Jan Fran (Australian SBS journalist) commenting on Murdoch media and the hounding out of Australia of Yassmin Abdel-Magied after she posted the following 7 words on Facebook : “Lest we forget (Manus, Nauru, Syria, Palestine)”(see Gideon Polya, “Yassmin Abdel-Magied censored on Anzac Day – jingoists trash Australian free speech,” Countercurrents, 28 April 2017: https://countercurrents.org/2017/04/yassmin-abdel-magied-censored-on-anzac-day-jingoists-trash-australian-free-speech ) (2020): “… Oh, thank you. I appreciate that. Can I just speak to your point about speaking up, Malcolm [Turnbull; former PM]?...
This can be a difficult topic to talk about. And I have, you know, friends who are journalists, and friends who are in public life, and we have conversations about this stuff privately. But they will not go on the record and say this publicly. And the main reason...
They are scared that the, you know, Murdoch press... And I want to acknowledge it’s not a homogeneous entity, but they’re scared that the Murdoch press is going to go after them, engage in a smear campaign, eviscerate their reputations, and they don’t want to do that. And if you don’t think that that happens, just look at what the Murdoch press did to Yassmin Abdel-Magied…
100,000 words, in one year, were written about that woman. 100,000 words. They hounded her out of the country. Now, let me tell you, it’s one thing to do it to you, Malcolm – you are a former prime minister, as is Kevin Rudd. You have...I heard you’re quite rich. You’ve got the money to deal with it, you’ve got the time, you’ve got the connections, you’ve got the platforms. Somebody like Yassmin doesn’t. And...and people, and it’s women, usually women of colour, who speak up and who say something that, perhaps, you know, journalists in the Murdoch press don’t necessarily agree with, and they get targeted. And you know what? I don’t want a pig’s head being sent to my scho...to my high school. I don’t want to have to deal with hundreds, if not thousands, of rape and death threats. I don’t want a white supremacist organisation to post my picture on walls around the city calling for my deportation. I don’t want commentators going on the radio telling everybody how they’d like to run me over with their car. And all of that happened to Yassmin. And that happened, in large part, because of the relentless and the cruel – the cruel – and unnecessary smear campaign that was targeted at her by the Murdoch press. Now, you tell me who wants that” (Jan Fran in ABC TV Q&A, “Politicians, presidents and the palace”, 9 November 2020: https://www.abc.net.au/qanda/2020-09-11/12840750 ).