IF YOU THINK there’s been a media campaign to discredit the Gillard Government, then you’re on the mark. It has not been your imagination. A source, a senior media executive I cannot name, but for the sake of this article I will refer to as ‘Peter’, has revealed the strategies used and the motivation behind them.

He says that the main reason is the NBN:

“The Murdoch media has been leaning to the right since the Whitlam days but the anti-Labor meme was really ramped up just before the 2010 election. The catalyst was Murdoch’s luncheon with Tony Abbott, where the NBN (National Broadband Network) must have been the main talking point as the very next day Abbott publicly announced that he’d rip up the NBN.”

Apparently Abbott almost gave the game away by his over-eagerness:

“He pissed a few of us off by jumping too soon, thinking that people might tie the announcement to the meeting with Murdoch, which luckily they didn’t. The NBN will affect Murdoch’s profits, and let’s be very clear on that, so the reason to back Abbott was clearly motivated by money for the media empire.”

The source said Tony Abbott is not easy for the media to sell, but they are doing their best:

“Tony Abbott is hard to sell as a politician, so we sell him as a person. He looks the goods as a loving family man or a fire fighter, but hopeless as a politician. He can’t control his mouth. For example, yesterday he announced that he wouldn’t rule out an alliance with the Greens. It’s going to be hard for us in the media to sell this after a couple of years of trying as hard as possible to discredit the Greens.”

http://www.independentaustralia.net/2013/politics/the-media-campaign-against-the-government-revealed/

From Margot Kingston, Patron saint...

“Fairfax, the ABC and even Crikey are too fucking timid to do anything to upset the powerful. It’s up to social media. And there are journalists in the traditional media who secretly admit that the new, independent media is the way of the future and we must join with them. We need to build a bridge between the new media and journalists who see the corruption within the mainstream media. We need to collaborate and work together. We can do this by luring traditional journalists into the new media and free them of their shackles. If we do this, one day we in the new media will look back and be grateful for the decisions we make today.”

Prominent lobby group Hacked Off - which counts actor Hugh Grant as its figurehead - says there is strong evidence that Mr Murdoch misled a parliamentary inquiry into phone hacking.

It has called on the British government to recall the Australian-born media mogul to the inquiry.

A spokesman for News Corp has defended Mr Murdoch and the firm but did not question the accuracy of the recording, which was made by a member of staff at the meeting in London and obtained by the Exaro investigation website.

"Mr Murdoch never knew of payments made by Sun staff to police before News Corporation disclosed that to UK Authorities. Furthermore, he never said he knew of payments. It's absolutely false to suggest otherwise," the spokeswoman said.

News Corp also said no other company has done more to compensate victims of hacking

Mr Murdoch, the head of News Corp and 21st Century Fox, had previously described himself as humbled and appalled by the revelations of illegality and phone hacking that forced the closure of his prized News of the World tabloid two years ago.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-07-06/murdoch-belittles-incompetent-police-in-secret-recording/4803380

See toon at top... BUT READ ARTICLE ABOVE CAREFULLY...