Former Aussie Liberal Party PM Malcolm Turnbull skewers Rupert Murdoch & Fox News for creating a ‘market for crazy’

[jserraglio]

No wonder the Donald hung up on him in 2017. Turnbull is far too articulate for a cretin like Trump to bulldoze. The big question, though, is why the Liberals traded in the silk purse of Malcolm Turnbull for the sow’s ear of Scott Morrison. What were they thinking?

CNN BUSINESS Former Australian prime minister puts Rupert Murdoch on blast https://www.cnn.com/videos/media/2021/0 ... rs-vpx.cnn

[barney]

Belle's view will differ from mine. The hard right of the Liberal Party felt Turnbull would have been a good Labour Prime Minister, that he was in the wrong party, and I'm pretty sure that's Belle's position. Mind you, he did one thing right-wingers love - he made pots and pots and pots of money. I, of course, disagree with that judgment. To my mind, Turnbull was an old-style Liberal PM along the lines of Malcolm Fraser, and I had a lot of time for him.

[jserraglio]

Six PMs in little more than a decade? Hardly makes for a stable gov’t.

[maestrob]

Belle's view will differ from mine. The hard right of the Liberal Party felt Turnbull would have been a good Labour Prime Minister, that he was in the wrong party, and I'm pretty sure that's Belle's position. Mind you, he did one thing right-wingers love - he made pots and pots and pots of money. I, of course, disagree with that judgment. To my mind, Turnbull was an old-style Liberal PM along the lines of Malcolm Fraser, and I had a lot of time for him.

Could that be because Malcolm Fraser hails from Melbourne?

Seriously, though, when Turnbull won his office by ONE VOTE in 2016, and then won the popular vote in 2018, only to be contested by the machinations of a majority of your MPs which opened the door for Scott Morrison to take over, that must have been hard to bear, much as our own election, where Trump lost the popular vote, was tough for us here in the USA.

I find it fascinating that, while our countries are so far apart, our politics are quite similar, no doubt due in large part to the Murdoch family. Same thing in Great Britain (See the Brexit fiasco.).

I do wish voters would stick to what's real, but that seems to be asking too much these days.

[barney]

Yes, Brian, Murdoch is a common denominator. Also an Anglophone tradition. Australia in theory follows the British Westminster system but today it is only a theory - as, indeed, it is in the UK. Under that system, cabinet ministers took responsibility. Today no one wants to take responsibility, and the US, under your own system, appears to share that problem.
Morrison seems to have been exceedingly sleazy in ascending to the top job, promising loyalty to Turnbull and plotting behind the scenes against him. A self-interested sleazy politician? Astounding. How rare!

[Belle]

I disagree about that characterization of PM Morrison. Entirely.

Malcolm Turnbull has scapegoated (and ours is the era of peak scapegoating) Murdoch for his own political failures. Same with erstwhile PM Rudd, who hasn't had the honesty to admit that News Limited was right behind his bid for the top job in 2007. In fact, neither man is in the least honest. Turnbull was a creature of the Labor Party who made his initial foray into politics by attempting to join them, only to be punted by Graham Richardson - coming across to the Liberals AFTERWARDS. He is a vicious man who - absolute irony of all (but never acknowledged) - he used News Limited NEWS POLLS as the reason for knifing a sitting PM!! "Mr. Abbott has lost thirty news polls in a row" was his plaintive anthem!! Now he has the epic hypocrisy to blame News Limited for his downfall. References to News Limited were his excuse to knife a PM who earned a 25 seat majority in the House of Reps and when that failed with him nearly losing government for the Coalition with a slim 1 seat majority he then blamed News Limited - as he did for his lost PM gig!! He lost it over climate change and his flip-flops, embracing fashionable woke causes and a shambolic style of governing which was and is light years away from conservative mainstream Australia. He got our family right offside back during the Republic referendum in the 90s when he came out boldly and claimed then-PM Howard, "broke the heart of the Australian people". Never mind that Aussies wouldn't have a bar of his republican model and its vague articulations; facts never suit Malcolm Turnbull.

Kevin Rudd is just a malignant narcissist and he'll never admit his failures because narcissists are constitutionally incapable of taking responsibility. Turnbull has morphed into the same kind of born-to-rule, aggrieved individual. He has invested heavily in the renewables sector and has become a vicious critic (all the while pretending it's all about climate change) because government simply refuses to head in that direction, compromising Lord Waffles of Wentworth's significant renewable investments. Didn't see that coming!! Now, like a spoilt brat, he snipes from the sidelines and has his favourite media, the left wing, activist "Guardian" and ABC, choral-singing his plangent chants of "they done me wrong". His particular schtick suits the furrowed brows of the haters.

Murdoch is used as a straw man by the Left. They have the vast majority of the media under their control and, as yet unsatisfied by not having all of it, have had to create a dragon to be slayed in the form of Rupert Murdoch. Some people would think they'd be smarter than that, but I'm not one of them. (And we don't have Fox News here in Australia, just Sky News - all Australian.)

As to conservatives being pre-occupied with money; it's the self-appointed elites of the Left today which are the real big earners. Those people who once championed the working class are now subscribers to the group think 'country club'; ergo, the new Democrat Party and British Labour and Australian Labor. AKA 'the goat cheese curtain' or the 'latte' sippers. Those monikers suit them very well. Where we live, in regional Australia, the people are pragmatic and authentic.

We're never going to agree on any of this and I write because the casual observer might read it and think. (And I have no idea why this ended up in bold type!)

[jserraglio]

Where we live, in regional Australia, the people are pragmatic and authentic.

’Epic hypocrisy’ is no more. Without relinquishing hypocrisy for an interminable Aussie minute, its epic flavour has gone flatly pastoral.

Malcolm Turnbull has scapegoated ... Murdoch for his own political failures ... He is a vicious man . . .

Belletristic. It pains me to have to point out that it’s ad hominem to boot.

. . . we don't have Fox News here in Australia, just Sky News - all Australian . . .

[barney]

Ah Joe, First Dog on the Moon can be delightful. As he is here. Captures Sky After Dark perfectly.

[barney]

Murdoch is used as a straw man by the Left. They have the vast majority of the media under their control and, as yet unsatisfied by not having all of it, have had to create a dragon to be slayed in the form of Rupert Murdoch. Some people would think they'd be smarter than that, but I'm not one of them.

I thought we'd disagree Belle, no mystery there, but you really went off on a rant. I highlight the quote above because, once again, you are simply factually wrong - wildly so. The last official survey, in 2016, found Murdoch had a print audience share of 65%. That means the former Fairfax reach 35%.

In what twisted Belle-world is 35% a vast majority and 65% a pitiful minority? I pointed out earlier that Murdoch boasted about his influence with the (UK) Sun headline "it's the Sun wot won it" about the 92 election. He certainly doesn't agree with your fatuous claim; his power comes precisely because people believe he has influence, and he's not going to downplay it.

Sky News on TV has a far smaller share, but it is a pay service amid a sea of free to air, and gets its influence because people in Canberra watch it, especially the ministerial advisers. And where is the balance in Sky? The ABC pretends to try; Sky glories in its right-wing bias. When challenged about this, suddenly they're not journalists any more, they're "commentators". Are you really going to claim there are any ABC or Fairfax journalists as twisted and contorted in ensuring that only their view gets published as Paul Murray, Rown Dean, Chris Kenny, Peta Credlin etc? As I said, they gloat in their bias. I don't want to defend the ABC because the wokerati there can irritate the heck out of me, but I vastly prefer that to Sky.That First Dog in the Moon cartoon Joe posted was such an accurate parody of Sky.

[maestrob]

about that cartoon, Joe, thanks!

Reading here is always an education for me.

Barney, I'm certainly no expert on Australian politics or media, so I'm grateful for your analysis, which immediately lends itself to credibility, unlike Belle's unreferenced and undocumented rant.

One thing I try to do when I post here is to provide links to my facts and figures, something I've never seen Belle do. Not once!

Obviously, articles from media sources that deal in bizarre rhetoric don't wash with me.

[Rach3]

Per Wiki:

“ Turnbull has publicly criticised the Morrison Government for not taking strong enough action on climate change, arguing that they should readopt his National Energy Guarantee (NEG) policy. In a piece in The Guardian, he stated that, ‘ Scott Morrison can't afford to waste the bushfire crisis when Australia urgently needs its own Green New Deal...There are simply no more excuses. We cannot allow political prejudice and vested interests to hold us up any longer. If ever there was a crisis not to waste, it is this one. Morrison has the chance now to reinstate the NEG with higher targets. Both he and Josh Frydenberg were among its strongest supporters when I was PM. They abandoned it in the lead-up to an election, to pacify the right wing of the Coalition that sabotaged it in the first place.’

On 25 October 2020, Turnbull gave his support to former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's petition for a "Royal Commission to ensure a strong, diverse Australian news media" with the goal of investigating Rupert Murdoch's control over Australian news media, tweeting that he had signed it and encouraging others to follow suit. The petition became the most signed parliamentary e-petition in Australia, with more than 500,000 signatures. The petition was tabled in the House of Representatives by Labor MP Andrew Leigh on 9 November 2020.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malcolm_Turnbull

[Belle]

Murdoch is used as a straw man by the Left. They have the vast majority of the media under their control and, as yet unsatisfied by not having all of it, have had to create a dragon to be slayed in the form of Rupert Murdoch. Some people would think they'd be smarter than that, but I'm not one of them.

I thought we'd disagree Belle, no mystery there, but you really went off on a rant. I highlight the quote above because, once again, you are simply factually wrong - wildly so. The last official survey, in 2016, found Murdoch had a print audience share of 65%. That means the former Fairfax reach 35%.

In what twisted Belle-world is 35% a vast majority and 65% a pitiful minority? I pointed out earlier that Murdoch boasted about his influence with the (UK) Sun headline "it's the Sun wot won it" about the 92 election. He certainly doesn't agree with your fatuous claim; his power comes precisely because people believe he has influence, and he's not going to downplay it.

Sky News on TV has a far smaller share, but it is a pay service amid a sea of free to air, and gets its influence because people in Canberra watch it, especially the ministerial advisers. And where is the balance in Sky? The ABC pretends to try; Sky glories in its right-wing bias. When challenged about this, suddenly they're not journalists any more, they're "commentators". Are you really going to claim there are any ABC or Fairfax journalists as twisted and contorted in ensuring that only their view gets published as Paul Murray, Rown Dean, Chris Kenny, Peta Credlin etc? As I said, they gloat in their bias. I don't want to defend the ABC because the wokerati there can irritate the heck out of me, but I vastly prefer that to Sky.That First Dog in the Moon cartoon Joe posted was such an accurate parody of Sky.

A 'rant'?!! For many people that's the truth. The facts are that these are the opponents of the Murdoch press, which currently enjoy regular readers:

Huffington Post
The Saturday Paper
The Conversation
Crikey
SMH/Age
The ABC
The Guardian
plus any number of smaller outfits too numerous to name.

News Limited has Sky (limited by subscription), The Telegraph, The Australian and other capital city mastheads - but they compete with all the aforementioned with their considerable Leftist group-think. In short, one media outfit stacked up against all the rest.

Sky News opinion programs openly state that they are just that; there is never any pretending to be anything else. The ABC is obliged, by charter, to adhere to balance and they fail on an hourly basis. The rot set into that organization when I worked there in the 1970s and it endured the influence of Alan Ashbolt, an avid communist. My friends there weren't interested in politics and I didn't engage with it, but I could see the partisanship right before my eyes even then. During the Nixon impeachment/resignation they all gathered around the TV sets to cheer; but the opposite occurred when Whitlam was sacked. Partisan to the hilt. Worse today. Time to give the ABC the chop; that or force it by fiat to represent the views of mainstream/average Australians.

[Belle]

Per Wiki:

“ Turnbull has publicly criticised the Morrison Government for not taking strong enough action on climate change, arguing that they should readopt his National Energy Guarantee (NEG) policy. In a piece in The Guardian, he stated that, ‘ Scott Morrison can't afford to waste the bushfire crisis when Australia urgently needs its own Green New Deal...There are simply no more excuses. We cannot allow political prejudice and vested interests to hold us up any longer. If ever there was a crisis not to waste, it is this one. Morrison has the chance now to reinstate the NEG with higher targets. Both he and Josh Frydenberg were among its strongest supporters when I was PM. They abandoned it in the lead-up to an election, to pacify the right wing of the Coalition that sabotaged it in the first place.’

On 25 October 2020, Turnbull gave his support to former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's petition for a "Royal Commission to ensure a strong, diverse Australian news media" with the goal of investigating Rupert Murdoch's control over Australian news media, tweeting that he had signed it and encouraging others to follow suit. The petition became the most signed parliamentary e-petition in Australia, with more than 500,000 signatures. The petition was tabled in the House of Representatives by Labor MP Andrew Leigh on 9 November 2020.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malcolm_Turnbull

You quote Wiki and "The Guardian". Neither can be trusted - one source taken from the other. Turnbull is a woke hypocrite who used News Limited for his own ends and then cried 'foul' when he was shunted from the Coalition. The Left dislikes News Limited because it preaches an alternate ideology light years from wall-to-wall progressive leftism. Again, the people ran from it as fast as they could in the UK and Corbyn's Labour. If they have to endure it in the media and their institutions they'll not vote for it willingly in politics. That puts the US Democrats squarely on notice.

"The Guardian" is an activist outfit, populated by group-thinkers and grievance junkies - most of whom are about 12 years old (that last moniker is one I used to hear regularly from a friend at the ABC who described the political activists there as "leather-jacketed, 12 year old chardonnay socialists"). But the aforementioned Guardian bolsters its bourgeois mien with regular features about "the arts", which barely conceal its undesirable ideologies. One of its erstwhile film critics, Derek Malcolm, appears frequently on the Sky program "Stars of the Silver Screen" and "The Directors" - all about famous people from cinema. Malcolm's often snide and judgmental comments really are combative. In a program about James Stewart the relationship was discussed between Stewart and friend Henry Fonda. Apparently the men had an early dust-up in their friendship, over politics. Malcolm sneered, "Fonda of course was a wonderful Democrat and Stewart a Republican - which really surprised me". I was livid when I heard him say that - it was so "Guardian". One man - the Democrat - whose first wife killed herself and who had appalling relationships with his children and the other a decorated bomber pilot and war hero who still worked for the US Air Force until late in his career. I know whom I'd want in the bunker beside me come the revolution.

I'm afraid that shallow, hate-fuelled kind of comment is all-too-prevalent on "The Guardian".

[barney]

Murdoch is used as a straw man by the Left. They have the vast majority of the media under their control and, as yet unsatisfied by not having all of it, have had to create a dragon to be slayed in the form of Rupert Murdoch. Some people would think they'd be smarter than that, but I'm not one of them.

I thought we'd disagree Belle, no mystery there, but you really went off on a rant. I highlight the quote above because, once again, you are simply factually wrong - wildly so. The last official survey, in 2016, found Murdoch had a print audience share of 65%. That means the former Fairfax reach 35%.

In what twisted Belle-world is 35% a vast majority and 65% a pitiful minority? I pointed out earlier that Murdoch boasted about his influence with the (UK) Sun headline "it's the Sun wot won it" about the 92 election. He certainly doesn't agree with your fatuous claim; his power comes precisely because people believe he has influence, and he's not going to downplay it.

Sky News on TV has a far smaller share, but it is a pay service amid a sea of free to air, and gets its influence because people in Canberra watch it, especially the ministerial advisers. And where is the balance in Sky? The ABC pretends to try; Sky glories in its right-wing bias. When challenged about this, suddenly they're not journalists any more, they're "commentators". Are you really going to claim there are any ABC or Fairfax journalists as twisted and contorted in ensuring that only their view gets published as Paul Murray, Rown Dean, Chris Kenny, Peta Credlin etc? As I said, they gloat in their bias. I don't want to defend the ABC because the wokerati there can irritate the heck out of me, but I vastly prefer that to Sky.That First Dog in the Moon cartoon Joe posted was such an accurate parody of Sky.

A 'rant'?!! For many people that's the truth. The facts are that these are the opponents of the Murdoch press, which currently enjoy regular readers:

Huffington Post
The Saturday Paper
The Conversation
Crikey
SMH/Age
The ABC
The Guardian
plus any number of smaller outfits too numerous to name.

News Limited has Sky (limited by subscription), The Telegraph, The Australian and other capital city mastheads - but they compete with all the aforementioned with their considerable Leftist group-think. In short, one media outfit stacked up against all the rest.

Sky News opinion programs openly state that they are just that; there is never any pretending to be anything else. The ABC is obliged, by charter, to adhere to balance and they fail on an hourly basis. The rot set into that organization when I worked there in the 1970s and it endured the influence of Alan Ashbolt, an avid communist. My friends there weren't interested in politics and I didn't engage with it, but I could see the partisanship right before my eyes even then. During the Nixon impeachment/resignation they all gathered around the TV sets to cheer; but the opposite occurred when Whitlam was sacked. Partisan to the hilt. Worse today. Time to give the ABC the chop; that or force it by fiat to represent the views of mainstream/average Australians.

You've left out all the regional papers - the Mercury etc - that Murdoch owns. But the number of titles is surely not the point. The point is the statistic I quoted: 65% of print readers read Murdoch.
I think your view of Sky commentators is skewed by your own prejudices. Certainly they do not constantly and honestly admit that theirs programs are simple bias. They claim to present facts, and when these are challenged and exposed as distortions or lies, it is then they come up with "we are only commentators". Can you not see how dishonest that is? Yes, many of your criticisms of the ABC are justified, but you have to show some balance if you want to be taken seriously.

[Rach3]

Per Wiki:

“ Turnbull has publicly criticised the Morrison Government for not taking strong enough action on climate change, arguing that they should readopt his National Energy Guarantee (NEG) policy. In a piece in The Guardian, he stated that, ‘ Scott Morrison can't afford to waste the bushfire crisis when Australia urgently needs its own Green New Deal...There are simply no more excuses. We cannot allow political prejudice and vested interests to hold us up any longer. If ever there was a crisis not to waste, it is this one. Morrison has the chance now to reinstate the NEG with higher targets. Both he and Josh Frydenberg were among its strongest supporters when I was PM. They abandoned it in the lead-up to an election, to pacify the right wing of the Coalition that sabotaged it in the first place.’

On 25 October 2020, Turnbull gave his support to former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's petition for a "Royal Commission to ensure a strong, diverse Australian news media" with the goal of investigating Rupert Murdoch's control over Australian news media, tweeting that he had signed it and encouraging others to follow suit. The petition became the most signed parliamentary e-petition in Australia, with more than 500,000 signatures. The petition was tabled in the House of Representatives by Labor MP Andrew Leigh on 9 November 2020.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malcolm_Turnbull

You quote Wiki and "The Guardian". Neither can be trusted - one source taken from the other. Turnbull is a woke hypocrite who used News Limited for his own ends and then cried 'foul' when he was shunted from the Coalition. The Left dislikes News Limited because it preaches an alternate ideology light years from wall-to-wall progressive leftism. Again, the people ran from it as fast as they could in the UK and Corbyn's Labour. If they have to endure it in the media and their institutions they'll not vote for it willingly in politics. That puts the US Democrats squarely on notice.

"The Guardian" is an activist outfit, populated by group-thinkers and grievance junkies - most of whom are about 12 years old (that last moniker is one I used to hear regularly from a friend at the ABC who described the political activists there as "leather-jacketed, 12 year old chardonnay socialists"). But the aforementioned Guardian bolsters its bourgeois mien with regular features about "the arts", which barely conceal its undesirable ideologies. One of its erstwhile film critics, Derek Malcolm, appears frequently on the Sky program "Stars of the Silver Screen" and "The Directors" - all about famous people from cinema. Malcolm's often snide and judgmental comments really are combative. In a program about James Stewart the relationship was discussed between Stewart and friend Henry Fonda. Apparently the men had an early dust-up in their friendship, over politics. Malcolm sneered, "Fonda of course was a wonderful Democrat and Stewart a Republican - which really surprised me". I was livid when I heard him say that - it was so "Guardian". One man - the Democrat - whose first wife killed herself and who had appalling relationships with his children and the other a decorated bomber pilot and war hero who still worked for the US Air Force until late in his career. I know whom I'd want in the bunker beside me come the revolution.

I'm afraid that shallow, hate-fuelled kind of comment is all-too-prevalent on "The Guardian".

The facts appear to be Turnbull said what he said, and there were 500000 signatures, inconvenient as those facts may be for you , unless there is evidence to the contrary.

[Rach3]

As here :
https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/22/media/ne ... index.html

[maestrob]

As here :
https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/22/media/ne ... index.html

Good grief!

Talk about burning the candle at both ends!

Rupert Murdoch has been such a malign influence in the world. I can't wait until the day he draws his last breath.

The lesson learned from his poisonous career is the same one P. T. Barnum taught us at the beginning of the last century: "There's a sucker born every minute."

[Rach3]

The Murdochs' poster boy,Tucker:

https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/tuc ... 32946.html

[maestrob]

Yeah, well, some folks don't change, they just grow in the wrong direction, don't they?

When Crossfire was on CNN, I sent in an email one day that referenced a running joke on the air about how TSC wore a hairpiece instead of his own mop, and, surprise, it got read on the air. It was the only thing I had in common with that creep, even then.

He was steeped in unreal nonsense then, and has only gotten worse and worse on Fox. Even Bob Novak with his red Corvette (now deceased) bravely denounced the Iraq war then, something Carlson and even many Democrats failed to do. I tried to relate to that world 20 years ago, and couldn't, and I shudder still at the terrible damage people like him have done to our nation since.

Words matter. We, as a society, have to find an effective way to counter propaganda like this generated by creeps like him in our media before its' too late.

So many of us are just too vulnerable.