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Occasionally the Murdoch commentator Andrew Bolt defies the party line. In 2021 he said News Corp Australia’s editorial campaign for net zero emissions by 2050 was “rubbish” and “global warming propaganda”.

This week Bolt stuck his neck out in support of the war crimes prosecution of Ben Roberts-Smith, in a marked departure from News Corp’s approach since 2018, when the Age and the Sydney Morning Herald published a series of stories alleging the Victoria Cross recipient had committed murder and other war crimes.

“I have a simple question for the people angrily defending Ben Roberts-Smith, claiming a war hero is being persecuted by woke civilians judging soldiers in battle from the comfort of their sofas,” Bolt wrote in his Herald Sun column. “Do you think Australian soldiers should be allowed to shoot unarmed prisoners?”

Reporters Nick McKenzie and Chris Masters have had to contend with multiple attacks on their journalism in News Corp pages.

In 2018 Roberts-Smith hired a PR firm and the investigative reporter Ross Coulthart as a consultant, and the Weekend Australian gave him a favourable sit-down interview, accompanied by photos of Roberts-Smith with his then wife Emma.

The former soldier claimed in a front-page story run by the national broadsheet that the stories were “demonstrably false’’.

“Nine has accused me of murder,” he said. “Frankly, it is time for their journalists to put up their evidence or admit they have none.”

As recently as May last year McKenzie was subjected to accusations on Sky News Australia that he had been “caught on secret tapes” acting unethically. Roberts-Smith’s application to reopen the appeal over the recording was rejected.

In his 2023 book Flawed Hero: Truth, Lies and War Crimes, Masters wrote: “I do not buy The Australian. It makes me sick.”

Ex-News Corp journos reveal company tactics

Masters is one of the case studies in a new book from journalism academics Andrew Dodd and Matthew Ricketson, Getting Murdoched, published by Hardie Grant Books in June.

Dodd is a professor of journalism at the University of Melbourne and Ricketson is a professor of communication at Deakin University.

The book analyses the way Rupert Murdoch’s media operates in the company’s major markets – the US, the UK and Australia.

The former reporters, who have both worked for News Corp, reveal the tactics the company’s publications use in a series of interviews with climate scientists, women’s rights advocates, Muslims, progressive politicians and others who have been the subject of relentless News Corp reporting.

In addition to Masters, who reveals the personal cost of attacks on his work, there are interviews with the Indigenous professor Larissa Behrendt, the journalism academic and Sydney Morning Herald columnist Jenna Price, the writer Benjamin Law, Jewish lawyer Sarah Schwarz, academic and author Clive Hamilton, the former young Queensland Australian of the year Yassmin Abdel-Magied and the former SBS journalist Scott McIntyre.

Pushing buttons for a promo

Journalists who are putting together a television feature sometimes make a spectacle of themselves at press conferences so they can include the exchange in their story.

Perhaps this was the tactic behind a bizarre and cringeworthy back and forth on Wednesday between the agitated 7NEWS Spotlight reporter Liam Bartlett and the energy minister, Chris Bowen.

Bowen was giving a regular press conference about the fuel crisis caused by the war in Iran, when Bartlett was invited to ask a question.

The former 60 Minutes journalist asked: “Minister, if this war in Iran has shown us nothing else, hasn’t it proved once and for all that your obsession with renewables will only lead us down the track to another energy crisis?”

Bowen: “That’s a pretty loaded … that’s a comment, not a question”.

“No, it’s a question,” responded Bartlett. Bowen answered the question before moving on to other journalists.

But Bartlett – who a decade ago spent two years working for oil company Shell as its global head of TV – wasn’t done, interjecting several times, at one point to ask if Bowen would “put the flag up and say, listen, I’ll resign?”

When Bowen moved on to other reporters, Bartlett attempted to mock the minister saying: “You’ve taken one question. That’s very brave.”

Bowen asked Bartlett to show respect for other journalists in the room, but Bartlett kept going, asserting the government had “spent billions of dollars we haven’t got on questionable green infrastructure, tying us to China, not worrying about where the minerals come from”.

Bartlett asked if it was clear that Bowen’s “renewables transition policy, will not alter one iota despite what this war has shown us with the failure of your energy policy?”

Bowen replied: “I’m not sure how you could assert, Liam, that the war in Iran is the fault of Australian renewable energy. I really don’t understand that logic.”

Bartlett had earlier complained he had been sending questions to the minister – “13 emails” – since 24 January, which, he said, were “open and honest questions about your renewables obsession”.

But it seemed the outlet got the moment of drama it was looking for. A snippet of the “fiery exchange” was used on 7NEWS socials to trail a “major investigation” to be screened on 19 April.

Seven did not respond to a request for comment.

Rightwing commentator goes to ‘university’

Former Nine and Sky News broadcaster Erin Molan is now a rightwing commentator with her own YouTube channel, the Erin Molan Show. She was briefly the host of a show called 69 Minutes on X.

But now we can reveal she has branched out internationally and become a presenter on PragerU, which styles itself as a university but is in fact a conservative content generator.

Molan’s bio on the site reads: “Unwilling to be silenced or sidelined for her views, Molan left mainstream media to forge her own independent path – championing free speech, online safety, and protecting women’s sports.”

PragerU’s goal is to “attract young people to its ideology”, the Guardian reported this week.

Molan’s videos include “The Threat of Mass Immigration to Western Culture” and “Why Won’t More Muslim Voices Speak Out against Extremism?”