John Pilger - Murdoch may be a convenient demon, but the media is a junta - TruePublica
John Pilger – Murdoch may be a convenient demon, but the media is a junta
Every Saturday we feature an article written by highly acclaimed film-maker, author and journalist John Pilger who,
with such foresight encapsulates how our world is being shaped by
corporations, corrupted political systems, propaganda, globalisation and
war. This piece was written originally June 2012 and is just as
applicable today, if not more so.
Australia is the world’s first murdochracy. US citizen Rupert Murdoch
controls 70 per cent of the metropolitan press. He has monopolies in
state capitals and provincial centres. The only national newspaper is
his. He is a dominant force online and in pay-TV and publishing. Known
fearfully as “Rupert”, he is the Chief Mate.
But Murdoch’s dominance is not as it is often presented. Although he
is now one of the West’s accredited demons, thanks to his phone-hackers,
he is but part of a media system that will not change when his empire
is broken up. The political extremism that is the concentration of the
world’s wealth in few hands and the accelerating impoverishment of the
majority will ensure this.
A Melbourne journalist, Paul Chadwick, one of the few to rebel
against Murdoch, described this as “akin to a small group of generals
who sit above the main institutions… a junta in all but name”.
Consider the junta’s rise. In the US, at the end of the second world
war, 80 per cent of newspapers were independently owned. By 1987, most
were controlled by 15 corporations, of which six dominate today. Their
ideological message is a mantra. They promote global and domestic
economic piracy and the cult of “perpetual war”. This is currently
served by a “liberal” president who pursues whistleblowers, dispatches
drones and selects from his personal “kill list” every Tuesday.
In Britain, where the propaganda of big capital also dominates, the
historic convergence of the two main political parties is rarely news.
Tony Blair, a conspirator in the greatest crime of this century, is
promoted as “a wasted talent”. In all these agendas, notably the
promotion of war, the Murdoch press often plays a supporting role to the
reputable BBC. The Leveson inquiry has shown not the slightest interest
in this.
In Australia, there is the Order of Mates. A struggle for the mantle
of Chief Mate is currently under way. From out of a vast Aladdin’s Cave
of mineral wealth, comes Gina Rinehart, said to be the richest woman in
the world. The daughter of iron ore billionaire Lang Hancock, Rinehart
and her fellow mining oligarchs all but got rid of Labor prime minister
Kevin Rudd in 2010 when he proposed a modest tax on their huge profits.
Rinehart believes Australia’s media is basically communist, especially
the Fairfax group of which she has now acquired almost a fifth of the
stock.
