Why Rupert Murdoch can't be stopped
By Robert Manne, The Monthly (November 2013)
In late July, Robert Thomson, the suave chief executive of News Corp – the recently separated and financially challenged publishing branch of the Murdoch media empire – announced that Col Allan, the editor-in-chief of Rupert Murdoch’s favourite tabloid, the New York Post, was coming home to Australia on a two- to three-month assignment. Unless Allan’s visit had some political purpose, the return of the native was difficult to explain. Under his editorship, the New York Post has reportedly lost several hundred million dollars since 2001. In the letter to Australian colleagues, Thomson defined the mission, with studied vagueness, as “providing extra editorial leadership for our papers”. “It will be invaluable for our papers in Australia,” he continued, “to have the benefit of his insight, expertise and talent.” Col Allan’s most famous insight is the fear that an editor might instil in his underlings by conspicuous acts of apparent derangement, like pissing in the office sink. His most famous expertise is bare-knuckled political combat and character assassination. His most famous talent is for the brazen front-page banner headline.
Allan arrived in Australia on 29 July, a week before the announcement of the date of the 2013 federal election. Almost instantly, News Corp’s three most influential Australian tabloids – the Sydney Daily Telegraph, the Melbourne Herald Sun and the Brisbane Courier-Mail – began what looked to the outsider like a front-page headline competition for Allan’s approval in what was by now News Corp’s main game – to get Kevin Rudd.
On 2 August, the Courier-Mail put in an early bid: “KEV’S $733m BANK HEIST”. The reference was to new taxes on beer, cigarettes and “your savings”, with Rudd pictured in a beanie and a mask grasping a sack of money. The next day the Herald Sun responded with “IT’S A RUDDY MESS”. As the paper explained, “Debt soars, unemployment to hit 11-year high, revenue crashes and boats bill blows out”. Two days later, when the election was announced, the Daily Telegraph upped the ante with its instantly notorious “Finally, you now have the chance to … KICK THIS MOB OUT”. It was on a roll. The next day, it followed with a Hogan’s Heroes catchphrase, “I KNOW NUTHINK!”, and caricatures of Kevin Rudd and Anthony Albanese as Nazis. The Courier-Mail was not to be outdone. After the prime minister announced the candidacy of former Queensland premier Peter Beattie, it answered the Tele with “SEND IN THE CLOWN”. And so it went. “DEAD KEV BOUNCE” (Courier-Mail, 10 August). “RUDD’S BULLY BOY” (Herald Sun, 10 August). “KEVIN DEADLY SINS” (Sunday Mail, 11 August). “DOES THIS GUY EVER SHUT UP?” (Courier-Mail, 22 August). By the final week of the campaign, it was clear that Tony Abbott would win the election handsomely. The headlines followed. “THE LONG GOODBYE” (Courier-Mail, 2 September). “RUDD FREE ZONE” (Courier-Mail, 5 September). “TONY’S TIME” (Herald Sun, 6 September). “THE CIRCUS IS OVER” (Courier-Mail, 6 September). Throughout the campaign there were scores of anti-Labor front-page items in the three critical Murdoch tabloids and not one that could be considered pro-Labor.
The most influential of the News Corp columnists – Piers Akerman, Andrew Bolt, Janet Albrechtsen and Miranda Devine – if anything outdid in venom their headline-composing colleagues, no doubt under Col Allan’s approving gaze. According to their collective portrait of the prime minister, Rudd’s government was “chaotic” and “dysfunctional”. He had left the nation with a “Budget shambles” and had “squandered billions”. He now had “no policies to talk of” except “back-of-the-beer-coaster nonsense” and was, as a result, conducting “the dirtiest, the lowest campaign ever run by a major political party”. Rudd’s rhetoric was “pompous” and “verbose”. He tried to win arguments by “bullying not persuasion”. Under him Labor had been “flushed away in a sewer of hate” with his “blatant appeal to … class warfare”. Rudd’s (partly apocryphal) personal history was supposedly all too revealing. He “had been kicked out of a New York ‘gentleman’s club’ for behaving weirdly with topless dancers”. He was the man “whose abuse had made an RAAF stewardess cry”. He had even pulled “a hissy fit in Afghanistan over a missing hairdryer”. He was nothing more than “a foul-mouthed backstabber”.
The News Corp columnists explained Rudd’s character like this. He was “venomous”, “a volatile, nasty man”, “a selfie-addicted, twittering Facebook junkie”, who thought that “rules are for other people”. Not only during the campaign had he “trashed the Bible” and “slimed his faith” but also “trampled on the lowly”. As a typical “class clown”, “the more Rudd tries to be like us, the less he is”, and “the more you know him, the more you detest him”. He was a “fake”, “a narcissist”, “hubris on steroids”, “callous and manipulative” with no capacity for “empathy” and most accurately to be understood as a thoroughgoing “psychopath”. Even his physical demeanour, we learnt, was rather disgusting. He “smirks”. He “pouts”. He “wants to stamp his little feet”. He “flicks” his hair repeatedly. Not only is he “afflicted by a repetitive, involuntary twitch of his lower lip”, but “his rotating hand movements have to be seen to be believed”.
In this collective portrait of Kevin Rudd, the News Corp columnists did not find him to have even one positive human quality.
Rudd was returned as Labor leader because of his apparent popularity with the Australian people. With him therefore the News Corp attack dogs went in for character assassination. With Tony Abbott, by contrast – “the Oxonian Rhodes scholar”, “the volunteer fire-fighter and surf club member”, “the hugely intelligent, hugely decent, down-to-earth bloke”, equally at home downing “beers” and “writing books about political philosophy” – the same journalists practised character beatification.
Australian journalists once did not write like this. How had Australian journalism come to this? Although the explanation is complex, the foundations were laid down a quarter-century ago.
