Having walked the corridors of power, Rudd has dealt with a hostile media first hand. He also courted Murdoch's support in his successful 2007 election campaign. However, I hope that he doesn't blame Murdoch's newspapers for the failure of his prime ministership, or allegedly turning voters against him, when he was deposed in June 2010. According to Rowan Callick, Rudd has only himself to blame for this. His own caucus could not work with him. As Rowan Callick wrote at the time, his downfall was:
"a result of his arrogant style, of a series of poor policy choices, and of the failure of his government to implement policies effectively."
Allow me to offer some personal responses to this petition. Back in 1996, I wrote an Honours thesis, looking at Australian newspaper coverage of former US Presidents Jimmy Carter (1977-1981) and Ronald Reagan (1981-1989). Looking at Murdoch and Fairfax newspapers of the time, on microfilm, mind you, I wanted to see if the Democrat Carter received more hostile newspaper coverage from Murdoch owned papers in Australia than Reagan, his Republican successor, because of Murdoch's supposed right wing leanings.
As part of my research, I interviewed two respected former newspaper editors. One of these editors, who worked for a rival masthead, cautioned me against reading too much into things. My thesis examiners also marked me down because they were not sufficiently convinced by the premise of my work. Now that I am older and wiser, and have more of an understanding of how politics works, and how numerous non state actors, be they individuals or groups, attempt to influence politicians to make decisions favourable to them, I no longer stand by the viewpoints I expressed at the time. I actually disowned my thesis a few years after writing it.
While it is true that in my lifetime, the Liberal Party has held government federally for longer than Labor, Labor has won more state elections than the Liberal Party, especially in my home state of Victoria. Over the past forty years, the Liberal Party has only been in power for 13 years (1992-1999, 2010-2014). Australia's most popular newspaper, the Herald-Sun, is published in Victoria. As recently as 2018, the Labor state government was reelected in a landslide, with an increased majority. The same voters that voted for a Labor state government in the November 2018 election in Victoria chose a Liberal federal government in the May 2019 federal election. Western Australia, Queensland, the Australian Capital Territory and the Northern Territory also have Labor governments. This would suggest that the situation is not as clear cut as Rudd argues.
Finally, Rudd's analysis also strikes me as condescending. It implies that readers of Murdoch owned newspapers, who generally speaking, as market research data shows, are from a less affluent and educated background than readers of rival newspapers, such as The Age, Sydney Morning Herald, or the Guardian Australia, which are marketed towards tertiary educated readers, are unsophisticated, easily manipulated, and lack critical thinking skills. They just accept whatever they read in the newspaper without question. This is another way of saying that they are "low information voters," identified by some media commentators and political scientists, of the type who voted for Brexit and Trump in 2016, or Scott Morrison in 2019.
He also fails to account for the changing media landscape. Newspaper readership and advertising revenues are declining year and year, as well as competition from online news platforms, radio, free to air, and cable television news.
Rudd is also vague on what the outcome of this proposed royal commission should be. Would the federal government use its power to break up News Corporation's alleged monopoly, take legal action against it, or impose new regulations to ensure that private media companies are non partisan? Are we also expected to believe that aside from News Corporation, all other news media outlets in Australia are completely unbiased and non partisan? Why should they not be included in an enquiry as well? Overlooking Rudd's long standing grudge against Murdoch, perhaps there is room for a mature, sensible debate about these issues.
https://asiasociety.org/australia/downfall-australias-kevin-rudd
https://www.statista.com/statistics/894218/australia-news-literacy-by-education-level/
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