Description
This narrative is a story about a News Corporation that dominated Australian media during the Gillard years and the extent it was prepared to go to, to inflict its corporate will on the people of Australia.
It may explain how a government that not only survived the GFC without going into recession but continued to outperform almost every country in the world has for the duration of its term looked like it was headed for a crushing defeat at the hands of voters who had been convinced that their government had not only done a bad job but was possibly the worst ever, and maybe the worst in the world.
The sentiment of the people could have been echoed by the American Chairman of the News Corporation on 19 May 2013, “Oz polls show nothing can save this miserable government. Election cannot come soon enough. People decided and tuned out months ago.”
At that stage for more than two years the assets of the Chairman’s corporation had been working tireless to shape the sentiment of the Australian people to harmonize with those of the Chairman with a narrative that was at odds with much of the evidence of this period.
The bubble that the assets of the News Corporation set up around the Australian people can best be exemplified by the occasion in 2011 when Australia was adjudged to have AAA credit rating by all three major assessment agencies. This was acknowledgment based on statistics and indicators of performance by international agencies of the quality of the Australian economy and the quality of the government that set the levers in place.
The same month when Australia earned its Triple-A credit rating with all agencies for the first time ever, Murdoch’s Daily Telegraph was telling Australians that “the last four years have been disastrous for Australia… There have been broken promises, billions lost and wasteful spending and economic mismanagement and sheer incompetence.”
It was sheer Murdoch media not letting facts, evidence and dictionary meaning of words get in the way of the agenda of the corporation that required regime change.
This narrative could be a study in many things- perhaps of bias in media, or perhaps about the delivery of propaganda, perhaps about everything an “Aussie fair go” is not about. It may or may not be a story of a people who were not ready for a female Prime Minister. However, it is primarily a story about the News Corporation that dominated Australian media where the lack of diversity enabled it to bring the worst of its practices into play without challenge.
Another News Corp Narrative talks about hate media. Nobody delivers it better than the assets of the News Corporation. By the time the minority government was sworn in, the assets of the corporation had had two years of practice in attacking the black President of the United States, denying him any credit and exploiting every bit of racism and latent racism that was left in that country as they fanned fears, fed the anger and fuelled the rage. Their campaign and tactics that had proved so successful in the midterms giving the party of George Bush huge wins in the congressional elections would be applied by its agents to the Australian scene.
The Prime Minister herself, as had the President, became their target in the Australian campaign as they seized on the unusual manner of her elevation to the post and the compromises that had to be made to negotiate minority government to focus their attacks. In hate media it is always the person rather than issues that is the focus and the campaign became about a woman who would stab a man in the back and lie to you before an election. The Australian assets were able to manipulate and exploit every bit of sexism and latent sexism that was left in the country as they fanned fears, fed the anger and fuelled the rage as they had successfully done in the USA.
This News Corp Narrative looks at the campaign of the operations of a multinational corporation to diminish the achievements of an accomplished Australian.