
neo-Nazi leader, Blair Cottrell — who had recently been fined for “inciting
contempt for Muslims” — appeared on one of the network’s shows. Cottrell had
been interviewed on Australian TV before, but his deferential treatment by Sky
caused a national outcry. Under gentle questioning, he called on his countrymen
to “reclaim our traditional identity as Australians” and advocated limiting
immigration to those “who are not too culturally dissimilar from us,” such as
white South African farmers. (Sky apologized and suspended
the program.)
Inside Lachlan’s living
room, the talk turned to national politics. “Do you think Malcolm is going to
survive?” Lachlan asked his staff. Malcolm was Malcolm Turnbull, the relatively
moderate Australian prime minister who took office a few years earlier. Inside
the government, a small right-wing uprising had been brewing over his plans to
bring Australia into compliance with the Paris climate accord. It is well
established among those who have worked for the Murdochs that the family
rarely, if ever, issues specific directives. They convey their desires
indirectly, maybe with a tweet — as Murdoch did in the spring of 2016 when he
decided to back Trump — or a question, the subtleties of which are rarely lost
on their like-minded news executives.
In the days that
followed, Sky Australia’s hosts and the Murdoch papers — the newspaper editors
had their own drinks session at Lachlan’s mansion — set about trying to throw
Turnbull out of office. Alan Jones, a Sky host
and conservative radio star, called for a party “rebellion” against him on his
program. Days later, the Murdochs’ major paper in Sydney, The Daily Telegraph,
broke the news that a
leadership challenge was in the works. Cheering on the
challenge, Andrew
Bolt, the Murdoch columnist who was once convicted of violating the
country’s Racial Discrimination Act, told his Sky viewers that Turnbull’s
“credibility is shot, his authority is gone.” Peta Credlin, the
commentator who was Tony Abbott’s former chief of staff, chewed out a member of
Parliament for the chaos inside Turnbull’s administration. The Australian, the
Murdochs’ national newspaper, was soon declaring Turnbull a “dead man walking.”......
It was always difficult
to separate the personal from the financial and the ideological with the
Murdochs. All appeared to be in evidence in their decision to turn against
Turnbull. To begin with, he took office a few years earlier by ousting
Lachlan’s friend Tony Abbott, and it was Abbott who helped lead the Turnbull
uprising. Turnbull’s policies were also not perfectly aligned with the
Murdochs’ interests. For instance, he had expedited the construction of the
country’s national
broadband network, which directly threatened the family’s highly profitable
cable business by giving Netflix a government-subsidized pipeline into
Australian homes.
The small number of
Australian media outlets that the Murdochs did not own portrayed
Turnbull’s ouster as a Murdoch-led “coup.” Kevin Rudd, a former prime
minister whom the family had helped push out of office years earlier, described
Murdoch in an op-ed in The Sydney Morning Herald as “the
greatest cancer on the Australian democracy.”
Turnbull was replaced by
the right-wing nationalist Scott Morrison, who quickly aligned himself with
Trump. The two met in person for the first time in late 2018 at the G-20 summit
meeting in Buenos Aires. “I think it’s going to be a great relationship,” Trump
said afterward. With a national election scheduled for May 2019, Morrison
quickly staked his party’s prospects on the polarizing issue of immigration,
promising a new hard-line approach. It dovetailed with Sky’s regular prime-time
programming. Andrew Bolt, who previously warned of a “foreign invasion,”
said in
one segment, “We also risk importing ethnic and religious strife, even
terrorism,” as the screen flashed an image of Australia’s potential future:
rows of Muslims on a city street, bowing toward Mecca. When the opposing Labor
Party managed to muscle through legislation that would allow doctors to
transfer severely sick migrants in detention centers on the Australian islands
of Nauru and Manus into hospitals on the mainland, Sky Australia’s prime-time
hosts went on the offensive.
Read the full
article here.
Sunday 7 April 2019
The absurd level to which the faux federal election campaign sinks
An overexcited and breathlessly earnest attempt to assert inherent bias on the part of the public broadcaster against the right wing of politics in the lead up to the federal election.....
And here again @chriskkenny and @australian: The word used was “conservators”, in a light-hearted chat about a murder mystery book set in an art museum. pic.twitter.com/XlHyxvyE7j— ABC Communications (@ABCMediaComms) April 1, 2019
Labels:
election campaigns,
News Corp,
Our ABC,
propaganda
Monday 4 March 2019
The Bolt name considered toxic by Sky News?
Ad
News, 28
February 2019:
Sky News has confirmed
to AdNews that it intentionally made the decision to drop ads from The Bolt
Report in order to protect advertisers from any potential backlash.
Yesterday, The Sleeping Giants found that Tuesday night’s The
Bolt Report aired with no paid ads as the host, political and social
commentator Andrew Bolt, angered Australians with his defence of Cardinal
George Pell.
This week Pell was found
guilty by a jury for molesting choirboys as an archbishop in the 1990s.
In an opinion piece
following the verdict, Bolt said Pell had been "falsely convicted"
and in a preview for his Sky News show he said he ‘doesn't accept' the verdict.
Now, Sky News has
confirmed to AdNews that it actively made the decision not to run ads, rather
than giving advertisers the option to first to pull out, in order to prevent
advertisers from being the target of public campaigning.
“Sky News is committed
to providing a platform for robust debate and discussion, and is not afraid to
tackle confronting and controversial issues,” a Sky News spokesperson said.
“Sky News recognised
that the controversial topic of George Pell’s conviction to be covered by one
of its highest rating commentators may have presented an environment that left
advertisers open to campaigns by activists.
“A proactive decision
was made to replace advertisements during last night’s program.”
Despite the measures Sky
News took, companies have still been facing protests after The Sleeping Giants
posted a list of advertisers on Sky News for the week ending 26/02/19.
So far, brands including
Nib, Samsung, Procter & Gamble, Coles, McDonald’s and CommBank have had
Twitter users urge them to stop advertising on Sky News.....
@TheRock man, I love everything you do and can not wait to see fighting with my family, but I thought you should know your film is being advertised on a. Show where they are defending a convicted child rapist. Put a stop to this!— addyourname (@jshawtaylor) February 27, 2019
Dear @Coles @CommBank— Natasha yann (@natasha_yann) February 27, 2019
As a share holder in the company I’m somewhat dismayed that we choose to advertise on a program which provides a platform for child abuse apologists like Andrew Bolt. His attack on the veracity of the victim is reprehensible. @slpng_giants_oz
Moving our health insurance from @nibhealthfunds because they advertise on @theboltreport defending #Pell #auspol @slpng_giants_oz pic.twitter.com/gRk70rvdVn— Fr Rod Bower (@FrBower) February 27, 2019
Labels:
advertising,
Andrew Bolt,
child sexual abuse,
News Corp,
Sky News
Tuesday 29 January 2019
Why is the Australian Government subsidising a News Corp television program?
On 21
December 2018 the Australian
Communications and Media Authority announced:
The ACMA has awarded
up to $3.6 million in grants to regional and small publishers under
the first round of the Regional and Small Publishers Innovation Fund.
Round one of the
Innovation Fund will support 29 projects by 25 successful applicants
nationwide, with a mix of regional and metropolitan proposals funded.
Grants
will support innovation and digitalisation across a wide range of activities,
including market research, trials of new business models, podcasts, and video
capability.
A list of successful
applicants and their projects is here.
However,
there is another grant stream which sees News Corp’s Sky News Channel - part of
multinational media empire - receive
money to cover 15 per cent of a particular Sunday program’s production costs.
BuzzFeed, 25 January 2019:
The show is partly
funded through a Commonwealth government grant awarded to Mundine's business
Nyungga Black Group, through a closed non-competitive selection process,
according to the grant information published online.
The grant, running from
June 18, 2018 to Aug. 1 this year is for a total of $220,000. The Department of
Prime Minister & Cabinet confirmed to BuzzFeed News that the grant was for
Mundine's Sky News show.
News Corp’s 2018
annual report states of the corporation’s news channel:
Australian News Channel
ANC operates 10 channels
featuring the latest in news, politics, sports, entertainment, public affairs,
business and weather. ANC is licensed by Sky International AG to use Sky
trademarks and domain names in connection with its operation and distribution
of channels and services. ANC’s channels consist of Sky News Live, Sky News
Business, Fox Sports News, Sky News Weather, Sky News UK, Sky News Extra, Sky
News Extra 1, Sky News Extra 2, Sky News Extra 3 and Sky News New Zealand. ANC
channels are distributed throughout Australia and New Zealand and available on
Foxtel and Sky Network Television NZ. ANC also owns and operates the
international Australia Channel IPTV service and offers content across a
variety of digital media platforms, including mobile, podcasts and social media
websites. In addition, ANC has program supply arrangements with third parties
such as WIN Corporation. ANC primarily generates revenue through monthly
affiliate fees received from pay-TV providers based on the number of
subscribers and advertising.
ANC competes primarily with other news providers
in Australia and New Zealand via its subscription television channels, third
party content arrangements and free domain website. Its Australia Channel IPTV
service also competes against “over-the-top” IPTV subscription-based news
providers in regions outside of Australia and New Zealand.
This is a corporation
which admits to having assets of over $16 billion in June 2018 - $2 billion of
which was held as cash or cash equivalents - and yet the Australian Government feels the need to subsidise its weekend programming?
This is the second time in less than two years that the Coalition Government has given News Corp money for programming. Then it was a funding package worth a cool $30 million.
Labels:
News Corp,
Rupert Murdoch
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