Kevin Rudd warns imitation of Fox News in Australia threatens to further fuel right-wing extremism

Former prime minister Kevin Rudd says the “Fox News-isation” of Australian media threatens to further encourage far-right extremism.

He delivered the warning on Friday during a Senate inquiry examining media diversity in Australia.

Mr Rudd has directly targeted the role of Rupert Murdoch’s media empire in the Australian media landscape, claiming its conflation of news reporting and editorial opinion has undermined democracy.

Mr Rudd appears before the committee.

AAP

Mr Rudd said he was worried this trend threatens to build an “alternative political ecosystem” that could act to further encourage far-right extremism.

“Where I really worry about the cancer setting in is this – this conflation of news reporting and opinion … ultimately corrodes the notion of factual analysis in itself,” he said.

“We’re on a slippery slope to where the Trumpian universe landed us all – a land of facts and alternative facts and that there is no such thing as the objective truth anymore.”

The newspapers owned by Murdoch’s News Corp include The Australian, the Daily Telegraph, the Herald Sun, and the Courier Mail. It also owns TV channel Sky News.

Overseas, it owns publications such as The Wall Street Journal and the New York Post in the United States, and The Sun and The Times in Britain.

Mr Murdoch also controls Fox Corp.

News Corp Australia executive chairman Michael Miller told the committee Mr Rudd’s claims against News Corp were “not only misleading” but “without fact”.

“A lot of his assertions are totally wrong – they are without fact,” he said.

Mr Miller also defended his organisation’s editorial approach, saying the media group published “a range of opinions”.

“I’ll defend the rights for those views to be expressed and those opinions to be there,” he said.

“The cornerstone of our democracy is a collection of opinion and ideas where different positions can be expressed.”

Mr Miller added that there was zero tolerance for inciting violence on its platforms.

“There is no place for hate speech,” he said.

“There is no place on any of our platforms for inciting any violence.”

News Corp Australasia Group Executive Campbell Reid and Chief Executive Michael Miller.

AAP

Mr Rudd has described the Murdoch media empire as a “monopoly” that has operated through a “culture of fear”.

Mr Miller disputed Mr Rudd’s assessment of News Corp’s control of the media landscape, saying this doesn’t take into account the growth of digital outlets or television networks.

“To look at media through the prism of just print – which is sharply declining – I think is not the way to consider how people consume media today,” he said.

Concerns over Facebook’s emerging monopoly power

The Senate inquiry is also seeking to examine concerns over the emerging power of social media giants on the media landscape in Australia.

Mr Rudd cited Facebook’s decision on Thursday to censor Australian news media on its platform as another example of the power of a monopoly to undermine factual journalism.

“Look at the impact of the Fox News-isation of American politics … my concern about where this drifts to overtime is it has a cumulative effect,” he said.

He went on to cite the example of the 6 January insurrection attempt by rioters against the United States Capitol building as a extreme example of this impact taking hold.

He said while Australia could say that would “never happen here”, the same would have been said in the United States a decade ago.

“I am not concerned about today – I am concerned about a decade’s time,” he said.

Mr Rudd cited the presence of far-right groups in Australia as evidence to support his concerns.

“I am worried that Qanon for example has a presence in this country – I’m really worried about that, but it is not just one conspiracy group there are others as well,” he said.

A petition signed by more than 500,000 Australians was delivered to Parliament last year backing Mr Rudd’s calls for a royal commission to ensure a “strong, diverse Australian news media”.

Mr Miller said he believed Australians were smart enough to make their own judgement about the news they consumed and who they supported “politically”.

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