Trump not first politician to be ditched by Rupert Murdoch

 The bashing of Donald Trump by Rupert Murdoch's US newspapers looks like a familiar pattern of the Australian-born media baron turning on political leaders who are no longer useful to him.

"Kill Whitlam."

• This was the confidential instruction for a political hit job issued by Rupert Murdoch in the mid-1970s to his editors, according to an American diplomat's telegram sent to the US Department of State.The target was Australia's Prime Minister Gough Whitlam.
• The Labour leader had been a guest at the Murdoch sheep farm outside Canberra, drawing admiring coverage in his left-leaning broadsheetThe Australian.

  

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But after winning election in 1972, Whitlam stopped speaking to Murdoch, as Michael Wolff recounts in his absorbing biography The Man Who Owns the News.

• From that point the relationship only grew worse. Among other things, the Whitlam government dragged its feet on granting licences for Murdoch's venture into bauxite mining, before devaluing the Australian dollar, costing the media magnate in his foreign exchange dealings.
• In response, The Australian began assailing the prime minister's administration with suggestions of financial and sexual scandal.Murdoch himself penned articles savaging Whitlam, writes Wolff, and stared down a revolt from newsroom staff outraged by the paper's dramatic shift to the right.
• Ten months after that "Kill Whitlam" directive, the prime minister was dismissed by the governor general of Australia amid a budget crisis.
• Since Murdoch inherited Adelaide's The News 70 years ago, conjuring from these unlikely beginnings a multi-billion dollar global business empire, 18 Australian prime ministers have come and gone.
• Through his media megaphone, Murdoch is said to have helped overthrow a few of them, including more recently Malcolm Turnbull and Kevin Rudd.
• Thirteen British prime ministers and 10 American presidents, meanwhile, have taken office since Murdoch's raucous style of journalism began shaping voter opinion in the UK and US.Read more..