Regardless of the outcome, this year's federal election campaign seems to have been increasingly influenced by a one-sided approach by much of the media.
Advocacy for the conservative side rather than unbiased reportage has been the flavour of the 2022 campaign.
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The Daily Advertiser, in contrast, has not been guilty of this charge.
Having been observing this phenomenon over the past few months, I'll focus my analysis on three very apparent aspects.
I'll begin with an overview, followed by the pernicious influence of the Rupert Murdoch media empire.
I'll conclude by analysing the increasing swing to the right of the ABC.
Though this right-wing media onslaught has thankfully failed, we need to note that Australia has fallen to 39 in the Reporters Without Borders World Press Freedom Index for 2022.
The report found press freedom in Australia is "fragile" because of the "ultra-concentration of media ownership", comprising "two giant firms", Rupert Murdoch's News Corp and Nine Entertainment, which includes newspapers such as The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, and the Australian Financial Review, as well as television's Channel 9.
It is a very big Liberal Party donor and its coverage of the election is blatantly pro-Coalition.
Murdoch's media empire, including Sky News and newspapers such as Sydney's Daily Telegraph, Melbourne's Herald Sun, Brisbane's Courier Mail and nationally The Australian, all take a deeply conservative bent, shamelessly advocating for the Liberal Nationals Coalition government through banner headlines and biased editorial comment.
From 2007 through to 2010, 2013, 2016 and 2019, the Murdoch media, representing some 70 per cent of the nation's total print media, has spread strong anti-Labor Party propaganda.
More broadly, they despise the progressive left, including The Greens.
In this election, they were also campaigning strongly against the 'Teal' independents.
They would do anything within their power to keep Labor out of office and the Coalition in power.
Murdoch's mastheads are also driving anti-China hysteria with "Reds under the beds" rapidly morphing into the "Yellow Peril". This is a huge throwback to 1950s McCarthyism, where any dissenting views are attacked as being in Beijing's pocket. And for those who think it will all expire when Rupert dies, there's another Murdoch in waiting. Lachlan is every bit as conservative as his father, including being a climate change denier.
The Liberal Nationals coalition is fond of accusing the ABC of having a left-wing bias, but as the Guardian Australia wrote: "Far from having a left-wing bias, the ABC has been tamed by cuts and incessant attacks. Under the Coalition, the national broadcaster has been domesticated to the point of overcorrecting for perceived partisanship," the paper noted.
The ABC has, over the past decade of conservative rule, been gradually tamed by an unrelenting campaign of funding cuts, bullying, intimidation and delegitimisation. The clearest example is the ABC's budget.
Despite a crystal-clear election promise in 2013 of "no cuts to the ABC", the national broadcaster is facing $1.2bn of cumulative cuts over a decade.
These cuts have felled two television programs that were crucial to government accountability, Lateline and the state-based 7.30 program (once known as Stateline), among many others.
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The Coalition government also exerts control by quietly stacking the ABC's board with directors hand-picked by the minister, directly ignoring the recommendations of independent merit-based selection processes established under legislation. This includes Ita Buttrose, a former Murdoch editor and Liberal party fundraiser, as its chair.
But the most insidious way the government domesticates the ABC isn't through budget cuts or board appointments; it is through incessant attacks on the national broadcaster over alleged systemic left-wing bias in its news and current affairs.
Examples of the ABC's move to the right include the interviewing technique used by its current affairs hosts.
From the Q+A program, host David Speers relentlessly pursued Anthony Albanese over 'NDIS-gate'.
A second example also includes Speers. During the ABC's 'Insiders' Sunday current affairs program, Speers interviewed guest Adam Bandt. He continually interrupted Bandt, not allowing him to finish his answers, with the obvious aim of belittling him.
What needs to be done is a simple question with complex answers too lengthy to fit into the word limit of this column, but I'll conclude with one straightforward option.
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The time has come for a full royal commission into the ownership and operation of the media in this country.
