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    Lachlan Murdoch knew Fox News claim of stolen US election was false, Crikey will argue in defamation trial

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    Lachlan Murdoch allowed Fox News hosts to peddle the claim that the US presidential election was stolen from Donald Trump despite knowing it was false, Crikey will argue in a defence of contextual truth in its upcoming defamation trial.The 36-page defence, which has been filed by the Crikey publisher, Private Media, in the federal court ahead of an October trial, substantially relies upon events in the US, where Dominion brought a $1.6bn defamation suit against the media company for spreading election lies.Crikey’s defence alleges Murdoch “closely monitored how Fox News Network handled reporting on the election”, according to his Dominion deposition, and that he was “generally aware of the allegations made by Sidney Powell on the Fox News Network at the time they were being made, which were to the effect that the 2020 US presidential election was fraudulently stolen from Mr Trump”.The US jury trial, set to begin on 17 April, centres on whether Fox News knowingly broadcast false claims about Dominion equipment as Trump and his allies sought to overturn the 2020 election.Justice Michael Wigney granted Crikey additional time to add the contextual truth defence on top of its already pleaded defences of public interest and qualified privilege.The defamation proceedings against the independent Australian news site were launched last year over an article published in June that referred to the Murdoch family as an “unindicted co-conspirator” in the US Capitol attack.
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    The expanded defence includes the recent admission by Rupert Murdoch that Fox News hosts endorsed Trump’s false claims.“Lachlan Murdoch is morally and ethically culpable for the illegal January 6 attack because Fox News, under his control and management, promoted and peddled Trump’s lie of the stolen election despite Lachlan Murdoch knowing it was false,” the Crikey defence says.“Lachlan Murdoch’s unethical and reprehensible conduct in allowing Fox News to promote and peddle Trump’s lie of the stolen election, despite Lachlan Murdoch knowing it was false, makes him morally and ethically culpable for the illegal January 6 attack.”Murdoch’s barrister, Sue Chrysanthou SC, indicated in an earlier hearing she would apply to strike out the contextual truth defence, which she described as vague.“This defence is not rational, it is not arguable, it’s a waste of everyone’s time and it serves no legitimate end in the litigation,” the barrister said.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionShe accused Crikey of including masses of material from the Dominion case in the Australian defamation lawsuit purely as part of its “Lachlan Murdoch campaign”, which she alleges is an attempt to raise funds and increase subscriptions on the back of the lawsuit.Murdoch’s attempt to split the trial and have the imputations determined first was dismissed.Murdoch has argued that he has been “gravely injured in his character, his personal reputation and his professional reputation as a business person and company director, and has suffered and will continue to suffer substantial hurt, distress and embarrassment” as a result of the Crikey article.At the hearing earlier this month, Wigney described the litigant and the respondent as having “a scorched earth policy” in their conduct of the matter.“And I say this with the greatest respect … there does seem to be a hint that this case is being driven more by … ego and hubris and ideology than anything else,” he said. More

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      in Elections

      Lachlan Murdoch ‘culpable’ for January 6 insurrection because of Fox News ‘lies’, Australian defamation case hears

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      Media mogul Lachlan Murdoch was culpable for the violent insurrection of the US Capitol after the 2020 presidential election because of lies told through Fox News, a judge has heard.In the federal court on Tuesday, barrister Michael Hodge KC said that while many media sources fuelled a conspiracy theory that Joe Biden stole the election from Donald Trump, Murdoch could still be held responsible.“He controls Fox Corporation. He permitted for the commercial and financial benefit of Fox Corporation this lie to be broadcast in the United States,” Hodge told Justice Michael Wigney.“We say that gives rise to culpability where you are allowing and promoting this lie and that lie is the motivation for the insurrection.”Hodge is representing Private Media, which publishes Crikey, as well as political editor Bernard Keane, editor-in-chief Peter Fray, chairman Eric Beecher and chief executive Will Hayward.They are seeking additional time to file their defences to Murdoch’s defamation suit over an opinion piece published in June last year and reposted in August referring to him as an “unindicted co-conspirator” with Trump over the false election claims.The publisher is seeking to add a contextual truth defence on top of its already pleaded defences of public interest and qualified privilege.
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      The proposed defence, yet to be approved by the federal court, includes personal communications between the Murdoch family revealed via separate US defamation proceedings brought against Fox by voting equipment company Dominion which claims it was falsely accused of conducting mass voter fraud.In one SMS, Rupert Murdoch tells his son Lachlan and Fox board member Paul Ryan about Trump’s “conspiracy nonsense” and refers to Fox talk show host Sean Hannity.“Wake up call for Hannity who has been privately disgusted by Trump for weeks but has been scared to lose viewers,” Rupert Murdoch wrote.Lachlan Murdoch, in the defamation case against Crikey, claims the articles conveyed a meaning that he illegally conspired with Trump to “incite a mob with murderous intent to march on the Capitol” in Washington DC on 6 January 2021.Murdoch’s barrister Sue Chrysanthou SC called the proposed contextual truth defence vague, saying it did not say how her client was culpable for the state of mind of about 2,000 people who stormed the Capitol building on 6 January.Other Murdoch-owned publications, including the Wall Street Journal, New York Post and even Fox itself had reported that Biden won the election and had disagreed with Trump’s claims.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“This defence is not rational, it is not arguable, it’s a waste of everyone’s time and it serves no legitimate end in the litigation,” the barrister said.She accused Crikey of including masses of material from the Dominion case in the Australian defamation lawsuit purely as part of its “Lachlan Murdoch campaign”.The media executive has previously alleged that Crikey has run this campaign against him to boost subscribers and gain financially.“They are happy to martyr themselves in this litigation to seek more money on the GoFundMe me campaign … to turn the case into something that resembles an inquiry and they don’t care if they win or lose,” Chrysanthou said.She urged the judge to reject the defence, saying it would mean a three-week trial scheduled to begin 9 October would have to be vacated.Wigney was due to deliver his judgment on Tuesday afternoon. More

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      in Elections

      Lachlan Murdoch alleges Crikey hired marketing firm to turn legal threat into subscription drive

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      Lachlan Murdoch alleges Crikey hired marketing firm to turn legal threat into subscription driveNews Corp co-chair’s lawyer tells federal court she intends to show Crikey did not republish article for public interest reasons

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      Crikey hired a marketing company to capitalise on a legal threat from Lachlan Murdoch in order to drive subscriptions, the co-chair of News Corporation has alleged in the federal court.Murdoch launched defamation proceedings in August against the independent news site over an article published in June that named the Murdoch family as an “unindicted co-conspirator” in the US Capitol attack. The trial has been set down for March 2023 but the parties are in dispute over pretrial matters.One of the matters heard by justice Michael Wigney in a brief hearing was an allegation by the Murdoch team that a marketing campaign, run by brand strategists Populares, undermines the public interest defence on which Crikey publisher Private Media was relying.Lachlan Murdoch’s legal team loses bid to have parts of Crikey’s defamation defence dismissedRead moreIn response to a concerns letter from Murdoch in June, Crikey initially agreed to take down the article but after failing to reach agreement it was reinstated on 15 August.Sue Chrysanthou SC, for Murdoch, said she intends to show that republication of the article was not for public interest reasons but for a marketing campaign.She said Populares produced a “significant report” titled “Lachlan Murdoch Campaign” about how “a dispute with my client could be marketed for the purposes of attracting new readers and gaining subscriptions”.“The purpose of the re-posting was not for the public interest, it was for the media campaign,” she said.
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      In his statement of claim in August Murdoch alleged that the placement of a New York Times advertisement inviting him to sue Crikey over the alleged defamation was “seeking to humiliate” the executive chair and chief executive of Fox Corporation.Chrysanthou said social media was “the modern-day grapevine” and alleged Crikey had paid for some posts about her client “to be promoted and advertised”.She sought orders for Crikey to provide further information in response to questions because the submitted outlines of information did not address anything after the 29 June publication of the article by Crikey’s politics editor, Bernard Keane. Wigney said the request for written answers to about 180 questions, including sub-questions, could delay proceedings and he repeatedly asked Chrysanthou: “Do you want this to go to trial in March?”“I would withdraw those interrogatories you can cross-examine them,” he said.‘Lachlan gets fired the day Rupert dies’: Murdoch biography stokes succession rumorsRead morePrivate Media’s lawyer, Clarissa Amato, said Chrysanthou’s request would result in a “a catastrophic waste of time and money”.“Some of those may be things simply left out of the discovery list by accident … there are other requests that are effectively new categories of documents,” Amato said.Chrysanthou said the social media posts about her client had spread “like a virus”, and she would call a social media expert to give evidence explaining the reach.“We want the expert to address that issue, and the effect of promoting particular posts and how that then causes those posts to appear in different people’s feeds,” Chrysanthou said.She said the expert would be asked to explain a few essential posts, relevant to claims of serious harm from the publication.Murdoch is seeking damages because through the publication and republication of the article he alleges he “has been gravely injured in his character, his personal reputation and his professional reputation as a business person and company director, and has suffered and will continue to suffer substantial hurt, distress and embarrassment”.The parties will return to court on Thursday.TopicsLachlan MurdochAustralian mediaLaw (Australia)Defamation lawMedia businessNews CorporationMedia lawnewsReuse this content More

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      in US Politics

      Malcolm Turnbull on Murdoch, lies and the climate crisis: ‘The same forces that enabled Trump are at work in Australia’

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      Australian politicsMalcolm Turnbull on Murdoch, lies and the climate crisis: ‘The same forces that enabled Trump are at work in Australia’ Systematic partisan lying and misinformation from the media, both mainstream and social, has done enormous damage to liberal democracies, the former PM writesMalcolm TurnbullSun 17 Oct 2021 16.41 EDTLast modified on Sun 17 Oct 2021 17.09 EDTThe United States has suffered the largest number of Covid-19 deaths: about 600,000 at the time of writing. The same political and media players who deny the reality of global warming also denied and politicised the Covid-19 virus.To his credit, Donald Trump poured billions into Operation Warp Speed, which assisted the development of vaccines in a timeframe that matched the program’s ambitious title. But he also downplayed the gravity of Covid-19, then peddled quack therapies and mocked cities that mandated social distancing and mask wearing.Trump’s catastrophic management of the pandemic resulted in election defeat in November 2020. It says a lot about the insanity of America’s political discourse that the then presidential nominee Joe Biden had to say, again and again: “Mask wearing is not a political statement.”Australia’s ambition on climate change is held back by a toxic mix of rightwing politics, media and vested interests | Kevin Rudd and Malcolm TurnbullRead moreFrom our relative safety and sanity, Australians looked to America with increasing horror. If the Covid-19 disaster was not enough, the callous police murder of George Floyd on 25 May 2020 ignited a wave of outraged protest against racism in the US and around the world. And then events took another sinister turn.Anticipating defeat, Trump had been busy claiming the election would be rigged by the Democrats. He predicted widespread voter fraud, setting himself up for an “I wuz robbed” case if the result went against him. He had done the same in 2016.As it happened, Biden won convincingly. Trump and the Republican party launched more than 60 legal challenges to the result. Their failure did not stop the misinformation campaign.Relentlessly, Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News and the rest of the rightwing media claque claimed Biden had stolen the election. A protest march was scheduled in Washington for 6 January 2021, the day Congress was scheduled to formally count the electoral college votes and confirm Biden’s win. The protest was expressly designed to pressure Congress, and especially the then vice-president, Mike Pence, to overthrow the decision of the people and declare Trump re-elected.They assembled in their thousands. Trump wound them up with a typically inflammatory address, culminating in a call to march on the Capitol. The mob proceeded to besiege and break into the home of US democracy. They surged through the corridors, threatening to hang Pence and the Speaker, Nancy Pelosi. Several security guards were killed, as was one of the insurgents. Luckily, none of the legislators were found by the mob, although several appeared to have encouraged them in the lead-up to the assault.It was nothing less than an attempted coup, promoted and encouraged by the president himself and his media allies like Murdoch who, through Fox News, has probably done more damage to US democracy than any other individual.Vladimir Putin’s disinformation campaigns have sought to exacerbate divisions in western democracies and undermine popular trust in their institutions. By creating and exploiting a market for crazy conspiracy theories untethered from the facts, let alone science, Murdoch has done Putin’s work – better than any Russian intelligence agency could ever imagine possible.That is why I supported the former prime minister Kevin Rudd’s call for a royal commission into the Murdoch media, which does not operate like a conventional news organisation but rather like a political party, pushing its own agendas, running vendettas against its critics and covering up for its friends.Murdoch empire’s global chief Robert Thomson to front questions at Australian Senate inquiryRead moreIn April I reinforced these points in an interview with CNN’s Brian Stelter, as I had to the Australian Senate’s inquiry into media diversity. Of all the endorsements, none was more significant than that of James Clapper, the former US director of national intelligence, who said Fox News was “a megaphone for conspiracies and falsehoods”.We have to face the uncomfortable fact that the systematic partisan lying and misinformation from the media, both mainstream and social – what Clapper calls the “truth deficit” – has done enormous damage to liberal democracies, and none more so than the US itself. Thanks to this relentless diet of lies, a quarter of all Americans and 56% of Republicans believe Trump is the true president today.Biden is leading a more traditional and rational administration. The friends and allies Trump had outraged around the world are breathing a sigh of relief. The US has rejoined the Paris agreement on climate change and Biden is seeking to lead the world with deeper, faster cuts to emissions.But the same forces that amplified and enabled Trump are still at work in the US and here in Australia. In April the Murdoch press bullied the New South Wales government into reversing its decision to appoint me chairman of a committee to advise on the transition to a net zero emission economy. My “crime” was to not support the continued, unconstrained expansion of open-cut coalmining in the Hunter Valley. In the crazed, rightwing media echo chamber so influential with many Liberal and National party members, the primary qualification to advise on net zero emissions is, apparently, unqualified support for coalmining.As though we hadn’t had enough demonstration of the Murdochs’ vendetta tactics, right on cue on 2 May Sky News Australia broadcast a “documentary” designed to disparage me and Rudd as being, in effect, political twins separated at birth. As a job, I am told it gave hatchets a bad name. But the message was clear to anyone inclined to hold Murdoch to account: step out of line and you will be next.And while politicians are accountable, the Murdochs are not. Their abuse of power has been so shameful that James Murdoch has resigned from the company. His brother, Lachlan, however, is thoroughly in charge and apparently more rightwing than his father. Yet he has chosen to move back to Australia with his family, fleeing the hatreds and divisions of America that he and his father have done so much to exacerbate.As bushfires raged in the summer of 2019-20 I hoped that this red-raw reality of global warming would end the crazy, politicised climate wars in Australia. Well, it didn’t. The onset of the pandemic served to distract everyone, although the irony of following the virus science while ignoring the climate science seems to have been lost on too many members of the Australian government.Australia is more out of step with its friends and allies than it has ever been. All of our closest friends – the US, the UK, the EU, Japan and New Zealand – are now committed to reaching net zero emissions by 2050.On 18 May the International Energy Agency released a new report on how the world can, and must, reach net zero.For the first time this expert agency, always regarded as sympathetic to the oil and gas sectors, demanded that investment in new oil, gas and coal projects cease and that we make a rapid shift to renewables and storage. They described how this would enable us to have more, and cheaper, electricity.02:13To coincide with this report (of which the Australian government had full prior notice), Scott Morrison chose to announce that his government would invest $600m to build a new gas-fired power station in the Hunter Valley. The energy sector, the regulators, the NSW government and other experts were united in saying the power station was not needed – $600m wasted. To the rest of the world, increasingly puzzled by Australia’s fossil-fuel fetish, it must have looked like a calculated “fuck you” to the global consensus demanding climate action.More Australians than ever are worried about the climate crisis, annual survey suggestsRead moreTo those concerned about the lack of leadership on climate, Morrison says his five predecessors all lost their job, one way or another, because of climate policy. He is determined not to let the right wing of the Coalition do to him what it did to me. Before June he would point to the instability in the National party and warn how a shift on climate could trigger a party room revolt, led by Barnaby Joyce, Matt Canavan and others, to overthrow Michael McCormack. That has now happened, and Joyce made his case for change on the basis of McCormack not doing more to oppose Morrison’s edging towards a net zero commitment.So Morrison is determined not to lead on climate; he wants business and other governments to take the lead and for events to take their course so that the transition to zero emissions happens without any discernible action from the Australian government at all. In the meantime he will continue to use support for coal as a totemic issue to rally working-class voters in mining areas.Scott is long on tactics and very short on strategy. With climate, he underlines my biggest concern about his government: that it will be successful at winning elections but do little in office. And with Barnaby back as deputy prime minister, he has another excuse to do nothing.
      This is an edited extract from the new foreword to A Bigger Picture by Malcolm Turnbull (Hardie Grant Books, available now in paperback)
      TopicsAustralian politicsMalcolm TurnbullAustralian mediaNews CorporationScott MorrisonUS Capitol attackDonald TrumpextractsReuse this content More

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      in US Politics

      Australian journalist Jonathan Swan wins Emmy for his viral interview with Donald Trump

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      Emmys 2021Australian journalist Jonathan Swan wins Emmy for his viral interview with Donald Trump The Axios political reporter, whose facial expressions launched a meme, grilled the US president on his response to Covid and fact-checked his misleading statements Amanda MeadeWed 29 Sep 2021 00.57 EDTLast modified on Wed 29 Sep 2021 01.36 EDTAustralian journalist Jonathan Swan has won an Emmy award for his widely acclaimed interview with Donald Trump in which he bluntly fact-checked the president’s misleading statements.In August last year the national political correspondent at the Axios news site grabbed international headlines when he doggedly but politely questioned the US president about his response to the Covid-19 pandemic.“I’m deeply honoured to have won this award, and grateful for the gifted, generous team who helped make the interview a great piece of journalism,” Swan told Guardian Australia after winning the Emmy award for outstanding edited interview.Who is Jonathan Swan, the reporter who grilled Trump? And what do kangaroos have to do with it?Read moreSwan’s myriad facial expressions during the Axios on HBO interview also attracted the attention of social media, launching a popular meme.The #NewsEmmys Award for Outstanding Edited Interview goes to “President Donald J. Trump: An interview,” @HBO @axios. pic.twitter.com/E5uMmHhKvp— News & Documentary Emmys (@newsemmys) September 29, 2021
      The 36-year-old had Trump shuffling through his papers as he put him on the spot about the death toll in the US.“Well, right here, United States is lowest in numerous categories,” Trump said. “We’re lower than the world.”Swan: “Lower than the world? Oh, you’re doing death as a proportion of cases. I’m talking about death as a proportion of population.”00:59Another part of the interview which was startling was Trump’s claim that he had “done more” to improve the lives of black people in the US than the late civil rights leader John Lewis.Ben Smith wrote in the New York Times that it was “perhaps the best interview of Mr Trump’s term”.Congratulations to @jonathanvswan and #AxiosOnHBO on an #Emmy win!!!!So proud to make this show with @perripeltz and the team @axios @HBODocs @DCTVny We’re back on the air 6pm Sunday night! Tune in! @HBO https://t.co/0sQCMAEjGR— Matt O’Neill (@MattODocs) September 29, 2021
      Swan is a former Sydney Morning Herald journalist who moved to the US in 2014, and is the son of ABC health editor Dr Norman Swan.So proud of my son @jonathanvswan winning an Emmy just now. Fabulous work. I love you.— Norman Swan (@normanswan) September 29, 2021
      Father and son have been covering the coronavirus for almost two years, albeit from different perspectives and on different sides of the world.Norman and health reporter Tegan Taylor host the hugely popular Coronacast podcast on ABC.Jonathan achieved early success in Australia, winning the prestigious Wallace Brown young achiever award for journalism in 2014 after a string of scoops about the questionable use of taxpayer funds by politicians, which led to an overhaul of the rules governing parliamentary entitlements and expenses. The judges commended his “dogged determination”.All the best reactions of @jonathanvswan as he listened to @realDonaldTrump’s responses. Which is your favorite? @axios #ItIsWhatItIs pic.twitter.com/TWL5bOvESX— Joel Lawson (@JoelLawsonDC) August 4, 2020
      The 42nd Annual News and Documentary Emmy Awards were announced by the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences in New York on Tuesday night US time.TopicsEmmys 2021Australian mediaTrump administrationUS politicsAustralian Broadcasting CorporationHBOTelevision industrynewsReuse this content More

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      in US Politics

      We shouldn’t forget which Australian commentators carried water for Trump | Jason Wilson

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      Now that Donald Trump has gone, what will his ride-or-die supporters in Australian media do? How will they “own the libs” when the libs have their hand at the tiller? Whose ideas will they crib as US conservatism falls deeper into a post-Trump fugue?
      The recent output of high-profile Australian Trumpists suggests that the solution will be to gradually back away from Trump himself, even as they double down on aspects of the Trumpist movement.
      That’s necessary because, even for the diehards and the know-nothings, since the 6th of January, Trump the man has revealed himself to be a spectacularly toxic liability.
      He departed, according to Gallup’s numbers, as the least popular US president in the history of opinion polling: he had the lowest average approval rating over the life of his presidency and, unlike every other president since Roosevelt, he never enjoyed majority approval.
      Most of his lame duck period was spent trying to overturn the election he lost, culminating in his incitement of a mob that stormed the Capitol building in DC. More than 100 people are facing federal charges, with prosecutors alleging some intended “to capture and assassinate elected officials”.
      Canny as ever, GOP Senate leader Mitch McConnell conceded, a day before Trump left the White House, that that crowd was “fed lies” and “provoked” by Trump.
      Trump spent the balance of his time since the election indulging in, on the one hand, an execution spree in federal prisons and, on the other, handing out pardons to cronies or mercenaries who wantonly murdered Iraqi citizens.
      It seems likely that state attorneys general and federal prosecutors alike will be jostling each other to serve him subpoenas and summonses.
      And a defanged, de-platformed Trump can’t even prosecute his case in the court of public opinion.
      So what’s a branch office culture warrior to do? Defending Trump directly would not only telegraph their moral bankruptcy but demand the kind of ingenuity that subsidised rightwing media neither demands nor rewards. If defending Trump is beyond the powers of a McConnell, it’s surely beyond the likes of a Sky News host?
      Some Australian conservatives simply sprinted from the blast area following the Capitol assault. Former US ambassador and treasurer Joe Hockey, who golfed with Trump through the Muslim ban, Charlottesville, the separation of children from parents, and the Covid-19 disaster, did well enough in his appointed role to earn a reputation as a “Trump whisperer”. But the riot, apparently, was too much to stomach. Hockey was, now, “appalled at the behaviour and incitement” of Trump, his family and his camp followers.
      Hockey followed up with an op-ed in the Nine newspapers which opined that “Biden’s calm but firm response to the attack on the Capitol is the leadership that most Americans want.”
      Perhaps the Capitol violence brought about an authentic change of heart for Hockey. Or perhaps he’s concerned about who will now be buttering his bread. His DC lobbying firm, Bondi Partners – staffed with cherry-picked Australian diplomatic talent – can no longer pitch the possibility of Hockey buttonholing Trump on the links.
      In the less rarefied air of Holt Street, Greg Sheridan also rapidly turned on Trump. Throughout last year’s election campaign, Sheridan held out the prospect of a Trump victory, claiming on 1 November that the “genuine authoritarian threat” came from Biden supporters, since his campaign was backed with the threat of “a plague of violent riots all through the big cities from people who won’t accept democracy if it yields Trump.”
      As late as 14 November, Sheridan was arguing that Trump offered a series of important lessons to conservatives around the world, including that “nationalism and patriotism are powerful forces that galvanise voters in a positive direction”.
      When nationalism and patriotism galvanised voters in the direction of sacking a federal building in order to overturn the election result, Sheridan dropped them like so many hot yams. Suddenly, the deplorables he had previously celebrated as “Trump’s liberty-loving base” were depicted as “clowns, thugs and street-fighting fascists”.
      For those who over-indexed on the president and his movement, and who cannot cut him loose quite so cleanly, it makes some sense to imagine the possibility of Trumpism without Trump. Enter James Morrow, whose work is difficult to talk about without courting paradox: its signature tone can only be described as low-energy histrionics.
      Morrow has shamelessly barracked for Trump both on Sky News and in the Daily Telegraph, and like all such rightwing Trumpists in Australia, he has done so safe in the knowledge that Trump’s failures, such as his catastrophic mismanagement of the pandemic, will never have any effect on him.
      As the quick spread of coronavirus among White House staff and cronies in October amply showed, those who spruiked for Trump in the United States at least had skin in the game.
      A week ago, in a column addressing the fallout from the Capitol riots, Morrow wrote that “while it is a long bow to say Trump incited the incident (he in fact tried to calm protesters down), it is also true that his conduct since the election will forever mar his achievements from Middle East peace to wage growth.”
      This dead-ender nonsense might be worth a chuckle if it didn’t erase the suffering and death of hundreds of thousands, and the way that Trump and his enablers bequeathed so many domestic and foreign policy nightmares to Biden.
      In the Middle East, Trump simply gave carte blanche to longstanding US clients like Israel and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. He approved – and even boasted of – a series of massive arms deal with the kingdom, raking in another half a billion dollars’ worth of blood money in the dying days of his administration.
      Saudi Arabia will use some of these weapons in their ongoing war on their neighbours in Yemen, where 13 million people are at imminent risk of starvation.
      In another parting blow on 10 January, Mike Pompeo declared the kingdom’s enemies, the Houthis, a terrorist group, which will make it even harder to provide them with aid. The Financial Times editorial board – hardly a den of communists – described this as “a cynical effort to scupper Mr Biden’s ability to ease Middle East crises and reset US policy”.
      And whatever wage growth there may have been has been wiped out by the cratering of employment, in an economy whose destruction was hastened by Trump’s fecklessness and lies (remember when he told people to inject bleach?)
      On Thursday Morrow offered a piece of whataboutism that laid much responsibility for what Biden calls America’s “uncivil war” not on conservative media outlets and United States senators who encourage the baseless belief that the November election was stolen, but on “radical campus politics … violent demonstrations in American cities that were often dismissed as ‘mostly peaceful protests’ [and] social media platforms doing everything they can to silence conservative voices”.
      Having read that, it was diverting to see Morrow in the same article criticising the prose style of Biden’s inauguration speech.
      It’s embarrassing, of course, that this kind of commentary occupies such a prominent place in Australia’s national political discussion. But it’s just one example of the kind of thing that would have no home, and no constituency, without the active subsidy of News Corporation. That company’s role, over decades, in bringing us the disaster of Trumpism cannot be overstated.
      From my place in the US, which I have not been able to safely leave for a year due to an unchecked pandemic, I can say unambiguously that the Trump administration was incompetent, racist and corrupt from the moment it was sworn in, as many predicted it would be. We shouldn’t forget which Australian commentators carried water for a disastrous presidency until the second that it became inconvenient to be seen to do so.
      We shouldn’t let them forget, either. More

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      in US Politics

      The media has mostly not taken the bait on dubious Biden claims – with some Australia-linked exceptions | Jason Wilson

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      The big difference between the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections is that this time, mainstream media outlets are mostly not taking the bait on a dubiously sourced set of digital materials associated with the Democratic candidate.Outside the rightwing bubble, the exceptions are disproportionately connected with Australia: Australian writers, Australian outlets, and/or outlets associated with News Corporation, who, like its founder, has Australian origins.The New York Post, a News Corp tabloid, has been leading the pursuit of the story of a data cache which is purportedly a copy of the hard drive of a computer belonging to Hunter Biden. They’ve not had much support from other established newspapers, but News Corp’s Fox News and a flotilla of lesser conservative media outlets have been dutifully amplifying and even adding their own touches to the tale.On Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show on Wednesday night US time, for example, the host implied that documents associated with the story, which his editorial team had shipped across the country, may have been stolen by people trying to shut down reporting on the cache.The Daily Beast reported on Thursday, however, that freight company UPS had simply misdirected the package, which has been recovered.The original New York Post Biden piece had huge problems on arrival, so much so that a journalist there reportedly refused to add their byline to it.The chain of custody was one of the issues. The data supposedly came from a computer, dropped off by an unidentified person, who was presumed but not positively determined to be Hunter Biden by the owner of a computer store in Delaware.That man’s story of how he retrieved the data from the machine and how he came to give it to the authorities and Rudy Giuliani has shifted. The FBI subpoenaed a computer from the store, which is reportedly connected to a money-laundering investigation, but it’s impossible to compare that machine with the supposed copy.Anyone who reports on leaked digital materials, as I have, knows that it is trivially easy to fake, modify, subtract from or add to, and otherwise mess around with any documents in any cache. Some documents carry indelible marks, such as any emails that are signed with DKIM security signatures, but everything else can be messed with.In this case, we haven’t seen the originals, just PDF printouts, and the New York Post has not been forthcoming with any detailed or satisfactory account of its own authentication process. It hasn’t said how it determined the authenticity of the cache as a whole, or individual items it has reported on, and has continued handwaving about the FBI subpoena, and the lack of denials from the Biden camp.If it does know for sure that the material is a genuine copy of Biden’s laptop, it isn’t letting on how. At least some of the material appears to be authentic. A sex tape released last week, for example, appears to really feature Hunter Biden. But that doesn’t mean that Giuliani has it because Hunter Biden took all that data to the computer shop. We still don’t really know who put them together, how, and for what purpose.This explains the queasiness of most mainstream outlets – of whom Giuliani told the New York Times that “either nobody else would take it, or if they took it, they would spend all the time they could to try to contradict it before they put it out.” The Wall Street Journal and Fox News were both reportedly offered elements of the story, and each refused.(One of Fox’s news anchors, Chris Wallace, commented that “I can understand the concern about this story. It is completely unverified and frankly, Rudy Giuliani is not the most reliable source anymore. I hate to say that, but it’s just true.”)None of this appears to have been a concern for the leadership at the New York Post, which once again now includes Col Allan, its Australian-born one-time editor in chief, and an outspoken Trump supporter. Allan retired in 2016 but is now back there as a special adviser, and was reportedly leading the charge to publish the material quickly.Once they pushed it out, Fox News started running with the pack that the Post had whistled up.So too, at crucial moments, did Australia’s News Corp outlets. On Sunday 18 October, Sharri Markson hosted Steve Bannon on her Sunday evening program. Bannon crowed about an email from Hunter Biden’s lawyer which supposedly showed him asking for the computer back.Bannon told Markson that the lawyer called the shop owner, “and when the guy said I can’t remember, I’m going back to my shop, he sent a couple of emails in a panic saying ‘I’ve got to get my hands on this right away’”.That email was subsequently released by a Fox reporter, and merely contained a request that the proprietor “review your records” on the matter. The lawyer, meanwhile, is on record saying that the Bidens “have no idea” where the email came from.Markson’s show, like most of Sky’s fare, is not widely watched. But she’s willing to have Bannon on. One might say that he couldn’t get arrested in the US, except that he recently was, and charged with fraud in connection with a border wall crowdfunding scheme, aboard the mega-yacht of his reported employer, Guo Wengui, whose bitter fight with the Chinese government has driven him into exile.Giuliani’s material was good enough for News Corp’s post; Bannon’s record apparently posed no concerns to News Corp’s Markson. News Corp’s Australian commentariat, and expatriate New York Post columnist Miranda Devine, have all assisted in pushing the story, and pushing back on criticism.While most media outlets had a reckoning after 2016, it didn’t extend to crucial parts of News Corporation, including the most prominent faces of its Australian operation. More

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      in US Politics

      Where to watch US election day live results in Australia

      by

      It’s been dubbed the most important US presidential election in recent history – one everyone in the world, including Australians, will be watching with great anticipation.
      Held amid a historic pandemic that has claimed the lives of more than 220,000 Americans, and the most widespread civil rights protests in US history, this is an election that will define the course America takes.
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      What will a Biden victory – who has vowed to take action on climate change – mean for Australia’s climate policy?
      What will a Trump victory mean for far right extremism, which has become a growing threat in Australia since his last election victory?
      How will either of them handle increasingly tense relations with our biggest trading partner, China, which has already placed Australian industries – such as barley and wine – in the crosshairs?
      A lot is at stake, not just for the US, but indeed for Australia, the Asia-Pacific region, and the entire world.
      Election day is Tuesday 3 November but for the Australians watching, most of the action will be taking place on Wednesday 4 November.
      So if you’re staying home or venturing out to a party, how and where can you watch the US election results live in Australia?
      Who will be televising it?
      Just like with past elections, Australian television stations will be holding special election day coverage. ABC TV, SBS, channels Seven, Nine and Ten will all be covering the election.
      The coverage begins at roughly 11am across the board, with ABC and Channel Seven starting earlier at 10am, and most going on until around 5.00pm.
      On cable, you’ll be able to watch rolling election coverage on BBC, CNN, Sky News, Fox News, and Al Jazeera English.
      Can I follow live results and commentary online?
      Of course there will be extensive coverage online.
      The Guardian will be running a liveblog covering the election throughout the day, in addition to the continued extensive US election coverage and will include a live results tracker.
      Major news broadcasters in the US such as NBC, ABC and CBS are expected to livestream their election coverage on YouTube, as they did in 2016.
      Traditional news publications such as the New York Times and the Washington Post, and digital platforms like Vice and Huffington Post, also held livestreams for election coverage in 2016.
      You’ll also be able to read live blogs at most major news platforms. The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, NBC News and Fox News will all be running a live blog on the night.
      Where are watch parties being held in my city?
      Adelaide
      Gilbert St Hotel, 88 Gilbert St, Adelaide.
      UniBar, Union House, Ground The University of Adelaide, Adelaide.
      Brisbane
      Pig & Whistle, Riverside Centre 123 Eagle St, Brisbane City.
      Canberra
      PJ O’Reilly’s, 52 Alinga St, Canberra.
      The Well, University of Canberra, 20 Telita St, Bruce.
      Melbourne
      Online watch party only.
      Perth
      The Windsor Hotel, 112 Mill Point Rd, South Perth.
      Sydney
      3 Wise Monkeys, 555 George St, Sydney.
      Cheers Sports Bar, 561 George Street, Sydney.
      CPAC, Doltone House, Darling Island, Pyrmont.
      There’s a relative dearth of election viewing parties this year, mostly due to the ongoing pandemic.
      Nonetheless, there are a couple of events being held across the country.
      Democrats Abroad, an official arm of the Democratic party, has organised watch parties across the country. In Brisbane, they’ll be at Pig & Whistle, in Sydney they’re at 3 Wise Monkeys, and in Canberra they’ll be at PJ O’Reilly’s. They’ll also be hosting parties in Adelaide and Perth, but unfortunately for Melburnians, they’ll be hosting an online watch party.
      A group of American expats in Sydney have also organised a bi-partisan watch party at Cheers bar, with the group encouraging people to “chuck a sickie” to join them.
      At the University of Canberra, a student group has organised a watch party at The Well. Similarly, students at the University of Adelaide have put together a watch party at the UniBar.
      Also in Adelaide, an election watch party is being hosted at the Gilbert St Hotel, with attendees encouraged to join up and cry “tears of joy or fear”.
      Finally, CPAC, Australia’s largest conservative conference, will be doubling up as a de facto election watch party. The initial allocation of tickets has been exhausted, although the conference is advertising a “standby” ticket if restrictions ease next week.
      What time will polls close in the US?
      Poll opening and closing times varies state-to-state, but they all open between 6am and 9am, and close between 7pm and 9pm local time.
      For Australians, that roughly translates to polls opening at 9pm AEST on 3 November and the latest poll, that being in Alaska, closing at 3pm AEST on 4 November.
      What are the key states to keep an eye on?
      Because of the presidential voting system, where a president is decided by how many electoral college votes they win, a handful of swing states will probably be where the election is won or lost.
      Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, North Carolina, Arizona, Wisconsin and Iowa are the states you’ll need to keep an eye on, with a majority of them having flipped from supporting Obama to Trump in 2016.
      When will the victor be announced?
      Over 70 million Americans have already voted, more than half of the people who voted in 2016, with experts expecting a historic turnout.
      Counting begins on election day, which means that throughout the day, winners will be declared in each state once a candidate has a clear lead there, and results are usually declared on election day, by 10pm ET in the US.
      That means a winner would normally be declared between 1pm and 3pm on Wednesday. However, with so many people voting by mail, the result could potentially still be up in the air by the end of the day.
      The numbers of people voting by mail is unprecedented, and coupled with the challenges of holding an election during a pandemic, it could be anyone’s guess when we’ll formally get a victor. More

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      in US Politics

      As our former lives dissolve into uncertainty, facts are something solid to cling to | Lenore Taylor

      by

      I have always worked with facts. I have sifted them for relevance, assembled them to make sense of things, and used them to construct an argument or to disagree with another point of view. Facts are, for journalists, the essential ingredient, like flour for bakers or clay for sculptors. So I recall very clearly how disconcerted I felt when I first sensed they were turning to liquid and sliding through my hands.It was during Tony Abbott’s campaign against the Labor government’s carbon pricing scheme – the policy he dubbed a “great big tax on everything”. There were, for sure, some factual arguments that could have been deployed against that policy, or alternative ideas that could have been raised. The then opposition leader opted for neither of these methods. Instead, he travelled the country saying things that were patently nonsensical. But most news outlets reported them uncritically, and this firehose of nonsense proved impossible to mop up. More