Screenshots from ABC News and The Telegraph
By Situation Theatre 15/4/2020
The full bench of the high court unanimously quashed the Murdoch Press’s social licence but stopped short of ordering the federal police to destroy them.
Civil society has won a high court case challenging the legality of News Corp’s daily raids on the homes of Australians.
In a mixed result for the public sphere, the court threw out Murdoch’s claims to run legitimate news organisations, but did not order their complete destruction.
The court unanimously held that News Corp had misstated the substance of their work as “journalism”.
Justice Michelle Gordon said “With Chomsky, we appreciate that propaganda is to democracy as violence is to a dictatorship. We recognise that thought control, the manufacture of consent, and the creation of necessary illusions are critical to marginalising the general public and reducing them to apathy. We understand that the function of media in a democracy is to mobilise the public in support of special interests that dominate government and private sector.”
“But at this point News Corp is just manufacturing consent gone mad.”
