Sky News Australia frequently makes its way into my YouTube recommendations. I can’t begrudge the algorithm for this one — last year I studied right-wing news media and consumed a lot of this content. Alas, the algorithm confuses this viewing habit for genuine interest in what Sky has to offer.
In November last year, Cameron Wilson reported on Sky News Australia’s online strategy for Business Insider. He noted their huge online viewership, as well as the largely U.S centric, culture-war content that the media giant’s YouTube channel is spouting on a daily basis. I would highly recommend reading Wilson’s reporting on Sky to understand more about the nature of, and the extent of their digital reach.
I made the decision today to actually view one of the Sky videos recommended me by YouTube, and the experience was bizarre. Sky News Australia is of course a NewsCorp operation, having been acquired by the company in 2016. This affiliation certainly makes an alliance with the U.S equivalent network Fox News inevitable, however the extent of this alliance is — for lack of a better word — unbelievable.
In the three-minute clip entitled ‘Candace Owens rips into Meghan Markle, Michelle Obama for acting like ‘victims’, Sky News Australia effectively regurgitates footage content from Fox News. The editor of this video has slapped some (presumably) royalty free music on top of a snippet from Tucker Carlson’s Fox News programme, added in a Sky correspondent’s commentary for 30 seconds, popped on the SkyNews.com.au label and called it a day.
This content seems to be pretty standard fare for Sky. Another clip from today titled ‘No one can be woke enough’: Dave Chapelle warns comedians against far-left ideology’ — follows a starkly similar formula, albeit replacing correspondent commentary with on-screen text. Now — we certainly do not live in a vaccum in Australia. U.S news is certainly relevant here, and one can’t expect for Sky to never utilise content from Fox.
But frankly — what does any of this have to do with anything?
The reiteration of U.S culture war rhetoric on Sky is pretty blatant. Does SkyNews Australia legitimately consider Owens’ take on U.S celebrities’ hypocrisy to be relevant to the Australian news cycle? Or are they merely recycling the same tactic that has worked in the U.S market, not even caring to replace the content with that that would be more relevant to the Australian context?
It would appear to be the later, and such an overt attempt to reimagine the Fox News model — to the point where it borders on plagiarism if the NewsCorp affiliation were not such — should be more newsworthy than anything Owen’s has to say.
