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posted by martyb on Thursday November 12 2020, @09:49PM   Printer-friendly
from the upside-down-under dept.

Australian parliament to probe Rupert Murdoch's media dominance:

Australia's parliament will launch an inquiry into media ownership, a prominent senator said, after more than half a million people signed a petition demanding a probe into Rupert Murdoch's dominance of the news industry.

The online petition attracted a record number of signatories after being launched on October 12 by former Labor Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, a frequent target of newspapers controlled by Murdoch's News Corp.

[...] The country's opposition parties united behind the move in the Senate to effectively sidestep the conservative government, which enjoys strong support from the Murdoch press and had not acted on the petition's demand for a royal commission.

In launching the petition, Rudd decried News Corp as a "cancer on our democracy" operating an effective "monopoly".

"This power is routinely used to attack opponents in business and politics by blending editorial opinion with news reporting," the petition stated. "These facts chill free speech and undermine public debate."

Rudd and Turnbull will be called to give evidence at Senate inquiry into media diversity:

The former prime ministers Kevin Rudd and Malcolm Turnbull will be called to give evidence at a Senate inquiry into media diversity that will examine the dominance of News Corp Australia and its impact on democracy.

The Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young won support for the inquiry on Wednesday following the popularity of Rudd's petition for a royal commission into the Murdoch media.

Hanson-Young told Guardian Australia it was essential the two former leaders, who have been outspoken about the role of the Murdoch press, be allowed to "speak frankly and have the protection of parliamentary privilege, which is important when you're talking about issues of power and influence".

News Corp Australia's editors and commercial executives, alongside independent and regional and rural editors, would also be called to give evidence, she said.

Kevin Rudd - former Prime Minister from the Labor Party - that's the "progressive party" in US parlance
Malcolm Turnbull - former Prime Minister from the Liberal Party - those are the "conservative wing"
Both of them were attacked by Murdock's publications in their time.

The petition (disclaimer) which I signed, because it's good to cancel a near-monopolist who lies. I'm having a good kind of surprise now seeing the Parliament went with it, usually they don't because there's no law to force them to.


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  • (Score: 5, Informative) by Mykl on Thursday November 12 2020, @11:03PM (3 children)

    by Mykl (1112) on Thursday November 12 2020, @11:03PM (#1076797)

    It's being instigated (at least in part) due to a concerted effort by one of Australia's ex-Prime Ministers, Kevin Rudd. Kevin was elected in 2007, ousted in a leadership spill in 2010 (the Prime Minister is elected by the parliamentary members of their party and can be voted out of the Prime Minister position at any time) and then won it back in a counter-ouster in 2013. He then lost the election 3 months later. Kevin is very good at holding grudges and has not gone quietly into that good night.

    His initial ouster was due to a concerted negative campaign against him by the Murdoch media, who also treated his successor, Julia Gillard, poorly. Murdoch backed Tony Abbott's Liberal Party (the name may confuse Americans - the Liberal Party in Australia are the conservatives), who went on to become Prime Minister in 2013 and was a disaster.

    It's taken Kevin 7 years to get enough people behind his campaign to look at Murdoch more seriously. I would say that his arguments gained a great deal of traction due to the behavior of Fox News in the US, as well as a drastic lurch into 'crazy town' territory for some of his local media more recently (The Australian newspaper being a significant example).

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  • (Score: 2) by Mykl on Thursday November 12 2020, @11:12PM

    by Mykl (1112) on Thursday November 12 2020, @11:12PM (#1076799)

    Here's his announcement of the petition [twitter.com] that got this going

  • (Score: 2) by krishnoid on Friday November 13 2020, @01:53AM (1 child)

    by krishnoid (1156) on Friday November 13 2020, @01:53AM (#1076865)

    It's taken Kevin 7 years to get enough people behind his campaign to look at Murdoch more seriously. I would say that his arguments gained a great deal of traction due to the behavior of Fox News in the US

    Ah, a populist candidate. They're going to regret not letting him in on the plot to let Murdoch undermine the United States via Fox News until it was confused and fragmented enough to be unable to resist an Australian invasion.

    Murdoch was going to try moving from hydroxychloroquine to encouraging Americans to lick cane toads ("Why not try it? I've heard a lot of good stories.") to cure SARS-COV-2, and he would have gotten away with it, too, if it wasn't for that pesky Kevin.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 13 2020, @04:22AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 13 2020, @04:22AM (#1076915)

      Damn, we missed out on a good export of cane toads!

      I mean, China won't take 'em any more...