Front page of Rupert Murdoch’s Daily Telegraph asking voters to get rid of the Australian Prime minister, at the beginning of the general elections’ campaign, August 2015 Greg Wood / AFP
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Two other Murdoch newspapers of a different Japan’s five media “keiretsu” category, The Times and The Wall Street Murdoch may be aging but the media model he Journal, influence the world’s decision-makers. embodies is not in decline. The media empire Both contain excellent reporting. They also with global ambitions has a great future and is reflect a vision of the economy and the world of the only way to guarantee the survival of many business that is not far removed from their media outlets. That at least is what John Fallon, owner’s. The same goes for the US news the head of the British media group Pearson, channel, Fox News. In Murdoch’s Australian told Financial Times journalists in July 2015 homeland, his conservative political views are after selling the FT to Japan’s biggest business even more influential because of his media daily, Nihon Keizai Shimbun, also known as monopoly. “Mr. Murdoch is entitled to his own The Nikkei. “The best way for the FT to view… he owns 70% of the newspapers in this guarantee its journalistic and commercial country,” then Labour Prime Minister Kevin success is to belong to a global digital news Rudd said in 20131. And Murdoch has never group,” he said3. The Nikkei, which had just held back from expressing his views, often in spent 1.2 billion euros to buy The City’s bible, fairly crude terms. “Finally, you have the is part of the five conglomerates or “keiretsu” chance to kick this mob out,” was how one of that dominate the media in Japan. A textbook his Australian newspapers, The Daily case of concentration. Telegraph, called for a vote against the then ruling Labour Party in a front-page headline on “The five groups represent a broad spectrum the eve of parliamentary elections in 2013.2. of opinion but their proeminence means that certain views tend to dominate mainstream debate.” That was the euphemistic assessment of a 2009 report by Open Source Center, a US