Malcom Turnbull (former Coalition Australian PM) commenting on Murdoch media on ABC TV “Q&A” panel show (2020): “ Well, I...I don’t think... I don’t think that’s fair, Paul [Kelly]. I think your employers – the Murdoch media – has gone from being a news organisations that, at election times, tended to lean more to the right than the left, to become pure propaganda. I mean, the campaign on climate denial is just staggering and has done enormous damage to the world, to the…you know, to the global need to address global warming. I mean, it is so horrifically biased and such propaganda that Rupert’s own son James can’t stomach it. So, he is not…you know, he’s not a ‘dangerous leftie’, he’s not a…sort of, ‘a grumpy old ex-prime minister’ – he is the son of the proprietor, and he has walked away and said, “This is just bias.” And you know it’s true as well as I do. You know that the newspaper that you edited used to be a broadsheet that tended more often than not to lean to the right at editorial times, but is now undiluted propaganda. And if you want to see its embodiment and the consequences, look at Fox News and the United States today…
What you’ve just disclosed... What you’ve just disclosed is the fundamental problem that the company you work for – and its friends in politics, like Trump and others – have turned this issue of physics into an issue of values or identity. Now, saying you believe... Saying that you believe or disbelieve in global warming is like saying you believe or disbelieve in gravity. You’ve turned something that should be a question of engineering and economics into undiluted ideology and idiocy, and we are paying the price in delayed action to address global warming. And your employer, Paul, has got a huge share of the blame for this. It is a shocking legacy…
That’s what Rupert always used to say to me. He’d say, “Oh, we don’t have a very big audience. We’re not that influential. Talk to Lachlan.” Look, I’ve had all of that flannel for years. The reality is, News Corp and Murdoch have done enormous damage to Western democracy and, in particular, to the United States and Australia. And, in particular, on the subject of global warming. You know, we had 12 million hectares of our country burnt last summer, and your newspapers were saying it was all the consequence of some arsonists. And James Murdoch was so disgusted, he disassociated himself from the family business. Now, what does that tell you? How offensive, how biased, how destructive does it have to be, Paul, before you will say – one of our greatest writers and journalists – “It’s enough, I’m out of it”? I mean, how long will you keep apologising?...
I dare to do it, and I’m saying to you, Paul, it is about time that people that work for the Murdoch organisation speak up and say, publicly, what they say privately. Speak up and do what James Murdoch had the courage to do...and clearly too many of the employees do not” (Malcolm Turnbull in ABC TV Q&A, “Politicians, presidents and the palace”, 9 November 2020: https://www.abc.net.au/qanda/2020-09-11/12840750 ).