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Rupert Murdoch’s global media operation is training its sights on the ABC after the public broadcaster aired a critical look at Fox News and its relationship with Donald Trump.
News Corp has published 45 articles in just two days attacking the public broadcaster across its Australian mastheads.
The pushback against the ABC came even before the two-part program reported by Washington correspondent Sarah Ferguson had aired.
Fox News headquarters in New York sent a legal threat, saying the ABC had “clearly violated” its own standards by “exhibiting bias and a failure to maintain any level of impartiality in the presentation of news and information”.
Four Corners spoke to former Fox News insiders who claimed the rightwing channel became a propaganda outlet for the former president under the watch of Rupert
Ferguson said Fox’s ratings plunged after the network called the state of Arizona for Joe Biden on election night, and Trump loyalists turned off in disgust and switched to rival far-right networks.
“To satisfy the mob, the Murdochs needed scapegoats,” Ferguson said. “They chose the two senior journalists on the Election Decision Desk. Fox News’s managing editor in Washington was forced to retire. Chris Stirewalt was sacked.”
On Tuesday The Australian published what amounted to a front-page editorial, The ABC’s big lie and the madness of Four Corners, which said the program was a “conspiracy-laden and error-ridden ‘expose’ into Fox News”.
The Australian’s editor-in-chief, Christopher Dore, went on to publish 10 articles rubbishing the ABC and Four Corners. Commentators included Chris Kenny, Gerard Henderson, and former Murdoch editor Mark Day, who called it a “full-frontal hit job on Rupert Murdoch, News Corp, and the US Fox News channel”.
Murdoch himself.
“It had a septic odor as if it were cobbled together from a trash can with only the rancid bits selected for regurgitation,” Day wrote on Wednesday.
Henderson, who is a trenchant ABC critic, said it “proved to be another hyperbolic, one-sided account of the impact of the Trump administration on US society”.Advertisementhttps://92693179f06692eda3aa8ec1dfe2099c.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.html
The Murdoch tabloids joined the pile-on too. Articles by rightwing columnists Rita Panahi, Tim Blair, and James Morrow were syndicated across the Herald Sun, Daily Telegraph, Courier-Mail, Mercury, Cairns Post, Townsville Bulletin, Advertiser, and news.com.au.
Murdoch’s most popular columnist, Sky News presenter Andrew Bolt, said the ABC itself “is an echo chamber and propaganda vehicle that destabilizes democracy”. The Daily Telegraph columnist Miranda Devine, who is based at the New York Post in the US and is a regular on Fox, joined in saying the ABC’s documentary “would put the worst Fleet Street beat-up merchants to shame”.
The chair of ABC Alumni and former Media Watch presenter Jonathan Holmes said the coverage was a “classic example of the empire striking
“It’s a phenomenon that we’ve seen for decades that the News Corp columnists gang up on individuals or organizations that they don’t like; we saw it with Gillian Triggs and Yassmin Abdel-Magied,” Holmes said.
“They know what the party line is on these kinds of topics; they don’t have to be told to write a column.”
Holmes said the attack on the Capitol on 6 January was an “extraordinary event” and examining the role of Fox News in the lead-up was “completely legitimate” for the ABC’s Washington current affairs correspondent.
The Media Unmade newsletter author Tim Burrowes said the News Corp coverage reminded him of “another low point” in 2013 when the Telegraph likened the then Labor minister Stephen Conroy to a despot because of the paper as opposed to his media reforms.
“The response to Four Corners makes News Corp look worse than the program did,” Burrowes told Guardian Australia. “Which makes me think it wasn’t a coordinated attack but was based on instinct. Those who come up in the News Corp culture know who the natural enemy is and obviously, the ABC is one. So when News Corp is attacked it’s very tribal and they all return fire.”Advertisement
News Corp denies the coverage was coordinated.
“No, it is not fair to say that there has been a ‘coordinated campaign’ about the ABC’s 4 Corners program,” a News Corp Australia spokesman told Guardian Australia.
“What has happened is that the editors and journalists who watched the program chose to report and comment on its bias and obvious failings as a piece of serious journalism.”
The ABC told Guardian Australia News Corp’s reaction was expected. “The Australian’s first column attacking the story was published before the first episode had even gone to air,” a spokesperson said. “Since then, the striking uniformity of the attacks from News Corp journalists, commentators, and outlets across the nation has only further served to highlight the importance of having a range of independent voices in the Australian media.
“News Corp not liking a story does not mean the story is biased or inaccurate. The Four Corners report is based on multiple on-the-record, on-camera interviews with people who were employed by Fox News who give first-hand, verifiable accounts of their own experiences.
“The story was rigorously tested against the ABC’s Editorial Policies and the ABC stands by it.”
Fox News said the use of five “former deeply disgruntled employees, only one of whom was part of the company during our coverage of the 2020 US presidential election and its aftermath, single-handedly discredits all credibility of the program”.
“As for the events of January 6th, implicating Fox News in any way is false and malicious,” a spokeswoman said. “Congressional hearings this past February and the Biden Justice Department not only did not implicate Fox but other media companies were cited as platforms for inciting and coordinating the Capitol riots. We stand by our coverage with our millions of viewers who have made us the most-watched cable news network in the US for nearly two decades.”
Fox News is the brash cable TV network that has dominated both the ratings and the headlines in America, delivering revenue and power to the Murdoch family empire. For decades its catch cry was “fair and balanced.” Then along came Donald Trump.
“I think that they allowed the former president to dictate what news they put out to the American people.” Gretchen Carlson, former Fox News host
On Monday, Four Corners investigates how the Murdoch-run Fox News became a propaganda vehicle for Donald Trump and helped destabilize democracy in the United States. Featuring Fox News insiders, the program reveals how the network changed once Donald Trump entered politics and Rupert Murdoch took over.
“I was under the false belief that…the Murdochs’ would elevate the value of news…They were not there to make Fox more mainstream. Quite the opposite.” Chris Stirewalt, former Fox political editor
In interviews with major Fox figures including Gretchen Carlson, the presenter who brought down famed network boss Roger Ailes; and former Fox political editor Chris Stirewalt, a key figure on the Decision Desk whose election night call triggered a Trump meltdown – the program examines the politics at work within the network and why it tied its fortunes to Donald Trump.
“This is all a money game. This is all about ratings. This is all about the bottom line.” Gretchen Carlson
They fear that this alliance has put the foundations of US democracy in peril.
