Happy Tuesday! It’s James West here, deputy editor of Mother Jones. I also go by a jokey unofficial title, Senior Australia Editor, and with that hat on, I bring you a fascinating new investigation into my home country’s most notorious export: Rupert Murdoch.
For someone growing up in Australia, Murdoch and his media were inescapable. Australia is where it all began, when he took his dad’s Adelaide newspaper and grew it into a global empire, as the story goes. It’s also where his influence is still most keenly felt. Today, News Corp owns more than 100 newspapers, including several top tabloids that command more than half of the country’s readership, with circulations that many American editors would kill for.
Even so, there’s been a fascinating change Downunder. While political leaders once came groveling, believing that Murdoch’s favor could swing an election their way, this doesn’t happen so much anymore. At Murdoch’s most dominant, he more often backed conservative leaders. But now, the left-wing Labor Party holds power in all but one of Australia’s states and runs the federal government too.
How did this happen? And, if Australia has been able to shake itself free from Murdoch’s grip, could American democracy—still wracked by the radical (and radicalizing) Fox News—do the same?
It’s the tantalizing prospect that Australian journalist Sean Kelly explores in his new, deeply reported story, “Australia vs. Rupert Murdoch,” published this week as part of our big look at American Oligarchy. (Remember, Rupert famously became an American citizen in 1985 to clear the way for US expansion.) Sean has long been my personal decoder for Aussie politics and media stories. Earlier in his career, I watched him rise through the ranks of politics to become a top adviser to former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and his successor Julia Gillard. He’s now an accomplished journalist and columnist for the Sydney Morning Herald and the author of the definitive book about the rise and fall of another recent prime minister, Scott Morrison.
I’ll let Sean lay out the stakes:
Suggestions that the Murdoch empire is declining in the place that Rupert first built it are tantalizing to his critics. That this alleged decline coincides with such a delicate handover—from all-powerful father to relatively untested son—may raise these hopes still higher: Perhaps this is the moment those terrified of Murdoch have been waiting for all these years. After all, if it can happen there, surely it could happen anywhere—perhaps even everywhere.
Sean’s article serves up some killer quotes from another former PM, conservative Malcolm Turnbull, who unloads on Murdoch as a power-obsessed planet destroyer. “It’s hard to think of one person that has made a bigger contribution to delaying action on climate in the world,” Turnbull said, before laying a similar blame for America’s crackup with Murdoch: “Of course, Trump and January 6: wow. There isn’t a person alive today who has done more damage to the United States.”
I won’t give it all away. Come for the dishy Murdoch palace drama. Stay for the big questions about democracy in 2024—when everything is at stake.
This Murdoch investigation is just one part of our wide-ranging look at the rise of the American Oligarchy—and what it means for the rest of us. You can read all the pieces here.
—James West
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