tag:theconversation.com,2011:/ca/topics/daily-telegraph-5001/articlesDaily Telegraph – The Conversation2023-09-21T15:54:12Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2132832023-09-21T15:54:12Z2023-09-21T15:54:12ZRupert Murdoch and the rise and fall of the press barons: how much power do newspapers still have?<p>Global media tycoon Rupert Murdoch has <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/21/business/media/rupert-murdoch-fox-retire.html">announced his retirement</a> as chairman of Fox and News Corp, <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-sky-takeover-and-the-next-generation-of-the-murdoch-dynasty-97889">making way for his son Lachlan</a>. He has been demonised as a puppet master who would pull the strings of politicians behind the scenes, as a man with too much power. But what influence did he and his fellow media moguls really wield?</p>
<p>The day after the 1992 UK general election, Murdoch’s tabloid <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0049089X15001854">The Sun claimed credit</a> for the Tory victory with the notorious headline “It Was The Sun What Won it”. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2012/apr/25/rupert-murdoch-sun-wot-won-it-tasteless">Murdoch subsequently denied</a> he had such influence.</p>
<p>But in 1995, and with another general election on the horizon, Labour leader Tony Blair certainly thought it was worth courting the media mogul. Blair, along with his chief press secretary Alistair Campbell, <a href="https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/389153/diaries-volume-one-by-alastair-campbell/9780099493457">travelled to Hayman Island</a>, Australia, to address a News Corp. conference. Two years later The Sun turned its back on the Conservatives and backed New Labour, which emerged victorious from that year’s general election. </p>
<p>Commentators have argued that Murdoch’s US media empire, notably Fox News, gave Donald Trump significant public support in his quest for presidential power. Although Murdoch now seems to have gone cold on Trump, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/sep/19/rupert-murdoch-dominion-suit-trump-fox-michael-wolff-book">his latest biography</a> quotes the tycoon’s ex-wife Jerry Hall as telling him: “You helped make him president.”</p>
<p>More than a century ago, commentators were worrying about the power of the “press barons”. The archetype of this malign figure was Lord Northcliffe, who as <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/59794">Winston Churchill put it</a>, “felt himself to be possessed of formidable power” after helping to unseat a prime minister and install the next one. According to Churchill, “armed with the solemn prestige of The Times in one hand and the ubiquity of the Daily Mail in the other”, during the first world war Northcliffe “aspired to exercise a commanding influence on events”.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/288776/original/file-20190820-170910-8bv1s7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/288776/original/file-20190820-170910-8bv1s7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/288776/original/file-20190820-170910-8bv1s7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/288776/original/file-20190820-170910-8bv1s7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/288776/original/file-20190820-170910-8bv1s7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/288776/original/file-20190820-170910-8bv1s7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/288776/original/file-20190820-170910-8bv1s7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p><strong><em>This article is part of Conversation Insights</em></strong>
<br><em>The Insights team generates <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/insights-series-71218">long-form journalism</a> derived from interdisciplinary research. The team is working with academics from different backgrounds who have been engaged in projects aimed at tackling societal and scientific challenges.</em></p>
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<p>Of course, the media landscape has changed dramatically since then. Indeed, it has even been transformed in the years since The Sun’s political interventions of the 1990s. Today’s press barons have had to come to terms with a digital revolution which has uprooted the traditional business model of newspapers: readership has declined and advertising revenues have collapsed, hoovered up by tech giants such as Google and Meta. Local newspapers have borne the brunt of the financial damage caused by this and by collapsing print sales, but national newspapers have struggled too.</p>
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<img alt="Four frontpages from The Sun newspaper" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/549421/original/file-20230920-31-4aptm3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/549421/original/file-20230920-31-4aptm3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=751&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/549421/original/file-20230920-31-4aptm3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=751&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/549421/original/file-20230920-31-4aptm3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=751&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/549421/original/file-20230920-31-4aptm3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=944&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/549421/original/file-20230920-31-4aptm3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=944&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/549421/original/file-20230920-31-4aptm3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=944&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Front pages of The Sun backing - and mocking - different political leaders.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">wikipedia</span></span>
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<p>One good example is the Telegraph Media Group: bought by the Barclay Brothers for £665m in 2004, but valued at just £200m by 2019. The group is now <a href="https://www.theneweuropean.co.uk/the-telegraph-proves-a-difficult-sale/">up for sale again</a>.</p>
<p>Meanwhile “alt truthers”, like Russell Brand, amass huge followings on social media while railing against a “media elite” that seems to include most of the traditional newspaper press. </p>
<p>As the 2024 election looms, it is timely to consider how the power and influence of newspapers – and newspaper owners – has waxed and waned, and to ask what this history might tell us about the state of the press and public life in the UK today.</p>
<h2>A ‘free press’ is born</h2>
<p>By the middle of the 19th century, the British newspaper industry was one of the most diverse and sophisticated in the world. Campaigners had, over the previous decades, successfully lobbied to see the dismantling of government restrictions and taxes on the press. Britain now had a “free press”, with no prior censorship of what could be printed and an essentially free market with little state regulation. Campaigners hoped this would usher in a period of democratic political expression in print. The free market would supposedly give everyone a voice, allowing a multiplicity of viewpoints to be published each day.</p>
<p>For a fleeting moment, this seemed to be borne out in an immediate flourishing of new titles. In the six years after the 1855 repeal of the newspaper stamp duty, <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Powers-of-the-Press-Newspapers-Power-and-the-Public-in-Nineteenth-Century/Jones/p/book/9781138276796#:%7E:text=Aled%20Jones%20addresses%20the%20problem,explores%20the%20social%20and%20intellectual">492 new newspapers were established</a>, many of them in provincial towns and cities which had never previously had their own newspapers. The reforming Manchester Liberal MP John Bright applauded the <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/dawn-of-the-cheap-press-in-victorian-britain-9781472511546/">“great revolution of opinion on many public questions”</a> that was taking place thanks to “the freedom of the newspaper press”. </p>
<p>However, many of the new titles quickly went to the wall and during the later 19th century a very different type of newspaper industry emerged. A new generation of entrepreneurs realised that they could benefit financially from market opportunities by applying novel technologies and techniques to newspaper production and distribution. </p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-election-wot-the-sun-and-the-rest-of-the-uk-tabloids-never-won-79208">The election wot The Sun (and the rest of the UK tabloids) never won</a>
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<p>Recently constructed national and international telegraph networks allowed them to bring in the latest news from around the country, and around the world, scooping their rivals. Steam engines could be used to power printing presses, allowing them to print vast numbers of newspapers quickly enough to sell them the same day. And steam trains provided a way to get those newspapers to readers across the country using the new rail network. Fleet Street became the centre of a truly national industry. </p>
<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Levy-Lawson,_1st_Baron_Burnham">Edward Levy</a> (later Levy-Lawson) led the way. From 1855 he owned The Daily Telegraph: the name of the paper was itself a reference to the new technologies being deployed in the newspaper industry. </p>
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<img alt="Full length photo of a balding man with glasses taken in the 1900s." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/547481/original/file-20230911-28-3n6j88.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/547481/original/file-20230911-28-3n6j88.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=1132&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/547481/original/file-20230911-28-3n6j88.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=1132&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/547481/original/file-20230911-28-3n6j88.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=1132&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/547481/original/file-20230911-28-3n6j88.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1423&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/547481/original/file-20230911-28-3n6j88.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1423&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/547481/original/file-20230911-28-3n6j88.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1423&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Edward Levy Lawson 1st Baron Burnham. Image taken in the early 1900s.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/use-this-image/?agreed=true&email=&form=cc&mkey=mw177321">NPG</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span>
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<p>Levy-Lawson’s Telegraph combined serious, up-to-date news reporting with American-style journalistic innovations, including lurid crime reporting, plenty of sports coverage and publicity stunts, such as backing H. M. Stanley’s <a href="https://www.joh.cam.ac.uk/library/library_exhibitions/schoolresources/exploration/stanley">1874 expedition across Africa on the Congo River</a>.</p>
<p>The purpose of all this was to sell more newspapers. By 1877, the Telegraph’s circulation approached 250,000 – the highest daily sales figure for any newspaper anywhere in the world. </p>
<p>Levy-Lawson saw newspapers primarily as a business, not as a route to political influence or social advancement. Although he was made Lord Burnham in 1903, the established elite looked down on his commercial origins. That snobbery was reinforced by antisemitic prejudice. The most disgusting public attacks on Levy-Lawson came from Henry Labouchere, editor of a newspaper called Truth, <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/20082684">who raved against the influence</a> of “Hebrew barons” on British public life.</p>
<p>Levy-Lawson established a template for a new type of press proprietor who was, first and foremost, a businessman. These entrepreneurs formed public companies to raise the vast sums of capital required to build their newspaper empires. They priced their newspapers aggressively low to attract the largest possible readership. </p>
<p>As a result, sales revenue fell well below enormous running costs. They made up the shortfall by raking in money from advertisers attracted by the large circulations and national reach of their papers. The battle was now for scale. Each press baron wanted to control the biggest possible newspaper empire.</p>
<h2>The Napoleon of Fleet Street</h2>
<p>By the late 19th century, a fortune could be made from owning newspapers. Alfred Harmsworth came from a modest background but built up a stable of publications aimed at entertaining, amusing and interesting the enormous new literate public created by Victorian universal primary education and rapid urbanisation.</p>
<p>Harmsworth used a range of eye-catching schemes to publicise his papers, including a competition that awarded the winner a pound a week for the rest of their life. By 1894, his newspapers and periodicals had a <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1831895.The_Life_and_Death_of_the_Press_Barons">combined circulation of almost two million</a>, constituting the world’s largest publishing business.</p>
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<img alt="Sepia photo of a gentleman reading a newspaper in 1896." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/547489/original/file-20230911-17-e89b6a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/547489/original/file-20230911-17-e89b6a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=445&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/547489/original/file-20230911-17-e89b6a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=445&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/547489/original/file-20230911-17-e89b6a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=445&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/547489/original/file-20230911-17-e89b6a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=560&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/547489/original/file-20230911-17-e89b6a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=560&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/547489/original/file-20230911-17-e89b6a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=560&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Alfred Harmsworth, 1st Viscount Northcliffe in 1896, the year he launched The Daily Mail.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portrait/mw111194/Alfred-Harmsworth-1st-Viscount-Northcliffe?">NPG</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span>
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<p>In 1896 Harmsworth launched the Daily Mail, a daily paper selling for a halfpenny. It targeted an aspirational lower-middle-class national readership, made up of women as well as men – an attractive demographic for advertisers. The paper was to contain everything that could be expected from a “serious” daily, presented in a respectable-looking package, but with more life, human interest and entertainment.</p>
<p>Content was condensed into short articles, presented in a punchy, accessible style, aimed at the new breed of office workers and commuters. Harmsworth’s brother Harold (later Lord Rothermere) ran the commercial side of the business on efficient, industrial lines.</p>
<p>In 1905, Harmsworth was made Lord Northcliffe. He chose this title in part because it allowed him, half-jokingly, to initial his correspondence “N”, in the style of Napoleon. He became infamous for his dictatorial, erratic, pedantic, obsessive and abusive management style. He would sometimes appoint two people to the same post and make them compete with one another to keep their job. Employees faced lavish rewards, alternating with frequent threats of dismissal. Fleet Street journalists <a href="https://archive.org/details/greatoutsidersno0000tayl_a3p6">warned prospective job applicants</a> that Northcliffe would “suck out your brains, then sack you”.</p>
<p>Northcliffe cultivated informers in the Daily Mail office to tell him what was going on behind the scenes and to monitor private telephone conversations. He liked his staff to be his “creatures”. A later <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Dangerous_Estate.html?id=P_Y2AAAAIAAJ&redir_esc=y">newspaper editor thought</a> that there was “something more than a little nauseating about his relations with many of his chief associates; one wonders how they could stomach the humiliations he imposed and retain their self-respect.” </p>
<p>The political elite, and many journalists, <a href="https://archive.org/details/greatoutsidersno0000tayl_a3p6">looked down on Northcliffe</a> and his popular papers. Lord Salisbury famously dismissed the Mail as being produced “by officeboys for officeboys”. Northcliffe’s former employee, E.T. Raymond, thought that the press baron had “an uncanny way of arriving at the results of thought without thought itself”. Another contemporary described Northcliffe as “brainless, formless, familiar and impudent”. </p>
<p>Northcliffe’s purchase of The Times in 1908 marked an attempt to expand his political influence, but some contemporaries still doubted whether he was very important. <a href="https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Journals_and_Letters_of_Reginald_Viscoun/dmRZngEACAAJ?hl=en">Lord Esher remarked</a> that “he evidently loves power, but his education is defective, and he has no idea to what uses power can be put”. Many of Northcliffe’s press crusades seemed harmlessly apolitical, such as his campaigns to promote the consumption of wholemeal bread or to grow better sweet-peas.</p>
<p>However, others worried about the consequences of allowing a small number of very rich men, running enormous corporate conglomerates, to dominate the British newspaper industry. The writer and journalist <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/The_Influence_of_the_Press.html?id=mG9AAAAAIAAJ&redir_esc=y">R. A. Scott-James</a> lamented in 1913 that “privilege” now dominated public debate, and that the press had become “a vehicle for false notions and antisocial ideas”. </p>
<p>The writer Norman Angell (a former Northcliffe employee who subsequently became a Nobel-prize-winning peace activist) similarly argued that the “modern industrialised Press” had become the most powerful instrument for the “capture of the mind by our industrial aristocracy”. Newspapers, <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/The_Press_and_the_Organisation_of_Societ.html?id=fjJAAAAAYAAJ&redir_esc=y">Angell claimed</a>, now worked to “exploit human weaknesses” for the purpose of profit, corrupting public debate. </p>
<h2>Press, politics and the first world war</h2>
<p>Concern about the power of press barons grew exponentially during WWI. From 1914, Northcliffe used his newspapers <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11063463/Daily-Mail-founder-Alfred-Harmsworths-blistering-denunciation-Lord-Kitchener.html">constantly to critique</a> the Liberal government’s coordination of the war effort. His main targets were Prime Minister Herbert Asquith and the secretary of state for war, Lord Kitchener. In 1915, Northcliffe accused Kitchener, in print, of failing to supply the army with enough high explosive artillery shells. Initially, this made the Mail unpopular. Circulation dropped dramatically and the paper was ceremonially burned on the floor of the London Stock Exchange.</p>
<p>However, as its claims about government mismanagement began to seem justified, the Mail’s popularity recovered. The “shell scandal” contributed to the fall of the Liberal government and the establishment of a reconstituted coalition under Asquith’s leadership.</p>
<p>The ambitious Liberal politician David Lloyd George worked closely with Northcliffe in order to further his own career and Lloyd George was rewarded when he was made Minister of Munitions in the wake of the shell scandal.</p>
<p>But Northcliffe’s criticism of the government continued and Cabinet members worried that German propagandists were exploiting his public attacks on the British war efforts to undermine morale. Northcliffe’s campaigning finally helped precipitate the resignation of Asquith in December 1916. The Daily News (a national newspaper founded in 1846 by none other than Charles Dickens) branded Northcliffe a <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6711394-northcliffe">“press dictator”</a> for his role in the prime minister’s downfall. </p>
<p>Northcliffe’s ally Lloyd George took Asquith’s place as prime minister. However, Lloyd George now cannily kept the press baron at arm’s length, giving him relatively minor official jobs that came with little power while making it difficult for him to attack a government with which he was now identified. At the end of the war, <a href="https://archive.org/details/greatoutsidersno0000tayl_a3p6">Lloyd George finally broke openly with Northcliffe</a>, attacking the press baron in a vitriolic speech delivered in the House of Commons. Northcliffe was deluded, Lloyd George suggested, in thinking that as part of his “great task of saving the world” he had the right to dictate the terms of the <a href="https://en.chateauversailles.fr/discover/history/key-dates/treaty-versailles-1919#:%7E:text=After%20four%20years%20of%20devastating,break%20out%20twenty%20years%20later.">1919 peace settlement</a> with Germany. Lloyd George spoke of Northcliffe’s “diseased vanity” and tapped his own forehead meaningfully as he delivered the speech to the assembled MPs.</p>
<p>By this point Northcliffe had become a serious liability to Lloyd George, and was indeed ill, both physically and mentally. His behaviour had become more erratic and aggressive than ever, and his language increasingly foul and paranoid. At one point he was reported to have brandished a revolver at his doctor. </p>
<p>Northcliffe died in 1922 leaving no legitimate heirs, although he had had several mistresses and two secret families. Management of his media empire passed to his brother, Lord Rothermere, who sold The Times and went on to expand in more profitable directions, conducting vicious commercial warfare against his rivals. Rothermere later became a prominent public supporter of Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists and an admirer and personal acquaintance of Hitler.</p>
<h2>The rise of Beaverbrook</h2>
<p>The first world war also saw the rise to prominence of another archetypal press baron, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Maxwell-Aitken-Beaverbrook">Max Aitken</a>. Like Northcliffe, Aitken came from a humble background. He was born in Ontario, raised in New Brunswick, and made his fortune through somewhat dubious Canadian business dealings. He came to England in 1910, forged new political connections and was elected as a Conservative MP.</p>
<p>By the end of 1916 Aitken had purchased a controlling interest in the Daily Express, the main rival to the Daily Mail. He was involved in the behind-the-scenes political intrigue that toppled Asquith as prime minister and brought Lloyd George to power that year, though his exact role was never made clear. Lloyd George treated Aitken more generously than he had Northcliffe: Aitken was made Lord Beaverbrook and in 1918 was appointed minister of information, taking charge of British wartime propaganda and entering the cabinet.</p>
<p>During the 1920s and 1930s, Beaverbrook turned the Daily Express into the biggest-selling newspaper in the UK. The paper adopted an aspirational, aggressive, populist tone to appeal to a broad audience and maximise advertising revenue. Beaverbrook used the Express to support his political allies, and to attack enemies like the Conservative leader, Stanley Baldwin. </p>
<p>Following the Wall Street Crash, Beaverbrook launched his “Empire Crusade” in the Express, seeking to turn the British empire into a tariff-protected economic union (a little like an English-speaking version of the later European Union). This campaign, also supported by Lord Rothermere of the Daily Mail, constituted a further direct threat to the leadership of Baldwin, now prime minister. </p>
<p>In a speech in parliament, Baldwin famously <a href="https://www.kiplingsociety.co.uk/quotation/quotes_harlot.htm">used words provided by his cousin Rudyard Kipling</a> to castigate Rothermere and Beaverbrook. He argued that by weaponising “direct falsehoods, misrepresentation, half-truths” the press barons aimed at “power without responsibility – the prerogative of the harlot throughout the ages”. </p>
<p>Baldwin eventually defeated Beaverbrook’s crusade, but the press baron continued to prosecute his personal vendetta. In supporting the embattled Edward VIII during the abdication crisis of 1936, Beaverbrook admitted in private that his main aim was to <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Walter_Monckton_The_Life_of_Viscount_Mon.html?id=0ssYxgEACAAJ&redir_esc=y">“bugger Baldwin”</a>. </p>
<h2>Conrad Black - the ‘moneylogue’</h2>
<p>Half a century later another wealthy Canadian, Conrad Black, used his fortune to build his own press empire. Black inherited substantial Canadian business holdings from his father, which he refocused on newspaper ownership. During the 1980s and 1990s he built up a vast portfolio of media investments in north America, the UK, Israel and Australia. In Britain, his key possession was the Telegraph Group.</p>
<p>Unlike some other notable press barons, Black revelled in the glamorous lifestyle that his wealth brought him. Newspapers were, for him, partly a status symbol. “The deferences (sic) and preferments” that the UK’s political culture “bestows upon the owners of great newspapers are satisfying,” <a href="https://www.panmacmillan.com/authors/max-hastings/editor/9781447269809#:%7E:text=Editor%3A%20A%20Memoir%20is%20above,Hastings%20is%20a%20brilliant%20reporter.">as he once put it</a>. But his press investments also helped fund his lavish spending. By the early 1990s, The Daily Telegraph was generating substantial profits and supporting Black’s other businesses interests. </p>
<p>Max Hastings, editor of The Daily Telegraph <a href="https://www.panmacmillan.com/authors/max-hastings/editor/9781447269809#:%7E:text=Editor%3A%20A%20Memoir%20is%20above,Hastings%20is%20a%20brilliant%20reporter.">between 1986 and 1995</a>, concluded from his time working for Black that it was, at root, all about the money.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Whatever the professed convictions of proprietors, most are moneylogues rather than ideologues. Their decisions are driven by commercial imperatives. Stripped of their own rhetoric, the political convictions of most British proprietors throughout history add up to an uncomplicated desire to make the world a safe place for rich men to live in.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>True to form, Black anticipated the coming slump in the newspaper industry and sold off many of his press interests while their value was still high, including the Telegraph Group in 2004. </p>
<p>In 2007, Black was sentenced for fraud in the US and served 37 months in prison. In 2019, US President Donald Trump granted him a <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/conrad-black-pardon-trump-1.5137985">full pardon</a>. The previous year Black had published a flattering biography: <a href="https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/05/book-excerpt-donald-trump-a-president-like-no-other-conrad-black/">Donald J. Trump: a President Like No Other</a>. Commentators were left to draw their own conclusions.</p>
<h2>Enter the ‘Dirty Digger’</h2>
<p>The preeminent press baron of our time has, of course, been <a href="https://theconversation.com/rupert-murdoch-how-a-22-year-old-zealous-laborite-turned-into-a-tabloid-tsar-204914">Rupert Murdoch</a>, who from the 1960s extended his Australian newspaper empire to the UK (buying The Sun and The News of the World in 1968 and The Times in 1981). From the 1970s he also made inroads into the US newspaper industry.</p>
<p>Murdoch established a reputation for selling newspapers using previously unacceptable levels of sensationalism and sex (Private Eye magazine labelled him the “Dirty Digger”). He later bought into the global film and television industry, building a US$17bn (about £14bn) fortune and establishing a reputation <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2023/04/rupert-murdoch-cover-story">for meddling in politics</a> around the world.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/rupert-murdoch-how-a-22-year-old-zealous-laborite-turned-into-a-tabloid-tsar-204914">Rupert Murdoch: how a 22-year-old 'zealous Laborite' turned into a tabloid tsar</a>
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<p><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/28/books/review/Carr-t.html">Biographer Michael Wolff</a> has suggested that Murdoch does <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/193219/the-man-who-owns-the-news-by-michael-wolff/">not greatly value</a> his personal wealth or relationships, writing: “Working isn’t the means to an end; it’s the end. It’s one man’s war – a relentless, nasty, inch-by-inch campaign.”</p>
<p>According to Wolff, what Murdoch loves is playing the game of high-stakes business, being in the room where it happens, doing the deal, owning more newspapers, and destroying his rivals. He enjoys gossip and gathering information about those with political power, using it to protect his commercial interests and to support the political agendas of those he favours. Beneficiaries have included Margaret Thatcher, Blair and Trump. </p>
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<p>In running his media concerns, like Northcliffe and Beaverbrook before him, Murdoch is aggressive, interventionist and hands-on. Wolff claims that Murdoch did not want his employees to be partners but would rather they serve him as subordinates, and so surrounds himself with sycophants. He is seemingly willing to accept short-term financial losses to secure long-term market dominance. This approach is rooted in the golden age of the press barons, when the dominant business strategy was to take over or shut down the competition, allowing the victor to rake in windfall profits unopposed.</p>
<p>Perhaps this strategy still makes sense: as the profits made by traditional newspapers dwindle, the remaining rewards might go to the last man standing.</p>
<p>Murdoch’s media empire has endured its periods of commercial crisis. The disastrous failures of journalistic ethics at the News of the World embroiled the newspaper in the phone hacking scandal and the paper was closed down by Murdoch in 2011. In the US in 2023, Fox News settled a lawsuit over on-air accusations concerning the role of voting machines during the US elections of 2020, <a href="https://apnews.com/article/fox-news-dominion-lawsuit-trial-trump-2020-0ac71f75acfacc52ea80b3e747fb0afe">costing the network</a> almost US$800m (£650m). </p>
<p>However, other elements in Murdoch’s empire continue to produce a profit. After an initial near-disaster, Murdoch’s takeover of The Wall Street Journal has proved a financial success. He paid US$5.6bn (about £4.4bn) for it in 2007. Now thanks to a stunningly successful drive for subscribers (3.78m of them, 84% digital-only) the paper is worth around US$10bn (£8bn). In the UK, successful management of the digital transformation has similarly meant that The Times and The Sunday Times have gone from a £70m annual loss in 2009 to a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2023/apr/28/murdoch-empire-succession-fox-news-settlement">£73m profit in 2022</a>.</p>
<h2>Press barons of the future</h2>
<p>The figure of the press baron has recently found a new fictional archetype in <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/logan-roy-111726">Logan Roy</a>, the dark heart of HBO’s series Succession. Roy has a number of reasons for wanting to own newspapers and other media outlets. Primarily, he simply needs to acquire more stuff, compulsively buying new titles to build an empire capable of eradicating all challengers. </p>
<p>Like Murdoch, expansion – doing the deal – is for Roy a reward in and of itself. He also loves the influence his media interests bring and wants to dominate those with political power, partly to protect his business, but largely because he craves control. The wealth and the lifestyle that accompany his media empire, in contrast, seem to give him little pleasure. </p>
<p>Succession reflects continuing concerns about who owns the media, how they make their money, and what they want to get out of their media outlets. As the show’s British writer, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2023/may/27/jesse-armstrong-on-the-roots-of-succession-bum-rush-trump-presidency">Jesse Armstrong</a>, reflected:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The Sun doesn’t run the UK, nor does Fox entirely set the media agenda in the US, but it was hard not to feel, at the time the show was coming together, the particular impact of one man, of one family, on the lives of so many. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>But does the press still have such influence over politics and public life? The many challenges facing traditional newspapers do seem to threaten their historical role. The UK’s newspaper industry has been <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/leveson-inquiry-report-into-the-culture-practices-and-ethics-of-the-press">rocked by scandals</a> about phone hacking, professional ethics and behind-the-scenes links between journalists, politicians and the police. </p>
<p>And then there is the declining readership and advertising revenue. In 2019, <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-cairncross-review-a-sustainable-future-for-journalism">a somewhat uninspired official report</a> on the future of British journalism summarised some of the challenges, but offered few meaningful solutions. That was the same year the Telegraph Media Group was valued at just £200m.</p>
<p>London’s Evening Standard is meanwhile facing <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2023/aug/11/evening-standard-reliant-owner-evgeny-lebedev-funding-losses-widen-newspaper">an annual loss of £16m</a>, and relies on loans from its Russian-British proprietor, Evgeny Lebedev, to stay afloat. The same Lebedev who was <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-61163446">controversially given a peerage</a> in 2020 by then prime minister, Boris Johnson. </p>
<p>Newspapers are also in danger of being dismissed as “mainstream” or “legacy” media: old-fashioned, obsolete and unable to counter the mendacities and conspiracy theories of online “alt truthers”. Recently, following allegations presented in newspapers and on television, the <a href="https://theconversation.com/russell-brand-investigation-what-good-journalists-should-have-to-go-through-to-report-sexual-assault-allegations-213815">comedian Russell Brand</a> immediately sought to discredit “coordinated media attacks” which he claimed served some shadowy hidden agenda.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, as their own profits dwindle and they <a href="https://pressgazette.co.uk/media_business/2023-journalism-news-job-cuts-redundancies/">lay off more journalists</a>, the capacity of newspapers to investigate public lies and misdeeds is drastically reduced. Some worry that the newspapers themselves are having a damaging effect on public debate – apparent, for example, in the polarising and sometimes <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/jun/24/mail-sun-uk-brexit-newspapers">inaccurate press coverage</a> and comment that accompanied the Brexit referendum and its aftermath. Fuelling culture wars, rather than mounting an informed defence against them, seems to be a key tactic in staying afloat for some titles.</p>
<p>Yet the reasons why press barons want to own newspapers remain much the same today as they did for Northcliffe, Beaverbrook, and Black: making money, securing a place in the national (or global) economic and social elite, generating political influence, and delivering the thrill of the great corporate deal.</p>
<p>And the old media dynasties endure: in 2022 the 4th Lord Rothermere, great-grandson of the Daily Mail’s co-founder, took the Daily Mail & General Trust group out of public ownership, and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/sep/22/lord-rothermere-take-over-daily-mail-chairman">became its chief executive</a>. </p>
<p>Above all else, traditional newspaper titles retain their appeal to potential owners because, in a crowded marketplace for online news, they can represent a trusted and prestigious brand. The <a href="https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/04/how-buzzfeed-news-went-bust.html">fate of Buzzfeed</a> has demonstrated <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/may/16/vice-bankruptcy-buzzfeed-news-dead-digital-age-revenue">the difficulties</a> of creating a viable online presence without such an established base. </p>
<p>Traditional newspapers will continue to scale back print runs over the coming years. Probably, at some point, they will just stop printing newspapers. But some of these companies will live on as profitable online brands. </p>
<p>In a post-Murdoch age, future press barons – digital media emperors – will want to invest in these brands because they offer recognition and respectability, following the early example set by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/aug/05/washington-post-sold-jeff-bezos-amazon">purchased The Washington Post</a> in 2013. </p>
<p>Potential buyers for the Telegraph Media Group take in <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2023/jun/07/daily-telegraph-and-sunday-telegraph-newspapers-to-be-put-up-for-sale">UK businesses</a>, including <a href="https://news.sky.com/story/daily-mail-proprietor-rothermere-in-talks-with-investors-over-telegraph-bid-12938653">the Mail’s Rothermere</a> and the owner of the <a href="https://news.sky.com/story/hedge-fund-tycoon-marshall-hires-bankers-to-plot-daily-telegraph-raid-12959685">rightwing GB News</a>. But there is also interest from <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2023/07/17/mike-mctighe-appointed-telegraph-chairman-sale-lloyds/">Europe and the US</a>, as well as the <a href="https://news.sky.com/story/yorkshire-post-owner-signals-interest-in-buying-daily-telegraph-12937353">Gulf states</a>. Surprisingly, perhaps, the Barclay family has itself assembled a portfolio of potential Middle Eastern finance to try to buy the business back from Lloyds. </p>
<p>Some of these international players may see the Telegraph Group as offering a respectable voice in the British media landscape and a route to political and popular influence, something that only a traditional newspaper business can provide. And they are no doubt interested in the brand’s asset of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2023/jul/25/telegraph-media-group-paying-subscribers-chelsea-magazine-company">nearly one million subscribers</a>, many of them digital – data being the be all and end all in today’s market. </p>
<p>Whichever way that sale goes, we are still a long way from the dream of a democratic utopia promoted by 19th-century campaigners for press freedom. They believed that the free market would liberate the press and, by doing so, liberate us all. Sadly, it seems like Logan Roy was closer to the truth when he said to his wannabe successors: “Money wins. Here’s to us.”</p>
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<p><em>For you: more from our <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/insights-series-71218?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=TCUKengagement&utm_content=InsightsUK">Insights series</a>:</em></p>
<ul>
<li><p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/my-home-city-was-destroyed-by-war-but-i-will-not-lose-hope-how-modern-warfare-turns-neighbourhoods-into-battlefields-211627">‘My home city was destroyed by war but I will not lose hope’ – how modern warfare turns neighbourhoods into battlefields</a></em></p></li>
<li><p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/beatrix-potters-famous-tales-are-rooted-in-stories-told-by-enslaved-africans-but-she-was-very-quiet-about-their-origins-202274">Beatrix Potter’s famous tales are rooted in stories told by enslaved Africans – but she was very quiet about their origins
</a></em></p></li>
<li><p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/invisible-windrush-how-the-stories-of-indian-indentured-labourers-from-the-caribbean-were-forgotten-206330">Invisible Windrush: how the stories of Indian indentured labourers from the Caribbean were forgotten
</a></em></p></li>
</ul>
<p><em>To hear about new Insights articles, join the hundreds of thousands of people who value The Conversation’s evidence-based news. <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/newsletters/the-daily-newsletter-2?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=TCUKengagement&utm_content=InsightsUK"><strong>Subscribe to our newsletter</strong></a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/213283/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Simon Potter does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Newspaper owners used to wield huge political influence – but as Rupert Murdoch steps down for his son Lachlan can the same be said of today’s?Simon Potter, Professor of Modern History, University of BristolLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2011042023-03-03T16:30:43Z2023-03-03T16:30:43ZOakeshott and Hancock: betraying a confidential source damages journalism and is a threat to public health<p>It is an iron rule of journalism – probably the first lesson that a rookie reporter learns on joining a professional newsroom: never betray a confidential source. A core principle of the National Union of Journalists <a href="https://www.nuj.org.uk/about-us/rules-and-guidance/code-of-conduct.html">code of conduct states</a> that a journalist “protects the identity of sources who supply information in confidence and material gathered in the course of her/his work”.</p>
<p>This principle is also enshrined in UK law: the 1981 <a href="https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1981/49">Contempt of Court Act</a> exempts journalists from contempt charges for “refusing to disclose the source of information” (with some caveats around national security and crime prevention). Under the 1984 <a href="https://www.gov.uk/guidance/police-and-criminal-evidence-act-1984-pace-codes-of-practice">Police and Criminal Evidence Act</a>, police cannot seize journalistic material without first making an application to a judge.</p>
<p>There are good reasons for such strong protections. They underpin the fundamental role of watchdog journalism in a democracy and the ability of journalists to hold the powerful to account. </p>
<p>We only have to think of “<a href="https://www.history.com/news/watergate-deep-throat-fbi-informant-nixon">Deep Throat</a>”, the famed source for Woodward and Bernstein’s exposure of Richard Nixon’s complicity in the 1970s US Watergate scandal, or the disc detailing <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2009/may/23/john-wick-expenses-scandal">MPs’ expenses</a> that found its way to the Telegraph in the UK in 2009, to understand the vital importance of preserving source confidentiality.</p>
<p>In all probability, neither scandal would have seen the light of day if the original source had not trusted guarantees of anonymity.</p>
<p>What, then, do we make of the decision by journalist Isabel Oakeshott to present the Telegraph with the complete cache of more than 100,000 WhatsApp messages confidentially given to her by Matt Hancock, for which she signed a non-disclosure agreement? Interviewed on the BBC’s Today programme, Oakeshott <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-64818969">claimed</a> an “overwhelming national interest” in breaching the golden rule of journalism. </p>
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<p>She said: “Millions … were adversely affected by the catastrophic decision to lockdown this country repeatedly on the flimsiest of evidence, often for political reasons.” Oakeshott insists she wanted the truth to come out.</p>
<h2>In whose interest?</h2>
<p>There are three reasons for casting severe doubt on her stated rationale. First, by her own admission, she spent a year collaborating with Hancock on a book that was published three months ago. Since she had access to his messages at least 15 months ago, why did she wait so long to reveal information in the national interest? </p>
<p>Pressed on this point in the BBC interview, she said that the cache of messages represented <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p0f69y72/the-hancock-messages-leak">more than 2.3 million words</a> and that the book she and Hancock were collaborating on was twice as long as the average political memoir. So her claim appears to be that she had simply not had time to do so.</p>
<p>Second, she deliberately chose the Telegraph for her exclusive, a paper which <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/12/02/even-now-nobody-wants-confront-awful-truth-britains-pandemic/">is known</a>, as is <a href="https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=620878875789449">Oakeshott herself</a>, for its profound editorial hostility to – and partisan coverage of – the scale of lockdown measures. </p>
<p>It would surely have been more responsible, having decided to break an agreement of confidentiality on the grounds of public interest, to do so via a non-partisan broadcaster or to make the messages available online for everyone to make their own judgment.</p>
<p>Third, a full <a href="https://covid19.public-inquiry.uk/terms-of-reference/">public inquiry</a> has been established. Led by Baroness Hallett, its remit is designed precisely to examine responses to the pandemic both by health authorities and by the government. </p>
<p>A genuine public interest response to any concerns raised by the former health secretary’s messages would surely be to hand them over to that inquiry where they could be properly contextualised and analysed, rather than allow them to be selectively quoted in pursuit of a journalistic agenda.</p>
<p>Instead, we are now seeing cherrypicked messages published piecemeal to further support the Telegraph’s own editorial position. Crucially, they are being published without any input from the scientific community about its expert advice on the urgent need for intervention.</p>
<h2>Damage done</h2>
<p>In fact, rather than serving the public interest, these revelations are more likely to cause longer-term damage both to public health and to journalism. Selective publication of Hancock’s messages has successfully raised doubts about the wisdom and effectiveness of government lockdown measures without any counterarguments from medical experts or scientists. </p>
<p>Should we be exposed to another full-scale public health crisis which requires government action on the advice of those experts, we will surely have less faith in any restrictions imposed by politicians. Such resistance would no doubt delight the libertarians, but could have dire consequences for public health and safety.</p>
<p>But the damage to journalism could be even greater. Next time someone discovers corruption or wrongdoing at the highest level and wants to blow the whistle on, say, a powerful cabinet member or a wealthy industrialist at significant personal risk to themselves, will they be quite so ready to trust a journalist’s promise of confidentiality? </p>
<p>At the very least, Oakeshott’s apparent readiness to betray her source – whatever her stated justification – is likely to generate even more cynicism about an industry that already struggles to command public confidence.</p>
<p>We can be fairly confident that any whistleblower will stay very clear of Oakeshott who – we should not forget – has <a href="https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-sunday-times-jails-its-source/">form in giving up sources</a> in the Chris Huhne-Vicky Pryce affair which ended in the pair both being jailed for perverting the course of justice.</p>
<p>But high-profile incidents like these will surely make it less likely that such public-spirited individuals will be prepared to risk their own livelihood in the public interest. The only beneficiaries will be the rich and powerful who will continue to escape proper scrutiny.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/201104/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Steven Barnett is Professor of Communications at the University where he has taught journalism students for nearly 30 years. He is on the management and editorial boards of the British Journalism Review. He is a member of the British Broadcasting Challenge which campaigns for Public Service Broadcasting. He is on the board of Hacked Off. </span></em></p>The first thing journalists learn is that confidential sources must be protected except in extraordinary circumstances.Steven Barnett, Professor of Communications, University of WestminsterLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1794682022-03-24T19:03:09Z2022-03-24T19:03:09ZIs News Corp following through on its climate change backflip? My analysis of its flood coverage suggests not<p>Several months ago, Australia’s Murdoch media news outlets launched a <a href="https://www.themercury.com.au/technology/environment/mission-zero-putting-australia-on-a-path-to-a-net-zero-future/news-story/83f521bfd9d592ab6defdab7d3b81ce8">new climate change campaign</a> advocating a path toward net-zero emissions by 2050. The launch included a 16-page wraparound supplement in all of its tabloids supporting the need for climate action.</p>
<p>We do not usually expect news media to campaign for political and social causes. Yet, here was one of the most powerful media organisations in the country not only implying it has held an editorial stance against climate action in the past, but also declaring a plan to reverse this position. </p>
<p>In announcing the launch, News Corp <a href="https://www.themercury.com.au/technology/environment/mission-zero-putting-australia-on-a-path-to-a-net-zero-future/news-story/83f521bfd9d592ab6defdab7d3b81ce8">said</a> a major reason climate action has stalled in Australia is “the debate has fallen victim to a culture of constant complaint”. </p>
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<p>[…] so here you will see only positive stories: real, practical and pragmatic solutions that will help the planet and also help Australia’s interests as well.</p>
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<p>Can a leopard change its spots? My analysis of the Murdoch outlets’ recent flood coverage suggests not.</p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/whats-behind-news-corps-new-spin-on-climate-change-169733">What’s behind News Corp’s new spin on climate change?</a>
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<h2>Climate change downplayed in flood coverage</h2>
<p>Climate change is reported in a range of ways in news media to help audiences understand its causes and consequences, as well as the policy responses. </p>
<p>Extreme weather events such as bushfires and floods allow journalists to show how climate change is <a href="https://theconversation.com/one-of-the-most-extreme-disasters-in-colonial-australian-history-climate-scientists-on-the-floods-and-our-future-risk-178153">contributing</a> to the severity of natural disasters in an urgent and visual way.</p>
<p>However, my analysis of recent flood coverage in the Murdoch news outlets shows that although the terms “climate change” and “floods” were placed together in a range of articles, these outlets are still well behind others when it comes to emphasising the connection between extreme weather events and our warming planet. </p>
<p>I looked at 171 articles (both news and opinion) in major Australian print and online news media from March 1–13 that mentioned climate change and floods together – and those that downplayed the link between the two.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/453766/original/file-20220323-17-5gq2e3.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/453766/original/file-20220323-17-5gq2e3.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=485&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/453766/original/file-20220323-17-5gq2e3.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=485&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/453766/original/file-20220323-17-5gq2e3.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=485&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/453766/original/file-20220323-17-5gq2e3.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=609&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/453766/original/file-20220323-17-5gq2e3.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=609&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/453766/original/file-20220323-17-5gq2e3.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=609&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Climate Floods Graph.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>There was some standout coverage making the link in at least one Murdoch outlet, news.com.au. This included a <a href="https://www.news.com.au/technology/environment/climate-change/flooding-disaster-firmly-embedded-in-climate-change-new-report-warns/news-story/c491eac3cae87874a40f12577acde0d8">report</a> about the Climate Council’s warnings of the impact of climate change on flooding, and <a href="https://www.news.com.au/finance/business/retail/farmers-for-climate-action-report-shows-reason-behind-grocery-price-hike/news-story/157984a28c7609540b5df75c1995092e">another</a> about the impact of climate change on food prices. </p>
<p>Yet the total number of articles linking climate change to floods in the Murdoch outlets (which also include The Australian, Herald Sun, Daily Telegraph and Courier Mail) lagged behind ABC News, the Nine newspapers, The Guardian and The Conversation.</p>
<p>The analysis also shows the Murdoch outlets were the only news organisations where voices argued the floods <em>were not</em> exacerbated by climate change. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1501458061357379585"}"></div></p>
<p>As reported by <a href="https://www.crikey.com.au/2022/03/09/nsw-qld-floods-climate-change-denial-right-wing/">Crikey</a>, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/mar/10/what-are-conservative-commentators-saying-about-the-floods-and-climate">The Guardian</a> and <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/episodes/floods/13795580">ABC’s Media Watch</a>, conservative commentators such as Andrew Bolt and Chris Kenny continue to muddy the water when it comes to the impact of climate on extreme weather. </p>
<p>For example, Kenny wrote in <a href="https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/politics/climate-catastrophists-see-opportunity-in-disaster/news-story/d4d934d45ecbd9b328363527d831ccdf">The Australian</a> on March 4: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>The pretence that climate policies can relieve us of these natural traumas is a ridiculously emotive and deceptive ploy.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The Australian’s <a href="https://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/media/media-blames-scott-morrison-for-floods-but-voters-wont/news-story/c1ff23a4de19c57ef69f20b230d8a5f4">Chris Mitchell</a> even complained that other media outlets such as the ABC put too much emphasis on the link between climate change and flooding.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1503153061761466369"}"></div></p>
<h2>How the media advocate on issues</h2>
<p>This analysis suggests the Murdoch outlets are not overtly advocating for climate action, nor linking catastrophic flooding with the need for political action aimed at achieving net zero by 2050. </p>
<p>Indeed, editorial hostility toward climate change is alive and well among the most powerful voices at the Murdoch outlets, with coverage that is seemingly more interested in advocating against climate action than for it.</p>
<p>This provides insight into different styles of news coverage and their influence on democratic debate. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.accc.gov.au/system/files/ACCC+commissioned+report+-+The+impact+of+digital+platforms+on+news+and+journalistic+content,+Centre+for+Media+Transition+(2).pdf">Although Australian audiences expect</a> media outlets to produce news that is objective, ideologically neutral and independent of politics, journalists and commentators sometimes play the role of “advocates” for particular issues and causes.</p>
<p>This style of journalism is not widely understood because it clashes with the idealised expectation that journalists shrug off their own perspectives to report without fear or favour. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/extreme-weather-news-may-not-change-climate-change-skeptics-minds-112650">Extreme weather news may not change climate change skeptics' minds</a>
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</em>
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<p><a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/14648849211072717?casa_token=zn7HHufw1NIAAAAA%3A4LAp7iQbJHKdB7DibQKFp1a89iiqvTXZnm7fAD8Y1NgIYt7ItI-LUcexDJT7YvJ-SiQTQdSxP16U7aw">In a recent study</a> I conducted, I propose there are three styles of advocacy journalism – radical, collaborator and conservative. And each one either enhances or degrades democratic debate.</p>
<p>What I call “radical advocacy” is when journalists deliberately campaign to increase the diversity of voices in news media, particularly when those voices are marginalised from mainstream debate. </p>
<p>An example is <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/series/keep-it-in-the-ground">The Guardian’s</a> “Keep it in the ground” campaign, which is transparently aimed at improving the public’s understanding of climate change. This style of journalism – although subjective and biased – arguably has a positive influence on democracy since its mission is to increase understanding of a crucial global issue and rally the public to join the cause. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1471813940720152582"}"></div></p>
<p>“Collaborator advocacy” journalism is when media organisations cooperate with government, such as when they broadcast flood warnings, advise the public what to do in an emergency or agree not to publish the locations of troops at war. </p>
<p>This style of advocacy can be good for democracy when it is deemed in the public interest. It can, however, be detrimental if the government controls media coverage to the point at which opposition voices are deliberately excluded. </p>
<p>The third style of advocacy – “conservative advocacy” – is one I’ve coined to describe journalism and commentary that promotes the agenda of powerful players in a political or social debate. </p>
<p>An obvious example is the Murdoch media traditionally siding with big fossil fuel and oil interests through their <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/business/companies/rupert-murdoch-newspapers-24-hour-news-channel-to-champion-net-zero-emissions-20210905-p58oyx.html">longstanding editorial hostility</a> to policies designed to address climate change. </p>
<p>Conservative advocacy degrades democracy by locking less powerful voices out of the debate, spreading what some would deem misinformation and deliberately downplaying or countering scientific research and evidence-based policy.</p>
<p>If the Murdoch media follow through with their promise to advocate for net zero by 2050, their campaign would fit within the radical definition. But since these outlets are historically entrenched in a conservative tradition, this shift to a more radical position on climate might prove difficult to achieve.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/climate-gloom-and-doom-bring-it-on-but-we-need-stories-about-taking-action-too-79464">Climate gloom and doom? Bring it on. But we need stories about taking action, too</a>
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</em>
</p>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/179468/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Victoria Fielding is a member of the South Australian Labor Party and a member of the National Tertiary Education Union.</span></em></p>The Murdoch outlets said they would pursue ‘positive stories’ on climate change. An analysis of stories during the recent floods, however, shows this wasn’t necessarily the case.Victoria Fielding, Lecturer, University of AdelaideLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1169922019-05-15T20:23:33Z2019-05-15T20:23:33ZThe secret history of News Corp: a media empire built on spreading propaganda<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/274546/original/file-20190515-60541-16td490.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">In recent years, Rupert Murdoch's News Corp papers have become more politically aggressive, adopting the openly partisan approach of British tabloids.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jason Reed/AAP</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>News Corp must have been startled to find itself <a href="https://theconversation.com/new-low-for-journalism-why-news-corps-partisan-campaign-coverage-is-harmful-to-democracy-116796">becoming one of the major issues</a> in this election campaign. But this is just another sign that, in recent years, the company’s ability to read the public mood has gone wildly off-kilter.</p>
<p>From <a href="https://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/opinion/andrew-bolt/andrew-bolt-why-pell-has-been-falsely-convicted/news-story/60da7b90f8035ca52c748d6c59fb730a">attacking</a> the decision of the jury in the sexual assault trial of Cardinal George Pell to last week’s <a href="https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/nsw/labor-leader-bill-shortens-heartfelt-story-about-his-mother-was-missing-one-vital-fact/news-story/eeab8c4d16e3f55304e06eaa704699c9">Daily Telegraph attack</a> on Bill Shorten using his deceased mother as ammunition, there are mounting signs of panic and folly at one of Australia’s largest media companies. </p>
<p>With the media and political landscape shifting rapidly around the company, there is a feeling akin to the last days of the Roman Empire. </p>
<p>Rupert Murdoch is winding back after six decades building up an Australian, and then global, media empire. The Murdoch family has retreated from buying up assets and instead become a seller, offloading, for instance, <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/maddieberg/2019/03/20/what-the-disney-fox-deal-means-for-rupert-murdochs-fortune/#187f5fbf312e">21st Century Fox to Disney last year</a>.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/mounting-evidence-the-tide-is-turning-on-news-corp-and-its-owner-116892">Mounting evidence the tide is turning on News Corp, and its owner</a>
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</em>
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<p>If the next generation of Murdochs starts looking to sell unprofitable assets, the Australian newspapers have reason to be concerned. Because they are no longer financially valuable to the newly slimmed down company, the Australian papers seem to be trying to prove their worth by being politically useful while they still can. </p>
<p>Since 2013, the News Corp papers have become more politically aggressive, with some adopting the shrill, cartoonish and openly-partisan approach of British “red top” tabloids. During the 2019 election, News Corp journalists – past and present – <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/may/09/for-30-years-i-worked-for-news-corp-papers-now-all-i-see-is-shameful-bias">have spoken out</a> against the company’s determined barracking for the return of the Coalition government. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1125971811013779456"}"></div></p>
<p>Academic Denis Muller <a href="https://theconversation.com/mounting-evidence-the-tide-is-turning-on-news-corp-and-its-owner-116892">recently called News Corp</a> a “propaganda operation masquerading as a news service”. Remarkably, this statement neatly encapsulates how News Corp actually began. </p>
<h2>Chance meeting on a train?</h2>
<p>As I explain in my book <a href="https://www.newsouthbooks.com.au/books/paper-emperors/">Paper Emperors: The Rise of Australia’s Newspaper Empires</a>, News Corp began its corporate life in 1922 as News Limited. It was a company that was secretly established by a mining company owned by the most powerful industrialists of the day, and it was created for the express purpose of disseminating “propaganda”.</p>
<p>This was not what I expected to find when I began researching its origins.</p>
<p>The story that News Limited/News Corp has long told was that it was founded by <a href="http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/davidson-james-edward-5901">James Edward Davidson</a>, a brilliant journalist and former editor of the Melbourne Herald. After Davidson was pushed out of the Herald in 1918 for asserting his editorial independence, he purchased two provincial newspapers – one in Broken Hill (the Barrier Miner) and one in Port Pirie, South Australia (the Recorder). </p>
<p>According to corporate legend, Davidson was travelling on the Melbourne-Adelaide steam train two years later when he sat next to an old friend, a “miner” named <a href="http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/mussen-sir-gerald-7718">Gerald Mussen</a>. On that journey in 1921, Davidson and Mussen hatched a plan for a new afternoon paper, the Adelaide News, to be owned by a company called News Limited. From those humble beginnings grew one of the world’s most important media companies.</p>
<p>But this corporate tale intrigued me immediately. There was something awry about it.</p>
<p>I knew that Australia’s most powerful industrialist at the time, <a href="http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/baillieu-william-lawrence-willie-5099">William Lawrence Baillieu</a>, was one of the directors and owners of the Herald, the outlet Davidson had modernised into a powerful force before his untimely exit. Baillieu was also head of a huge industrial complex dubbed “<a href="https://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/in-baillieu-we-trust-portrait-of-a-familys-legacy/news-story/0311cd58e5f4728596a22063b79895c2">Collins House</a>”, which dominated the mining and manufacturing industry and was involved in many other businesses. It developed some of Australia’s most famous brands, including the Herald and Weekly Times (HWT), Consolidated Zinc (now Rio Tinto), Carlton and United Breweries (CUB), Dunlop Rubber, and Dulux. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/274528/original/file-20190515-60537-emjmv7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/274528/original/file-20190515-60537-emjmv7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=460&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/274528/original/file-20190515-60537-emjmv7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=460&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/274528/original/file-20190515-60537-emjmv7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=460&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/274528/original/file-20190515-60537-emjmv7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=578&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/274528/original/file-20190515-60537-emjmv7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=578&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/274528/original/file-20190515-60537-emjmv7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=578&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">William Baillieu with his daughters on board a ship in NSW around 1930.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">National Library of Australia</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Collins House’s immense wealth and power originally came out of the mines of Broken Hill. It also formed the Broken Hill Associated Smelters (BHAS) in 1915 and took over the lead smelter at Port Pirie, turning it into the world’s largest lead smelting works. </p>
<p>It seemed beyond coincidence that the two papers Davidson had chosen to buy in 1918-19 just happened to be at the two ends of Collins House’s supply chain - Broken Hill and Port Pirie. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/factcheck-does-murdoch-own-70-of-newspapers-in-australia-16812">FactCheck: does Murdoch own 70% of newspapers in Australia?</a>
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</em>
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<p>But I also knew that Mussen, Davidson’s train companion, was no mere miner, as the company story goes. He was Collins House’s industrial consultant. A former journalist, Mussen had become a PR man and fixer, a soother of industrial conflict, who had already worked for Baillieu for more than a decade.</p>
<p>Private letters in the BHAS archive at the University of Melbourne provided the next clues about what – and who – were really behind the founding of News Limited.</p>
<h2>A tool for combating union influence</h2>
<p>In mid-1918, BHAS executives were increasingly concerned about the union-owned newspaper in Broken Hill, the Barrier Truth. In a letter held in the BHAS archive, the general manager of Collins House’s Broken Hill South mine reported that the Barrier Truth was inciting “class warfare” and industrial unrest. He wanted “some means of keeping it within bounds”.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/274525/original/file-20190515-60557-1uvt3z9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/274525/original/file-20190515-60557-1uvt3z9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/274525/original/file-20190515-60557-1uvt3z9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/274525/original/file-20190515-60557-1uvt3z9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/274525/original/file-20190515-60557-1uvt3z9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=473&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/274525/original/file-20190515-60557-1uvt3z9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=473&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/274525/original/file-20190515-60557-1uvt3z9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=473&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Barrier Truth newspaper building in Broken Hill in 1905.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">National Library of Australia</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>BHAS’ managing director, Colin Fraser, began searching for a way to combat the union paper with pro-mining company publicity. In late-1918, he wrote to Collins House’s <a href="http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/robinson-william-sydney-8247">WS Robinson</a> and suggested that BHAS buy the Barrier Truth’s local rival, the Barrier Miner newspaper. But the astute Robinson, a former Age journalist, knew it would be a bad look for a mining company to own a newspaper. </p>
<p>Fraser came up with another idea. His letter explaining this idea to Robinson is missing from the BHAS archive. But Robinson’s reply to Fraser is still there, thankfully, for this letter is significant. </p>
<p>Robinson wrote to Fraser in December 1918: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I am glad to note that you are going to shake the Port Pirie Recorder up. There is great room for propaganda in Broken Hill and Port Pirie … Let us try and educate our men, and the public too. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Nineteen days later, a new company was registered in Melbourne for the purpose of taking over the Recorder. Davidson was the key shareholder. Obviously, he was the means of “shaking up” the Recorder and disseminating “propaganda”. </p>
<p>Davidson purchased not only the Port Pirie Recorder, but the Barrier Miner, too. </p>
<p>Under Davidson, the Barrier Miner became known locally as the “bosses’ paper” for its pro-company line. Only a month after Davidson took it over, Fraser wrote to Robinson in March 1919 and said how pleased he was with it. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/274529/original/file-20190515-60549-l70e5i.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/274529/original/file-20190515-60549-l70e5i.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/274529/original/file-20190515-60549-l70e5i.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/274529/original/file-20190515-60549-l70e5i.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/274529/original/file-20190515-60549-l70e5i.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=474&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/274529/original/file-20190515-60549-l70e5i.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=474&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/274529/original/file-20190515-60549-l70e5i.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=474&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A 1939 photograph of News Limited’s building in Adelaide – the beginnings of the News Corp media empire.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">State Library of South Australia</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Consolidation under Murdoch</h2>
<p>Union activists at Broken Hill suspected the Collins House mining companies had funded Davidson’s purchase of the paper, but they could never prove it. </p>
<p>But proof lies in the letters in the BHAS archives, as well as in the original company documents for News Limited (now held in the State Records of South Australia and the Public Record Office Victoria). When Davidson’s first newspaper company was registered, the only other two shareholders were both Collins House accountants. When it was rolled into News Limited, the company’s first shareholder list was a roll call of key Collins House figures. </p>
<p>Tellingly, Davidson was never made the chairman of News Limited’s board and never increased his shares in the company. By 1929, he was being pushed out of it. A chronic alcoholic, he died while on an overseas trip in 1930, just as Baillieu’s other protégé, <a href="http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/murdoch-sir-keith-arthur-7693">Keith Murdoch</a>, was proving a deft hand at interstate takeovers of newspapers.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/after-rupert-welcome-to-the-game-of-thrones-at-news-corp-43179">After Rupert – welcome to the game of thrones at News Corp</a>
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</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>After Davidson’s death, News Limited quickly ended up in Murdoch’s hands. He initially oversaw the company for Collins House’s HWT but, in 1949, he convinced HWT executives to let him acquire a stake in it. </p>
<p>Murdoch built up that stake to such an extent that, when he died in 1952, he was able to leave News Limited to his son Rupert, who then used it as a springboard for the creation of his media empire.</p>
<h2>Veneer of ‘impartiality’ no longer needed</h2>
<p>When it was founded in 1923, News Limited concealed its mining company connections at the same time it promised the public that its news would be “independent” and “impartial”. </p>
<p>Lip service or not, notions of balance and the public interest were important then. This was because News Limited’s founders knew that respect was an important precondition for influence, and that newspapers had to be responsive to the communities they served in order to attract a wide audience and prosper. </p>
<p>News Corp’s recent behaviour suggests it now sees such notions as quaint.
</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/116992/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sally Young received funding from the Australian Research Council (ARC) for her research on press power in Australia.</span></em></p>New research reveals how News Limited was secretly established in the early 1900s by a mining company for the express purpose of disseminating ‘propaganda’.Sally Young, Professor, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1167962019-05-09T05:23:20Z2019-05-09T05:23:20Z‘New low’ for journalism? Why News Corp’s partisan campaign coverage is harmful to democracy<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/273480/original/file-20190509-183112-oszja8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Bill Shorten tearfully responded to the latest attack aimed at him by News Corp – a move that seemingly backfired for the Murdoch media empire.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Lukas Coch/AAP</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Remember the Daily Telegraph’s 2013 front page headline “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/05/daily-telegraph-election-australia">Kick this mob out</a>”? </p>
<p>Although some could argue that Labor after the Rudd-Gillard years was in a deep mess and not fit to govern, such a headline was deeply partisan and far from neutral election campaign coverage. The Guardian’s Roy Greenslade <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/05/daily-telegraph-election-australia">said at the time</a> of News Corp chief Rupert Murdoch:</p>
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<p>There is not the slightest attempt to conceal his agenda. It is blatant, bold and belligerent. And it confirms yet again the way in which he links political interventions to his commercial desires.</p>
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<p>Fast-forward six years and little has changed in News Corp’s approach to covering the federal election campaign.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/factcheck-does-murdoch-own-70-of-newspapers-in-australia-16812">FactCheck: does Murdoch own 70% of newspapers in Australia?</a>
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<p>The similarities between Labor in 2013 and the Coalition in 2019 are uncanny. They have done the same number of replacements of sitting PMs (Labor 2010-2013: Rudd-Gillard-Rudd. Coalition 2015-2019: Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison). And both parties have suffered from disunity and division, although the Coalition is perhaps even more divided than Labor was in 2013 on core policy issues such as climate change. </p>
<p>And yet, we have seen no “Kick this mob out”-style headlines targeting the Coalition from News Corp Australia’s publications in this campaign. Instead, it’s been a steady drumbeat of one-sided, positive coverage (or convenient lack of scrutiny) of the Coalition’s candidates and policies, compared to a barrage of criticism of Labor and Bill Shorten.</p>
<p>News Corp’s campaign coverage so far confirms that growing partisanship in political reporting seem to have become increasingly entrenched in the organisation. </p>
<p>A case in point is The Daily Telegraph’s much-maligned <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-05-08/daily-telegraph-front-page-from-may-8,-2019-1/11090400">front page</a> story on Wednesday that implied Shorten hadn’t told the full story when describing his mother’s educational opportunities on Q&A earlier earlier in the week. </p>
<p>The article can only be described as an ultra-partisan hatchet job. Shorten <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-05-08/bill-shorten-slams-daily-telegraph-federal-election-mother-story/11090238">called it a “new low”</a>, while Kevin Rudd went so far as to compare News Corp with the People’s Daily newspaper in China on Twitter.</p>
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<p>Interestingly, the Telegraph’s story on Shorten’s mother appears to have backfired, creating a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/may/08/mymum-australians-share-tales-of-mothers-sacrifices-after-shortens-tearful-speech">huge social media moment</a> – #myMum – devoted to people’s stories of their mothers. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/a-matter-of-mis-trust-why-this-election-is-posing-problems-for-the-media-116142">A matter of (mis)trust: why this election is posing problems for the media</a>
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<p>But the article illustrates how damning it is for diversity and plurality when media ownership is as concentrated as it is in Australia, with News Corp being the dominant player by far. If the dominant outlet in such a media landscape decides to wholeheartedly back one side of politics, it will undoubtedly impact the tenor of a campaign and skew the information voters rely on to make up their minds. </p>
<p>It’s not good for a healthy democracy and a fair election campaign.</p>
<h2>News Corp’s partisan climate coverage</h2>
<p>Backing one side of politics is nothing new for News Corp. There is plenty of empirical research spanning decades documenting how Murdoch’s media empire has sought to influence politics in Australia, the UK and the US. One of the most comprehensive and damning studies is David McKnight’s <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books/about/Rupert_Murdoch_An_investigation_of_polit.html?id=txzEc48_LPoC">Rupert Murdoch: An Investigation of Political Power</a>, which is a devastating read illustrating how Murdoch has used partisan journalism for decades to gain political influence benefiting the media empire’s financial bottom line. </p>
<p>Indeed, this is what Labor claims is the driver behind News Corp’s scathing coverage of its policies in this campaign. Deputy leader Tanya Plibersek and assistant treasury spokesman Andrew Leigh <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/federal-election-2019/a-political-hit-job-labor-braces-for-war-with-murdoch-media-20190508-p51lf6.html">tied the partisan coverage</a> to Murdoch’s desire to protect “tax loopholes” in Australia by keeping Labor out of power. </p>
<p>One of the case studies in McKnight’s work is News Corp’s undermining of climate science and meaningful action on climate change. This can also be seen in its coverage of the current Australia election campaign.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/lies-obfuscation-and-fake-news-make-for-a-dispiriting-and-dangerous-election-campaign-115845">Lies, obfuscation and fake news make for a dispiriting – and dangerous – election campaign</a>
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<p>In spite of <a href="https://theconversation.com/lowy-institute-poll-shows-australians-support-for-climate-action-at-its-highest-level-in-a-decade-98625">polls</a> showing growing support in Australia for action on climate change (59%) and renewables (84%), the environment is still treated as a second- or third-tier election topic by most media (with the notable exceptions of Crikey and the Guardian). This is particularly the case with outlets owned by News Corp. </p>
<p>When climate change has been covered by News Corp in the campaign, it’s predominately been done in an alarmist way to slam Labor’s policies. For example, The Australian <a href="https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/politics/price-labors-carbon-cuts-yes-you-can/news-story/4aae9813f8fc2a92789ad5c8f74974c2">reported a week ago</a> that Shorten’s climate policies aiming to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 45% by 2030 could cost the country A$264 billion – a figure based on modelling by a former government economist that <a href="https://www.sbs.com.au/news/shorten-slams-climate-change-propaganda">Shorten dismissed as “propaganda.”</a> </p>
<p>Though notable climate experts and academics also disputed the estimate, it was widely repeated across News Corp’s other outlets.</p>
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<p>Meanwhile, News Corp has asked few critical questions about the Coalition’s much less ambitious climate plan. Most importantly, hardly any coverage has been offered by the large legacy media outlets (such as the ABC, The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald) on seriously assessing the cost of inaction on climate change. (A study to track climate change coverage during the campaign is currently underway by myself and a colleague.)</p>
<p>Overall, the media coverage of climate change thus far can only be described as a failure (with a few exceptions). A failure of giving it enough prominence during debates, panel discussions and crucial press conferences. A failure of deeply scrutinising climate change policies from all parties.</p>
<p>The next generation has made it abundantly clear where it stands on the issue in school strikes and protests across the country. It’s time we all, including the media, start listening to them and give them a voice in the final week of election coverage.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/116796/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Johan Lidberg does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Lack of scrutiny of the Coalition, barrage of criticism aimed at Labor: News Corp’s coverage of the election campaign has been the definition of partisan.Johan Lidberg, Associate Professor, School of Media, Film and Journalism, Monash UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1151272019-04-11T06:23:16Z2019-04-11T06:23:16ZGeoffrey Rush’s victory in his defamation case could have a chilling effect on the #MeToo movement<p>The decision in <a href="http://www.fedcourt.gov.au/services/access-to-files-and-transcripts/online-files/rush-v-nationwide">Geoffrey Rush v Nationwide News</a>, handed down today in Australia’s federal court, is the first – and so far, only – legal determination of a case associated with the #MeToo movement in Australia. </p>
<p>The defamation case was decided in favour of the actor Geoffrey Rush, who <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-12-08/geoffrey-rush-files-defamation-suit-against-daily-telegraph/9241224">had sued</a> News Corp’s Nationwide News, the publisher of the Daily Telegraph, over <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-11-10/geoffrey-rush-defamation-trial-a-drama-with-final-act-to-come/10483944">allegations the newspaper published</a> regarding Rush’s inappropriate behaviour with an unnamed fellow actor, later identified as Eryn Jean Norvill, who gave evidence in the case. </p>
<p>In finding for Rush, Justice Michael Wigney decided that the defence of truth argued by Nationwide News had not been proven. Because Wigney said Rush had suffered significant distress – and to vindicate his reputation – he set non-economic damages at A$850,000. This is more than double the cap in cases not involving aggravated damages, with further economic loss still to be determined.</p>
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<p>The Rush decision comes as the Australian #MeToo Movement seems to have gone quiet. The high-profile cases that arose in the year following #MeToo, which included allegations against television presenter <a href="https://www.news.com.au/entertainment/celebrity-life/celebrities-gone-bad/can-i-lick-your-back-the-allegations-against-don-burke/news-story/adea300bd3890276a10aeaf2227a365c">Don Burke</a>, actor <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-11-23/craig-mclachlan-accused-of-inappropriate-touching/10548738">Craig McLachlan</a> and politicians <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/7.30/catherine-marriott-speaks-about-alleged-sexual/10269060">Barnaby Joyce</a>, <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-11-08/ashleigh-raper-full-statement/10478012">Luke Foley</a> and <a href="https://newmatilda.com/2018/10/27/jeremy-buckingham-accused-grabbing-greens-staffer-vagina/">Jeremy Buckingham</a>, have mostly faded from public view. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/craig-mclachlan-defamation-and-getting-the-balance-right-when-sexual-harassment-goes-to-court-91223">Craig McLachlan, defamation and getting the balance right when sexual harassment goes to court</a>
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<p>None of these cases have been heard under sexual harassment laws, and none of the women has claimed or received any remedy. Rather, what most of these cases have in common is that the men involved have sued or threatened to sue for defamation. </p>
<p>While reckless and sensationalist media stories certainly cause harm, the Rush decision and other defamation cases may lead someone who has experienced sexual harassment to think that the reputational interests of the accused are better protected by law than those alleging harassment.</p>
<p>Australia has particularly <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/national/australia-s-defamation-laws-are-ripe-for-overhaul-20181207-p50kwk.html">strong defamation laws</a>, which the Rush trial has brought into sharp relief. Actress Yael Stone, who <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2018/dec/19/yael-stones-allegations-about-geoffrey-rush-divide-the-arts-industry">publicly raised further concerns</a> about Rush, said that Australia’s defamation laws <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/16/opinion/metoo-defamation-geoffrey-rush-yael-stone.html">made her “terrified” to speak up</a>.</p>
<p>Will the decision in favour of Rush have a further chilling effect on future harassment claims, especially in the absence of any successful, high-profile sexual harassment cases? </p>
<h2>Sexual harassment: layers of silence</h2>
<p>We have, on paper, strong laws in Australia to respond to individual incidents of sexual harassment in the <a href="http://classic.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/sda1984209/%5D.">Sex Discrimination Act 1984</a> (Cth). But laws are useless if they are not enforced, and only a tiny proportion of sexual harassment incidents <a href="https://www.humanrights.gov.au/sites/default/files/document/publication/AHRC_WORKPLACE_SH_2018.pdf">are ever reported</a> (just 17%), let alone taken to court.</p>
<p>Of those few reports, most are kept quiet and out of the public view. If an incident is reported in a workplace, for instance, only a few insiders may ever know about it because of <a href="https://www.humanrights.gov.au/news/media-releases/workplace-sexual-harassment-inquiry-call-limited-waiver-ndas">non-disclosure agreements</a>. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/we-need-to-do-more-about-sexual-harassment-in-the-workplace-52817">We need to do more about sexual harassment in the workplace</a>
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<p>If a harassed person makes a complaint to the <a href="https://www.humanrights.gov.au/">Australian Human Rights Commission</a>, he or she must go through a <a href="https://www.humanrights.gov.au/complaints/complaint-guides/understanding-and-preparing-conciliation-unlawful-discrimination#Heading31">compulsory, confidential conciliation stage</a>. If this is unsuccessful and the complainant proceeds to court, there are <a href="https://research.monash.edu/en/publications/behind-the-conciliation-doors-settling-discrimination-complaints-">very strong incentives</a> to settle the case privately (namely the cost and difficulty of pursuing a case).</p>
<p>While these layers of confidentiality and privacy may suit the harassed as well as the alleged harasser, the flip side is that it makes sexual harassment, an enormous social problem, barely known to the public. Only the tiniest number of cases make it to court and into public scrutiny. </p>
<p>And if women speak up publicly through social or conventional media, defamation laws come into play.</p>
<h2>What impact will the Rush decision have on sexual harassment reporting?</h2>
<p>An unfortunate side effect of the decision is that it is likely to have an additional silencing effect on sexual harassment discussions and reporting. Such a widely reported defamation case can only further entrench public perceptions of the risks of speaking up. </p>
<p>There are further concerns. There is the potential for the public to mistakenly see this as a sexual harassment case between Rush and Norvill, rather than a defamation case between Rush and Nationwide News. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/metoo-has-changed-the-media-landscape-but-in-australia-there-is-still-much-to-be-done-111612">#MeToo has changed the media landscape, but in Australia there is still much to be done</a>
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<p>Since the court found that the defence of “truth” was not proven, this may lead to a misconception that Norvill’s statements about inappropriate behaviour were a lie. This will only be reinforced by Wigney’s statements questioning Norvill’s credibility, saying she was a witness “prone to exaggeration and embellishment”.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/268744/original/file-20190411-44814-not1zu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/268744/original/file-20190411-44814-not1zu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/268744/original/file-20190411-44814-not1zu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/268744/original/file-20190411-44814-not1zu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/268744/original/file-20190411-44814-not1zu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/268744/original/file-20190411-44814-not1zu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/268744/original/file-20190411-44814-not1zu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">The judge said Eryn-Jean Norvill had nothing to gain from making accusations against Rush, but was not an ‘entirely credible witness’.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Peter Rae/AAP</span></span>
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<p>But having insufficient evidence to prove the truth of a statement in law is not the same thing as it being a lie. That misconception has the potential to exacerbate stereotypes about women making up claims of assault and harassment. </p>
<p>The Rush decision is a legal success for the actor, but it may have unintended side effects for the #MeToo movement and the effectiveness of sexual harassment laws. </p>
<p>People bringing sexual harassment cases to court generally receive very low damages payouts. Compared to the million-dollar awards for a celebrity defamation case, <a href="https://www.humanrights.gov.au/sites/default/files/document/publication/AHRC_Federal%20Discrimination%20Law_2016.pdf">the median damages payment</a> in a sexual harassment case is below A$30,000. The severe under-reporting and under-valuing of sexual harassment allegations, and the silencing of public discussion of the problem, may be further impacted by this decision, as well. </p>
<p>We need the #MeToo movement to continue if we are to tackle the continuing problem of sexual harassment and gendered abuse. In delivering his summary judgement, Wigney’s comment to the courtroom is surely the truest statement of all: </p>
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<p>… it would have been better for all concerned if the issues that arose … were dealt with in a different place to the harsh, adversarial world of a defamation proceeding.</p>
</blockquote><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/115127/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Karen O'Connell receives funding from the Australia Research Council.</span></em></p>The judgement is a personal and legal vindication for the actor, but it may have unintended side effects for the #MeToo movement and the reporting of sexual harassment allegations.Karen O'Connell, Associate Professor, Faculty of Law, University of Technology SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/642902016-08-23T08:01:41Z2016-08-23T08:01:41ZA pub brawl over research funding doesn’t benefit any of us<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/135125/original/image-20160823-30257-152s889.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Is this really how we want to decide where research funding should be allocated?</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Here we go again. On Monday, we were interested to see The Daily Telegraph’s Natasha Bita and 2GB broadcaster Ray Hadley making a strong fist of implying they would make good directors of Australia’s research funding system, supported by a college of experts in suburban pubs.</p>
<p>In <a href="http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/nsw/taxpayer-dollars-wasted-on-absurd-studies-that-do-nothing-to-advance-australian-research/news-story/c0c20e651da84b3f249f6e77405cfc7c">this piece in the Telegraph</a>, Bita provides us with some examples of what are headlined “‘absurd’ studies that do nothing to advance Australian research”. </p>
<p>Studies lined up for ridicule included a project to “investigate warfare in the ancient Tongan state through a study of earthwork fortifications”; another on “whether colleagues chatting in open-plan offices ‘creates annoyance’ and affects productivity”; and an investigation of the “post World War II evolution of the Australian university campus”. </p>
<p>Hadley <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/higher-education/research-funding-for-obscure-projects-needs-closer-examination-morrison-warns/news-story/602d7b2ecdba18fd1b1dbc4d41c763a6">joined in the ruck</a>, suggesting that the Australian Research Council (ARC) should be forced to “justify its grants in the front bar of a pub in western Sydney or northside Brisbane”.</p>
<h2>Get a new hobby horse folks, this one’s dead</h2>
<p>It’s all so sadly familiar: lazy swipes by lazy blowhards at lazy academics lazing their way through granting procedures (notwithstanding the fact that these procedures are hyper-competitive). It seems like this has happened nearly every year since taxpayer dollars started being spent on science and research.</p>
<p>In 2014, Fox News joined with Texas Republican Representative Lamar Smith in <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/09/28/feds-spend-300k-on-study-on-how-to-ride-bikes.html">lambasting “wasted” US National Science Foundation money</a>. In 2013, while in opposition, Australian Liberal MP Jamie Briggs condemned <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/education/pyne-steps-back-on-grants-audit/news-story/a2c86e334b8c560ad45c8419ffde759d">“completely over-the-top” and “ridiculous”</a> grants. </p>
<p>As is now standard, these attackers often stress that they’re not against science and research <em>per se</em>; they’re just upset that research they don’t value is taking money away from the research they reckon really matters. </p>
<p>It seems all such commentators really <em>know</em> <a href="http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/nsw/taxpayer-dollars-wasted-on-absurd-studies-that-do-nothing-to-advance-australian-research/news-story/c0c20e651da84b3f249f6e77405cfc7c">what valuable research looks like</a> and what it does not. And in Australia they apparently also know exactly whom to call on to back them up.</p>
<h2>All roads lead to a western Sydney pub</h2>
<p>If you’re Ray Hadley, for example, the only way to collect genuine, representative views on things we should value – and therefore fund – is to go to a pub in western Sydney. It’s as if these pubs are populated by the most genuine Australians: people united in a single dream of how the perfect Australia should look, and moreover that it’s the <em>right</em>, perhaps <em>only</em>, dream.</p>
<p>In Ray’s view, discourse in these Utopian drinking establishments represents the true north of Australian public opinion, which naturally includes how best to prioritise research funding. </p>
<p>But why on earth would this be our yardstick for measuring value? </p>
<p>If we’re going to talk about what people do and don’t value, ask us what we think about motor sport, AFL, or hipster poetry slams. We’re not huge fans. But saying that doesn’t mean we think they are without some intrinsic value, or aren’t incredibly important to others, or shouldn’t be supported by the government or community at large. </p>
<p>You see, people differ. Sometimes we are interested in things that others aren’t, and that’s OK. That’s part of living in societies and agreeing to hand over a proportion of our income in order to maintain, and nurture, these societies. And it’s not as if the government doesn’t fund things like <a href="http://www.ausport.gov.au/supporting/funding">sport</a>. </p>
<h2>Being different is damned useful</h2>
<p>Over the last ten thousand years or so, humans have come up with this great thing called specialisation. Instead of everyone being a food-collecting, house-building, animal-husbanding generalist, we’ve discovered that having some people excel at spouting confected rage on the radio, and other people being good at assessing the quality of research, is a good thing for us as a society. </p>
<p>So for Australian society, how could an idealised, homogeneous subset of working-class (and typically white male) pub-goers be the ultimate litmus test for deciding if something is of value <em>to the whole country</em>? </p>
<p>In what possible world would they be the sole, and best, representatives of all Australian people – all taxpayers, all parents, all community groups, everyone? In what possible world is <em>any</em> single demographic group going to be?</p>
<p>There are innumerable potential problems out there, so many that we can’t be sure we even know what all of them are, better yet which are most important to invest money and research effort in.</p>
<p>And it’s impossible to tell which individual idea or piece of research might trigger the next revolutionary breakthrough. Few people anticipated that optimising radio telescopes would yield <a href="http://www.csiro.au/en/About/History-achievements/Top-10-inventions">Wi-Fi</a>, or that bird watching would lead to an understanding of <a href="http://australianmuseum.net.au/gould-and-his-contribution-to-science">evolution</a>, or that the musings of a few philosophers would transform our <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wealth_of_Nations">economy</a>.</p>
<p><em>We</em> don’t know precisely what research should be funded today, and neither do Hadley, or Bita, or the individual researchers submitting their research grants, “absurd” or otherwise. We’re sure we would all agree that investing in anything is risky, so like any sensible investor, society diversifies when allocating its collective research dollars. </p>
<p>And to the degree that anyone decides where the money should be spent, it should be people who have the knowledge and expertise to <a href="https://theconversation.com/if-youre-going-to-ridicule-research-do-your-homework-64238">understand</a> and judge the relative merits of research proposals.</p>
<p>Of course, we prioritise a sizeable chunk of the total research kitty to certain areas, pursuits, problems and interests. But to arbitrarily decide that a research area is literally of no value because five guys in a pub in a particular part of the country <em>might</em> laugh at the grant proposal title? Who’s being absurd now?</p>
<h2>Is this really just about exchanging cathartic rants?</h2>
<p>It’s fair to say that some of our colleagues in academia are unquestionably as dismissive of the priorities of Ray Hadley’s mythical, homogeneous, working class pub-goer as those pub-goers allegedly are of them.</p>
<p>It’s also fair to say that we from the research side of town could do more to be available, relevant and intelligible to people who would like to ask questions of us, to know more about what we do, and perhaps to make suggestions about what we <em>should</em> do. This is, at least in part, a failure of the research class to reach out beyond its own borders.</p>
<p>But we also have to ask: how much do people want to be reached out to? We ourselves wouldn’t want people constantly cluttering our Facebook timelines, inboxes, Twitter feeds and pub chats with attempts to make us like motor sports, AFL, hipster poetry slams or Donald Trump. </p>
<p>Honestly, we’re happy for other people to prioritise spending money (yes, even sacred taxpayer money) on things even if we don’t personally value them. We also hope that in turn perhaps they might be able to be accept us wanting to know more about the post World War II evolution of the Australian university campus.</p>
<p>In the end, perhaps the solution to this constantly rehashed problem of conflicting priorities is simply to acknowledge that people will always have conflicting priorities, and think about how best to live alongside each other: mythical, homogeneous pub-goer and irrelevant, out-of-touch academic alike? </p>
<p>Not all differences of opinion are problems that need to, or even <em>can</em>, be solved.</p>
<p>Perhaps instead of periodically lobbing abusive word-bombs at each other via our media outlet of choice, we could all occasionally go to a pub halfway between <em>Western</em> Sydney and the <em>University</em> of Sydney, ask each other a few questions, and raise a glass to the wonder that is the diversity of Australian culture. Surely we’d agree we’ve all benefited from that. </p>
<hr>
<p><em>Will Grant will be online for an Author Q&A between 10 and 11am AEST on Wednesday, 24 August, 2016. Post any questions you have in the comments below.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/64290/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rod Lamberts has in the past received funding from the ARC. He is also an avid pub-talker about research as co-host of The Wholesome Show </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Will J Grant receives funding from the Department of Industry, Innovation and Science. He also communicates possibly obscure research in a pub via The Wholesome Show. </span></em></p>Well, here we are again. Lazy swipes by lazy blowhards at lazy academics lazing their way through hyper competitive granting procedures.Rod Lamberts, Deputy Director, Australian National Centre for Public Awareness of Science, Australian National UniversityWill J Grant, Researcher / Lecturer, Australian National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science, Australian National UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/638242016-08-18T20:14:04Z2016-08-18T20:14:04ZWhen punitive media intrude on the courts’ role, can justice be served?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/134218/original/image-20160816-13017-a7ncv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Harriet Wran was sentenced to four years in prison with a non-parole period of two.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/David Moir</span></span></figcaption></figure><blockquote>
<p>In my opinion the publication of these egregious articles warrants the imposition of a sentence that takes account of Ms Wran’s continuing exposure to risk of custodial retribution, the unavoidable spectre of enduring damage to her reputation and an impeded recovery from her ongoing mental health and drug-related problems.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/jul/26/harriet-wran-subjected-to-immense-distress-by-ill-informed-news-corp-attacks-says-judge">So said</a> New South Wales Supreme Court Justice Ian Harrison in sentencing Harriet Wran, daughter of former NSW premier Neville Wran, to four years in prison with a non-parole period of two years for being an accessory after the fact to murder and robbery in company.</p>
<p>The “egregious articles” appeared in News Corp’s Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph newspapers; they were then circulated through other media. Somewhat ironically, what the judge described as these newspapers’ “sustained and unpleasant campaign” served to reduce Wran’s sentence because it amounted to “extra curial” (non-judicial) punishment.</p>
<h2>How did media coverage affect Wran’s case?</h2>
<p>The three forms of non-judicial punishment exacerbated by the media campaign are all established grounds for mitigating Wran’s sentence.</p>
<p>First, prisoners forced to serve time on protection or in segregation – <a href="http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/harriet-wran-prison-letters-tell-of-regrets-after-chaotic-plunge-into-addiction-led-to-murder-charge/news-story/3bd860ca4c7681eb0ae1b2192d39fbec">as Wran did</a> – do their time much harder than if they are in “normal discipline”. They are entitled to have that taken into account in sentencing. </p>
<p>This applies to a range of vulnerable persons. They include informers, police, child sex offenders, young or good-looking prisoners, LGBTI people, those with disabilities both intellectual and physical, and those with particular medical conditions – among others. </p>
<p>Second, the media coverage made Wran a “potential target in a dangerous environment”, “generated safety concerns” and “exposure to the risk of custodial retribution”. The result was more restrictive confinement, including 23 hours in cells, which had “potential serious and physical health implications”.</p>
<p>Third, the judge also noted the articles were published online, “continuing indefinitely the damage to Ms Wran’s reputation”. Again, loss of reputation is an established ground for mitigation. It generally favours those without previous convictions, and white-collar, middle-class offenders. </p>
<p>While the judgment trod established legal turf, what was more unusual was the sheeting home of these various effects to specific media articles. It highlighted that punishment of offenders is not confined to the specific sentence that is imposed. </p>
<p>This punishment is not even confined to the offender; partners, families and children of people imprisoned are also punished.</p>
<p>The internet and social media have also expanded the potential for more enduring forms of non-judicial punishment by way of continued denigration, humiliation and abuse. This not only takes place during the court process but long after any formal sentence has expired. “Doing your time” can drag on indefinitely.</p>
<h2>A broader trend?</h2>
<p>The newspapers’ “campaign” included:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>what the judge described as “distasteful and wholly misleading headlines”;</p></li>
<li><p>private letters from Wran to a friend; </p></li>
<li><p>her distraught phone calls to her mother, Jill Wran, which were transcribed and re-enacted for online listeners;</p></li>
<li><p>details of what should have been confidential negotiations between Wran’s lawyers and the Director of Public Prosections; and</p></li>
<li><p>a narrative framing that implied that Wran had “willingly taken part in a planned murder” when this was never part of the Crown case.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>This range of unsavoury practices is part of a wider pattern of tabloid media attempts to exert influence in criminal justice matters. In Wran’s case, the media <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/comment/the-case-of-harriet-wran-we-need-to-see-the-person-not-the-drug-addict-20160728-gqfs8e.html">promoted lurid narrative frames</a>, such as “Daddy’s little girl to ice junkie”, “Killer junkie thought she was a hooker on night of murder” and “Dirty Harriet”.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"752053336698810368"}"></div></p>
<p>Other examples of tabloid media coverage of legal issues include:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>sustained attacks on lawyers acting for unpopular or notorious accused; </p></li>
<li><p>attacks on those who offer character evidence for a convicted person; and </p></li>
<li><p>attacks on judges and magistrates who are perceived to be too lenient. </p></li>
</ul>
<p>In NSW, tabloid media coverage of criminal justice issues is taking place in a political context. The attorney-general has been subordinated to the justice and police minister (and deputy premier), Troy Grant, in the structure of the new justice department. </p>
<p>Police powers and police political power have been drastically increased; the NSW Law Reform Commission starved of staff; the Criminal Law Review Division abolished; and new judicial appointments made almost exclusively from the ranks of prosecutors.</p>
<p>The influence of the tabloid press and shock-jocks has become so pronounced as to <a href="https://theconversation.com/is-rational-law-reform-still-possible-in-a-shock-jock-tabloid-world-30416">raise the question</a> of whether rational law reform is still possible. An additional question is whether tabloid media campaigns, built on false, misleading, confidential and improperly obtained material, present a significant threat to the proper functioning of criminal justice.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/63824/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Brown does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The internet and social media have expanded the potential for more enduring forms of non-judicial punishment by way of continued denigration, humiliation and abuse.David Brown, Emeritus Professor, Law Faculty, UNSW SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/619912016-07-06T20:07:30Z2016-07-06T20:07:30ZCheerleaders of the press don’t win elections like they used to<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/129503/original/image-20160706-814-1ahk4fh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Is Rupert Murdoch's influence on the Australian political landscape what it used to be?</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Paul Miller</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The Murdoch press played its self-assigned role of shamelessly cheerleading for the conservatives in the election. But is Rupert’s influence quite what it used to be?</p>
<p>To answer that, we need to disentangle two threads that in the past have been woven together: Rupert Murdoch’s direct personal engagement with politicians, and the election coverage provided by his newspapers.</p>
<p>We have not seen any evidence of direct personal engagement this time. Neither Malcolm Turnbull nor Bill Shorten was observed flying halfway round the world to obtain the great man’s blessing, as Tony Blair <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/murdochs-courtship-of-blair-finally-pays-off-1144087.html">did in 1995</a> when newly installed as leader of the British Labour Party.</p>
<p>It is probable that this kind of political deferrence is a thing of the past. The phone-hacking scandal of 2011 made Murdoch politically toxic in the UK and it is doubtful that a political leader in Australia would take a risk on him. But his newspapers remain a force, and the question of their influence, if any, remains a relevant question.</p>
<p>News Corp controls <a href="https://theconversation.com/factcheck-does-murdoch-own-70-of-newspapers-in-australia-16812">just on two-thirds</a> of metropolitan and national daily newspaper circulation. It has a daily newspaper monopoly in Brisbane, Adelaide, Hobart and Darwin.</p>
<p>For all that their newsrooms are much reduced, it is still the newspapers that inject the most fresh material into the daily news cycle. That gives them an edge in setting the news agenda. Radio talkback and television feed off them all day, and the megaphone of social media now greatly amplifies this effect.</p>
<p>While increasing numbers of people are using social media as their main means of getting news, the content they get still largely comes from newspapers, which anyway own some of the biggest news websites, including News Corp’s news.com.au.</p>
<p>So, in the symbiosis that is rapidly expanding between legacy and new media, setting the news agenda – deciding what to pay attention to – remains an influential part of the role newspapers play in our political life.</p>
<p>Taken together, these factors provide a reasonable basis for discussing the influence of the Murdoch press in the recent election. </p>
<p>On the whole, that influence is malign. The reason is bias.</p>
<p>Bias limits and distorts the body of information that voters need to make an informed choice. It shuts out dissent and imposes distorting emphases.</p>
<p>The first responsibility of the media, including newspapers, is to provide a reliable body of information on which citizens may make political, economic and social choices. This much has been accepted and understood for at least 70 years, when the <a href="https://archive.org/details/freeandresponsib029216mbp">US Commission on the Freedom of the Press</a> set down the functions newspapers were expected to fulfil for society.</p>
<p>As it happens, the News Corp bias is to the conservative side of politics, but this is beside the point. It is the bias itself that does the damage.</p>
<p>One way by which News Corp’s papers showed its bias was by mixing news and opinion all through their pages, making it difficult to disentangle factual content from commentary.</p>
<p>Another way was by turning the front pages of its tabloids, especially The Daily Telegraph in Sydney, into highly partisan satirical posters.</p>
<p>One had Bill Shorten as “Billnocchio”, with an elongated nose, with a story about how he was allegedly misleading the voters with a scare campaign about the GST.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"745951997455544320"}"></div></p>
<p>Another had him dressed up as Willy Wonka with a purple bubble containing the words “Billy Shorten and the Money Factory”.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"734851817960398848"}"></div></p>
<p>Then, on election eve, the Murdoch tabloids in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane all declared either a Labor loss (“Going down” in The Daily Telegraph) or a Coalition win (“Victory in sight” in The Courier-Mail and “PM triumph beckons” in the Herald Sun).</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"748598658048925696"}"></div></p>
<p>Whether Murdoch directed all this is highly improbable. He doesn’t have to. His one-time chief executive in Australia, John Hartigan, <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2011/s3269880.htm">told Leigh Sales</a> in an interview on ABC TV in 2011 that there was no need of directives from Murdoch because:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We think as a company.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>More than 20 years ago The Economist made this <a href="http://www.economist.com/blogs/blighty/2011/07/archive">shrewd assessment</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Perhaps Mr Murdoch’s biggest influence has been not so much in persuading people how to vote as in moulding a cultural and moral climate for politicians of varying hue to exploit.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>So long as he retains ownership and control of his newspapers, this thread of Murdoch’s influence will linger.</p>
<p>Newspaper readership, as measured by <a href="http://www.roymorgan.com/findings/6806-cross-platform-newspaper-readership-australia-march-2016-201605120654">Roy Morgan Research</a>, shows a continuing decline in hard-copy numbers. Digital readership outstrips print readership for The Sydney Morning Herald, The Daily Telegraph, The Australian, The Age and the Herald Sun.</p>
<p>But the total reach of those newspapers remains very large. <a href="http://www.roymorgan.com/findings/6806-cross-platform-newspaper-readership-australia-march-2016-201605120654">Morgan data</a> show that the combined readerships of the print and digital version of those papers in March 2016 are, in round numbers:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>The Sydney Morning Herald: 4 million</p></li>
<li><p>The Daily Telegraph: 3 million</p></li>
<li><p>The Age: 2.9 million</p></li>
<li><p>The Herald Sun: 2.8 million</p></li>
<li><p>The Australian: 2.2 million.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>Given their continued role as the main provider of new news every day, and the amplifying effect of social media, their potential to influence the body politic remains substantial.</p>
<p>Yet the relentless bias of the Murdoch newspapers in favour of the Coalition did not deliver those parties a clear victory. What is going on?</p>
<ul>
<li><p>First, the American political scientist Bernard Cohen <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/2146712?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">said decades ago</a> that the media aren’t much good at telling people what to think, but very effective in telling them what to think about. That dictum still holds.</p></li>
<li><p>Second, in a country like Australia, an educated population of voters sees through bias and makes up its own mind.</p></li>
<li><p>Third, there is an echo-chamber effect: people read the newspapers that already accord with their own worldview.</p></li>
<li><p>Fourth, voters seldom take any notice of newspaper editorials.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>All the big newspapers <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/federal-election-2016/federal-election-2016-daily-newspaper-editorials-unanimously-back-turnbull-coalition-20160630-gpw0df.html">ran editorials</a> saying Turnbull should be returned. But <a href="http://jmq.sagepub.com/content/38/4/473.abstract">research has shown</a> for decades that only a very small proportion of a newspaper’s audience reads these turgid sermons, and they, par excellence, are preaching to the choir.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/61991/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Denis Muller does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Given newspapers’ continued role as the main provider of new news every day, and the amplifying effect of social media, their potential to influence the body politic remains substantial.Denis Muller, Senior Research Fellow in the Centre for Advancing Journalism, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/415692015-05-09T14:45:57Z2015-05-09T14:45:57ZElection coverage: sweet victory or a new low for UK press?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/81093/original/image-20150509-22722-1a0083j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Morning after: how the nationals covered the election.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Paperboy</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>So that’s that, then. The pollsters got it <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/may/08/polls-wrong-pre-election-results">wildly wrong</a> and the UK did not wake up on Friday to endless debates about coalitions, minority governments and who would deal with whom. Instead a startled “national” press rushed out <a href="http://www.jomec.co.uk/blog/wp-admin/%C2%A0http:/www.pressgazette.co.uk/national-newspapers-go-press-late-6am-carry-surprise-election-news-front-page-round">early editions </a> which either greeted the Conservative victory with smug, euphoric glee (The Daily Mail and The Sun) or stunned resignation at the prospect of the bleak years ahead (the Daily Mirror and The Guardian).</p>
<p>Pretty much every serious political commentator had predicted days, may be even weeks of manoeuvring, right up until the exit poll landed moments after the polls closed at 10pm. Very quickly – and very eloquently — some journalists turned to analyse the unexpected. </p>
<p>In The Guardian online <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/may/08/labour-vote-party%20">Rafael Behr</a> coolly analysed the scale of the catastrophe that had befallen Labour which extended far beyond Miliband’s difficulty in performing with easy aplomb in front of a camera. In The Independent, meanwhile, <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/election-2015-results-a-brutal-night-that-laid-bare-the-disunity-of-the-united-kingdom-10234566.html">Rosie Millard</a> reflected on a “brutal” night resulting in an SNP “tsunami” and the destruction of the Liberal Democrats.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/81089/original/image-20150509-22773-p9un66.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/81089/original/image-20150509-22773-p9un66.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/81089/original/image-20150509-22773-p9un66.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/81089/original/image-20150509-22773-p9un66.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/81089/original/image-20150509-22773-p9un66.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/81089/original/image-20150509-22773-p9un66.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/81089/original/image-20150509-22773-p9un66.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/81089/original/image-20150509-22773-p9un66.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Mail in excelsis.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Daily Mail</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>By Friday lunchtime the online editions of all the major titles were straining to adequately cover the continuing fall-out from what the <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3072723/Ed-Miliband-resign-leading-Labour-disastrous-election-defeat.html">Daily Mail</a> accurately described as an incredible night of political drama.</p>
<p>Balls was out, Clegg had quit and Farage had failed in South Thanet. Then Miliband was gone and Cameron – enjoying his “sweetest victory” – was on his way to see the Queen. The Daily Mail was erupting with schadenfruede and triumphalism. </p>
<h2>Character assassination</h2>
<p>This was a sweet victory for the Daily Mail and The Sun which will undoubtedly and repeatedly tell us that it was them wot won it. And this is very bad news for those who us who are appalled by the character assassinations endured by Ed Miliband at the hands of the Tory press. </p>
<p>Cameron’s victory will embolden these titles to resort to such tactics again. The Sun will claim this victory as its own and the sadly iconic image of Miliband eating a bacon sandwich will be as much a feature of future election coverage as the Neil Kinnock “light bulb” image of 1992, when <a href="http://www.bl.uk/learning/histcitizen/fpage/elections/election.html">The Sun asked</a> the last person leaving Britain to “please turn out the lights”.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/81090/original/image-20150509-22773-a8jnwu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/81090/original/image-20150509-22773-a8jnwu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/81090/original/image-20150509-22773-a8jnwu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=851&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/81090/original/image-20150509-22773-a8jnwu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=851&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/81090/original/image-20150509-22773-a8jnwu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=851&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/81090/original/image-20150509-22773-a8jnwu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1069&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/81090/original/image-20150509-22773-a8jnwu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1069&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/81090/original/image-20150509-22773-a8jnwu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1069&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Singing from the same songsheet.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Indeed, for seasoned critics of The Sun and Daily Mail, the vindictive lies and slurs directed at Miliband during the final week of campaigning represented another occasion for them to lament a new low. After the wet bank holiday Monday and the two-day diversion of the royal baby, Wednesday saw the gloves well and truly off as far as the right wing press were concerned.</p>
<p>Headlines such those above drew widespread criticism and not solely from the traditional left-wing quarters. Having seen the papers in advance, Andrew Neil, former editor of the Sunday Times and now presenter of the BBC’s Daily Politics, tweeted:</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"595720878979186689"}"></div></p>
<p>Some saw a “whiff” of <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/may/06/sun-front-page-antisemitic-save-our-bacon-ed-miliband">anti-Semitism on the front page</a> of Wednesday’s Sun. In the Guardian, Keith Kahn Harris wrote that Miliband could be the first Jewish-born prime minister since Disraeli and that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Damning Miliband with porcine satire seems – like the <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2435751/Red-Eds-pledge-bring-socialism-homage-Marxist-father-Ralph-Miliband-says-GEOFFREY-LEVY.html">Daily Mail’s exposé</a> of his ‘Britain-hating’ Jewish émigré father – to radiate some nasty connotations.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>No balance</h2>
<p>Aside from the impressionistic, research conducted by the <a href="http://www.jomec.co.uk/blog/wp-admin/%20http:/www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2015/may/06/national-newspapers-labour-sun-daily-mail-telegraph">Media Standards Trust</a> found that The Sun had gone after Miliband in a more ferocious manner than it went after Neil Kinnock in 1992. In its analysis of leader columns from March 26 to May 3 this year their research found that 95% of the leader columns in the paper were anti-Labour compared with 79% in 1992. </p>
<p>Over the whole the period the trust examined, The Sun ran 102 leader articles considered to be anti-Labour compared with just four that were critical of the Conservatives. Similarly, Loughborough University’s <a href="http://blog.lboro.ac.uk/general-election/the-knives-are-out-in-closing-days-of-election-campaign/">Communication Research Centre</a> found that across the press, over the whole of the campaign, Labour experienced “extensive negative coverage”.</p>
<p>That we have such a Conservative (and conservative) newspaper industry is not news. But it doesn’t harm to be reminded of that fact now and gain. As Dominic Ponsford and William Turvill said in the <a href="http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/uk-daily-newspaper-market-backs-tories-over-labour-margin-five-one">Press Gazette</a>, in this election the UK daily newspaper market backed the Tories over Labour by a margin of five to one. In terms of the Sundays, five out the 11 main newspapers backed the Tories working out at 66% of all the titles.</p>
<p>So Cameron is back in Downing Street and Miliband, the would-be scourge of Murdoch and the only party leader in generations to openly challenge the press barons, finds his career (for the time being) in tatters. And, whether or not we believe that <a href="http://www.jomec.co.uk/blog/wp-admin/%20https:/theconversation.com/the-suns-snp-tory-split-shows-newspaper-endorsements-arent-what-they-used-to-be-38256">newspapers influence their readers</a> we are unlikely to see his successor behave anywhere near as pugnaciously. </p>
<p>It’s my guess that the analysts and advisers to the new leader will point to the sustained and co-ordinated negative coverage that Miliband has received and reason that therein lies part of the reason for his failure. It won’t at all matter if the evidence doesn’t support that theory.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/41569/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
So that’s that, then. The pollsters got it wildly wrong and the UK did not wake up on Friday to endless debates about coalitions, minority governments and who would deal with whom. Instead a startled “national…John Jewell, Director of Undergraduate Studies, School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies, Cardiff UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/403352015-04-16T13:06:22Z2015-04-16T13:06:22ZQuality has been sacrificed in the ‘melee of digital change’ at the Daily Telegraph<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/78211/original/image-20150416-5650-18o22du.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Hold the front page!</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">The Daily Telegraph</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>It’s not often that you see journalists openly criticise each other. For sure, there is the well documented ideological antipathy that exists between the <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/editorials/guardian-vs-daily-mail-this-newspaper-took-care-not-to-publish-sensitive-data-from-the-snowden-files-8874680.html%20">Daily Mail and the Guardian</a>, for example, but criticism of a particular writers work by another is relatively rare. </p>
<p>That’s why the sarcastic tweet of Channel 4’s economic editor Paul Mason last week, relating to <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/ed-miliband/11526188/Ed-Miliband-was-dating-senior-BBC-economics-journalist-Stephanie-Flanders-when-he-was-at-the-Treasury.html">a story</a> about Ed Miliband’s love life by the Daily Telegraph’s chief political correspondent, Christopher Hope, was so noteworthy.</p>
<p>With a link to the piece itself, Mason tweeted:</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"586262376015626242"}"></div></p>
<p>Hope’s article is a piece of fluff put together with information gleaned from a “Woman’s Own” type interview that Miliband’s wife, Justine, gave to <a href="http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/ed-milibands-wife-justine-dog-5481870%C2%A0">the Daily Mirror</a>. In the interview, she recalled that at the dinner party where she first met the “good-looking and clever” Ed, he had been “secretly” going out with the party’s host. </p>
<p>When Justine found this out, she says, she was furious. They bumped into each other a couple of times after that but: “We didn’t start seeing each other for at least a year”.</p>
<h2>Man dates woman shock</h2>
<p>Not much to work with there, you might think. Man dates woman before he dates woman who becomes his wife. That’s it. But not for Hope and the Telegraph who managed to find out that the “secret” woman was in fact the (then) BBC economics journalist Stephanie Flanders. </p>
<p>Evidently, Mason was not alone in his view of Hope’s article – the tweet has been retweeted 856 times and the below-the-line comments on Hope’s article were almost unanimously critical of him - and the Telegraph. What seemed to annoy the readership more than anything was that a chief political correspondent, and of a so-called quality paper, should be reduced to employing tabloid tactics. As one reader wrote:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The DT don’t even need a scandal these days before trying to blacken a man’s character. This non-story is down there in the bowels of The Sun and Daily Mail. For Shame!</p>
</blockquote>
<p>There was so much more of the same, so much vitriol spewing forth, that as I read, I began to think that maybe the Labour party had orchestrated the response themselves. The only realistic conclusion I could reach, though, was that after a recent history of alienating its own journalists, the Telegraph was well on the way to disaffecting its readers as well.</p>
<h2>Collapse in standards</h2>
<p>It’s only a few weeks since the <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-peter-obornes-resignation-forces-us-to-confront-about-journalism-37771">resignation of its chief political commentator, Peter Oborne</a>. Upon leaving the paper in February, at the height of the HSBC banking scandal, Oborne launched a scathing attack on its owners and management, alleging that the Telegraph regularly spiked reports about HSBC for fear of offending one of paper’s most lucrative advertisers.</p>
<p>Writing in <a href="https://www.opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/peter-oborne/why-i-have-resigned-from-telegraph">Open Democracy</a>, he stated that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>From the start of 2013 onwards stories critical of HSBC were discouraged. HSBC suspended its advertising with the Telegraph. Its account, I have been told by an extremely well-informed insider, was extremely valuable. HSBC, as one former Telegraph executive told me, is ‘the advertiser you literally cannot afford to offend’</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Oborne also catalogues a “collapse in standards” at the Telegraph and a series of sackings and management choices which, in his view, have completely altered the fabric of the newspaper. The foreign desk has been “decimated”, half of the sub editors have been dismissed and, since the Barclay brothers bought the paper in 2004, there have been six changes of editor.</p>
<p>Oborne’s decision not only to resign from the Telegraph but also to make his disquiet public was driven in large part by his concerns for the future of the Telegraph under the present ownership of the mysterious and reclusive Barclay Brothers. As <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-31517392">Tom De Castella</a> has written:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Surprisingly little has been written - in any depth - about the Barclays. Few photos exist of them on news picture libraries. One of the few shows them formally dressed, having just been knighted by the Queen. That was in 2000.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>We know, as the <a href="http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/d6af687c-b8d2-11e4-b8e6-00144feab7de.html#axzz3XC3gxB6E">Financial Times</a> noted in February, that the Barclay-owned delivery business, Yodel, <a href="http://markets.ft.com/tearsheets/performance.asp?s=uk:HSBA">owed £242m to HSBC</a> at the very time when the newspaper allegedly discouraged <a href="http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/d63f2d46-b6cf-11e4-a33b-00144feab7de.html">critical coverage</a> of the bank. A spokesperson for the Barclay brothers dismissed this as “misguided and just plain wrong”.</p>
<p>Also less obscure than the brothers themselves is the fact that they have turned the Telegraph’s parent group into one of their “most profitable holdings”. This is a unique achievement - the Daily Telegraph is, according to the <a href="http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/content/jason-seikens-departure-marks-latest-stage-barclay-brothers-permanent-revolution-telegraph">Press Gazette</a>, the only mainstream national “quality” newspaper in the UK to run at a profit: at £61m on a turnover of £325m despite a big fall in print sales.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/78205/original/image-20150416-5657-758sib.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/78205/original/image-20150416-5657-758sib.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/78205/original/image-20150416-5657-758sib.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=451&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/78205/original/image-20150416-5657-758sib.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=451&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/78205/original/image-20150416-5657-758sib.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=451&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/78205/original/image-20150416-5657-758sib.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=567&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/78205/original/image-20150416-5657-758sib.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=567&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/78205/original/image-20150416-5657-758sib.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=567&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">But has it worked?</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/luc/697091392/in/photolist-24ALZ7-gFXBmS-dMv3Ue-9rbCqX-cb3yC7-9XJMqT-5Xej7-dMv4LK-dMACCd-4xHtMJ-edexJD-dCvncE-dMACo3-gS3Fi8-9DS4nC-dMv3H2-9c3WRt-a7wk7m-aUebRz-nZy7DW-rAYtTQ-5HxKdv-cxhJ3Q-bksmE3-aVg4LR-bwsTPV-bEHNUW-9YtdL8-a7wjuo-qdpYPZ-eP142v-dMAC6f-dMABdu-6RewUD-ifBaGa-5uh9VL-dMv45c-daZisM-dMv3P8-by1Mfe-cPq22b-6eR4dq-acX6bn-85o5uF-8mZY3m-85o6o4-85rfAu-85o5X8-dEcKXf-eg4F2U">Luc Legay, IFRA</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This financial success has come at a cost as the digital transformation of Telegraph newspapers has developed, especially since the recruitment of American digital guru Jason Seiken in 2013 to the role of chief content officer and editor-in-chief (though <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/apr/02/jason-seiken-steps-down-daily-telegraph">a swift departure</a> followed Oborne’s “exposé”). Other staff have been axed in the the march towards digital. In March 2013 Telegraph Media Group <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2014/oct/21/telegraphmediagroup-national-newspapers">got rid of 80</a> of its editorial staff and then in October last year a further 55 editorial jobs were lost. In the past few years, <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014/06/18/telegraph-cuts-highprofile-journalists_n_5506465.html">high-profile</a>, talented journalists have left, including Benedict Brogan, Damian Thomson and the well-regarded editor, Tony Gallagher. </p>
<p>Most recently it was reported that sports writer, Henry Winter, possibly the most widely read and high-profile of all of the Telegraph’s journalists, was <a href="http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/now-winter-theyre-discontented-telegraphs-top-sports-writer-believed-be-joining-times">leaving to join The Times</a>. </p>
<p>In terms of print sales the Telegraph’s downward trajectory, which is a now a common feature of the national press, continues apace. I remember the significance of when sales fell below <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/media/2010/feb/12/daily-telegraph-abcs%20.">700,000</a> in 2010. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/78213/original/image-20150416-5615-w0r6zt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/78213/original/image-20150416-5615-w0r6zt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=325&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/78213/original/image-20150416-5615-w0r6zt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=325&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/78213/original/image-20150416-5615-w0r6zt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=325&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/78213/original/image-20150416-5615-w0r6zt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=409&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/78213/original/image-20150416-5615-w0r6zt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=409&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/78213/original/image-20150416-5615-w0r6zt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=409&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Not just The Telegraph: decline in print circulation.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/ken-goldstein/dont-blame-papers-declining-political-influence-of-printed-press">Open Democracy</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/national-newspaper-abcs-march-2015-sun-sales-decline-unaffected-second-full-month-without-page-three">Latest figures</a> for March 2015 show the Daily Telegraph’s circulation at 479,290 which is a year-on-year drop of 8%.</p>
<h2>Clicks and bucks</h2>
<p>But the shift in emphasis from print to digital content appears to be bearing fruit. The Audit Bureau of Circulation (ABC), the industry body for media measurement, showed that in the period between June 2013 and July 2014 <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/10980139/Telegraph-digital-readership-figures-soar.html">the Telegraph’s worldwide digital audience rose 46%</a> while in June 2014 the number of people accessing the Telegraph online and on mobile phones reached 79m.</p>
<p>For some seasoned commentators the above developments have been to the detriment of journalistic standards at the Telegraph titles. Former Guardian editor, Peter Preston, wrote in the <a href="http://www.jomec.co.uk/blog/wp-admin/%C2%A0http:/www.theguardian.com/media/2015/feb/21/daily-telegraph-hsbc-advert-controversy-needs-editor-not-ceo">Observer in February</a> that in “the melee of digital change” the Daily Telegraph no longer has an editor.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>What they have instead is content managers who don’t sit on the editorial floor but reside elsewhere trying to make more clicks and more bucks for the [Barclay] brothers. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>And, since the departure of Seiken earlier this month, the paper’s digital strategy is now uncertain.</p>
<p>One thing <em>is</em> certain, though. As Telegraph editorials celebrate <em>its passionate commitment to journalism of the highest quality … with investigations that have helped hold the powerful to account</em>, many are challenging this view. </p>
<p>And worryingly, the criticism is not just coming from disgruntled ex-employees and business rivals – it’s coming from the readership, too.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/40335/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
It’s not often that you see journalists openly criticise each other. For sure, there is the well documented ideological antipathy that exists between the Daily Mail and the Guardian, for example, but criticism…John Jewell, Director of Undergraduate Studies, School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies, Cardiff UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/238302014-03-03T04:33:56Z2014-03-03T04:33:56ZIs press freedom a licence for unfair and unbalanced coverage?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/42886/original/h3hgh2p4-1393814239.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Daily Telegraph gave extraordinary prominence to the allegations against former speaker Peter Slipper, then relegated the dismissal of the case to page 17.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://i.imgur.com/8W1ec.jpg">nofibs.com.au</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The Sydney Daily Telegraph’s <a href="http://mumbrella.com.au/telegraph-slams-press-council-finding-kingston-questions-teles-motives-209930">reaction</a> to an Australian Press Council ruling that it breached the council’s “fairness and balance” principle raises concerns about the council’s relationship with the big newspaper houses that provide its funding.</p>
<p>The Press Council found that the Daily Telegraph had breached the <a href="http://www.presscouncil.org.au/general-principles/">“fairness and balance” principle</a> in its treatment of the <a href="http://www.fedcourt.gov.au/case-management-services/access-to-files-and-transcripts/court-documents/ashby-v-commonwealth">court case</a> involving the former speaker of the federal parliament, Peter Slipper, and a former member of his staff, James Ashby. Ashby, who on Thursday <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-02-27/court-upholds-james-ashby-appeal/5288270">won an appeal</a> to rehear the case, alleged that Slipper had sexually harassed him and had involved him in questionable practices concerning the use of government Cabcharge vouchers.</p>
<p>The original case was heard in the Federal Court before Justice Steven Rares. His <a href="http://www.judgments.fedcourt.gov.au/judgments/Judgments/fca/single/2012/2012fca1411">judgment</a> noted that on April 4, 2012, a News Limited journalist, Steve Lewis, had sent a text message to Ashby saying: <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/we-will-get-him-journalists-alleged-texts-to-slipper-accuser-20120626-20zl9.html">“We will get him”</a>. The judge found that to be a reference to Slipper.</p>
<p>Justice Rares also referred at some length to what he called “collaboration” between Ashby and Lewis. This included his arranging for Ashby to fly to, and stay in, Sydney at News Limited’s expense while conferring with his lawyers about the case. </p>
<p>For all that, Justice Rares found that Lewis had not shared Ashby’s political objectives but had simply been <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/ashby-journalist-spurred-by-story-20121212-2ba3c.html">pursuing a story</a> as any journalist might in similar circumstances.</p>
<h2>The grounds for complaint</h2>
<p>The endeavours of Lewis and other News Limited journalists yielded a large number of stories on the Slipper affair. The Daily Telegraph gave these very prominent treatment. On April 21, 2012, the allegations lodged by Ashby with the court were carried across pages one, two and three.</p>
<p>By contrast, on December 13, 2012, the article reporting the court’s dismissal of Ashby’s action as an abuse of process was carried on page 17.</p>
<p>This drew a complaint from a journalist, <a href="http://nofibs.com.au/margo-kingston/">Margo Kingston</a>, a one-time Sydney Morning Herald reporter in the Canberra press gallery. She complained that by burying the report of the outcome after giving such prominence to the original allegations, the Daily Telegraph had breached the Press Council’s “fairness and balance” principle.</p>
<p>In <a href="http://www.presscouncil.org.au/document-search/adj-1573/">upholding the complaint</a>, the council said that while the principle does not necessarily require complete or almost complete fairness or balance, a combination of factors meant that avoiding serious unfairness or imbalance was of special importance in this case. These factors were:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>The paper had broken the story in the first place.</p></li>
<li><p>Lewis had described the allegations as <a href="http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/opinion-peter-slipper-sex-scandal-a-threat-to-fragile-government/story-e6frerdf-1226334888126">“among the most serious ever raised”</a> in Australian political history.</p></li>
<li><p>The newspaper had prominently reported the allegations and progress of the legal proceedings on many occasions over the ensuing months.</p></li>
<li><p>Dismissal of the case raised important questions about Slipper’s decision to stand aside as speaker, a decision that the newspaper had noted at the time came after its revelations of Ashby’s allegations.</p></li>
<li><p>Readers were entitled to expect to be informed of such a key development as the dismissal of the proceedings, especially by the newspaper that had given them great prominence.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>The Press Council might have added – but didn’t – that Lewis’ activities behind the scenes imposed a particular ethical duty on the newspaper to treat the story fairly.</p>
<p>The council went on to say that the later report did not need to match the prominence and detail of the earlier reports. It expressly disavowed any role in specifying precisely how fairness and balance should have been achieved.</p>
<h2>The newspaper hits back</h2>
<p>Regardless, the Daily Telegraph stated in its editorial that the adjudication was an attack on freedom of the press. The newspaper said that the council was attempting to dictate to editors the way in which they selected and placed the news in their papers.</p>
<p>This is, of course, the standard reaction of the established newspapers to any attempt at holding them accountable. However, in assessing the Daily Telegraph’s attack on the Press Council’s decision and in particular on its chair, Professor Julian Disney, it needs to be remembered that the council depends for its existence on funding from the newspaper companies. The largest of these by far is News Corp (previously News Limited), which owns the Daily Telegraph. That makes it the largest funder too.</p>
<p>After the collapse last year of the Labor government’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/media-reforms-a-historic-opportunity-missed-12963">attempt at media regulatory reform</a>, the Press Council is all Australia has by way of a mechanism of accountability for newspapers. With its fate in the hands of the media companies, it is unsettling that its largest funder is so openly hostile to its work. Another News Corp publication, The Australian, has referred to the council as <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opinion/columnists/press-council-in-disneyland/story-e6frg75f-1226657314748?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheAustralianOpinion+%28The+Australian+%7C+Opinion%29#">“Disneyland”</a>.</p>
<p>The treatment of this latest adjudication says a lot about the News Corp’s attitude. The Telegraph published it on page 29 under the headline: “Australian Press Council Adjudication No 1573”. How about: “Tele mauled by newspaper watchdog”?</p>
<hr>
<p><em>After publication of this article, the Press Council advised that, in accordance with its requirements, the Daily Telegraph published a 180-word summary of the adjudication on page 2.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/23830/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Denis Muller does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The Sydney Daily Telegraph’s reaction to an Australian Press Council ruling that it breached the council’s “fairness and balance” principle raises concerns about the council’s relationship with the big…Denis Muller, Senior Research Fellow in the Centre for Advancing Journalism, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/232222014-02-14T06:05:19Z2014-02-14T06:05:19ZThatcherism’s lethal legacy and the politics of reporting research<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/41488/original/58yj9xkz-1392312989.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Maggie, Maggie, Maggie.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Joe Giddens/PA Wire</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>There has been much written in the media over the last year about the legacy of Thatcherism and the ways in which it reshaped the British political landscape. However, in new empirical research published this week, we demonstrated just how high a cost the country paid in terms of health and well-being for Thatcherism’s economic and social policies.</p>
<p>Our <a href="http://pcwww.liv.ac.uk/%7Ealexss/thatcherism.pdf">study</a>, which looked at material from existing research and data from the Office for National Statistics, concludes that Thatcherism resulted in the unnecessary and unjust premature deaths of British citizens, together with a substantial and continuing burden of suffering and a widespread degradation of well-being. Alcohol and drug-related mortality, deaths from violence and suicide all increased substantially during the Thatcher years – compared to other countries. Regional inequalities in life expectancy between north and south were also exacerbated, as were health inequalities between the richest and poorest in British society.</p>
<p>We argued that these adverse public health outcomes were a result of unnecessary unemployment, which <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/january/26/newsid_2506000/2506335.stm">increased</a> from approximately 1m in 1980 to 3m in 1982; a further peak was seen in Thatcher’s wake in the early 1990s. Unemployment is strongly associated with higher mortality rates (unemployed are <a href="http://jech.bmj.com/content/64/01/22.short">twice as likely to die</a> as employed), and Thatcherism can therefore be said to have resulted in additional unemployment-related deaths. </p>
<p>The welfare cuts implemented by Thatcher’s governments led to a rise in poverty rates from 6.7% in 1975 to 12% by 1985; poverty is <a href="http://www.mailman.columbia.edu/academic-departments/epidemiology/research-service/death-poverty">well known</a> to be one of the major causes of ill health and mortality. Income inequality also increased in the Thatcher period, as the richest 0.01% of society had 28 times the mean national average income in 1978 but 70 times the average in 1990. As has been shown by <a href="http://www.equalitytrust.org.uk/">research</a> in the Spirit Level, income inequality is internationally associated with higher mortality and morbidity. </p>
<p>The housing policies pursued in the 1980s led to a tripling of homeless households from 55,000 in 1980 to 165,000 in 1990. Homeless people on average <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/society/2011/dec/21/homeless-people-life-expectancy-47">live to only 47</a> – more than 30 years on average less than the rest of us.</p>
<p>Our research clearly showed how the decisions of governments and politicians in the Thatcherite years drove health inequalities: the wrong political decisions can kill. Clearly any future advancements in public health will be limited if governments continue to pursue hard-line neoliberal economic and social policies, such as the current welfare state cuts being carried out by the Coalition in the name of austerity. </p>
<p>Indeed, life expectancy in UK has apparently begun to <a href="http://www.hsj.co.uk/topics/public-health/dh-acknowledges-first-fall-in-life-expectancy-since-2003/5067862.article?blocktitle=News&contentID=13251">fall</a>, and a growing body of <a href="http://www.lse.ac.uk/publicEvents/events/2013/11/20131127t1830vOT.aspx">research</a> has shown the dire human cost of austerity.</p>
<p>The study -– which was carried out by the universities of Liverpool, Durham, West of Scotland, Glasgow and Edinburgh and was published in the USA-based <a href="http://baywood.metapress.com/app/home/contribution.asp?referrer=parent&backto=searcharticlesresults,3,10;">International Journal of Health Services</a> – was scientifically peer-reviewed and the data upon which it was based came from mre than 70 other academic papers as well as publicly available data from the ONS. </p>
<h2>Shoot the messenger</h2>
<p>Naturally, any critical academic research on this topic is bound to provoke some media attention and debate. However, while the <a href="http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/margaret-thatcher-health-legacy-former-3138706">Daily Mirror</a> covered the content of the report, <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/margaret-thatcher/10634706/Labour-links-of-academics-who-denounced-Thatchers-legacy.html">The Daily Telegraph</a> chose to focus on my well-publicised membership of the Labour Party (as well as that of the lead author Dr Alex-Scott Samuel), using this to try to undermine and marginalise the findings of the paper.</p>
<p>Clearly, The Daily Telegraph wanted the Labour Party to be the story, as opposed to our paper’s public health science about Thatcher’s health legacy. But their decision to report our study on the basis of my political affiliations is a clear attempt to use an academic’s personal beliefs to poison the conditions for rational debate. </p>
<p>There have been <a href="http://www.bmj.com/content/342/bmj.d269">many other instances</a> of academics’ open affiliations being used to undermine their research; this practice has wide implications for academics who wish to engage in politics and political issues on the basis of their work. </p>
<p>It would be wrong to claim that scientific research is necessarily free from bias. The neutrality of science has long been contested, particularly by <a href="http://lifesandlanguages.wikispaces.com/file/view/Harding+-+Strong+Objectivity.pdf">feminist and critical researchers</a>, in recognition of the fact that everyone has political values of one kind or another. Academics who try to be clear about them are merely being more open. Our findings, and the research process by which they were generated, should be assessed on their own scientific merits.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/23222/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Clare Bambra receives funding from Leverhulme Trust and the BUPA Medical Foundation to study the health effects of austerity. She is a member of the Labour Party and the Socialist Health Association (affiliated to the Labour Party).</span></em></p>There has been much written in the media over the last year about the legacy of Thatcherism and the ways in which it reshaped the British political landscape. However, in new empirical research published…Clare Bambra, Professor of Public Health Policy, Department of Geography, Durham UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/225072014-01-28T16:10:35Z2014-01-28T16:10:35ZDigital labs are re-inventing journalism on the run<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/40015/original/mtq98rpq-1390908908.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Can you handle the digital revolution?</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">www.shutterstock.com</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>It was something of a moment in the evolution of news in this country. Last week, while we were still digesting the revelation that The Independent, which had been acquired by its current owner for just £1, was once more <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2014/jan/16/theindependent-alexander-lebedev">looking for a buyer</a>, we heard The Daily Telegraph had sacked its editor – an old-style newsman – and then on the same day, The Guardian Media Group had sold off its remaining stake in its cash cow Auto Trader to help keep its operation afloat.</p>
<p>Three “quality” newspapers with illustrious track records, all facing up, in their own way, to the challenges presented by the digital revolution – which has turned the news industry on its head.</p>
<p>For the past 15 years, an argument has been reverberating in and around journalism. The digital era, <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeff-jarvis/can-ezra-klein-tear-apart_b_4675309.html">argued one school of thought</a>, is a total re-set: nothing will – or can – survive of the old news media dominated by print and terrestrial broadcast. Rubbish, argued the other school: <a href="http://reconsideringdigital.com/10-reasons-why-newspapers-are-still-better-than-the-internet/">digital journalism can’t do original reporting</a> and when the world clocks that fraud, mainstream media will revive.</p>
<p>I parody the opposing positions, but not by much. The quarrel was static and often sterile. I’ve argued (<a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/28560140/George-Brock-Is-News-Over">here</a> and <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Out-Print-Newspapers-Journalism-Business/dp/0749466510/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1372008803&sr=1-1&keywords=brock+out+print">here</a>) that the task of journalists in the digital era is to adapt old values and ideals to new circumstances and possibilities. In other words, a lot needs to change to renew an old ideal: telling people useful truth.</p>
<p>This stale dispute from the past is now being rendered irrelevant by new online news businesses which have the experimental drive, technological confidence and resources to try new ways of doing things – and which have already won a sizeable audience to try them on.</p>
<h2>Shock of the new</h2>
<p>Experiments small and large with everything from how long the ideal list should be to the ideal width for pictures to the right tone for long-form reporting are conducted on the run, at speed and with a wealth of data about what is shared and how much. Failed experiments are dumped and forgotten. Online sites are not inhibited by caution about their reputation; they have won millions of users but not yet prestige and respect. Such sites are run as laboratories for the next news.</p>
<p>This does not mean that each of these experiments will succeed – by definition, the majority don’t – and it does not mean that any business pumped full of cash by over-excitable venture capital firms will succeed. Some will flame out or fizzle out.</p>
<p>But the readiness of young digital consumers of news to look at what companies such as Vox and Buzzfeed are doing is accelerating the rate of experiment and discovery. </p>
<p>The traditional way of reporting a major international story, such as the increasingly violent protests in Ukraine, would be with words (for print) or in reportage led by a questing reporter on radio or television. The print version might be accompanied by still picture or two. Words traditionally dominated pictures because they could convey more complex ideas – and space for pictures was short.</p>
<p>But in the digital age, words and pictures can be both transmitted at low cost and at the same speed; the space constraint has gone. So Buzzfeed tried telling <a href="http://www.buzzfeed.com/maxseddon/protest-against-dictatorship-in-ukraine-turns-violent">the story of one recent day in pictures</a>. There were more than 30 images, four or five were video clips. Each had at least a two or three line caption. Although delivered in fragments, the total word count for that day’s despatch would have added up to as many words (between 600 and 800) as a newspaper foreign correspondent would expect to land on a page.</p>
<p>This wouldn’t be the ideal way to tell any story, but it was quite a good way to tell this particular day in Kiev. Because it was on Buzzfeed, you can suppose that the editor-geeks there will be looking at user-generated data to see what number of pictures plays best. Do readers get bored after 25? Or do they prefer more depth at around 30 or even 40 images? There will be data to provide clues. (For more on Buzzfeed’s philosophy, science and speed of growth, see <a href="http://www.wired.co.uk/magazine/archive/2014/02/features/buzzfeed/viewgallery/331449">here</a>).</p>
<p>The presentation or organisation of news gets turned upside down like this at intervals. The driver of change is usually technology opening new opportunities or the readers and viewers getting fed up with what they see as mannered, formal or simply un-illuminating ways of producing news. Those ways of doing news haven’t been rethought because no one is paying enough attention to readers – and particularly to young readers – as they adjust to digital news.</p>
<p>To repeat: not all these new attempts will work. Will <a href="http://www.niemanlab.org/2014/01/vice-news-wants-to-take-documentary-style-storytelling-to-hot-spots-around-the-globe/">Vice TV’s</a> energetic and quirky reporters actually judge the situation they report correctly? Perhaps, but quite possibly naivety will undermine them. Will Ezra Klein’s new site for giving context to the news backed by <a href="http://voxmedia.com/">Vox Media</a> find <a href="http://gigaom.com/2014/01/27/vox-media-doesnt-just-have-to-reinvent-the-news-it-has-to-reinvent-advertising-too/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter">a business model</a> even if his intentions are good?</p>
<p>But failures won’t obscure the fact that these new players are starting to make the weather. David Carr of the New York Times caught this very well <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/27/business/media/ezra-klein-joining-vox-media-as-web-journalism-asserts-itself.html?_r=3&referrer=&utm_content=bufferdb692&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer">in a column at the weekend</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>More and more, it’s becoming apparent that digital publishing is its own thing, not an additional platform for established news companies. They can buy their way into it, but their historical advantages are often offset by legacy costs and bureaucracy.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Carr quotes Henry Blodget of Business Insider: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Digital journalism is as different from print and TV journalism as print and TV are from each other … Few people expect great print news organizations to also win in TV. Similarly, few should expect great TV or print organizations to win in digital. The news-gathering, storytelling and distribution approaches are just very different.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The clearer this becomes, the tougher the strains on established media trying to manage both print and digital in the right combination. The Guardian’s <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-25830592">sale of its lucrative Auto Trader stake</a> raised enough, we’re told, to soak up its losses for almost 20 years. The Daily Telegraph’s <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/after-tony-gallaghers-sacking-from-the-telegraph-last-week-theres-a-big-question-mark-hanging-over-the-organisations-guru-jason-seiken-9086249.html">abrupt dismissal of Tony Gallagher</a> leaves the editorial operation now effectively run by someone from a digital tradition. The Independent has lost circulation and revenue for as long as anyone can remember.</p>
<p>All these papers have extensive online operations. But despite their advantages of accumulated reputation and wisdom, they find the agility and experimental inventiveness of their new rivals hard to match.</p>
<p><em>This article is an edited version of a blog post that first appeared on <a href="http://georgebrock.net/">georgebrock.net</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/22507/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>George Brock does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>It was something of a moment in the evolution of news in this country. Last week, while we were still digesting the revelation that The Independent, which had been acquired by its current owner for just…George Brock, Head of Journalism, City, University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/222802014-01-22T14:14:07Z2014-01-22T14:14:07ZSell-offs and editor’s exit mark seismic shift as newspapers accelerate into digital-first era<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/39666/original/v4nzq5v4-1390389600.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Chill wind or bright new dawn?</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Zhenlang Li</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The push towards online over print was confirmed in an extraordinary 24 hours, which saw three major media groups take radical action to pursue a web-first future. </p>
<p>In the UK, Tony Gallagher, editor of the Daily Telegraph <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/jan/21/tony-gallagher-exits-daily-telegraph-editor">left the paper</a>, while Guardian Media Group <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/lossmaking-guardian-papers-helped-by-auto-trader-sale-9075883.html">sold its stake in car classifieds brand Auto Trader</a> for a reported £500-£600m in order to secure a financial future. These changes came only days after it emerged that the Independent newspaper titles <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2014/jan/16/independent-print-alexander-lebedev">were being put up for sale</a> by its owner Alexander Lebedev – leaving Rupert Murdoch’s Times as the only daily UK broadsheet currently unscathed.</p>
<p>Meanwhile in the US, former Telegraph editor and News International executive Will Lewis was <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/jan/21/will-lewis-appointed-interim-ceo-of-dow-jones">named interim CEO of Dow Jones & Company</a> as part of a review of “institutional strategy”.</p>
<p>Telegraph Media Group announced that Tony Gallagher, who masterminded the MPs’ expenses story as deputy editor, was leaving the group. The paper’s assistant editor (news) Chris Evans was named acting print editor of the newspaper Monday to Friday, while Sunday Telegraph editor Ian MacGregor will now also take charge of the Saturday paper.</p>
<p>Gallagher’s departure comes after TMG appointed Jason Seiken, a former PBS executive, as “chief content officer” and editor-in-chief to focus the group more on digital content; a statement from the group said Gallagher’s departure came at the same time as the business “moves to its next phase of its digital transformation”.</p>
<p>Gallagher, a former Mail executive, had been expected to head up a print division when the group was restructured but <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2014/jan/21/tony-gallagher-telegraphmediagroup">according to media commentator Roy Greenslade</a> there had been a “personality clash” between Gallagher and Seiken.</p>
<p>In a statement, Seiken said, “We must reinvent the way we work and move beyond simply putting news and information online and be an essential part of the audience’s lives. Our competition is no longer only newspapers and we must innovate to survive.”</p>
<p>Tweets from serving Telegraph journalists expressed shock at Gallagher’s sudden departure, and the veteran newspaper man was given a traditional “banging out” of the newsroom (when staff bang their keyboards or desks as a fellow colleague leaves their job as a mark of respect).</p>
<h2>Guardian cashes out of Autotrader</h2>
<p>Meanwhile the Guardian revealed it had sold its 50.1% share in AutoTrader owner Trader Media Group to the private equity firmer Apax Partners. The deal, subject to regulatory approval should generate around £600-700m to fund the Guardian, Observer and guardian.com website.</p>
<p>Auto Trader was seen as a cash cow that had covered the Guardian’s losses over the years. According to the Independent, those close to GMG said the sale would “transform its balance sheet” and guarantee the future of the loss-making paper for the next decade. While the Guardian website has won numerous awards for innovation, and editor Alan Rusbridger <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/gnm-press-office/guardian-news-media-digital-first-organisation">has made clear he is pursuing a “web-first” policy</a>, the Guardian and Observer newspapers made an operating loss of £31m to March 2013, <a href="http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/guardian-news-and-media-reports-boost-digital-revenue-losses-fall-lowest-level-2008">although digital revenue rose</a>.</p>
<p>“Once completed, this deal will make GMG a very well-capitalised media organisation with the financial flexibility to navigate the rapidly-changing media environment, where our flagship titles are proven pioneers of digital and print innovation,” Neil Berkett, the chair of the GMG board said.</p>
<p>And then there’s the Independent being put up for sale; founder and chairman of its publishing company Andreas Whittam Smith was authorised by owner Alexander Lebedev to seek out a buyer.</p>
<p>The Independent, which was bought for a nominal £1 fee by the Russian oligarch has continued to experience falls in circulation, although its populist version the i, which costs 20p and was introduced in 2010, has built a daily circulation of around 220,000.</p>
<p>In the US, Lex Fenwick yesterday left News Corp’s Dow Jones group after only two years in the post of chief executive and was replaced by Will Lewis as interim CEO.</p>
<p><a href="http://newscorp.com/2014/01/21/news-corp-announces-changes-at-dow-jones-company/">In a statement on the News Corp website</a>, Robert Thomson, chief executive of News Corp said that the company was looking towards changes “that will deliver even more value to customers”. “We will also be redoubling our efforts to develop the Wall Street Journal and its digital properties globally, which continue to serve the world’s most influential readers with the most authoritative news and analysis,” added Thomson.</p>
<p>Lewis instituted a digitally integrated newsroom at his time at the Telegraph and was given the job of Chief Creative Officer at News Corp to drive digital initiatives at the company.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/22280/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Glenda Cooper has worked at the Independent, the Daily Telegraph and the Sunday Times and was the Guardian Research Fellow 2006-7. She still contributes to the Daily Telegraph on a freelance basis. </span></em></p>The push towards online over print was confirmed in an extraordinary 24 hours, which saw three major media groups take radical action to pursue a web-first future. In the UK, Tony Gallagher, editor of…Glenda Cooper, PhD student, City, University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/175432013-09-08T20:37:40Z2013-09-08T20:37:40ZElection 2013: the role of the media<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/30940/original/d74kzzkz-1378625600.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Wherever the leaders went on the campaign trail the media followed. How can we assess the media's performance?</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Alan Porritt</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In one sense, the Australian media did a good job under difficult circumstances in this election. The difficult part was how predictable the campaign was and the increasing inevitability of the outcome.</p>
<p>Both leaders tried to play it safe, but Kevin Rudd was put under much more scrutiny and pressure. This perhaps led to his disappointing performance in the <a href="https://theconversation.com/leaders-debate-experts-respond-16892">first leaders’ debate</a>, removing that element of uncertainty and drama which journalists need to give their narratives structure and tension. </p>
<p>The polls suggested a historic defeat for the ALP, and that’s what transpired. Against that background, it was always going to be a challenge for the press to make the campaign interesting to an electorate largely tired of and cynical about the incumbents, and inclined to give the Coalition a fair go. By week four of the campaign, <a href="https://theconversation.com/election-reporting-as-horse-race-coverage-contributes-to-voter-disenchantment-17659">many had tuned out</a> and were pretty much ready for the ballot box.</p>
<p>The media could have done a better job scrutinising the Coalition’s program, but opposition leader Tony Abbott and his team played a masterful game of hide-and-seek with their policy costings, denying both journalists and political opponents a clear target. The fact-checkers on several media outlets did what they could with the numbers that were available, but the Coalition strategy of “the less you say on policy and costings, the less likely you are to be found out” was effective in deflecting the kind of scrutiny that might have influenced the outcome.</p>
<p>The idea that a major party could get away with releasing their detailed policy costings fewer than 48 hours before the polls opened is bizarre. But in the end, it appears that close to <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/federal-election-2013/results/">46% of voters</a> didn’t care if shadow treasurer Joe Hockey’s sums added up or not.</p>
<p>Add to that Rudd’s campaigning incompetency, and there really was very little in the way of genuine party competition for the media to get their teeth into. In that context they did an okay job.</p>
<p>But did the press make a difference to the outcome?</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/30944/original/c3qpjc35-1378626282.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/30944/original/c3qpjc35-1378626282.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/30944/original/c3qpjc35-1378626282.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=866&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/30944/original/c3qpjc35-1378626282.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=866&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/30944/original/c3qpjc35-1378626282.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=866&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/30944/original/c3qpjc35-1378626282.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1088&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/30944/original/c3qpjc35-1378626282.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1088&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/30944/original/c3qpjc35-1378626282.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1088&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Sydney’s Daily Telegraph nailed their colours to the mast from day one of the campaign.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Early on, speculation abounded as to why News Corp was going all out <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-outcry-over-that-front-page-decline-of-objectivity-or-a-way-to-get-media-coverage-16773">against Labor</a>. Was is to look after commercial interests? Was it the media giant’s owner Rupert Murdoch’s dislike of <a href="https://theconversation.com/news-corp-australia-vs-the-nbn-is-it-really-all-about-foxtel-16768">Labor’s version of the NBN</a>? There was also News Corp’s systematic <a href="https://theconversation.com/news-corp-its-not-a-conspiracy-its-just-business-17867">attack of Fairfax</a> during the campaign and on <a href="http://www.news.com.au/breaking-news/labor-falls-in-with-a-bad-crowd/story-e6frfkp9-1226713576319">election day itself</a> to consider.</p>
<p>Overlooked is the fact that Labor virtually declared war on News Corp back in March with then-communications minister Stephen Conroy’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/conroys-media-reforms-are-too-much-stick-not-enough-carrot-12958">proposed media reforms</a>. The reforms never made it through the ten days Conroy had given them to get through parliament, and Labor was destined to be in the News cross-hairs.</p>
<p>Did the overt bias of the News Corp press – Sydney’s Daily Telegraph and The Australian in particular - push voters towards the Coalition? Or were those biases, exposed as they were at the very outset of the campaign and subject to welcome scrutiny, discounted by the swing voters who determined the outcome? Politicians, journalists and scholars of political media will debate this over the next few months, though they’re unlikely to reach a definitive conclusion.</p>
<p>The leaders themselves viewed the media coverage very differently, depending on their perception of its fairness to their cause.</p>
<p>From day one, Rudd’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/dialing-m-is-madness-16927">obsession with News Corp</a> had him on the back foot. Labor’s view is that there has been an orchestrated campaign against it, with barely any favourable attention given to its policies.</p>
<p>Labor was not claiming there was a conspiracy, which would imply covert forms of attack, rather that News Corp’s editorialising had, after all, been plain for all to see on the front pages of the tabloids. There was also no secret to <a href="https://theconversation.com/when-did-the-tabloid-front-page-election-campaign-begin-16844">Col Allan’s</a> arrival and less so the remarkable <a href="https://theconversation.com/news-is-the-story-as-boss-kim-williams-resigns-16889">resignation</a> of the company’s CEO Kim Williams.</p>
<p>For the Coalition, the media were simply reflecting the mood of the people. As Tony Abbott <a href="http://www.news.com.au/national-affairs/election-2013/better-coverage-be-a-better-government-tony-abbott-says/story-fn9qr68y-1226704995609">put it</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The reason why this government gets poor coverage, at least in some areas of the media, is because it has been the worst government in our history…If you want better coverage, be a better government.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Abbott’s view is that the press, having been critical of the government in its last term, is entitled to carry this criticism over into an election, where calling a government to account matters the most.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/28880/original/d98r4kkm-1375923352.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/28880/original/d98r4kkm-1375923352.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/28880/original/d98r4kkm-1375923352.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=874&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/28880/original/d98r4kkm-1375923352.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=874&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/28880/original/d98r4kkm-1375923352.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=874&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/28880/original/d98r4kkm-1375923352.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1099&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/28880/original/d98r4kkm-1375923352.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1099&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/28880/original/d98r4kkm-1375923352.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1099&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Another of the Daily Telegraph’s infamous campaign front pages.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But does making a government accountable in the media have to involve character assassination of its leader, or applauding the alternative leader when he asks if the prime minister ever <a href="https://theconversation.com/shuddup-your-face-17343">“shuts up”</a> at a people’s forum? And in any event, does such coverage matter to the outcome?</p>
<p>Anti-ALP propaganda wasn’t necessary to propel Abbott into The Lodge. All the media had to do was report the spectacle of the ALP destroying its credibility as a government – a process which began with the dumping of Rudd in 2010, and ended with the dumping of Julia Gillard in June. But did the hostility of the Daily Telegraph and others make an already bad situation worse for the ALP, and the electoral outcome worse than it would otherwise have been?</p>
<p>Voting patterns suggest that coverage such as News Corp front pages depicting <a href="https://theconversation.com/anglo-saxon-worldviews-in-the-media-do-little-to-reflect-australias-diverse-ethnic-make-up-16838">Rudd as a Nazi</a>, or advising readers to <a href="https://theconversation.com/first-impressions-from-the-tabloids-16702">“Kick this mob out”</a>, was less influential than some commentators expected.</p>
<p>For example, the results in key marginal seats in western Sydney have defied expectations. On August 23, the Daily Telegraph ran headlines of <a href="https://theconversation.com/mr-rude-the-make-up-then-the-wipeout-17392">“ALP losing its heart”</a> and “Exclusive: Labor facing western Sydney election wipeout”. The article based its exclusive on a Galaxy poll of 550 voters each in the seats of Reid, Werriwa, Lindsay, Greenway and Banks. All seats were hyped to be lost to Labor in a “wipeout”. </p>
<p>But now the <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/federal-election-2013/results/electorates/#NSW">results are in</a>: two have gone to the LNP, two to the ALP with one still undecided. The polls have loomed large in this election, and have been published at a rate not seen in past elections. This has led to suggestions that they might <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-only-poll-that-counts-or-is-it-17941">unduly influence election outcomes</a>, where they are accompanied by stories suggesting the vote is already decided.</p>
<p>Rudd’s anticipated dread of the polls and News Corp’s coverage had him looking to <a href="https://theconversation.com/twitter-needs-tony-not-17716">social media</a> and first-time voters for a boost. His first speech after reclaiming the leadership was about reaching out to the “youth of today”. But alas, even if it did vote for him, this demographic made very little difference where it counted most: in the assorted marginal electorates.</p>
<p>In the end, Rudd completely overdid the rapport he imagined he could cultivate on social media in his television performances, which saw the emerging monstrosity of the Rudd ego. It was all about Kevin as the weeks went on, right up until Saturday’s concession speech, which came across more like a victory rally in its self-congratulatory and complacent tone.</p>
<p>With the childish refusal to acknowledge Gillard’s achievements as prime minister for three years, it seemed that Rudd was truly pleased with himself, as if he knew that his revenge was complete. Shame about the damage done to the ALP and its supporters.</p>
<p>One other media highlight included the three leaders’ debates, all organised by Sky News. Murdoch’s Sky News assumed a monopoly over these events, and many saw it as a commercial windfall for him to consolidate his influence over the election. They were also “sponsored” by the Murdoch tabloids, and had the cross-selling of venues, newspapers and Sky itself. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/30941/original/9f8hg3wm-1378626028.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/30941/original/9f8hg3wm-1378626028.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/30941/original/9f8hg3wm-1378626028.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/30941/original/9f8hg3wm-1378626028.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/30941/original/9f8hg3wm-1378626028.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/30941/original/9f8hg3wm-1378626028.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/30941/original/9f8hg3wm-1378626028.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Rudd and Abbott appeared at three leaders’ debates, all sponsored and organised by Sky News. Did this shut the other broadcasters out?</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Lukas Coch</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Like News Corp’s press outlets, Sky is transparent in its anti-ALP bias, with presenters such as Paul Murray functioning like tabloid cheerleaders for the Coalition in the campaign. Murray, it should be acknowledged, can also be extremely critical of Coalition policy, and has a refreshingly frank way of expressing his doubts. Elsewhere, the channel provided important moments of critical scrutiny of both sides. The leaders’ debates didn’t go well for Rudd on the whole, but that was his responsibility. Sky merely gave him enough rope.</p>
<p>Sky’s rumbustious, opinionated approach was also a welcome contrast to the ABC’s necessarily more even-handed, sober coverage. The ABC is not a pro-ALP organisation, as is alleged by many on the right in Australia. Even if it was, it would have been dangerous for its managers and journalists in this campaign to give any ammunition to their News Corp critics, who are already calling on the Coalition government to cut the public broadcaster’s funding. Were the ABC to come under serious governmental attack in the next parliament, it would indeed be a disaster for Australia’s political culture.</p>
<p>But the public service broadcaster’s duty to impartiality made for a duller, less engaging coverage. Both the quantity and dynamic quality of its coverage should be acknowledged, even by those who regard any media outlet associated with Murdoch as the spawn of Satan.</p>
<p>The ABC, on the other hand, while meeting its public service obligations to inform with well-resourced, impartial, independent journalism, also gave us Q&A with Kevin Rudd, and “infotaining” interludes such as <a href="https://theconversation.com/kitchen-kitsch-17887">Kitchen Cabinet</a>. Both leaders are to be commended for engaging with popular political formats in this campaign, which offer both opportunities and risks. </p>
<p>These were perhaps the highlights of what was, in the main, a predictable and lifeless media campaign.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/17543/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Brian McNair receives funding from the Australian Research Council.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Holmes does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In one sense, the Australian media did a good job under difficult circumstances in this election. The difficult part was how predictable the campaign was and the increasing inevitability of the outcome…Brian McNair, Professor of Journalism, Media and Communication, Queensland University of TechnologyDavid Holmes, Senior Lecturer, Communications and Media Studies, Monash UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/126982013-03-17T19:42:07Z2013-03-17T19:42:07ZLittle Green people from outer space: labelling Christine Milne and co<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/21239/original/svb5q6tb-1363216327.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Adam Bandt, Christine Milne and Richard Di Natale don't walk this planet, says The Daily Telegraph.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Penny Bradfield</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The Daily Telegraph isn’t known for holding back. As Stephen Conroy discovered in an already infamous front page, if you’re in its firing line, you’ll know it. It’s a world where a relatively pragmatic media policy is enough to get you compared to mass murderers.</p>
<p>So when The Daily Telegraph depicted Greens MPs as invading aliens last month, it’s safe to say it wasn’t a friendly allusion to Steven Spielberg’s E.T. While Spielberg’s film suggested that, beneath the surface, the alien and the human are fundamentally alike, The Daily Telegraph was implying a brand of Greens radicalism far beyond the mainstream.</p>
<p>Across its coverage of Christine Milne’s decision to cut her formal alliance with Labor, the newspaper’s stance was clear: the Greens were merely confirming their position as extraterrestrial extremists, divorced from conventional reality and ideology.</p>
<p>“The Greens”, <a href="http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/opinion/an-alliance-just-waiting-to-crack/story-e6frezz0-1226581421794">The Daily Telegraph editorialised</a>, “inhabit a planet far from any galaxy that the electorate might recognise as real”.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/21263/original/s5cq7j42-1363225797.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/21263/original/s5cq7j42-1363225797.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=877&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/21263/original/s5cq7j42-1363225797.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=877&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/21263/original/s5cq7j42-1363225797.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=877&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/21263/original/s5cq7j42-1363225797.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1102&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/21263/original/s5cq7j42-1363225797.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1102&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/21263/original/s5cq7j42-1363225797.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1102&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The front page of the The Daily Telegraph on 20 February.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Regular columnist Joe Hildebrand made this point more bombastically on Sky News. The party, <a href="http://www.news.com.au/entertainment/television/joes-rant-the-greens-are-lunatics-idiots-imbeciles/story-e6frfmyi-1226583322781">he argued</a>, is comprised of “lunatics, imbeciles and undergraduates … They should get up, get on the next boat to Cuba and leave the rest of us normal people alone”.</p>
<p>Of course, such a response is both unsurprising and, in its way, understandable. The Greens and The Daily Telegraph tend not to overlap in either style or ideology. Where <a href="http://bit.ly/Z3ApoH">research by Ariadne Vromen</a> found that Greens members are likely to be philosophically “post-material”, The Daily Telegraph maintains a solidly material focus on its readers’ aspirations. In the political solar system, the organisations do indeed occupy different planets.</p>
<p>What is perhaps more interesting, and certainly more significant, is the way Labor have echoed this formula, though in a subtly different way. Where The Daily Telegraph emphasised the Greens’ transgression from mainstream values, the ALP has tended to focus on the Greens’ approach to mainstream governance. The former has accused them of being extreme; the latter has added a charge of destructive immaturity.</p>
<p>Labor has positioned the Greens as being unable to engage with the reality of running a country. Following Milne’s announcement, prime minister Julia Gillard described the Greens as a “<a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/breaking-news/greens-are-protest-party-says-gillard/story-fn3dxiwe-1226581913819">party of protest</a>” rather than a “party of government”. “The Greens are fundamentally a party that would prefer to complain about things than get solutions”, she argued.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/21254/original/cxdmfrjn-1363222163.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/21254/original/cxdmfrjn-1363222163.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=909&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/21254/original/cxdmfrjn-1363222163.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=909&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/21254/original/cxdmfrjn-1363222163.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=909&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/21254/original/cxdmfrjn-1363222163.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1142&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/21254/original/cxdmfrjn-1363222163.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1142&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/21254/original/cxdmfrjn-1363222163.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1142&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Paul Howes claimed that the Greens ‘extremist’ policies would cost jobs.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Dave Hunt</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Speaking from a similar script, Anthony Albanese, the Infrastructure and Transport Minister, <a href="http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/prime-minister-julia-gillard-sinking-as-the-greens-jump-ship/story-e6freuy9-1226581488357">depicted the move</a> as a “meaningless act of petulance from an immature political party”. Sharing the Telegraph’s intergalactic theme, he described the Greens as outside the boundary of “the real world”. Paul Howes, the leader of the Australian Worker’s Union, simplified the discussion by accusing Christine Milne of a childish “<a href="http://www.news.com.au/breaking-news/national/greens-policies-extremist-awu-boss/story-e6frfku9-1226581893122">dummy spit</a>”.</p>
<p>These comments can be read as an overtly political assessment of the current Greens (as both <a href="http://sydney.edu.au/arts/government_international_relations/postgraduate_research/research_students/stewart_jackson_profile.shtml">Stewart Jackson</a> and <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10361140600959791">Narelle Miragliotta</a> have argued, the party exists at the fault-lines of social movement and electoral professionalism, radicalism and pragmatism), but they also tell an important story about the state of party competition in Australia, and especially amongst its political left.</p>
<p>Labor placing the Greens outside the circle of sensible governance is certainly not new. In 2012, Sam Dastyari, Labor’s NSW General Secretary, compared <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/opinion/labor-boss-takes-aim-at-greens/story-e6frgd0x-1226419317229">the Greens to One Nation</a> and urged his party to preference them last at the next Federal election. In the same year, Joel Fitzgibbon asked the Greens again to “<a href="http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/opinion/time-for-greens-to-join-us-in-the-real-world/story-e6frezz0-1226416061731">join Labor in the real world</a>”, whilst the ever-ready Howes labelled them “extremist”.</p>
<p>When viewed collectively, these statements, all from senior figures, point to a concerted attempt to portray Labor as the sole reliable voice of Australian progressivism.</p>
<p>The existence of this strategy (keeping Labor up by keeping the Greens down) also provides evidence for Richard Katz and Peter Mair’s theory of <a href="http://www.studentpulse.com/articles/368/cartel-parties-and-party-competition-growth-and-analysis">“cartel” politics</a>. These theorists have argued that, as the ideological gulf that characterised the Cold War shrinks, major parties are much more likely to cooperate and use institutional authority to maintain their electoral primacy.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/21260/original/rwdgrjzn-1363223164.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/21260/original/rwdgrjzn-1363223164.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=902&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/21260/original/rwdgrjzn-1363223164.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=902&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/21260/original/rwdgrjzn-1363223164.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=902&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/21260/original/rwdgrjzn-1363223164.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1133&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/21260/original/rwdgrjzn-1363223164.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1133&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/21260/original/rwdgrjzn-1363223164.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1133&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Joel Fitzgibbon has said the Greens will only be a fringe party.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Alan Porritt</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>And as we’re unlikely to hear Liberal opposition to this characterisation of the Greens, it seems fair to say that both major parties, in their current positions of supremacy, would be happy to keep the minor party down.</p>
<p>But has it worked? Is there a popular perception of Greens extremity?</p>
<p>Whilst the evidence is far from conclusive, a recent Essential poll found that 52% of Australians do think they’re “<a href="http://essentialvision.com.au/greens-policies-3">too extreme</a>” to represent the views of “many voters”, up from 47% in November. Most strikingly, the number of Labor supporters holding this view jumped 10% in five months.</p>
<p>The success of Labor’s strategy remains to be seen, but its intent seems clear. </p>
<p>Ultimately, if the Greens really are as alien as the ALP suggests, then Labor MPs should volunteer their mobiles for Green voters to “phone home”.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/12698/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Shaun Crowe does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The Daily Telegraph isn’t known for holding back. As Stephen Conroy discovered in an already infamous front page, if you’re in its firing line, you’ll know it. It’s a world where a relatively pragmatic…Shaun Crowe, Doctoral candidate and Research Manager, Centre for the Study of Australian Politics, Australian National UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.