My debut article for US outlet The Intercept: RUPERT MURDOCH, who oversees a global media empire that includes Fox News, doesn’t like losing, but he just tasted defeat in Australia’s election. Despite years in which Murdoch’s media properties vociferously backed conservative Prime Minister Scott Morrison, Labor leader Anthony Albanese won the May 21 contest. Australia…
Showing all posts tagged Murdoch
Wrestling with Murdoch columnist who embraces the drug war
During the research of my just-released book, Pills, Powder and Smoke: Inside the Bloody War on Drugs, I interviewed one of Australia’s most prominent Murdoch columnists and supporters of the drug war, Miranda Devine. The book features the full version of this exchange but Australian outlet Crikey published an edited extract this week: The Kings…
US magazine Truthout picks Disaster Capitalism and extracts its introduction
US magazine Truthout has picked my book Disaster Capitalism: Making A Killing Out Of Catastrophe… as its “Progressive Pick” (AKA book of the moment). Here’s an extract from the introductory chapter: “Sometimes we win the skirmishes, but the war continues.” — Rebecca Solnit, 2011 Back in 1972 Jørgen Randers, today the professor of climate strategy at…
Al Jazeera America interview on Sydney siege part 2
During this week’s Sydney siege I was interviewed by Al Jazeera America to offer analysis of the event (the first interview is here). Here’s the second interview:
Al Jazeera America interview on Sydney siege part 1
This week’s horrific terrorist attack in Sydney, a crazed self-styled cleric held people hostage in the Lindt cafe in central Sydney killing three people including the gunman, has shocked the country and generated global headlines. Too much of the media coverage was exploitative and sensational, framing the event as led or even inspired by ISIS.…
Stand firm against the Murdoch war on public broadcasting
My weekly Guardian column: The terms of the current battle in Australia over the ABC, its budget and place in public life have been set by its most vociferous critics, mostly in the Murdoch press. If only the lines weren’t so predictable. Their campaign fits neatly into a global trend: to reduce the public’s faith…
Defending the rights of whistle-blowers in our age
My weekly Guardian column: Freedom is difficult to resuscitate once extinguished. Australian attorney-general George Brandis recently chastised journalists for criticising his government’s new laws aimed at preventing reporting about “special intelligence operations”. Because he’s a culture warrior brawler, Brandis damned the “usual suspects of the paranoid, fantasist left” but also “reputable conservative commentators” for questioning…
How Australia is importing Tea Party style politics
My weekly Guardian column: It’s the swaggering and unthinking bravado that hits you. Australian prime minister Tony Abbott threatens to “shirtfront” Russian leader Vladimir Putin when he arrives in Australia for the G20. Moscow responds via Pravda by comparing Abbott to Pol Pot and Hitler. Australian senator Jacqui Lambie then praises Putin as a “strong…
Political scandal in New Zealand offer lessons for the world
My weekly Guardian column: It’s extremely rare to have the genesis of a political smear campaign uncovered for all to see, just like it is uncommon to read the correspondence between senior government officials and media backers to attack opponents and critics. And yet, that’s exactly what is unfolding in New Zealand. New Zealanders are…
Inside the mind of ISIS
I’m currently in America, investigating disaster capitalism in privatised immigration detention for my 2015 Verso book. I’ve been watching a lot of cable TV (lord knows why but I’m a masochist) and it’s been ISIS day and night (apart from mostly awful coverage of the killing of Michael Brown and white blindness on racism). Fox…