LONDON: Rupert Murdoch may be wounded by controversy in Britain. He may have failed to tip president Obama in the last US presidential election. But a twitch of his media muscle at the opening of Australia’s federal election has already raised the political temperature.
It is surely no surprise that he wishes to oust Kevin Rudd from power. Even so, the Daily Telegraph’s front page today is uncompromisingly unequivocal: Kick This Mob Out.
The editorial urging Australians to consign Rudd to history is a classic example of Murdoch’s penchant for political character assassination. There is not the slightest attempt to conceal his agenda. It is blatant, bold and belligerent. And it confirms yet again the way in which he links political interventions to his commercial desires.
He is a past master at this business and appears to have chosen one of his most loyal editorial lieutenants to oversee what is certain to be an uninhibited five-week assault on Rudd and his Labour colleagues.
Step forward Col Allan, specially re-imported from New York to his native country to ensure that Australia’s voters do Murdoch’s bidding.They may, of course, have been willing to do it without any unwanted advice from the country’s most powerful media mogul. Labour is far from popular, especially after the Rudd-Gillard shenanigans. But Murdoch doesn’t take chances. He doesn’t do subtlety. Allan is therefore the perfect go-to guy.
Murdoch believes the government’s national broadband network (NBN) poses a threat to the operation of the Foxtel cable TV monopoly that News Corp jointly owns with Telstra. And he is exercised by the potential introduction of a stricter press regulatory regime that could inhibit his papers’ editorial freedom, which means his own freedom to say and do as he likes.
None of this is new, of course. Murdoch’s electoral interference in three continents is a matter of record. He doesn’t always win, as Bill Clinton and Obama can testify. But he has done much better — or worse, depending on your viewpoint — in both Australia and Britain.
By arrangement with the Guardian
