News Corp’s Stage 3 tax cut coverage a deceitful political campaign

News Corp's coverage of Labor's altered Stage 3 tax cuts has unsurprisingly highlighted – yet again – its existence as a propaganda machine rather than news outlet, writes Dr Victoria Fielding.

WE OFTEN HEAR people complain that Murdoch media is biased towards right-wing causes. News Corp voices tend to justify their bias by claiming they’re just taking a position in news and commentary not taken by other outlets.

Right-wing bias – however – is the least of the Murdoch media's problems. The biggest problem with News Corp is that they are not a news organisation, they are a campaign platform for right-wing causes.

By presenting a political propaganda campaign as if it were news, News Corp is doubly misleading audiences and damaging the public’s trust in actual news — a trust that is crucial for a functioning democracy.

They are also using their concentrated size to influence how the rest of the media report “reality” to audiences.

Backtracking forwards: Hypocrisy over Labor's altered Stage 3 tax cuts

Perspective is needed on the substantial reforms of the income tax schedules Prime Minister Albanese announced last Thursday, Alan Austin reports.

The Murdoch media holds far too much power over Australian democracy and are using that power to undermine any person or group who challenges right-wing ideas. To put it bluntly, news media is meant to serve democracy — but rather than serve democracy, the Murdoch media is hell-bent on destroying it.

News Corp’s “coverage” of Labor’s Stage 3 tax cuts demonstrates that their content is not designed to inform, but is designed to manipulate.

When a government announces a change to a policy, like Labor’s changes to Stage 3 tax cuts, the news media is not meant to take sides, it is meant to get the facts and report them to audiences. This includes acting as a watchdog by fairly scrutinising those in power.

It does not include being an attack dog on behalf of the government’s political opposition, or misleading audiences about the changes by only giving them one perspective.

As sure as night follows day, as soon as Prime Minister Albanese announced reasonable and credible tweaks to this tax package – a change delivering bigger cuts to lower income earners to assist with cost of living pressures – News Corp’s campaign went into overdrive.

This campaign is characterising Albanese as dishonest and untrustworthy, and the tax changes as an assault on working Australians. It is at its very heart an attack on Albanese designed to damage him politically. Never mind that the changes still deliver a tax cut to everyone, as promised. This reality is lost in the mudslinging.

Stage 3 tax cuts: The fight is on

With the Federal Budget only weeks away, time is running out for Labor to make the right decision on its Stage 3 tax cuts policy.

Just to give a sense of the hyperbolic fervour: The Australian focused on the 'The occupations set to lose out from Labor’s Stage 3 tax plan'. The Daily Telegraph headlined a piece 'Lying Albo has no credibility left with voters after tax ambush'. Caleb Bond for News.com.au complained that people 'earning $200,000 weren’t rich,' implying people on higher income brackets were not receiving any tax cut when indeed they still were.

Sky News called Albanese a "lying clown" and the Courier Mail wasn’t even pretending to be anything other than a campaign platform for Liberals and Nationals by publishing an opinion piece by Matt Canavan where he accused Albanese of 'lying about lying'.

This campaigning does not represent a healthy news marketplace of ideas where different groups have equal opportunity to present their views to the public to let them decide for themselves what they think of the tax changes.

This coverage is not just biased — it’s not even “news”. It represents yet another political campaign against the Labor Government and is designed to look like news. This manipulates people into thinking they are being informed about the tax cuts, when what they are really consuming is a political pamphlet which is designed to persuade them against voting Labor.

We of course know that such aggressive and one-sided coverage would never be used to criticise a Liberal government for making changes to a policy — something governments do all the time without being accused of lying.

It is only Labor governments and other progressives who receive such treatment from Murdoch. News Corp’s media power is not used fairly or in the interests of the public.

Murdoch propaganda machine catastrophic for democracy

News Corp publications and television shows offer little in the way of actual news and rely heavily on biased commentary.

If it’s not bad enough that Australia’s largest media organisation uses a façade of journalism to campaign for right-wing political causes, worse still it has an agenda-setting influence on the rest of Australian media. This is because staff at other outlets – including the ABC – refuse to accept that the Murdoch media is not producing journalism. They therefore do not recognise that when The Australian, in concert with the Liberal Party, deems Albanese’s Stage 3 tax cut tweak a “backflip” and a “broken promise”, this is not a representation of reality, but a political perspective on the situation, which should be reported only through this lens.

News Corp exists to try to stop Labor governments from winning elections and to undermine them when they win power. It also exists to oppose anything remotely progressive in the social, cultural, industrial, economic or political sphere. It is a powerful machine used to maintain and reinforce its own power.

When you understand that the Murdoch media – Australia’s largest and most influential “news” organisation – is not really a news organisation at all, you start to get a sense of how big the problem is. Any challenge to Murdoch’s power becomes the fodder for another Murdoch media assault. News Corp is holding Australian democracy hostage and the public seems powerless to stop them.