Kill Bill - the front page antics of the Daily Terrorgraph
The unofficial propaganda arm of the Coalition Government, Sydney's The Daily Telegraph has predictably come out swinging ahead of the federal election.
"Bill's tax bomb for battlers"
The content is factually wrong. What 'Aussie battlers' actually have the money to buy a home as an investment? And Malcolm Turnball plans to give tax cuts to high income earners. It’s ludicrous. If you want to read more about negative gearing and who the ALP's policy really affects (not Mums and Dads) read this article by Michael Janda at the ABC.
The Tele has been doing blatant anti ALP propaganda ever since Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard were in power. And of course before when it suited them.
The ABC's Media Watch reported on the recent media horror story that was Duncan Storrier, “With the story ticking all boxes for News Corp: Bash the poor. Bash the ABC. And Bash Labor. The perfect trifecta.”
I won't lament on how the hell they get away with it being so obviously biased, but I am curious about how it will actually affect voting intentions.
Rupert Murdoch used to have the power to make or break politicans and elections.
Crikey’s founder Stephen Mayne explains in this article how, despite Murdoch’s bashing of Hilary Clinton in the US, she still looks likely to be the next US President. He also reveals insight into the inner workings of News Corp in Australia: "Rupert has long hated Malcolm Turnbull, but there would be a civil war inside News Corp if he chooses to effectively back Bill Shorten and the unions in the lead-up to the likely July 2 double dissolution election," he said.
So if the US is any indication of the current influence of News Corp, it's not a great deal of influence.
Who actually reads the Tele these days?
The kind folks at Roy Morgan gave me a breakdown of who reads the Tele and how they vote.
"On average, 28.9% of Daily Telegraph (Monday-Saturday) readers would vote ALP as their first preference if a Federal election for the House of Representatives was being held today."
So in other words, of the 881,000 Australians who read the Tele each week from Monday to Saturday, (the large majority of whom are aged over 50) there's not nearly a big enough proportion of ALP voters to be influenced by the paper's propaganda.
Roy Morgan Research Single Source (Australia): April 2015 – March 2016.
The news landscape is swiftly changing. For many years networks have been trying to get younger viewers to watch their news as, like the Tele, their main demographic is in the 55 plus age group. Most people these days get their news and information online, not from picking up a paper with salacious headlines. Circulations are dropping for newspapers and people aren’t watching free to air TV as much as they used to with the advent of online sources of entertainment like Netflix. Campaigns through organisations like GetUp garners thousands of supporters. A call to action from Gold Logie winner and The Project's Waleed Aly stirs support from younger generations. A YouTube video goes viral.
So at the end of the day, the Tele can do its bashing as much as it wants, because now, more than ever, due to the Interwebby thingy, people have the power.
