Writing in Crikey the other day, Guy Rundle fleshed out the bones of the “tipping point” theory about the scandals that have enveloped News International in Britain. Rundle made the interesting argument that the political agenda is being set in Australia by the left. That seems counter-intuitive, but only because we’re so surrounded by the voices of reaction from the media (and not just News Limited, but its echo chambers in press gallery and ABC cultures, and the milquetoast journalism of Fairfax). But, when you think about the fact that we’ve seen the introduction of a proper paid parental leave scheme, we’ve seen a redistributive tax reform which favours the lower paid, we’re on the cusp of a labour market shift towards green and clean energy jobs, and we will have a carbon price…
If you sit back and take the longer view, reality is actually shaping policy – the reality of climate change, the reality of female workforce participation, the reality of changing attitudes to gender equality, the reality of an impending end to dirty and unrenewable fuel… and same-sex marriage can’t be far off.
And the forces of reaction have nothing to peddle but fear. The peddling of that fear, in terms of public opinion, has of course, been spectacularly successful. To date.
But there may be another tipping point – the decline into collapse of industrial media. Given that the NotW scandal has now seen it suggested, plausibly, that the Murdoch family may lose control of News, I’ve seen it argued, also plausibly, that come the next election, there may be no Australian to run its “campaigning journalism”. It’s not outside the realm of possibility.
Thinking, though, that everything will always be the same in the Australian mediascape is almost certainly also out of step with reality. We may be seeing the end of newspapers as we know them.
Elsewhere: On some of the issues tossed around concerning mooted and current media reviews, Mr Denmore at The Failed Estate. Anthony Burnett has an interesting UK take at Open Democracy.
NB: Earlier Murdochracy discussion on LP is here.
or Tipping points, politics, NotW, the longer view, wishful thinking and utter, utter delusion.
If, yes a big if, that Murdoch steps down, what ever this will change nothing. The culture he has groomed into his empire will flourish no matter who is at the head. Any falling on swords will be just window dressing a side show, and what’s more the rubes will buy it. They will flock to his defence, and the irony is, it wont be his friends that will fall at his feet in sympathy, it will be the new left.
I watched sky news this very day and the defence of this evil all encompassing empire by the journalists or should I say dupes, was making me sick to my very stomach. They are treating the public like simpletons. I remember it wasn’t that many years ago the true left what’s left of them excuse the pun, warned of the dangers of this empire, and were laughed and scoffed at as reactionary imbeciles. ha ha.
So mind-numbingly predictable.
@1 – oh really? I suppose you would have said a year ago that Murdoch being dragged unwillingly before a Commons enquiry and Brooks being charged was unthinkable.
@2 – I don’t agree, though it’s certainly true that the culture is rotten.
The two big threats are:
(a) an actual assertion by shareholders and directors of a shift in governance that looks at doing what public companies are supposed to do, rather than the interests of the Murdoch family;
(b) forced moves – whether by government or market necessities – towards divestment.
The ‘flagship’ News papers which set the tone are all unprofitable or only marginally profitable and living off a declining business model. There’s no evidence that any of the life rafts seized upon (paywalls, mobile apps, ‘The Daily’, etc) are going to make any difference.
The value in the company is in pay tv not in newspapers (and not much in film production anymore).
If there’s anything in the 9/11 hacking allegations, Murdoch’s standing in the US will be destroyed.
It’s looking less and less likely that the James Murdoch succession plan will fly, and if he’s entangled personally in legal trouble, that would be game over.
Things do come to an end. Including powerful things. Sometimes that happens quite quickly.
Yep! Not a ‘fit’ and ‘proper’ person.
of course things wont be as they have always been. And of course the people who run whatever News Corp becomes post Murdoch will be right wing. But they probably wont have the same interest in Australia that Rupert has. The Oz is a bit of an affectation really, it hasnt been Murdochs main game since he took out US citizenship.
As newspapers become less and less relevant, i always assumed Murdoch would keep the Oz on life support until Fairfax collapsed, at which point the damn thing might even make a profit.
But a new set of proprietors would look around and ask “what use is this to us”. At that point the Oz is gone. They will keep the rest, or sell them to the Packers or Kerry Stokes, perhaps.
One of the signs of the times is that Murdoch himself was reported to be considering selling his remaining British titles – The Times, the Sunday Times, and the Sun, but concluded that they would find no buyers in the state of the newspaper biz these days.
I don’t know what the financial position of some of the Australian dailies is… if the Courier-Mail struggles to sell more than 100 000 a day (and no doubt a lot of those are given away) in a city with almost 1.8 million people now, it can’t be a good sign. Just picking up the thing you can tell it’s pitched almost solely to the over 60s crowd.
I’ll emphasise again – the confluence of two tipping points (the exposure of NotW and what it implies and the death of the newspaper business model) is what will drive change.
House of Commons inquiry live on “The Age” website now (and later tonight on ABC24, I believe)
I’d just add to the commercial point that News doesn’t do innovation – cf Myspace, which it wrecked.
What it has traditionally done is tried to seize monopoly or oligopoly positions in particular markets. Often through leveraging political influence. There are real threats to that (cf BSkyB) now, and the strategy itself makes less sense with the fracturing of media and audiences.
Fascinating post, Kim.
We may well be seeing the end of newspapers as we know them. But it’s very much an open question what will replace them.
I’d like to throw in one unpleasant possibility that has lots of historical precedents. Indeed, the Murdochs themselves have long done so with the Oz.
What if – for example – Gina Rinehart buys the remnants of some of the news organizations and runs them as a subsidized political propaganda operation for her thoroughly unpleasant and self-serving views?
Thanks, Robert.
That might be the case, but who would read them?
I’m also wondering if there might not be some short term effects on the News biz in Australia. A sensible political strategy would be to lie low, to tone down their various mad campaigns, get some different editors.
Probably won’t happen, but if the revelation that the Emperor has no clothes shifts some behaviour in the ABC and other bits of the press gallery, that would be a good thing.
I do think we are witnessing the death of the media as we know it. What replaces it is indeed an interesting question. But I am sure that the 2016 election will be fought under very different media conditions indeed, and if the Murdoch empire really does fall over a cliff, who knows about 2013?
Well I for one think the most likely scenario is that Murdoch Snr will ride out this storm and retain chairmanship and strategic control of News Corp. Probably even James will still be CEO of important parts of the empire.
But even so, that would only be the appearance of status quo.
It seems to me the real change here will be in how politicians relate to Murdoch journalists. It’s hard to write stories when politicians don’t return your calls…
It has also shown up the utterly craven partisan relationship here in Australia between the conservatives and News Ltd. Whereas in the UK the House of Commons were unanimous in calling for an inquiry, whereas in the USA both Republican and Democratic politicians have called for inquiries; here in Australia you’ve had the conservatives saying ‘oh, no, the media do a good job in this country…’
In the end, they will all ride the u-bend together…
PS – on the ‘not returning calls’ situation, it was very interesting to hear John Hartigan reveal last week on 7.30 that the most recent incoming police commissioner in NSW (I think?) told Hartigan that he wouldn’t be seeking to have any “relationship” with the media.
Given the events of the weekend, that commissioner’s decision is looking wiser by the minute…
If the rate at which Murdoch journalists are being shut out of the offices of the great and the powerful continues, pretty soon phone hacking is the only means they’ll have left to get a story!
The foam-pie protestor has scored somewhat of an own goal.
I freely admit that my first reaction to hearing about the harmlessly humiliating foam-pie stunt was laughter at Murdoch’s expense, and that this makes me a less than perfect human being. I don’t however think that it necessarily makes me a bad human being, and neither do I think that anybody was over-reacting to his approach with what could have been a much more dangerous object.
The own goal? This stunt has frustrated people’s desire to see Murdoch squirm due to the questions he was being asked rather than because his suit had been slimed, and has tipped the scales towards people feeling sympathy for Murdoch for the first time in weeks. Also because wife Wendi Deng deflected the pie so that it didn’t even hit Murdoch in the face as planned, she’s garnered admiration (quite justifiably) for her badassery.
He should have targeted James. I bet Wendi wouldn’t have lifted a finger.
re Tig Tog, everyone was cheering Wendy Deng!
But after a little while it began to dawn that it could have been a nutter, While security were off on their coffee/cigs break, someone with a bottle of acid could have walked up to someone and thrown it in their face…appalling!
Thank goodness Alex Munday was there to save Rupert.
tt said:
What’s the bet that Murdoch paid the guy to perform the stunt to clear the gallery and elicit sympathy? If somone would give me 2/1 I’d be tempted.
{someone}
I doubt it, Fran. He’s apparently well known in certain UK activist circles. He seems to be an activist who occasionally lets off steam with stand-up comedy, rather than a comedian who occasionally lets off steam with activism.
Kim@11:
Alan Jones, Andrew Bolt etc. don’t exactly struggle for readers/listeners. Jones also demonstrates another thing about right-wing populists – they’re also often prepared to shill for their paymasters.
Twiggy Forest, Gina Rinehart etc. could fund a news operation out of a couple of days mine profits at the moment. Aside from the ABC, they may not have a lot of competition. And, as we’ve seen over the past few years, the ABC’s journalists often take their coverage slant direct from Newscorp.
I didn’t know about the pie – I watched about 5 minutes of James Murdoch, and went back to watching Martha Jones and the Doctor…
Rob, but insufficient numbers of people read The Oz to make it a viable commercial proposition now. News Limited peeps have themselves said this week that the influence comes from how it sets the agenda (ie through the ABC).
You’ve also got a very aging demographic reading Bolt/listening to Jones.
Mercurius @13
Jay Rosen writes in The Guardian that the Sun King’s newspaper properties are basically there to wield influence with governments and police etc – i.e. as agency to facilitate the growth of his other interests, especially satellite and cable tv, which require government approval/licensing (newspapers do not, in anglophone sphere at least).
It’s clear that most of the politicians in Britain were/are compromised by what NI was able to uncover, phone hacking being just one method of winkling out compromising information.
Phone hacking was just one of the mechanisms.
A good piece in The Age:
http://www.theage.com.au/business/world-business/murdoch-survives-grilling-but-the-family-empire-teeters-20110720-1hnn0.html
The inventor of the Paywall, Necro-Journalism and a way to lose money in online Social Media.
I only saw the coverage of the UK Parliamentary enquiry on ABC Breakfast TV this morning. I think I missed the bit where the p-lates of wet lettuce were brought in. Spose the 3 hour Director’s Cut might’ve been more interesting.
“I’ve seen it argued, also plausibly, that come the next election, there may be no Australian to run its “campaigning journalism”. It’s not outside the realm of possibility.”
A post-Murdoch NewsCorp may rid itself of vanity banners like the OO. However, the Tele will remain, though in an unpredictable form.
It’s not necessarily the case, though, that the Australian and the Daily Telegraph have to be so partisan. The former wasn’t always – if you think back to the 90s, its line was more yay for economic reform and The Republic. If anything, its politics were a form of Keatingism. What was absent, though, was the suite of over the top op/edders and the blurring of news and opinion.
I don’t know about the Daily Telegraph, never having read it.
The man is 80. Even bogeymen retire eventually.
I think that it is undeniable that a post-Rupe News will be driven more by return on equity and less by megalomania.
TT said:
A damned shame. It would have been nice if that story could have run for a while.
What a goose!
When Rupert was asked if an internal investigation had been established to identify if there had been any phone hacking in the US. His reply was along the lines of , we haven’t seen any evidence of this behavior in our US operations. At the time I thought hang on, he didn’t answer the question but it wasn’t followed up by anyone.
Am I a bit too sensitive on this? I would have thought at least an acknowledgment that an internal investigation had or had not been set up would have been required. Without this the culture of “we didn’t know, no one told us” can continue.
The old man is really done for, after all his whole model of newspaper micromanagement-that-isn’t-really-micromanagement is contained within his royal being, and age has finally caught him. Watching him testify was like watching Reagan after he left office testify for that Iran Contra trial in US federal court. He’s obviously on the way out.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the markets and the banksters begin to steer him towards offloading newpapers all over the place. Newsprint is something that plays a role only in Rupert’s grand design, not the Newscorp investors’ grand design. The merchant banks and the traders want more FoxTel, more blockbuster movies. They couldn’t care less about old tree media.
Whoopee, now Australia can have editions of that nice, independent, pluralist ‘West Australian’ in Sydney, Adelaide and Brisbane (I jest). Viva the fall of the Berlin Wall!
@Point of Order: that’s a classic “non-denial denial”. Well spotted.
I think that Rupe’s not as dumb as he tried to pretend, and James is certainly not as bright as he tried to appear. Did he really believe that he fooled anyone with MBA PRspeak guff?
Obviously his plan was to talk and talk until his audience lost the will to live.
The Commons Culture, Media and Sport committee are zen masters of the wet noodle school of interrogation.
Are they really that timid and/or intellectually lax or is the fix on?
Obviously the calling of the Murdochs to front the Select Committee is merely the beginning of one very long statist process encompassing multiple inquiries and various trials.
I think Kim’s point that we may not have The Oz to run a highly partisan, reactionary line come the next election might be correct but the route taken to achieve that outcome is a little too hazy to discern at this point.
After all is said and done and a consensus narrative (which will please no one on the political spectrum) is framed is the question of the shape of the media sector in the West and more specifically Australia.
If someone other than a Murdoch were to control News Corporation would that person cross-subsidise the Australian newspaper stable? I think not. If the papers cannot be sold as a going concern where will the journalists go? Fairfax and Stokes’ outfit can only absorb so many. Sure the George Megalogenis’, Laura Tingles and others will find a place but what about those who need the space and time to mature into journalists of equal facility?
Is there enough money for a not-for-profit outlet to be established along the lines of Pro Publica in the US? Who will hold government and private interests to account or should I say take a stab at selectively holding some politicians and some business people to account, some of the time?
To pre-empt any misunderstanding. I am not defending Rupert, Lachlan or the cast of odious editors and executives sitting directly below them. I think Geoffrey Robertson QC was spot on when being interviewed by Phillip Adams on Late Night Live when he stated that the Committee did not have a cross-examiner worthy of the name on it. The lack of co-ordination, grandstanding, failure to reign junior in on some of his more long-winded answers, lack of follow up on the odd occasion when something did slip out and lack of challenge to the blanket answer that junior did not want to prejudice the police inquiry was atrocious. There was an opportunity for a politician to cement a reputation as an anti-corruption advocate there and no one seized it.
Despite all of that I return to one of the major questions of public interest. Without a Murdoch-led News Corporation how will written journalism be subsidised?
It’s interesting there is no popular journalism of the left any more – particularly as there such a great constituency out for there for news framed that way.
Guy Rundle did an interesting piece in Crikey the other day about how the Australian electorate is actually much more progressive than the Murdoch papers give it credit for (viz: popular support for gay marriage, resentment at fatcat pay, the encroachment of work on family time and the commodification of everything).
I think there’s an interesting essay to be written about the sudden crumbling of the Murdoch empire – along with the GFC and, here in Australia, the rejection of Work Choices – all as symbols of the end of a globalised, corporatised, free market era that begin with the rise of Thatcher and Reagan 30 years ago.
Murdoch’s papers have ridden on the coat-tails of that era. As Mark mentioned above, back in the 80s and early 90s, The Australian actually reflected Keating’s view of the world – pro-republic, pro-liberalised markets, pro-independent foreign policy. With the exhaustion of economic reform (sans the GST) and the rise of Howard and Bush, the template turned to the fake ‘culture wars’ and the manufactured backlash against ‘political correctness’.
I think that era has now run its course and Murdoch’s papers are trying to squeeze the lemon dry with manufactured opposition to the carbon tax, the NBN and – in the US – lukewarm support for the lunatics of the Tree Party.
We’re at the fag end of it all, but the public consciousness is running way ahead of the media. There’s a great opportunity for someone here to develop a popular, rabble-rousing media property (perhaps like The Daily Mirror in the UK, but of greater quality) that taps into that emerging world view.
… linked and discussed in the post
Weirdly enough, this government is getting the big reform runs on the board. A price on climate, the NBN, universal maternity leave.
Maybe it’s closer to the Whitlamite ‘crash through or crash’ modus operandi than we think.
Whatever happens at the next election there’ll be major reforms in place that won’t be changed.
Mark @38, that’ll teach me for not reading from the top. Sorry.
No worries, Mr Denmore!
I don’t know about Murdoch being so influential and so Right wing.
We did have wall to wall state labor govts. (almost) and a “Ruddslide”
Either he’s a king-maker and NOT right wing, or he’s right wing and of little influence to the Aust electorate.
The move to the right by voters has everything to do with ALP incompetence and dishonesty (state and Fed) that should quite properly be reported in the media.
What happens in the UK is irrelevant.
jumpnmcar – Isn’t it time you were in bed?
It seems to me that calls on the impending demise of the Murdoch bureaucracy are a little premature. The Murdochs both played their roles well and will probably continue on their autocratic paths.
Here in Australia I don’t see anybody with the guts to front their power plays, nor to prevent them acquiring more media than they presently own.
“”"jumpnmcar – Isn’t it time you were in bed?”"”
Oh, nice one. I must remember that one the next time i want to be juvenile.
“”"”It seems to me that calls on the impending demise of the Murdoch bureaucracy are a little premature. “”"
But this is better, well done champ.
I must say Rebekah Brooks gives the term “a SHOCK of red hair” some definition.
The carbon tax is left wing? A piss weak maternity scheme is left wing? Dream on.
Geoffrey Robertson casts a forensic eye upon the abject old spiv.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/07/12/rupert-murdoch-will-he-be-arrested-for-news-of-the-world-hacking-scandal.html
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/07/19/murdoch-scandal-rupert-murdoch-s-know-nothing-strategy.html
“Oh, nice one. I must remember that one the next time i want to be juvenile.”
No need to remember anything. Just carry on as normal.
Let’s hope the dynamic duo end up in a courtroom and are questioned by someone who knows what they’re doing.
How does Rupert Murdoch find out what’s going on in his own company?
He reads The Guardian.
How did Rebekah Brooks?
She watches Panorama
This is rightly making the rounds:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jul/20/jonnie-marbles-history-pie-activism
Comrade, the correct third option is “he normally plays at being a mercenary, non-ideological kingmaker in Australia, unless we have a wounded state or federal Labor govt in office, at which point he lets his organs play at being viciously anti-Left kingmakers.” That explains why his papers’ started running a national anti-minority-federal-government campaign last year even as his Victorian tabloid was endorsing & preparing for John Brumby’s government’s inevitable second term. It explains why his Sydney tabloid tied itself to the election of Barry O’Farrell months before the NSW election occurred. It explains why all Newscorp was nowhere near as enthusaistic about the rise of Rudd as they were about the rise of Howard ten years earlier.
That said I’m convinced his powerplays normally don’t have any direct influence with the actual voters, not unless there’s an unusually controversial issue said powerplays can be attached to, i.e. a supposedly illegitimate PM who is working closely with the Greens, or a carbon tax, or a dysfunctional State cabinet full of shameless operators most of whom are on the verge of being arrested.
And obviously Murdoch’s UK business is of much import to his Australian one if its problems lead to him losing control of the board, or if it results in the demise of the eighty-year-old’s chosen successor, his son James.
(See, folks, that’s how you engage a conservative who is arguing about all this stuff being trivial.)
Ok, I’ve just trashed every recent comment on this thread that misspelt another commentor’s name.
That’s snide and very definitely uncivil. Cut it out.
It’s interesting to note that some here have also realised early that Murdoch has to be tackled and continue to be tackled here as well, you have to get the metastases as well as the main cancer.
An unintended consequence of the Murdoch antic has been the stirring of now incensed former Fairfax high flyer Margo Kingston, who has returned to blogging at WD after “six years of allergy”.
The reason I mention this is, that she is trying to put together a movement or campaign to have Murdoch account for himself as to msm, before our parliament also, at Facebook. It is not a bad list she’s begun to accumulate either, inlcuding a number of recognisable journo names, Lindsay Tanner, Catherine Lumby and others.
One thing she has suggested is, that those of us who see value in pressure being maintained on Murdoch, should seek out other progressives and progressive organisations, for support, encouragement and if possible cooperation.
This is the first site I’ve visited to mention this, there are some ethical intellectual heavy hitters here and I hope they will give Margo’s ploy some thought, even some support at her FB site. Time runs out. We know Murdoch’s agenda in Australia for the next coupleof years and if our democracy is not under threat I’m a dutchman.
I say without intentional resort to hyperbole, that our society is at a a “Niemoller Moment” in its history.
Play safe NOW- no more carbon tax misrepresentations, boat people, welfare, aboriginal, anti feminist, anti gay and anti muslim hysteria, dumbing down, shonky deals with the mining giants and other vested interests.
I should have said the formal title for this, “Campaign for an Australian Murdoch Inquiry”. Regular LP poster Dr. Fiona Reynolds, who also moderates at WD, is also involved