Murdoch and Australia/American Relations
Submitted by Phoebe_in_Sydney on November 14, 2006 - 6:23pm.
International
The ideologically-slippery media mogul is back in his land of birth trying to do something about the relations between our two countries -- proclaiming that we're suffering from anti-Americanism and remedial action needs to be taken before we find ourselves as overcome with the illness as those dastardly Europeans.
But Rupert's doing more than just talk. He contributing money to the cause of boosting the flagging popularity of the USA in Australia.
Little is said in the following articles about what Murdoch himself might've done to damage American's opinions of Aussies, but I guess that's another topic for another day :-)
News Corporation chairman Rupert Murdoch has warned Australians not to allow anti-American sentiment over the Iraq war to damage the country's relationship with the United States.
Addressing a benefit dinner for the American-Australian Association in Sydney, Mr Murdoch has said Australians must actively avoid a rift with the US by rejecting what he describes as the "facile, unthinking anti-Americanism" that has gripped much of Europe.
--snip--
Mr Murdoch says the Howard Government's close working relationship with the Bush administration has undoubtedly fuelled Australian animosity towards America.
But he says doubts about the Iraq war should not cloud the broader relationship between the two countries.
"Wars end, administrations come and go," he said.
The story as reported on Murdoch's own News.com.au
ANTI-Americanism is on the rise in Australia, fuelled by the unpopularity of the Iraq war among young people, Rupert Murdoch said last night.
Speaking in Sydney, Mr Murdoch warned Australians against allowing doubts about the US administration to fester into an irrational antipathy that saw America as a greater threat to world peace than al-Qaeda.
"Australians must resist and reject the facile, reflexive, unthinking anti-Americanism that has gripped much of Europe," said Mr Murdoch, chairman and chief executive of News Corporation, parent company of the publisher of NEWS.com.au.
Addressing a star-studded audience, including Prime Minister John Howard, at the inaugural American Australian Association benefit dinner, Mr Murdoch said America had to work to address criticisms that it took Australia too much for granted "and not come calling only when in need".
"Australian sentiment is thankfully nowhere near Europe's level of hostility - but it could get there, and it mustn't," Mr Murdoch said.
The Sydney Morning Herald reports this was triggered by a poll showing Australia's negative feelings about the US that led to last night's dinner and the initiative to set up the US Studies Centre at an Australian University (more on that below)
Mr Murdoch, chairman and chief executive of News Corporation, who was honoured at the dinner as "a quintessential American Australian", was horrified at last year's Lowy Institute poll that showed only Indonesia, the Middle East, Iran and Iraq generated fewer positive feelings than the United States.
Being a Sydney paper, and the only mainstream oppositions to Murdoch's print empire in Australia, the Herald (note the cutely snarky headline above) focuses more on the Sydne Uni aspect of the story:
CONTRARY to all expectations, except perhaps its own, the University of Sydney has won its bid to host a US Studies Centre worth at least $50 million.
--snip--
Gavin Brown, Sydney University's vice-chancellor, said it would be a centre for all Australia and the university was honoured to host it.
The university plans to run short courses, debates, public lectures and forums through the centre.
It will also conduct a national survey measuring what Australians think of the United States, a summit on US studies and a classic American film festival.
--snip---
Professor Brown yesterday denied there would be any pressure for researchers to take a favourable stance towards America. "It will be pro-America in a certain sense of the word because we've got a whole lot of American scholars who are in love with America, [but] they may have disagreements with the things that go on in the US at time to time," he said.
The Federal Government has promised $25 million, which is likely to be more than matched by contributions from the university, the NSW Government, the Murdoch family company, News Corporation, and the Lowy family.
Don't quite know what to make of Rupert being the one to tell Australians to think more positively about the US. Doesn't he know how much FoxNews feeds amti-American sentiment in this country? As it's the only American cable news network we get (our CNN is CNN International) many Australians think of Fox as representing typical and popular American points of view.
There's already been some interesting blog reaction:
Yes, more of this ridiculous wooble about Australians sinking into the pit of anti-Americanism.
Now if he claimed that Australians were beset by a wave of anti-Bushism, then he might be making a legitimate argument. But there's a vast, gaping gulf between disagreeing with the brutal neocon international agenda of Bush Co. and hating an entire country of people and by definition its culture as well.
Absolute twaddle.
Murdoch seems to make this kind of speech about once a year, and no doubt this little doozy will once again stir up this non-debate and give the Andrew Bolts and Piers Ackermans and Tim Blairs of Australian mediadom plenty of scope to try and shred 'Leftists' for hating Americans.
It's such an obvious and dodgy strawman that it's in danger of spontaneously combusting in a fireball of total irrelevancy.
Few countries in the world have embraced Americans and American culture more completely than Australia has.
A blog attached to Murdoch's site has also started a blog on the topic Not anti-American, pro-Australia
There's only one comment there as I post this link but it'll be interesting to see where the discussion goes.
Anyway looking on the definitely positive side of all this ... I'm a graduate of the Uni of Sydney and it's literally walking distance from where I live and, so perhaps I can get involved in some of what's going to be on offer via this centre for US studies.
has a simple principle. (As opposed to George W, for example. I still can't figure out exactly what he set out to achieve and not sure whether it's because he's botched it so badly, or because the aim was so diabolical) But with Murdoch the end objective is always a business gain for him.
So I'm trying to work out whether he thinks anti-Americanism in Australia is bad for his business. Or some business he's planning for the future. He seems pissed off with Europe, that's for sure.
one thing's clear. He's distancing himself from the Bush admin. Quietly, but quite definitely.
You'd be taking them to the Better Business Bureau if you bought a washing machine the way we went into the war in Iraq. Wes Clark, CNN Aug 17 2003
people here seem to be treating Wes with a little more respect these days.
He knows, of course, that at least half of the US are not happy with his services here and his numbers are dropping. I should imagine that they're much worse in Europe if he's been offering them the same fare as in the U.S.
Go take a look at this over at HuffPo today:
Fox Internal Memo obtained by Huffington Post:
Interesting reading, pia. It's almost like it's saying the election result is the bad news, but the good news is people still want to kill americans. The psychology of the Foxs News agenda is the more fear, the better, I'm sure of it.
I've watched bits and pieces of Fox since the election and you know I can't help feeling they're almost enjoying having a fresh narrative to work with. They've got new people to hate (Pelosi, being one of the new 'stars') and I do feel they're enjoying it. But there's less defending Bush and more just hating the Dems.
You'd be taking them to the Better Business Bureau if you bought a washing machine the way we went into the war in Iraq. Wes Clark, CNN Aug 17 2003
I made the mistake of watching Fox news before and after the General's appearance. The bias of it horrified me. But then Tucker horrifies me. Seems like the only straight stuff these days is coming out of Olbermann and the Daily Show.
Run, Wes, Run! (Please?)
bluemoon, everything you say is so true. Eisenhower hit the nail right on the head when he said we needed to be wary of the military-industrial complex. Unfortunately, somewhere along they way, they bought the government. Now we seem to have no way of viewing anything that doesn't involve soldiers and bombs.
I guess the Cold War was the perfect leg up to that mode of thinking. It even trained young kids to see the world that way as they ducked beneath desks that would never protect them from the kinds of weapons we and our enemies held poised.
Then the end of the Soviet Union, the fall of the Berlin wall, and everybody is talking about a peace dividend, only we never saw that dividend. Why? Because we had this huge hungry behemoth poised and ready, and their only survival lay in selling more bullets and bombs.
Before the outbreak of the Iran war, my brother sent me a paper from some huge think tank. It was about the economic benefits that would accrue to U.S. business from invading Iraq. I got sick to my stomach when I read it, and I got even sicker when I realized this is the kind of thinking our government is hearing as well.
We need to look past the president to the powers that are behind him, and I don't mean Dick Cheney. We need to take a hard and fast look at our country and vow to root out this mentality and this mega industry.
That will be the hardest thing of all.
Run, Wes, Run! (Please?)
for the interesting observations!
Win with Wes in '08
thanks for dropping by :-)
You'd be taking them to the Better Business Bureau if you bought a washing machine the way we went into the war in Iraq. Wes Clark, CNN Aug 17 2003
I guess Murdoch is truly Machiavellian. He'd done more to twist the mindset of this country into something dangerous and ugly than any single other person.
Now he tells Australians not to hate us? This has me wondering if raising Anti-Americanism in Australia to new heights isn't his real objective.
But to think of you getting Fox and no other U.S. news feed. I shudder.
On TV isn't strictly limited to Fox. We do get the NBC and CBS evening bulletins here on another cable network and CNN shows some American programming (e.g. Anderson Cooper 360 and Wolf Blitzer's Sit Com, oops Sit Room) but Fox is the only news network that we just get exactly as it rolls in the US.
The upside of that is that I actually get to see Wes when the timing's right and he's not on the middle of the nights, the down side is ... well, just about everything else :-)
You'd be taking them to the Better Business Bureau if you bought a washing machine the way we went into the war in Iraq. Wes Clark, CNN Aug 17 2003
Phoebe, I'm glad to know you see a little other U.S. news. Still, U.S. news is so insular. I was absolutely thrilled recently when we started getting the CNN International feed. Unfortunately, in the process, we lost the Internation News Channel which used to carry programs from around the world in English. My favorite was the German newscast. (We didn't get one from Australia.)
I had a friend from Queensland who years back came to the U.S. for a visit. One of the first things she noticed about the U.S. was our news. She told me it was so parochial, with very little of international substance, that in Australia you get far more of the international coverage. Is that still true?
Run, Wes, Run! (Please?)
probably rates better in Australia than news with international substance, but we do have (compared to the US) relatively strong public broadcasting, set up loosely on the BBC model and that keeps up a supply of international news.
Our ABC (the national public broadcaster) carries a reasonable amount of international news, and there's a second public broadcaster, SBS, which was set up to cater mainly to the many ethnic communities in Australia, so they are very big on international news. Their main bulletin each night is called "World News". I love it.
On radio the network I mainly listen to has a lot of BBC programming as well as feature news programs each day from German national radio and Radio Netherlands. NPR's "All Things Considered" is run on that network daily as well.
Having said all that, the vast majority of Aussies tend to choose the more Australian-focused outlets. And what international news they get is very much British and American-centric.
Realistically, one of the reasons Australians probably seem more outward looking that the US is that we've grown up in country that's relatively isolated geographically but not powerful enough to really stand alone. So we've always paid attention to what's going on in Britain and the USA. Those countries affect us politically and culturally.
There are many voices within Australia that have been saying for some time we should be looking more to Asia, as that's the region closest to us, and it's a region with a big future. But the problem is most Aussies don't self identify as Asian, but they do feel kinship with the British and Americans.
anyway, I'll stop now before this become an essay ...
You'd be taking them to the Better Business Bureau if you bought a washing machine the way we went into the war in Iraq. Wes Clark, CNN Aug 17 2003
Phoebe, by all means give me the essay. I was fascinated. I hadn't thought of Australia's geographical position vs the culture and loyalties. Certainly you have always been, and still are, our staunchest allies. I've never met an American who didn't think fondly of Ozzies.
Anyway, does all of this create tensions for your country?
Run, Wes, Run! (Please?)
The most evil man in the world.
Wish you had kept him in Australia....take him back, please.
Run Wes Run!
Went back to the blog I referred to in the original post (The "Not Anti-American, Pro Australia" topic) and found this interesting comment:
As an Australian journalist living in Europe, I have to say that I’m not alone in this part of the world in having spent most of the last six years “resist(ing) and reject(ing) the facile, reflexive, unthinking” FOX News service, owned by that great media-diplomat Rupert Murdoch - which perhaps more than even George Bush himself has fanned the great divide between an America gone mad and the rest of the world trying to stay sane.
I tell ya, FoxNews as an "ambassador" for the American point of view is a scary concept.
You'd be taking them to the Better Business Bureau if you bought a washing machine the way we went into the war in Iraq. Wes Clark, CNN Aug 17 2003
Hi Phoebe,
Anti-Americanism has a lot of causes, some valid and others not. Perhaps the most valid of those causes is our narcissistic focus on ... anti-Americanism. "Why do they hate us? Can't they see we're the greatest country in the world?" *shrugs*
I'm reminded of a t-shirt I once bought for a friend, that read:
The thing about me is, it's always about me.
Crissie
Mr Murdoch has said Australians must actively avoid a rift with the US by rejecting what he describes as the "facile, unthinking anti-Americanism"
As opposed to the unthinking, pro-[right wing]Americanism that Murdoch promotes?
I'm frankly exhausted and fed up with the usual suspects chiming in and having their say.
It's all BS - every last stinkin' bit of it. Every ounce of tpooh that comes out of the mouths of the movers, shakers and pundits is motivated by one thing - not honesty, not integrity, but by lust for fame, money or power.
Sick to death of these people. But hey - somewhere along the line they nabbed the brass ring, and the people - the regular people who populate this doomed planet? We're left riding around and running amok because these people can't keep their mouths shut or their pocketbooks closed.
Pffffffffft.
The only word that floats into my head after reading this is... mind____k.
Such an abusive pattern. Truly Phoebe the global elite power brokers who command the New World Order practice a curious & incestuous form of... entertainment.
There's a sickening feeling of gamesmanship going on, isn't there? I've been so conditioned to see this all unfold in my mind's eye- the little maps, the soldiers in the field, the dark figures moving them about just exactly as if they are toy soldiers, and not real ones-making calculations & furtive calls. There's a whole class of people & a whole class of industry that is simply devoted to creating & trying to maintain these illusions.
How could Wes have walked through these rooms & the corridors of power these long years & remained so unscathed? He gave some kind of talk or perhaps it appears in an early chapter of Winning Modern Wars where he talks about being in a room full of people flapping their arms up & down trying to describe bombing runs who clearly had not the slightest clue of what they were talking about but yet were in high level policy positions making critical decisions regarding the activities of the bombers.
Murdoch has contributed much to not only the dumbing down of English-speaking nations & a kind of insular but outwardly manifesting near-Crusades-level mentality, but also to a form of media ownership & monopoly that simply undermines every priniciple of good citizenship AND weakens everything we hold dear.
I would say that that takes nerve, but what it really takes is a kind of deadness somewhere where there SHOULD be nerve endings.
Draco Malfoy: Scared, Potter? Harry Potter: You wish.