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News Corp’s worsening mendacity suggests time may be up for Australia’s failing Press Council [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2023-07-31
A campaign of malicious lies about the Indigenous Voice to the Australian Parliament by the Murdoch media corporation is well underway. This highlights the need for mechanisms to alert Australians to deliberate falsehoods so they can be stopped in their tracks.
Unfortunately the Australian Press Council (APC) is failing at this.
Take the latest adjudication as an illustration. The Council criticised the Daily Telegraph on 7th June this year for a March 2020 article reporting a 2019 manslaughter trial. The APC judged the article had referred to the victim as transgender when her gender status was not relevant to the offence.
The lag between writing the defective article and its exposure as breaching APC standards is more than three years. That is far too long if the process is to have any remedial effect.
Prioritising social evils
That adverse APC finding correctly censured the Daily Telegraph for its gratuitous use of the term transgender. But was that article, really, this outlet’s most egregious failure in March 2020?
That was when the Telegraph was enthusiastically lying about New South Wales (NSW) Labor leader Jodi McKay, concealing the Berejiklian regime’s corruption, refusing to report on the environmental destruction being wrought in NSW, declining to expose the rorts of Nationals leader John Barilaro, and continuing its relentless attacks against progressive causes.
That was also when the Morrison federal government was engaging in multiple corrupt schemes which News Corp refused to reveal. It was when federal debt reached an all-time high $580 billion, when the jobless rate began its climb to 7.5 per cent, when covid infections soared above 3,000 – none of which News Corp reported accurately.
Offenders never named and shamed
We know the offending story was run in News Corp’s Daily Telegraph and possibly other Murdoch outlets. But we are not told who wrote it, or the editor who approved the final shonky version.
Covering up offenders’ names diminishes the educative purpose of an adverse APC decision and reduces the punitive effect close to zero. Who at the Daily Tele, or anywhere else, needs to do anything differently following this ruling?
Number of judgments issued
According to the APC’s latest annual report, for 2021-22, 694 complaints were received through the year, with 81 per cent partially or fully upheld. Of these, 22 resulted in published adverse judgments. That is quite low, considering the hundreds, if not thousands, of mendacious articles News Corp publishes each year.
That’s well down from 1,076 complaints received two years earlier, of which just 16 resulted in critical published adjudications.
Total cost of running the Council was $1.61 million in 2021-22. Funding comes from news companies according to their size, with News Corp by far the largest contributor, giving the Council “31%-70%” of its core funding, according to the annual report.
News Corp is the problem
This column found last April that 75 per cent of all articles in breach were from News Corp. That is an increase over 70 per cent in our January 2022 analysis, and significantly higher than our September 2020 findings of 62 per cent.
This trend line confirms what is obvious to any attentive observer. News Corp is an evil organisation whose social destruction globally via its malicious falsehoods is steadily worsening.
News Corp’s Fox News in the USA paid a defamation settlement of $787.5 million to Dominion Voting Systems in April following a lengthy campaign of deliberate lies. It has paid hefty settlements to others. Yet is has shown no remorse and is not changing its ways.
The current campaign in Australia against the Voice was exposed last Tuesday by former Coalition prime minister Malcolm Turnbull:
“Sky News is regularly promoting anti-voice misinformation that is demonstrably false. It is a deliberate campaign to spread fear and misinformation in the lead-up to the referendum, with the objective of securing a no vote.”
Responses from the APC
Independent Australia asked the Council why it doesn’t name and shame individual journalists and editors, nor highlight News Corp as the dominant offender, along with other questions regarding case volume and funding models alternative to having News Corp as the principal donor.
The Council declined to address the specific questions, but offered this general response:
“Over the years, Council has consistently referred only a small percentage of complaints received by the Council to Adjudication. This reflects the fact that complaints are considered on an individual basis, and, for a number of reasons, the assessment is that the majority of complaints received do not require referral to adjudication ...
“The APC is a self-regulatory body but alternative funding sources are reviewed and considered from time to time.”
Ultimately, the Council’s effectiveness is demonstrated by improvement in the quality of journalism.
News Corp is getting progressively worse, not better. Its current campaign of lies and deceit against the Voice proves this.
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This is an abbreviated version of an article published today in Independent Australia. The original article is available here in full for free:
https://independentaustralia.net/business/business-display/australias-media-watchdog-not-holding-news-corp-to-account,17765
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