Stifling dissent: the Murdoch press and its campaigns against its ‘critics’

Abstract

ABSTRACTIn 2014, Nick Davies, the investigative journalist responsible for uncovering the News of the World phone-hacking affair, argued that Rupert Murdoch’s global media conglomerate News Corp actively seeks to intimidate its critics into silence. This article provides an Australian case study on News Corp’s representation of scholars and commentators the company seemingly identifies as adversaries. Content analysis of Murdoch’s national broadsheet newspaper The Australian reveals patterns of negative campaigns against several of Australia’s most prominent media and communication researchers. Outside of academia, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s television program Media Watch and its host Paul Barry have also received aggressive and ad hominem coverage, so too has the Australian Press Council, the press’s self-regulator and its former Chair, Julian Disney. These negative campaigns by The Australian amount to the mobilisation of ‘flak’ against critical perspectives and perceived enemies and is part of broader ideological contest labelled ‘the culture wars’. This execution of media power risks engendering a ‘chilling effect’ upon academic freedom and media scholarship, where researchers might choose to self-censor their activities rather than risk adverse representations of their character, ethics, and research.