How does the Murdoch media set the whole media agenda? How does Murdoch narrative often become the Fairfax, ABC and even sometimes the Guardian narrative? That’s the next big questions that needs to be discussed. I'm here to do that. Thread.
Everyone is talking about Rudd’s slaying of the Murdoch ‘political party’, who have disguised themselves as journos, and waged ideological war against political parties and policies Murdoch wants killed. smh.com.au/politics/feder…
This is explosive. Peeps like me have been complaining about Murdoch for years, and have been labeled conspiracy theorists. But here we have an ex-PM who 100% knows exactly what went down, and so when he says Murdoch is a political party, he’s bringing the truth out of shadows.
Rudd mentioned that ‘Murdoch's print media has a disproportionate impact on setting the day's overall agenda’. I have some ideas about how this agenda filters into the other outlets and becomes a narrative tide, which it is impossible for less-powerful voices to swim against.
Important to note that this doesn’t happen for every Murdoch story, it doesn’t happen to every journalist, but it does happen, and sometimes those stories have huge impacts on every day Australians through changing policies, changing leaders, changing Australia.
It can, as Rudd alludes to, also mean that fake news, or news used to attack a politician, policy, party or govt, is able to circulate so fully, with such authority, that things that literally aren’t true are ‘made true’ through forceful, regular repetition.
Like money can be laundered, misinformation can be washed clean, made respectful, and become a zombie-lie which can’t be undone. It’s important we talk about this and fix it.
So, how does this happen? How does a Murdoch political party campaign influence the rest of the media? The first thing to know is that journalists hold their colleagues in the media in a higher regard then they hold the public, their audience.
They all believe their journalistic training, and success at being hired by a news organisation, leads them to be more objective, more honest, more committed to truth than anyone else. They think they see reality better than us.
Journos at all outlets also believe they’re watchdogs holding officials to account. So, even when a News Ltd journo is clearly not doing this, and is instead a player, interfering with politics to bring about result, other journos don’t change perception of colleagues as pure.
This means, that even if on some level a Fairfax journo knows Murdoch journalists are biased towards Murdoch’s views, and enact campaigns as Murdoch’s mouthpieces, they don’t let this knowledge change the way they view the NEWS produced by the Murdoch media.
If a story is broken by the Murdoch media, other journos, therefore, don’t write it off as political campaigning, as they should. It’s not every story, and it’s not every journo. But, the problem is, other outlets don’t seem to often differentiate amongst Murdoch stories.
You see evidence of this when journos at other outlets defend News Ltd journos using examples of pure, objective journalism, that is in the public interest, as evidence of News Ltd journos ‘doing good’. They say we shouldn’t write off News Ltd because of one example.
But, you don’t see journos at other outlets ever saying ‘News Ltd are reporting this but it’s clearly a politically motivated attack and we’ve found that what they’re saying isn’t true’. Just doesn’t happen. They hardly ever criticise their colleagues’ work.
It doesn’t help that they all live in a bubble together, and circulate around different organisations. They socialise together and mostly come from the same backgrounds. There is little diversity of views amongst them.
So, if Murdoch media are reporting something, other journos see it as perfectly legitimate, and they report it too. And then there’s the next problem. The characterisations used by the Murdoch journos become cemented in the rest of the reporting.
Villains are villains. Heroes are heroes. Victims are victims. Not many seem able to break out of these train-track character molds, to tell story from a different perspective. Since journos believe all journos are objective, they forget to actually be objective themselves.
This leads to a Murdoch narrative not just setting the agenda for what is important to report (what makes the news), but also setting the narrative – that is – the character roles of the people in the story. The other outlets follow.
Then, when new events and information happen, relating to the original story, they frame this new information in the same characterisations as each other, and no one is able to break out of these Murdoch-constructed narratives.
And, that, folks, is how the Murdoch political party has such toxic and dangerous impact on the country. It is not just his employees doing his bidding, but, through the outcomes explained above, the rest of the Australian media too, including our public broadcaster.
You see examples of it in so many stories, it’s maddening. For instance, the focus on Labor leadership tensions that literally don’t exist. A campaign against the Carbon Price and Mining Tax. No focus on Turnbull's NBN failures. Gillard framed as illegitimate. List is endless.
Can I just reiterate at this point that I’m researching this stuff for my PhD, so this is all backed up by quantitative analysis of news media. If anyone in interested in what I’m doing and would like to find out more, please email me here: vic_rollison@yahoo.com.au. End.
