Kevin Rudd’s petition is blowing up. The former prime minister’s call for a royal commission into News Corp has more than 350,000 signatures.
While his demands are almost certainly not going to be met, he’s rebooted a crucial conversation about the company’s pervasive influence over Australian politics. It’s forced plenty of coverage in rival news outlets, even those traditionally more reluctant to attack the beast than Crikey.
But despite Rudd’s call being pretty newsworthy, you’d be hard-pressed to read about it in any News Corp publication.
But it’s not because of any specific “anti-petition” policy — News Corp is happy to report on all kinds of petitions.
And snubbing Rudd can’t really be chalked down to a lack of relevance.
When Tony Abbott was a former prime minister, in 2016, his signing of a petition calling for a review of safe schools got a write-up in several News Corp papers.
Last year, when Sydney pre-schoolers signed a petition calling for the Aboriginal flag to be flown on the Harbour Bridge, it aroused a spree of tabloid fury, capped off with some Andrew Bolt hyperventilating.
Perhaps the lesson here is if you want your petition to get noticed, focus on the culture wars that News Corp has become obsessed with. When that obsession was squarely on Islam, a petition with just 400 signatures calling for a ban on anti-Muslim writer Ayaan Hirsi Ali got ample furious coverage (also with a Bolt column, of course).
And in the last year alone, The Australian’s transphobia correspondent Bernard Lane has written at least seven articles mentioning petitions related to gender identity and trans rights. One was a piece on Coalition Senator Amanda Stoker’s petition calling for a stand against the “radical transgender agenda”.
Other cranks have also got their due: Miranda Kerr’s mum’s anti-vaxxer petition was written up fairly uncritically in news.com.au.
Of course, there are some petitions the News Corp papers can’t avoid reporting on, even if they don’t fit into the current culture war.
Last year Warringah MP and Abbott-slayer Zali Steggall tabled a petition with a record 400,000 signatures calling for a climate emergency declaration. Despite News Corp’s well-documented hostility to the science on climate change, it covered the petition.
On the other hand, The Australian soon after gleefully reported that another online climate emergency petition had been blocked because of alleged fake signatories.
Perhaps if Rudd crosses Steggall’s record and gets more than 400,000 signatures, Holt St will be forced to take notice. But don’t hold your breath.
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Peter Fray
Editor-in-chief of Crikey
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Newspapers and Murdoch in the same sentence??
What “newspapers”?
Media Watch this week reported on the barrier reef die back etc, reported world wide (think over 700 mentions) but none in aust Murdoch media. So if one only relies on Murdoch media, how much is missing from what is important news. Truly bizarre behaviour. And reporters working for these papers – do they have any ethics/morals?
As far as i’m concerned rudd is a has been, he’s pro communist, as also labour. now as i think,also the news media in australia most of them are leftist, as an australian i think many things that i hear in the news are lacking in truth and is not good.To have variety of news platforms like news corp to listen to to get another perspective, all the lefties want to do is take away our freedoms what left want to do is turn our society into nanny states as all the labour states are i guess the time will come when we all will have our hands tied by the left which will be sad,in that day austalia will be like china communist, then australians can only blame themselves for voting away our freedoms
It always amazes me – Why does a person [Kevin Rudd] sacked by his own investors [Labor] receive so much attention after he is out of the picture. His failures were well documented the same way as News Corps failures are well ventilated. On the other side why is John Howard idolised for his political judgement – he made history by being the only Prime Minister In living memory to lose his seat in an election.
Perhaps both should stand and be voted in as directors of Crown at the next general meeting-
Rudd, in addition to his supervised academic research, has a moderate international speaking programme. On that basis, albeit lime-light deprived, he cannot be said to be ‘out of the picture’.
Both Howard and Rudd came to be obsessed with their own importance: both deeming themselves irreplaceable.
Had Howard hung up his gloves say 2005 he might have made it onto the currency by now or at least a postage stamp. As I had occasion to point out to someone today : history is one’s life.
Andrew Bolt htperventilating, ha ha. He is the same guy who stood up for disgraced Priest Pell.
Says a lot about his credentials and can some one explain to me how Pell was allowed to leave AUSTRALIA?
because he was found not guilty of the charges laid against him-so he was free as any Australian to come and go
Abbott, too; merely comped the form. Try it yourself.
However, rather than harping on about Pell you might ask yourself why the ‘opportunistic witnesses’ (the description given by the Judges of the Court of Appeal were not charged with perjury.
As for the trial of Pell, it was never about evidence until the very end. The testimony of the accuser was clearly at variance with the given practices and customs (being accompanied etc.) of which the accuser was wholly ignorant.