Murdoch royal commission campaign taps research on News Corp’s Voice coverage

Researchers from the University of Adelaide will carry out weekly media analysis throughout the remainder of the Voice referendum campaign with a view to holding News Corp “accountable” for its coverage of the Yes and No camps.

The research, commissioned by the Australians for a Murdoch Royal Commission campaign, will be carried out by communications lecturer Dr Victoria Fielding with two researchers and aims to qualify context given to Yes and No campaign spokespeople, beyond counting mentions.

“For instance, if Yes advocate Thomas Mayo is mentioned, it is important to know if he is mentioned in a positive or a negative context,” Fielding wrote in the research proposal.

“As such, this research will not only measure the inclusion and exclusion of voices from the Yes and No camps, but identifies the context in which they are used. Furthermore, as well as assessing which sources are used, this analysis also reveals which News Corp voices are most prominent in their Voice coverage.”

Fielding argued the research was necessary for “a healthier democracy” given the corporate media’s failure to self-regulate.

“Self-regulation through the Press Council or broadcast regulation through ACMA is not having a meaningful impact on media standards when it comes to bias and misinformation,” she said. “In this context, it is important that the country’s largest and most partisan media organisation’s Voice coverage be scrutinised.”

The research will also try to capture how often both cases are presented to audiences of News Corp’s coverage of the referendum, in a bid to measure balance and move to assess how much Voice coverage across the News Corp stable amounts to political campaigning.

“A key element of media campaigning is when an author or television presenter — whether they be a journalist, commentator, panellist, or guest — advocates for the audience to take a position by making their views clear and presenting an obviously-one-sided assessment,” Fielding said.

A News Corp Australia spokesman rejected the claim and told Crikey: “News Corp Australia’s publications are not campaigning against the Voice. We are publishing the views and positions of all sides of the debate to inform the community.”

The platforming of “disinformation and hateful ideas” across News Corp will also be a target of the research, which Fielding argues there is “already evidence” of. The research would measure the inclusion of misinformation and disinformation, along with hateful ideas.

“This includes accusations by the No camp such as the Voice causing segregation and creating an apartheid state, that the Voice gives Aboriginal people special privileges and will lead to more land rights claims, and that the Voice will be able to veto decisions made by the Australian Parliament,” she said.

The researchers said they would use the coverage of News Corp’s competitors — Nine newspapers, the ABC, and Guardian Australia — to identify voices and ideas that had been excluded from News Corp coverage, or to “identify how Yes ideas are being misrepresented or attacked” in News Corp coverage.

The commissioned research comes just one week after the campaign’s co-chairs, former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull and Sharan Burrow, co-wrote an opinion piece in Guardian Australia branding Sky News a misinformation machine and its new 24/7 “Voice Debate” channel “an affront to the foundations of Australian democracy”.

On the new channel, which has been live for about a week, programming has so far given balance to spokespeople from both campaigns.