Malcolm Turnbull labels Lachlan Murdoch ‘stupid’ and News Corporation ‘a political propaganda operation’
Malcolm Turnbull has sensationally described Lachlan Murdoch, the presumed heir to the News Corporation empire, as “stupid” and the family’s media operation as “a political and propaganda operation”.
The former prime minister was part of a panel on Tuesday night at an event organised by the independent news site Crikey, probing defamation law in Australia and the influence of the Murdoch machine.
Malcolm Turnbull has launched a fresh attack on the Murdoch media empire.
Crikey’s defence of a lawsuit filed by Lachlan Murdoch last year, over an opinion piece penned by its political editor Bernard Keane, was the main topic of discussion.
Turnbull, who has been a regular ardent critic of Rupert Murdoch and his media interests since exiting politics – and who is now the chair of a campaign calling for a Royal Commission into its Australian operations – did not hold back.
“If ever you wondered whether the suggestion that Lachlan Murdoch was not quite as intelligent as his father, any doubt on that matter was completely resolved when he sued Crikey,” he told the crowd of about 100 attendees.
Keane’s article alleged the Murdochs and their US cable channel Fox News were complicit in whipping up doubt about the legitimacy of the 2020 US election. Trump supporters waged a bloody assault on the Capitol in Washington DC on 6 January 2021.
“For Lachlan to sue over [the article] shows how stupid he is,” Turnbull said.
News Corp Australia declined to comment for this story.
Malcolm Turnbull has been an ardent critic of the Murdoch family since leaving politics.
Turnbull said the opinion piece did not contain fresh accusations, but rather re-stated a discussion that had been held countless times around the world.
“Whether you like it or not, the fate of the Western world, the democratic world, is linked inescapably to the United States. There is no person, no organisation, that has done more to damage that country than Rupert Murdoch and Fox News.”
It was Keane’s description of the Murdoch family as an “unindicted co-conspirator” that sparked the defamation action.
“The reality is that the January 6 assault on the Capitol, that attempted coup, could never have happened had not millions of Americans been persuaded by Trump’s ‘big lie’ that the election had been stolen. And the single biggest amplifier of that was Fox news,” Turnbull said.
“Honestly, the suing was a purely a cynical effort to use Australia’s defamation laws to silence somebody who was making the same criticism that thousands of others have made. It was very, very cynical and it completely blew up in his [Lachlan Murdoch’s] face.”
Murdoch ultimately withdrew the lawsuit in the shadow of News Corporation’s explosive pre-trial settlement with Dominion Voting Systems for a historic US$787 million (AU$1.2 billion).
“It’s not as expensive for [News Corporation] as the Dominion case but in its own way, [ceasing the defamation action was] just as humiliating,” Turnbull said.
Lachlan Murdoch sued Crikey for defamation but ultimately withdrew the action.
When the panel – comprising Keane, Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young, Alliance for Journalists’ Freedom chief executive Lesley Power, and Crikey editor-in-chef Sophie Black – turned its focus to News Corp Australia’s operations, Turnbull again went on the attack.
“In Murdoch’s operation, we’ve got an organisation that is no longer a news organisation in the sense all of us, even the youngest of us, have grown up with. It is basically a political operation – it’s a propaganda operation.
“Murdoch’s media has intimidated everybody in Australia for a very long time, and especially other media outlets – including the ABC.
“I think Crikey standing up so successfully to Lachlan Murdoch, and some other events – Kevin Rudd calling for a Royal Commission, which of course I support, and the Dominion case… all of that has made other parts of the media in Australia say: ‘Why are we being intimidated?’”
He said the Murdoch media is the “single most potent player in the political mix in Australia – it’s the political player whose name we dare not speak” but added: “I think that’s changed.”
Hanson-Young will introduce a bill in the Senate next week calling for a Royal Commission into the Murdoch family’s Australian media business.
I am the oldest boy
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Name-calling, even when it’s factually correct, aside let it not deflect from the real issues here.
News Corp lied to its audiences in the US and was complicit in an attempted coup.
News Corp engaged in criminal phone hacking in the UK.
News Corp has consistently lied and dissembled to undermine action on climate change, insisting to 2019 mega fires in Australia were caused by arsonists.
The Murdoch’s do not pass a ‘fit and proper character test’ by any stretch of the imagination yet they have been granted their bully pulpit in Australia by cowed and/or conniving politicians for too long.
We have seen how important a responsible free press is to democracy and that public interest journalism is vital to its survival in a form any reasonable person would find tolerable. Yet time after time, News Corp sides with the authoritarian right, spreads lies and misinformation, punches down and persecutes anyone with the temerity to stand up to the oligarchs and their enablers. They hide behind corporate platitudes like ‘Your Right to Know’, but they are a political interest group in their own right and have accomplished a level of state capture that is undemocratic, anti-competitive and downright dangerous.
A Royal Commission is urgently needed and action against a quasi-fascist News Corp merited.
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I’m starting to feel the wheels of progress moving forward on a long awaited Royal Commission into Murdoch’s corrupt juggernaut. Thanks to the persistence of Malcolm Turnbull and Kevin Rudd (and others).
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Shannon, Fox Corp settled with Dominion, not News Corp. News Corp is a different company, which shares common ownership with Fox Corp.
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Malcolm is fighting for a worthy cause.
[Moderated under Mumbrella’s comment policy]
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The days of having to go cap in hand to Rupert to get his annointment are just about done with
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Maybe be so, but things need to get to a tipping point and we all can’t be first in line and finally having politician’s publicly recognize and call out corruption (Murdoch media corrupt the polity) is a very good thing.
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This is not news, this is just Malcolm catching up.
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Lachlan was “interviewed” for a Mumbrella keynote session years ago and he was lack lustre and completely demotivating to listen too. There was nothing #leadership in that session!
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As the saying goes, if you point a finger there are four fingers pointing back.
I don’t doubt what Turnbull is saying – yet it’s always been that way and he had no issue with it when it suited him and he chose to work with it. Only now after it’s turned on him and he’s bitter and twisted about being out of office does he chose to challenge it. The younger Murdoch may be dumb but Turnbull is an opportunist with zero conviction – his own party and the public saw right through that which is the primary reason he’s out.
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Sensational? Hardly. That is a very mild terms considering the sheer amount of pure damage that empire has done to democracy in the name of pure greed. Only wish he’d said it when he had real power – but of course, he’d likely no longer have that power then.
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when the queen dies we’ll have a republic.. when Rupert karks the media landscape will improve.. right
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Could’ve done something about it when you were in office champ.
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