Join us in person or online for a seminar with Professor Matthew Ricketson.
Rupert Murdoch and the Damage Done
Just how much damage has been done by the publications and television stations run by Rupert Murdoch since his father bequeathed him an afternoon daily newspaper in 1952? This seems like a harsh question. Murdoch has been widely praised as a great businessman. He created what has become the longest running national daily newspaper in Australia. He bought an ailing daily newspaper in England, The Sun, and re-moulded it to become the biggest selling and most profitable paper in the country. He created a fourth television network in the United States after decades of dominance by the big three tv networks; in recent years Fox News has become the single most profitable media business in the world. He moulded the first global media empire, with significant media properties in the US, the UK and Australia, among other countries. He has always advocated for freedom of the press. News Corp, now headed by his eldest son, Lachlan Murdoch, continues to employ thousands of journalists at a time when the funding of journalism has become an existential issue.
A harsh question, but a necessary one. This seminar presentation will draw on research done for a book-length work of journalism about how the Murdochs’ media outlets have been targeting and harassing a wide range of perceived enemies across three continents for more than 70 years. It examines three main areas where the Murdochs’ media outlets have done damage: to journalism; to democracy and to the planet. The primary relevant case studies are: the phone hacking scandal in the United Kingdom; the lawsuits brought by Dominion and Smartmatic against Fox News over its coverage of the 2020 US presidential election, and News Corp’s coverage of climate science. To be published in mid-2026, the book is titled Getting Murdoched: How Murdoch’s media wield power and punishment, and is co-authored with Andrew Dodd, professor of journalism at the University of Melbourne.
13 May 2026, 11am AEST.
Burwood: C2.05.01
Waurn Ponds: IC1.108
Zoom: Click here.
Matthew Ricketson is an academic and journalist. He is Professor of Communication at Deakin University in Australia and before that was inaugural Professor of Journalism at the University of Canberra. He has worked on staff at The Age, The Australian, The Sunday Herald and Time Australia magazine. He has won several awards, including the George Munster national prize for freelance journalism. He is the author or editor of seven books, most recently Who Needs the ABC? Why taking it for granted is no longer an option, co-authored with Patrick Mullins. He has been a chief investigator on four Australian Research Council grants about journalism and the media. In 2011 he was appointed by the federal government to assist Ray Finkelstein QC in an Independent Inquiry into the Media and Media Regulation, which reported in 2012. He was the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance’s representative on the Press Council between 2016 and 2024.
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