Hannah Ferguson wants Rupert Murdoch to know her (and hate her). Her ambition doesn't end there

Sydney Morning Herald

19 hours ago

In the election cycle just past, social media commentator Hannah Ferguson was everywhere. The 27-year-old interviewed the prime minister, found herself at the centre of media storms, went viral multiple times, and delivered an election post-mortem at the National Press Club.
I see her multitasking in action when, halfway through our lunch at A.P. Bread & Wine, a waiter stops to clear Ferguson's empty plate. I look down to see my barely touched meal and wonder how this is possible, given that Ferguson has been doing almost all the talking.
I hadn't even noticed Ferguson chowing down on her 'leftover bread pasta'. She talks quickly and rarely hesitates, even when I push back on her answers or delve into more controversial topics.
Admittedly, 'The All Purpose' platter I ordered is large, and I am known to eat at a leisurely pace, but I'm still bemused by how Ferguson's ability to do it all at once is a pleasing metaphor for her last six months.
When we meet in mid-June, Ferguson's finally had some time to breathe after a manic period of work that was bookended by the US election and hosting British author Dolly Alderton at the Sydney Opera House on one end, and the Australian federal election and announcing her plans to run for the Senate on the other.
Already beloved among progressive Gen Z women, Ferguson burst into Australia's broader public consciousness this year. While her loyal left-wing fan base expanded, so did her pool of detractors. She's reached the milestone of being well-known enough to be the sole target of hit pieces in The Australian and diatribes on Sky News.
'It's actually shocking to me to look back,' Ferguson tells me. 'I feel like I've cracked through five ceilings in five months.'
On October 31, 2022, Ferguson celebrated the second anniversary of her progressive social media platform, Cheek Media, with a message to her followers, posted (of course) to Instagram: 'I won't sleep until I can confirm that Rupert Murdoch knows me and hates me,' it read.
Having launched the feminist platform in 2020 with two friends, primarily to call out media reporting of domestic and sexual violence, Ferguson had since taken the project solo.
When Cheek hit 50,000 followers in 2023, a book deal emerged that allowed Ferguson to quit her job, move to Sydney and run the platform full-time. The book that resulted is Bite Back, an homage to the promise contained in Cheek's tagline: 'News that bites back.'
'The idea is that we can respond and say, 'No, no, we're cutting through the noise'. Young people see through this, and we want something different,' Ferguson says.
It quickly grew into a platform for Ferguson's political commentary, delivered in tweet-sized text snippets or vertical video. (While Cheek is a popular Instagram news source, Ferguson's always insisted she's not a journalist.)
Cheek is now nearing the 200,000 follower mark on Instagram, after a huge six months that saw more than 50,000 new followers join to hear Ferguson's commentary in the lead-up to the election. Her podcast, Big Small Talk, co-hosted with Sarah Jane Adams, regularly features in Australia's top 50 on Spotify, and Ferguson has announced a national tour.
A little less than three years after her bold Rupert Murdoch claim, it's impossible to say if the media mogul knows Ferguson's name, but she's certainly caught the attention of the mainstream political establishment and the ire of the mastheads and networks Murdoch owns.
On June 6, The Australian ran an opinion piece about Ferguson with the headline 'Progressive 'girlboss' preaches diversity – but champions conformity'. Days earlier, Sky News presenter Chris Kenny said her address to the National Press Club included 'plenty of the usual extreme-left bile'.
In that May address, Ferguson articulated the same goal she had in 2022: to be an 'antidote' to the 'Murdoch media'.
Is it overly ambitious for a 26-year-old in Sydney to take on arguably the world's most powerful media figure (the industry's biggest 'influencer', one might say)? Maybe, but unbridled ambition and barefaced confidence are Ferguson's signatures.
Ferguson grew up in a working-class conservative household, moving from Orange to south-west Sydney and back again during her childhood. Her dad is a truck driver, now based in Queensland, and her mum still lives in regional NSW, running a small bra fitting business.
Aged 13, Ferguson recalls how her parents' critique of Julia Gillard's 2012 misogyny speech didn't sit right. 'I remember thinking, 'They're not making fun of her policies. They're making fun of the way she speaks, and her haircut'.'
As Ferguson grew up, she developed political views that were at odds with her parents', but still credits them with allowing for the robust debate that helped form her point of view. 'The reason I am progressive is that my parents always treated me like a small adult. I was allowed to ask any question.'
Ferguson received a scholarship to study law at the University of Queensland, where her political perspective was shaped further by the privilege she observed in the 'stuffy' law school culture.
Early work experiences at Queensland's Department of Public Prosecutions and the Electrical Trades Union provided a conviction in those beliefs that rears its head again and again through Ferguson's career.
'I was negotiating with BHP, with Rio, with Qantas. That's a wild thing to be able to say at 23,' Ferguson recalls of her time at the union.
'I think that really reflects what I do now in that I don't really doubt that I'm welcome at these tables and that I can say something.'
With Cheek, Ferguson is delivering content for mostly young, mostly female progressives who aren't necessarily highly engaged in the political process but who agree with her worldview and care about the news. One 24-year-old fan I spoke to said she valued how Ferguson broke down big concepts and explained the impact of the news on society at large. 'I came to Hannah because I agree with her, and there aren't many people that I feel represented by in the media in terms of that worldview,' she told me.
Cheek has a squarely political focus, but often uses memes and humour to deliver its message, while Big Small Talk is a hybrid pop culture-politics podcast that gives equal airtime to the top political stories and the latest celebrity news.
'The joke is putting the dog's medicine in peanut butter,' Ferguson says, explaining that despite being highly engaged, many Gen Zers are put off by traditional media's approach to politics.
There's no doubt that their media habits are changing. Over the past year, the number of Australians accessing news via social media overtook online websites, with Instagram being the primary news source for 40 per cent of people aged 18-24, according to the University of Canberra's latest Digital News Report.
Ferguson puts that down to mainstream outlets' failure to connect with young people, and in her typically confident way, she stood up at the National Press Club and said as much to a room full of newspaper and TV journalists.
'The fourth estate has failed us because it's currently wedded to the Coalition,' she claimed in her address. 'These outlets wanted to sow the seeds of doubt. They wanted to invalidate and undermine a group of powerful young women who have developed the ability to communicate with new audiences in ways traditional media cannot fathom because they have eroded the trust of their audiences.'
This line alluded to the response of Canberra's press gallery when Labor invited a group of social media personalities, including Ferguson, to the federal budget lock-up.
Ferguson became the face of the biggest story of the pre-election budget that no one wanted to have. The Australian Financial Review called the group of largely female commentators 'self-obsessed and self-promoting', and Ferguson criticised The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald when a report on Labor paying for some influencers' travel costs included her image, even though she paid her own way.
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The budget uproar was the start of what would be dubbed the 'influencer election', spawning countless think pieces, many of which took a condescending tone, accusing the diverse group of personalities of 'chasing clout' and delivering 'light-weight' political coverage.
'It was naive of me not to think that I would become the story in some way,' Ferguson says, adding that the budget prepared her for what was to come during the election campaign.
'This idea of shitting on us in the first instance, instead of actually getting a microphone out themselves and explaining politics to people, it's this elitist view of what news is meant to be,' Ferguson says.
Ferguson has a degree of sympathy for those who are reluctant to accept the disruption of anarchic, inexperienced social media commentators on hierarchical newsroom structures. 'I can talk about vibrators the day after covering the budget, and that would, fairly, be so painful [for political journalists] because I'm not providing the sophisticated take they are.'
In some ways, what Ferguson and her peers are doing is not all that new. She's drawn a parallel between her work and talkback radio. Even veteran tailback radio broadcaster Ray Hadley has recently embraced vertical video, and there's very little that distinguishes what he does from Ferguson's work, except their age and experience, and of course, their gender.
Ferguson thinks the other element at play when the mainstream media sneers at her is a 'fundamental belief that young women are silly, stupid, self-obsessed and doing it for the wrong reasons'.
'And that's from the left and the right,' she adds.
Social media success is not Ferguson's end goal. 'I think it's amazing to have the following I do, but social media has killed me,' she says, listing off the bullying and threats she's faced online. 'There are so many parts of my spirit that have been broken that cannot be repaired.'
Ferguson is hiring Cheek's second full-time employee, and opening up the platform to freelance writers for the first time. She hopes that no longer running the platform solo will give her the time she needs to mount her campaign to enter politics as an independent senator at the next election.
While remaining realistic about the unlikely odds of being elected, Ferguson is dogged in her conviction, telling me she is prepared to try and fail 'a hundred times'.
'I think there's something so important about showing people how to fail and that it's not embarrassing to give it a go.'
And Ferguson's not in the business of being coy about the extent of her ambition, revealing that her ultimate goal is to create a new political party that fills an ideological gap she sees on the left, between Labor and the Greens.
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'We are so used to the two-party system that asking Labor to do anything feels like begging for a crumb,' Ferguson says, mentioning climate action, gender inequality and the cost of living, while the Greens' 'baggage and branding' has allowed it to be framed as radical and obstructionist.
'What I would be looking to do is create a kind of framework for how we can make policy with respect, not designed to inflame, and focus on issues that matter to Middle Australians,' she says, citing David Pocock as the kind of politician she would aspire to be.
'This is a bigger dream. This is a lifetime dream. I want to create a new major party.'
Ferguson delivers this statement with the same confidence that propelled her to the centre of Australian politics in her mid-twenties. And while it's tempting to dismiss her goals as too lofty, you wouldn't dare write her off.