How do you spot a News Corp campaign? When a grown-up calls for calm

Over the weekend, in terms so broad and allusive as to be near incomprehensible as a news story, the Herald Sun ran a front page referencing persistent conspiracy theories — some of which originally sprouted in far-right anti-lockdown circles and bloomed into the mainstream with the help of then opposition treasurer Louise Staley — that the public hadn’t been told the whole truth about how Premier Dan Andrews’ sustained a serious back injury in 2021.

Associate editor at The Australian John Ferguson, for one, has had enough, providing an illuminating counterpoint in today’s edition:

The conspiracies — and there are dozens — almost always involve big names and almost always come from disgruntled Liberals, disgruntled businessmen or the mad right.

The co-conspirators [sic] in Andrews’ downfall often are alleged to be some of the biggest names in Victorian life. Problem is, none has been proven to have any connection to the mishap and no one has been able to provide credible, on the record, evidence to support a conspiracy.

The piece goes on to correctly point out that coverage of this sort takes up space that could be dedicated to real issues affecting how Victorians ought to vote later this month.

All this might seem strange, given News Corp is clearly in the midst of a campaign attacking Victorian Labor and Andrews, one of its great hate figures, ahead of the state election. The Australian approaches that task differently from the Hun, but both are part of the process.

But of course, reasoned, thoughtful pieces appealing to our better natures, like Ferguson’s today (which we’re quite sure is sincere), are all part of the full service of a News Corp campaign.

Remember the early days of COVID, when Greg Sheridan wrote “We know too little of COVID-19 to relax yet”, and observed that “the contradictory claims of comment­ators and non-government experts are bewildering”.

This at the same time his Oz colleague Adam Creighton, who has barely changed the record since, was arguing that “however many lives the more onerous restrictions have saved, the cost is looking enormous and far more than we typically spend to save lives”, and Andrew Bolt was telling Hun readers the danger of the virus “was wildly exaggerated” — again, and again and again.

Or what about putting out an editorial calling for Australians “to be vigilant about those who seek to divide their fellow Australians on racial lines”, a mere week before a persistent gratuitous focus on “men of African appearance” finally got it reported to the Australian Press Council.

Indeed, having decided that it can’t go back to the relentless, destructive, dubious “African gangs” narrative and cartooning that did so much to return Andrews to office in a landslide in 2018, News Corp needed new material.

So apart from going all Antigonish on the premier’s 2021 accident, the Hun’s other major VicPol front-page fodder has been to relentlessly hammer the story of a car accident that involved the Andrews family and a young cyclist. It happened in 2013, Andrews’ wife, Catherine, was behind the wheel, the police concluded that she’d done nothing wrong, and the whole thing has already been dredged up once before in 2017. As Media Watch has pointed out, there is nothing concrete or new to report, beyond reminding everyone it happened.

The Oz meanwhile hasn’t picked up on the D-Anon conspiracies as enthusiastically as it did “African gangs”, but it’s still got involved, doing a straight story on Andrews’ refusal to go through the 2013 saga all over again, and noting with a raised eyebrow Catherine’s “sandwich diplomacy”, despite the fact that she (quite rightly, in this publication’s view) fucking hates journalists.

What do you think about the media frenzy around Dan Andrews? Let us know by writing to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.