Deputy Prime Minister Anthony Albanese says he's spoken to "embarrassed" News Corp Australia journalists who've been instructed to run negative coverage of Labor.
Mr Albanese was commenting after Sydney's The Daily Telegraph began its election campaign coverage on August 5 with a full-page photo of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and an editorial under the headline: "Kick this mob out".
Mr Albanese described the coverage of the election campaign by News Corp publications as "pretty extraordinary" and said he had never seen anything like it in all his years in politics.
"I have been involved in campaigns for a very long time," he told SBS's The Observer Effect program on Sunday.
"I have never seen before, on day one of an election campaign, an editorial on a front page advocating a vote for the opposition.
"I've never seen such a consistency in front page headlines consistently attacking the federal government."
Mr Albanese says he's had private conversations with journalists from the publications involved and "some of them are embarrassed".
Asked by host Ellen Fanning if they had been "instructed to run an anti-Labor line", he replied "Yes".
Mr Rudd has previously accused News Corp boss Rupert Murdoch of railing against Labor to prevent the implementation of its National Broadband Network, which could hurt Mr Murdoch's television interests.
Mr Albanese said it was obvious that there was an agenda but readers would be able to work out that what they were being served by News Corp wasn't unbiased coverage but "opinion shaped to elect a Tony Abbott government".
