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starting point
dilate
Empire Map
epilogue
1 Starting point
On October 10, 2020, former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd launched a public petition on the website of the Australian Parliament to organize a royal investigation team to openly investigate the news group led by media mogul Murdoch.
He argues that News Corp has monopolized australia's media and manipulated the country's politics. In just one week, more than 300,000 people signed the website, sparking a heated discussion.
Speaking of Murdoch, many people have heard of it, the world-famous media tycoon, the founder of News Corp...
Under his command, there is both the prestigious Times and 20th Century Fox, one of the biggest names in the American film industry.
Not only that, he also mastered more than 2/3 of Australia's print media, but no one expected that such a behemoth was originally just a local tabloid in Australia's third-tier cities.
Murdoch's father, a former war correspondent and the owner of several small newspapers in Australia, took over the family business after his father's death.
At first, he was just running a tabloid in Adelaide, but slowly he reached out to other Australian states.
In 1964, Murdoch founded Australia's first national newspaper, The Australian, and his principles were very simple:
"We report what readers like."
He believes that most people read books and newspapers only to pay attention to strange things and gossip news, as long as they publish gossip and materials of celebrities such as the royal family, politicians, celebrities and bishops, they can win eyeballs and sell a large number of newspapers.
Someone once summed up his newspaper principles as three "S's", namely sex, scandal (SCANDAL) and sports .
After that, he set his sights on the world.
2 Expansion
The UK was Murdoch's first stop at overseas mergers and acquisitions.
In 1968, he took the troubled News of the World under his wing, and the following year, he acquired The Sun.
Murdoch revamped and renovated The Sun from start to finish, abandoning the tedious religious and political content, adding coverage of sporting events and celebrity gossip, and launching the famous "Three Editions of Girls" column in the history of journalism.
With the operation of publishing photos of naked beauties directly on the third page of the newspaper, the Sun newspaper, which was on the verge of decline, actually "rejuvenated" and became one of the largest selling newspapers in britain, becoming the printing press of the Murdoch media empire.
Subsequently, Murdoch successively collected the Times and the Sunday Times, and finally became the master of 40% of the British newspapers.
But Murdoch wasn't satisfied with Britain, and the United States had always been his dream land, and in 1973, Murdoch bought the New York Post, the Chicago Sun-Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the Dow Jones Group.
He also incorporated 20th Century Fox, one of Hollywood's eight largest film companies, and based on this, he created the fourth largest television network in the United States--- Fox Network.
His expansion model is very simple:
"First we have to buy it, and then we can continue to develop or let it die."
3 Empire
Through continuous mergers and acquisitions, Murdoch promoted the operation of the group, and finally created a media empire.
But he was not only satisfied with the media field, but through his own public opinion media he began to meddle in the political field.
Australia's sparse population, coupled with Murdoch's media empire, which originated in Australia, made Murdoch's manipulation of Australia easy.
With total assets now at $14.5 billion, Murdoch is no difficult task to capture the Australian media market.
At present, there are 12 major media outlets in Australia, and Murdoch has mastered 8 of them, and has full control over its online and offline distribution and reporting.
That said, at least 65 percent of media resources are firmly in Murdoch's hands. None of the other competitors combined were his opponents...
In Murdoch's hands, a large number of media and public opinion resources allow him to meddle in politics at will, and while making profits, he spreads a far-right world view.
In 1975, Australia's prime minister was The Labor Party in Whitland, but Murdoch manipulated it behind the scenes, causing News Corp's media to attack Wheatland.
For example, during the political period of former Australian Prime Minister Tam Bao, he has been promoting Australia's energy plan to try to save energy and reduce emissions and provide reliability of energy supply.
But Murdoch himself did not acknowledge that the global climate was warming, and even hated Australia's climate change strategy.
Tan Bao's policies during his political career were all against Murdoch's wishes, so Murdoch personally came to Australia to manipulate media opinion.
For a time, the major news media began to attack Tan Bao wildly.
A columnist for Murdoch's News Corp. posted:
"The Liberals should unite against The Stupid Politics of Overho, who believes that the world is warming."
Not only that, but even News Corp's TV stations have begun to storm Diss Tan Bao, in their own political discussion programs, connecting various guests to slander Tan Bao together.
After Tan Bao made a promise, held a caucus meeting and resigned, early the next morning, the cover of a magazine under Murdoch News Group was still slandering Tan Bao.
However, the cover of the news about the new prime minister Morrison is different...
Former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd accused the news group of being a "cancer on Australia's political system" and a substantial "monopoly" on the Australian news media.
It is not an exaggeration to say that Murdoch's influence can change the fate of a country.
4 Conclusion
News Corp's response to climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic is almost the same negative attitude, such as "the global climate has not warmed, the epidemic has not occurred" and so on.
Although such public opinion manipulation is outrageous, it is really happening.
The problem in Australia is that there are too few different voices in society.
Listening to both is bright, and partial belief is dark.
Murdoch's News Corp covers too many cities, covering mainstream newspapers and 24-hour news channels throughout Australia, which has forced it to exert a huge influence on Australian politics.
From an Adelaide tabloid to today's News Corp., Murdoch's ability and influence is indeed well-deserved around the world, but no one knows his purpose in manipulating public opinion.
A reporter once interviewed Murdoch:
"Of all the things that have happened in your business empire, what makes you happiest?"
Murdoch immediately replied:
"Participate in the editing of a news article, in daily activities ... Impact on humanity."
When I first started learning about Murdoch News Corp., I thought it was ideology at 90 percent.
But now my view is completely different, the ideological part may only account for 10%, and the rest is all about monetary and political interests.