Rudd Sees Bias as Murdoch-Owned Media Dominate Australia Readers
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Even by the abrasive nature of Australian political sparring, the war of words between Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and Rupert Murdoch, who controls more than two-thirds of the nation’s urban newspaper market, is shaping up to be the most acrimonious in its election history.
Labor leader Rudd has been depicted as a bungling Nazi commandant, Kermit the Frog and a bank robber in Sydney’s best-selling Daily Telegraph, whose front-page salvo on the first day of the campaign was “Kick This Mob Out.” Murdoch’s News Corp. is “taking a club to our government,” Rudd said Aug. 23, one of at least 20 occasions he and his ministers have accused the company of bias in the 24 days since the Sept. 7 poll was set.