Deputy PM says journos 'embarrassed' by News Ltd anti-Rudd agenda
Australia’s deputy Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has claimed that News Corp Australia journalists have told him they are embarrassed about negative coverage of Labor running in the corporations’ papers ahead of the federal election.
The front page of The Daily Telegraph
Albanese said, whilst appearing on SBS's The Observer Effect on Sunday, that News Copr journalists had told him they had been "instructed to run an anti-Labor line".
"I have been involved in campaigns for a very long time," he said.
"I have never seen before, on day one of an election campaign, an editorial on a front page advocating a vote for the opposition.
"I've never seen such a consistency in front page headlines consistently attacking the federal government."
He said during the segment that in private conversations with journalists, he had been told: "some of them are embarrassed".
Writing in the Guardian’s recently launched Autralian edition, Roy Greensalde said Rupert Murdoch believes the government's national broadband network “poses a threat to the operation of the Foxtel cable TV monopoly that News Corp jointly owns with Telstra,” and perceives the development to be a threat.
“The editorial urging Australians to consign Rudd to history is a classic example of Murdoch's penchant for political character assassination,” Greensalde said.
“There is not the slightest attempt to conceal his agenda. It is blatant, bold and belligerent. And it confirms yet again the way in which he links political interventions to his commercial desires.”