Kevin Rudd has accused News Corp Australia’s Herald Sun tabloid of “dog-whistling to conspiracy theorists” over its election campaign reporting of Daniel Andrews’ fall last year and a nine-year-old car crash involving his wife.
On Tuesday, the paper published its second front-page story in five days on the 2013 crash which showed photos of the Andrews’ damaged car after it collided with cyclist Ryan Meuleman. The photos were consistent with the statements made by the couple at the time of the accident.
The Sunday Herald Sun also devoted its front page to the premier’s 2021 accident, headlined “The steps that took down a premier”. The exclusive story provided no new information on the accident, other than a picture of the wooden steps at the Mornington Peninsula holiday rental.
Rudd, a former Labor prime minister who has spearheaded a campaign for a royal commission into News Corp, said the articles served to assist the Coalition at the upcoming state election.
“News Corporation is a taxpayer-funded company that has a vested interest in electing Liberal governments they believe will do them favours,” he told Guardian Australia.
“They can’t beat Premier Andrews on policy, so they’re trying to take him out through smear and innuendo. You see the same happening with the Courier-Mail and Annastacia Palaszczuk in Queensland.”
He also accused the publication of encouraging baseless conspiracy theories.
“By dog-whistling to conspiracy theorists, the Herald Sun is playing with fire. But the moment some radicalised individual acts out, they will deny any responsibility for setting the fuse,” Rudd said.
But the former Victorian Liberal premier Jeff Kennett said the article about Andrews’ fall last year was “fair play”, as there was concern among some about whether he was being “fully transparent”.
However, Ambulance Victoria released a statement in June 2021 confirming the timeline Andrews had previously given for the accident. The state’s police commissioner, Shane Patton, also confirmed police did not attend the home where Andrews fell, or interview him.
Kennett said Meuleman and others were entitled to their views.
“There are others in the community including the victim who still feel aggrieved and are hurt and are in pain,” he said.
“They have a right to raise their issues as the Andrews’ have a right to disagree.”
Meuleman, then 15, was seriously injured and spent 11 days in hospital after the crash at Blairgowrie in the Mornington Peninsula in January 2013.
No charges were laid at the time. An investigation by the Independent Broad-based Anti-corruption Commission (Ibac) was ordered after police failed to breathalyse anyone at the scene of the accident and later refused to release documents requested by media under freedom of information laws.
Ibac cleared police of wrongdoing in December 2017.
On Tuesday, Andrews said he stood by his 2013 statement to police.
The Herald Sun’s story was the first time Meuleman has spoken about the accident. He said he had engaged a lawyer and was considering his legal options, though he did not explain what kind of claim he hoped to bring or against whom.
The story also did not note his avenues for action may have expired.
Dr Belinda Barnet, a senior lecturer of digital media at Swinburne University, said Sunday’s story about Andrews’ fall, on the other hand, had “no newsworthy elements”.
“The event it is talking about happened over a year ago. What’s changed about the story is that someone took a picture of some steps,” Barnet said.
“It appears its sole purpose is to create public discussion that questions that the event took place in the way that the premier says it did during the election campaign.”
Barnet said putting the story on the front page of the paper “legitimised conspiracy theories” about the accident.
Denis Muller, a senior research fellow at the Centre for Advancing Journalism at the University of Melbourne and former associate editor of the Age, said the Herald Sun’s sustained reporting bears resemblance to its coverage of the opposition’s 2018 law and order campaign and focus on “African gangs”.
“That backfired spectacularly and Andrews won in a landslide. The Victorian population doesn’t buy this stuff on the whole,” Muller said.
He also pointed to the tabloid’s criticisms of the state’s Covid-19 lockdowns, particularly by the former Liberal federal treasurer Josh Frydenberg, who subsequently lost his seat of Kooyong in the May federal election.
“I think there’s a degree of sort of impotent fury in all of this as well – News Corp’s influence is waning, [it] cannot make and unmake governments in the way it used to.”
Matthew Ricketson, the professor of communication at Deakin University, said the reporting was a “free kick” to the premier that could allow him to be more dismissive of reporting from the Herald Sun and other media outlets by claiming the stories were a witch-hunt.
“It distracts from legitimate, important public issues that the media should be reporting on for the sake of Victorian voters,” he said, pointing to reporting of a secret Ibac probe into the awarding of contracts to a union on the eve of the last election.
The Herald Sun did not respond to questions from the Guardian.
As for the premier, he has repeatedly refused to comment on the reports of the crash and laughed off the story on the stairs.
“I genuinely don’t know what the point of the story is,” the premier said.
“Can any of you explain it to me? Are you going to interview the stairs next? People can go as low as they want. I’m not coming there with them. It’s as simple as that.”
