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The case for breaking up News Corp is clear — but what is the best mechanism for doing so? Fortunately, the Murdochs have already given it to us.
This article is part of a series about a legal threat sent to Crikey by Lachlan Murdoch, over an article Crikey published about the January 6 riots in the US. For the series introduction go here, and for the full series go here.
The case for curbing the power of News Corp in Australia can be told with a few simple facts. It controls around two-thirds of the nation’s newspapers. It is the nation’s dominant subscription television platform. It owns a quarter of the nation’s top 20 news sites. Other media outlets, especially the notionally independent ABC, readily follow its editorial lead each day. That alone justifies its break-up.
But worse, the nature of that dominant role in Australia’s already highly concentrated media environment is toxic. It openly supports one political party, by the admission of its most senior and experienced political commentator. It is “an absolute threat to our democracy”, according to former Liberal prime minister Malcolm Turnbull. He describes News Corp as the nation’s most powerful political actor, but one that acts with no accountability. Its climate denialism, Turnbull says, “is just staggering and has done enormous damage to the world”. Even James Murdoch has lamented “the ongoing [climate] denial among the news outlets in Australia given obvious evidence to the contrary”.
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