Further News Corp Bias in Favour of Scott Morrison
Earlier in the week I published an article about what I perceived to be blatant media bias in favour of the Liberal Party and Scott Morrison during this 2022 Federal Election campaign.
It has been brought to my attention by one of my fellow branch members (named Don) that The Courier Mail (CM) appears to only be publishing letters to the editor which are favouring Morrison and the Liberal Party, and normal progressive contributors like him are not having their letters published, even though he has been a regular published contributor to the CM for many years before the 2022 Federal Election was called. As you may recall from my above mentioned article, the CM is owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp Australia (NCA).
Don is a retired Honorary Associate Professor. As a scientist, he has studied and worked at Sydney University, the University of Queensland and Cambridge University. His writing is always very astute and courteous. Set out below is a letter Don has tried twice to have published by the CM this week, to bring some balance to what are otherwise very biased articles, only for his letter not to be published:
“PM Scott Morrison’s confected outrage at Labor’s campaign against cashless debit cards for pensioners, contrasts with the LNP’s baseless yet successful scare campaign on “Labor’s” death taxes in the 2019 election (and still continuing) despite no basis in facts as noted by columnist Mathew Killoran (C-M, Apr 20). Indeed, they were based on comments by Anthony Albanese more than 30 years ago, since retracted and not repeated. By contrast, the Morrison government is running a continuing programme to expand the use of cashless debit cards, currently trialling them for welfare recipients in remote indigenous communities such as Cape York, and JobSeeker payments in regional communities such as Bundaberg/Hervey Bay. The Department of Social Services website notes these trials will continue to December 2022, and offers the invitation: “People receiving the Age Pension may volunteer to participate.” As recently as February 2020 Social Services Minister Anne Ruston said “we’re seeking to put all income management on to the universal platform, which is the cashless debit card”. The Morrison government now says it has ruled out extending cashless debit cards to pensioners in the next term of parliament, but clearly it intends to keep extending them to other welfare recipients, and some (or all?) pensioners will be fair game in future parliaments if we continue to re-elect this government. Beware the thin edge of this wedge.”
There are no passages of Don’s letter which could be construed as inflammatory or abusive. Indeed, Don is very reserved with both his use of language and the subject matter of his letter.
As I’ve recently explained (on my Facebook page), the Morrison Government amended the legislation at the start of 2020 which expanded the use of the Indue Card to apply to pensioners. Notwithstanding his stage managed objections, Morrison has not said he will repeal the 2020 amendments, nor has he accepted Anthony Albanese‘s invitation to scrap the Indue Card.
What concerns me is the NCA bias, which I’m informed by my fellow progressive friends on social media is just as blatant and misleading in the other capital cities in which NCA publishes newspapers (I believe only The West Australian is not owned by NCA, but the reporting in that paper has also been blatantly biased in favour of the Liberal Party), is undermining a foundation stone of our democracy, namely the Fourth Estate. As I also reported to you in my above mentioned article, Labor and the Greens have sought in December 2021 for a Judicial Inquiry to be conducted into media ownership and the quality of the news being reported in this country.
If a person of immense education and work qualifications is now being shut out as a contributor to the letters to the editor of the CM, then we are living in a compromised system of politics and major media business interests.
This is not the Australia I was born into in 1969.
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9 comments
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Kathryn
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GL
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Sully Of Tuross Head
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Canguro
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Harry Lime
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Phil Pryor
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New England Cocky
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Kerri
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Mr Bronte ALLAN
Return to home pageWhen is this internationally reviled, mean-spirited, totally self-serving, right-wing biased old bstd going to do the world a HUGE favour and cark it? Murdoch is a soulless predator who’s manipulation of the truth; his character-assassinating slander against anyone and everyone who oppose him; his appalling, totally biased allegiance to the Lying Nasty Parasites, which appalling regime has proven to be the absolute worst, most corrupt, misogynistic and dangerously undemocratic government in Australia’s history! Murdoch’s constant undemocratic interference and influence in the governance of our nation DESPITE the fact that this marauding predator contemptuously dumped his Australian citizenship to become a 100% AMERICAN citizen in order to corrupt, infiltrate and manipulate the media in the USA, should NEVER be tolerated! Murdoch is like a malignant cancer destroying, annihilating and infecting everything he touches! Murdoch ticks every box as an unconscionable, self-serving psychopath and megalomaniacal narcissist who is absolutely, and justifiably, detested in Australia, the UK, the USA and by other citizens around the world! The ONLY thing that keeps this bitter, twisted wrinkled old goat alive is PURE HATE for anyone who does not share his twisted, callously inhumane, perverted and self-obsessed neoliberal capitalistic view of the world!
Kathryn,
The problem is that Lachlan appears to be just as right wing, if not more so, than the shrivelled monstrosity himself. When he finally kicks the bucket No. 1 son may well be even more vile.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/lachlan-murdoch-is-even-more-of-a-right-wing-ultra-than-his-old-man
https://www.washingtonpost.com/media/2022/04/09/fox-news-lachlan-murdoch-attacks-1619-project-covid-measures/
The Australian published an article on the 1st October 2019 about Morrison praising China.
How convenient they have forgotten that as they attack Marles.
Link Here https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=Morrison+praising+China
Of course this will be howled down and rightly condemned as a comment from someone living in la la land and hopelessly out of touch with reality and realpolitik, but it’s not as if anyone has to work for Murdoch’s evil empire. Anyone with a shred of conscience and ethical responsibility would say ‘go f*ck yourself, I’d rather roast over a burning pyre than sell my soul to a devil like you just for a fat salary.’
In lal la land, they’d all give the wrinkled prune the middle finger and work elsewhere.
Then where would he be, without paid-off labour to do his dirty work?
It won’t happen though. And before I get howled down, I know that as much as you do. Money, and lots of it, seems to send men’s (and women’s) brains into some sort of a zone where the best-practice principles of human behaviour are suspended or supplanted with whatever it takes to stay on the gravy train.
Yeah Kathryn…what you said.Not to worry,Satan is calling in his markers,and there will be no negotiations.Same, same for the Morrison thing.
Rupert Sicko-Dicko-Psycho-Ego is a reconstructed manifestation of surgically enhanced foreskins. He was dipped in the Jordan as were his family members, is a treacherous dropout ex-Australian, a citizen of USA, and it seems a citizen, by arrangement, of Israel, perhaps as the ultimate bolthole and/or refuge. He knows how to do much without being caught usually, thieving, lying, blackmailing, coercing, threatening, phonetapping, hiring and firing to get an elite guard of brown, black and red shirted superserfs, where praise, blame, enlistment, indoctrination, empowerment to go on crusades, righteous filth, deep sick propaganda and utter commitment to Caponelike sevice are required. What is there at the core is the putrid drive to dominate, to erect a monumental penetrator to achieve total climactic relief. The World is Merde dog’s herd on heat…
Murdoch media-ocrity supporting LABOR? Never!! Since Gough declined to give Rupert an ambassadorial appointment, preferably to Washington, after the 1972 LABOR election win.
May I politely suggest Don stops giving his money to Murdoch?
It shocks me that people on this page would ever subscribe to any Murdoch product?
If you need to research the views of the worst person in the world, then go to your local library or some other place where they purchase his rags as a public service.
He deserves to starve but we still keep watching Foxtel and reading his BS.
#Canguro
I am, albeit at a distance, howling with praise for your comments.
#New England Cocky
They did once support Rudd.
In the first week of the election, our daily paper, The Advertiser (a mudrake rag), published a two page spread on pages 2 & 3 as to how they were going to be unbiased, fair & equal in their campaign coverage! Yeah, right! Looks like old mudrake–an American–is just fulfilling his “duty” (sic), in doing as he always has, praising liberal crap, damning Labor anything! Bastard, he sure does live up to the name I give him–mudrake! Great article, & so true too Michael!