This article is an instalment in a series, Project Harmony, on Rupert Murdoch’s secret plan threatening to blow up his family.
Underneath Rupert Murdoch’s brazen attempt to future-proof News Corp and Fox in favour of Lachlan Murdoch against his siblings and half-siblings is a blunt admission that Murdoch’s outlets around the world aren’t news organisations but right-wing propaganda machines, ones Rupert fears his children will seek to return to journalism after his death. Those actions “would impact the strategic direction at both companies including a potential reorientation of editorial policy and content”, in the words of the Nevada court where the battle is being waged.
It’s up there with Rupert admitting Fox News endorsed lies of a stolen 2020 election and that he refused to intervene, and Lachlan Murdoch admitting that Fox News was opposed to the Biden administration as evidence that whatever the companies’ pasts as journalism outlets, they now exist to relentlessly promote right-wing leaders and ideas, and demonise “liberals” unless it’s egregiously in their financial interests not to do so.
Rupert Murdoch’s legal argument — that it is in the interests of all his children that Lachlan be permitted permanent control of the companies to retain their current “editorial policy and content” — reflects that the companies’ business model is peddling resentment, grievance and division to keep its predominantly white, older, male audience enraged — and that it is a very financially successful model.
But the three other Murdoch children, Prudence, Elisabeth, and James, who are the subject of this argument, don’t buy the line that the company’s resentment-based business model is good for them. They’re fighting changes to a trust arrangement Rupert Murdoch once agreed was “irrevocable”. Clearly, for Rupert, there’s “irrevocable” in the sense that everyone else understands the word, and there’s “irrevocable” as he wants it to be — a lot like the difference between the real world and the fantasy world of woke elite conspiracies peddled by Fox News in the US, his papers in the UK, and his TV and newspaper outlets here.
Question is, what do Prudence, Elisabeth, and James Murdoch know that Anthony Albanese and other Labor politicians do not? In August 2022, the prime minister, accompanied by comic-relief sidekick Richard Marles and Foreign Minister Penny Wong, visited News Corp’s Sydney headquarters to pay court to Lachlan Murdoch and his editors.
Last night, Albanese and Marles, along with NSW premier Chris Minns and a host of business identities, joined Lachlan — standing in for Murdoch père — to “celebrate” the 60th anniversary of The Australian, an outlet that decades ago had some credibility but which these days consists almost entirely of partisan barracking for the Coalition (as admitted by its rattled “editor at large” Paul Kelly back in 2020) and incessant cultural warring. Those wars are usually on topics taken straight from the United States, and always with the goal of demonising their targets and inciting anger among the resentful white men who make up its readership.
The Australian is a tumour on our political process and a propaganda machine that is a permanent flurry of punches and kicks downward at the least powerful; it has to be the least aptly named media outlet in the country’s history. The one thing The Australian isn’t is Australian. Rupert Murdoch is an American. News Corp is an American company. And News Corp — hilariously for a company that rails at foreign tech giants — pays virtually no tax in Australia.
According to the Australian Tax Office’s corporate tax transparency data, News Corp last paid tax here when Barack Obama was president. Not for nothing did the Australian Tax Office identify the company as its biggest tax risk. The whole company has paid just $8 million in tax in the last decade — a fraction of the money taxpayers handed to the company while the Coalition was in power.
News Corp is a foreign company that leeches on taxpayers, interferes in Australian politics, and demonises real Australians. Why on earth are the prime minister and his deputy celebrating with them? In the belief that they can encourage the company to engage in more journalism and less right-wing propaganda?
A similar question could be asked about Federal Court Judge Michael Lee, who was also reported to have attended (Crikey has contacted the Federal Court to confirm Lee’s presence, which would be surprising given the possibility he might end up presiding over a defamation case involving News Corp or The Australian).
Labor’s leaders should learn from the example of Rupert’s estranged children: if they don’t trust their father, why on earth would any politician with integrity trust him?
