A Uni Lecturer Has Ripped Shreds Off News Corp For Being A “PR Outfit” For The Government
He also criticised Nine Entertainment and the ABC directly.
A political analyst has slammed the media over its election coverage in an interview with ABC News Breakfast on Tuesday morning.
Dr Scott Burchill, an honorary fellow at Deakin University who specialises in international relations, criticised the Murdoch press for being a “PR outfit for the government”, while also claiming that Nine Entertainment is a “mini-Murdoch”.
“The Murdoch press has been basically a PR outfit for the government and the problem they had this morning is that the two-party preferred vote in Newspoll has remained steady, despite what we’ve been told was a horrendous week for the opposition leader Mr Albanese,” said Burchill. “So instead of dealing with that issue, which must be frustrating for them because they’re clearly barracking for the Prime Minister, they’re basically saying that it’s unsure if it will be possible for either party to govern in their own right.”
Political analyst Scott Burchill says Murdoch papers are just preaching to the converted and "the 9 newspapers are sometimes called mini-Murdoch these days"
(earlier scoffing at The Australian's headline that Albanese is unelectable when the poll is ALP 53 / 47 LNP)#auspol pic.twitter.com/3VGqGkxO48
— Squizz (@SquizzSTK) April 18, 2022
Throughout the interview, Burchill called out the Murdoch press, in particular, for trying to agenda-set during the election.
“I think a lot of these papers preach to the converted. A lot of the people who read these papers are already Coalition voters, so they’re not going to win over a large number of people but it’s all about agenda setting,” Burchill told the ABC.
“Setting the issue of the day, who won the week? And this is, unfortunately, a fairly trivial aspect of politics these days as if somehow or another we’re focusing on who’s going to win the actual result, rather than any serious evaluation of any of the policies.
Burchill also criticised the press for not focussing on the actual policies of each party, instead, being too occupied with winners and losers.
“We’ve heard nothing about higher education, domestic violence, we’ve heard nothing about so many key issues that the community is interested in hearing about,” said Burchill.
“I know it’s early days but it would be nice if we could just move from refracting everything from who’s going to win and start looking at some policies in detail and we’ve yet to see that and unfortunately the ABC is also guilty of that but let’s hope things change over the course of the next three or four weeks.”
In addition to his ABC appearance, Burchill penned a lengthy blog post criticising many journalists for not using critical thinking in their reporting, and blaming a variety of factors from university to the pressure of beating competitors to an “exclusive” story as the reason for such behaviour.