Piers Akerman: Left ignores truth as it manufactures fake Murdoch conspiracy
SCOTT Morrison is clearly kicking a few goals for the Coalition. How can we tell? That’s easy, the ABC, the Fairfax press and the Guardian have cooked up a huge conspiracy involving media bosses Rupert Murdoch and Kerry Stokes, Piers Akerman writes.
Opinion
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SCOTT Morrison is clearly kicking a few goals for the Coalition.
How can we tell? That’s easy, the ABC, the Fairfax press, the Guardian and the lunatic Leftist Saturday paper have gone into reactionary overdrive with confabulated accounts of a huge conspiracy cooked up by media boss Kerry Stokes, who owns the Seven network and The West Australian newspaper, and Rupert Murdoch, who controls this newspaper and others around the nation.
In the interests of full disclosure, I’ve met Stokes a number of times and we’ve casually discussed the media landscape when we’ve bumped into each other at the occasional public event.
I’ve been a Murdoch employee here, in the UK and the US for 48 years. One of many Australians whose lives have been enriched by their association with one of the most dynamic figures of the era. I’ve edited newspapers, and run a Washington television news service as a vice president of Fox News.
What’s more, I’ve always felt intellectually stimulated and enriched when I’ve spent time with Rupert because he is always overflowing with ideas and relishes discussion (some would say gossip) about international events.
It is perhaps a measure of the petty and insular mindedness of the ABC’s Barrie Cassidy and some of those he hosted on the Insiders program that when I was once asked who I would most enjoy spending time with around a dinner table I was mocked when I nominated John Howard and Rupert Murdoch.
I guess I should have said Mao or Hillary Clinton.
In the normal course of things I wouldn’t bother to acknowledge the garbage that has been written and broadcast in the past week, but as Fairfax is persisting in its attempt to cook up a conspiracy theory to distract its rapidly diminishing audience from the firm determination of PM Morrison to get the government back on course, I’ve decided to break my rule and lay out a little of my experience as an editor in what a Guardian writer describes as the “News tribe”.
First, when I joined News as the industrial roundsman on The Daily Mirror, it was actually more of a family affair than a tribe. Rupert had acquired a few holdings in Australia and was just settling into the UK. The Australian was just six years old.
His mother, Elisabeth, (later honoured as Dame Elisabeth for her enormous philanthropic contribution to the nation) occasionally visited the offices where I worked and was always warm and vibrant in our conversations and generous in her hospitality when my young family moved to Melbourne in 1990.
Second, professionally, was I ever directed to bring down a government or support a particular policy as an editor or editor-in-chief or television news director?
I can state unequivocally No.
Did I in any of those positions advocate for a change in government at state or federal level? I can happily state Yes.
When I was editor-in-chief of The Advertiser in Adelaide, the newspaper started to look at the State Bank, which collapsed fairly soon after.
John Bannon, the Labor Premier (with whom I enjoyed a friendship) and the directors of the bank took out injunctions against the newspaper on a regular basis which we fought — running up significant legal bills.
When the bank inevitably collapsed in 1991 with debts of $3 billion, I was living in Melbourne and examining Premier Joan Kirner’s calamitous government but Bannon had the decency to fly over and, over drinks in his suite at the Windsor Hotel, offer a personal apology for the manner in which he and his government had mishandled the bank issue.
Did Rupert Murdoch ever direct me on the editorial position the Advertiser should take — No.
Similarly, in Victoria, when Kirner demonstrated her abject inability to come to grips with the union-dominated Labor Party, there was no direction from anyone on the editorial position the Herald & Weekly Times newspapers should take.
Certainly, the ABC and The Age blindly followed the trade union and Labor Party line that Mother Russia was a feminist icon and that any attacks on her failing government were misogynistically inspired blah, blah, blah, but to take any other editorial stance would have failed the people of Victoria.
Professionally, was I ever directed to bring down a government or support a particular policy as an editor or editor-in-chief or television news director? I can state unequivocally No.
I’m pleased that our readers supported the position we took, and maybe some noticed a full front-page editorial we published calling for the Socialist-Left Kirner to leave office before she could further damage the state, but they certainly showed their displeasure when she had to go to the polls in 1992 and was swept out by the Jeff Kennett-led Liberal team with a 19-seat victory, the second-largest in the state’s history.
Was Rupert engaged in some conspiracy to undermine this disastrous Labor government?
Hardly.
The team at the H&WT can take full credit for the great newspapers they produced during that period and the service they provided their readers.
For the record, Bill Clinton wasn’t pleased, either, with a fantastic report WTTG broadcast about his younger half-brother Roger’s shambolic presence in the capital, who it must be noted was granted a presidential pardon for a 1985 cocaine possession and drug trafficking conviction before Clinton Sr left office in 1991.
Did Rupert know what we were going to put to air that night?
Nup and it was such a huge ratings hit that I decided it should run again the following night — which it did to an even greater audience.
So, when I read of a Murdoch-driven conspiracy to dump Turnbull, who stands with Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard as one of the worst prime ministers we’ve seen in the past 50 years, I can dismiss the nonsense out of hand (and I apologise for all the personal pronouns. It won’t happen again).