Fair and balanced. According to Chris Mitchell, the editor-in-chief of The Australian, the Prime Minister thanked him for the newspaper's election coverage being ''fair and balanced''. Is it a coincidence she used the much-mocked slogan of Rupert Murdoch's American TV news channel Fox News?

The slogan is so synonymous with the network that when the left-wing American media identity Al Franken titled his book Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right, Fox (unsuccessfully) mounted a lawsuit, claiming the title infringed their trademark.

This most controversial of American news outlets - trusted according to a recent survey by 74 per cent of Republicans but only 30 per cent of Democrats - still provokes outrage. Earlier this year, the former New York Times executive editor Howell Raines thought Fox's conduct so betrayed journalistic standards that other news organisations should ''blow the whistle'' on its propaganda campaign against the Obama administration. Even Rupert Murdoch's son-in-law, Matthew Freud, said he was ''sickened and ashamed'' by Fox's ''horrendous and sustained disregard'' of journalistic standards.

More than any other media proprietor in the English-speaking world, Murdoch has recognised and cultivated the commercial and political benefits of partisanship. Having been an enthusiastic supporter of Margaret Thatcher in Britain, when he was building his American beachhead with the purchase of the New York Post in the 1970s, he was determined to make his mark.

He campaigned for Ed Koch for mayor, which Koch said made his victory possible. His opponent, Mario Cuomo, lamented that when Murdoch endorses you, he hands the whole newspaper over to your campaign.