Petition targeting Murdoch swamps Australian parliament’s website

Most Australians would probably not choose to spend their weekends browsing Parliament’s website.

But a petition calling for a public inquiry into Rupert Murdoch’s media empire in Australia, posted by a former prime minister, generated so much interest over the weekend that it overwhelmed the website’s cyberdefenses and shut down access to the document.

The petition — posted Friday by former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd — asks the government to establish a Royal Commission, the country’s highest form of inquiry, into the dominance of Australian media by Murdoch’s News Corp and its impact on the country’s political landscape.

“Murdoch has become a cancer — an arrogant cancer on our democracy,” Rudd said in a Twitter video Friday.

The move was an attempt to challenge Murdoch, 89, and his global media empire, which contributed to the rise of right-wing politics and helped reshape democratic governments around the world.

In the United States, Murdoch’s Fox News Channel and New York Post have been leading supporters of President Donald Trump and critics of President Barack Obama. His British newspapers are conservative stalwarts, and one of them, the tabloid The Sun, was a leading booster of the successful campaign for Britain to leave the European Union.

But nowhere is his influence greater than in Australia, where News Corp controls about two-thirds of daily newspaper circulation, and Murdoch also controls prominent news channels like Sky News Australia.

Also read: Thousands back inquiry into Murdoch's Australian media 'monopoly'

Ousted prime ministers like Rudd, of the center-left Australian Labor Party, have said that News Corp and its outsized presence were partly to blame for their falls. And, critics say, News Corp outlets have undermined efforts to fight climate change, pushed governments into hard-line policies on issues like migration and employed language and images widely seen as racist.

The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Murdoch has said that he is a climate-change skeptic, and his outlets have repeatedly denied charges of racism.

By Monday night, over 200,000 people had signed Rudd’s petition — even as technical issues over the weekend prevented some users from accessing the site.

The government, a coalition of conservative parties, is unlikely to approve a commission and would not want to antagonize Murdoch, media and political analysts say.