Culture & Society Blog: The Murdoch/Fox War On The People - The Murdoch's Own Fox News, Fox Does Nothing Without Their Implicit Or Explicit Approval

Mar 14, 2021

The Murdoch/Fox War On The People - The Murdoch's Own Fox News, Fox Does Nothing Without Their Implicit Or Explicit Approval

Background/Context:

1. After Helping To Cancel 500,000 Lives With Coronavirus Misinformation, Fox News Conservatives Go On TV To Complain About Cancel Culture

2. For Fox News, Mass Murder In The U.S. Was Just The Cost Of Doing Business

3. Congratulations To Fox News For Winning The Misinformer Of The Year Award!

4. Fox Used To Pretend It Was Part News And Part Opinion. That Pretense Is Over. Now Its Lies All the Time.

Fox News is owned and run by the Mordochs. A family that seeks to create chaos globally and then try and cover it up with flimsy excuses. Research done by the non profit media research group, Media Matters, proves that the Murdochs and Fox News are waging war on the people by pushing misinformation that leads to bad decisions including death. This post simply outlines the research.

Media Matters: Misinformer of the Year: 21st Century Fox Executive Chairman Lachlan Murdoch

Media Matters’ 2018 Misinformer of the Year is 21st Century Fox Executive Chairman Lachlan Murdoch. Our annual designation is given to the media figure, news outlet, or organization that stands out for promoting conservative lies and smears in the U.S. media. Murdoch was selected for his role in overseeing Fox News, the right-wing network founded by his father Rupert, who previously received the title. Several of the network’s current and former commentators have previously been named Misinformer of the Year.

The Murdochs’ Fox News, a uniquely destructive force in American public life that ushered in an era of post-truth politics, has been unleashed under President Donald Trump. The network now functions as a propaganda outlet for his administration, embracing any level of extremism, deceit, and bigotry necessary to promote the president’s message while scorning basic principles of journalistic ethics.

Lachlan Murdoch has consistently lied about what his network does and what it is, even as the people who work for him have breached the norms of their profession in increasingly flagrant ways and become ever more entangled with the Trump administration.

Media Matters: Chris Hayes: Murdoch owned media has “waged a war against public health” during pandemic

Hayes: “They’ve been playing down the virus and peddling just outright lies, and pushing junk science”

Read transcript.

Media Matters: The Murdochs have blood on their hands

Rupert Murdoch bears responsibility for the Trump COVID-19 response that reportedly “disgust[s]” him

Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch made their decision. They chose money and ideology over responsibility. And a lot of Americans are dead because of it.

Fox News founder Rupert Murdoch is reportedly “disgusted” by President Donald Trump’s failed handling of the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19. He and his son Lachlan Murdoch, who currently oversees the network, are also partly responsible for it.

Murdoch has complained to confidants that Trump “is not listening to advice about how best to handle the pandemic” which is “creating a never-ending crisis for his administration,” according to a Thursday account from The Daily Beast.

It’s true that Trump has ignored the counsel of experts throughout his failed handling of the pandemic, and the result has been a calamitous death toll from an unsuppressed pandemic with no end in sight. But the advice Trump took instead came from Murdoch employees at Fox.

Trump is obsessed with Fox and treats its right-wing personalities as his closest advisers. The hours of Fox programming he watches each day shape his worldview. His administration’s policies are informed by what the network’s hosts tell him, both through his television and in private conversations.

The coronavirus has proved no different. Virtually every presidential action on the pandemic has reflected Fox’s malign influence.

Fox told Trump that the virus was nothing to worry about -- just another “hoax” by journalists and Democrats who wanted to destroy him -- so he downplayed and ignored it for crucial weeks as it spread through the country.

Fox told Trump that unproven antimalarial drugs were a miracle cure for COVID-19, and he put them at the center of his administration’s therapeutic push. The federal government has stockpiled tens of millions of doses of a drug that is apparently ineffective in stopping the virus.

Fox told Trump that face masks were both ineffective at preventing the spread of the coronavirus and a sign of Democratic authoritarianism, and he scorned them. Masks became a culture war issue that divided the parties, rather than a vital tool.

Fox told Trump to prioritize “reopening” the economy over stopping the spread of the virus and he obliged them. Seven months later, the virus is still not contained, and the economy is still faltering.

Fox told Trump that Scott Atlas, a radiologist and conservative think-tanker who regularly appeared on the network to downplay the virus, was a credible expert, so he hired him as a White House coronavirus adviser. The administration’s policy “is increasingly being shaped” by Atlas, who has championed a “herd immunity” approach that experts say could lead to a catastrophic death toll.

The Murdochs elected a president who would dance to their network’s tune, and now Rupert is “disgusted” that it hasn’t worked out.

All of this was predictable, and I know that because I predicted it.

“A significant number of Americans are likely to die -- prematurely and unnecessarily -- because Trump is taking advice from Fox News,” I warned on March 9, when the recorded count of COVID-19 cases in the U.S. was only 500 and the network was telling the president it was nothing to worry about.

Two weeks later, with the death toll still numbered in the hundreds and the president following Fox personalities by praising the coronavirus-fighting properties of antimalarial drugs and pushing to swiftly end business closures, I wrote that the network “needs to get its hosts under control -- or take them off the air.”

“If Fox does neither, the network’s leaders will bear partial responsibility for the calamitous death toll that is likely to ensue,” I warned. “Fox's executives need to act -- if they don’t, the results could be catastrophic.”

Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch made their decision. They chose money and ideology over responsibility. And a lot of Americans are dead because of it.

Media Matters: New emails show Stephen Miller slamming Rupert Murdoch over immigration. At Fox News, it's clear that Miller has won.

The Southern Poverty Law Center has released more emails from 2015 and 2016 between White House senior policy adviser Stephen Miller — at the time, an aide to then-Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) — and then-Breitbart editor Katie McHugh. In addition to showing Miller’s support for a number of far-right conspiracy theories, such as the “great replacement,” the emails reveal that Miller also took aim at a notable conservative target: Fox News founder Rupert Murdoch.

Miller’s criticism of Murdoch shows just how much the tycoon has lost control of right-wing media narratives. Instead, it’s now his son Lachlan Murdoch heading up the Fox Corp. and supporting the network’s descent into outright white nationalism.

In July 2015, Rupert Murdoch posted a tweet that was critical of then-presidential candidate Donald Trump’s statements on immigration:

“Actually, no,” Miller commented in an email to McHugh with the subject line “don’t believe your lying eyes,” which linked to the tweet. The email also linked to an article by Jason Richwine, who had previously resigned from the Heritage Foundation over his racist writings against Hispanics.

Lachlan Murdoch, by contrast, sent personal text messages of support to Fox’s Tucker Carlson, whose show has been a center of anti-immigrant commentary, after the prime-time host declared in December of 2018 that immigration “makes our own country poorer, and dirtier, and more divided.”

More recently, Carlson said that “illegal immigrants are tethering themselves here with millions of anchor babies.” Likewise, in Miller’s own emails to Breitbart, the future White House adviser decried: “Not only will the U.S.-born children of future illegal immigrants and guest workers be made automatic U.S. citizens, but their foreign-born children will too because, as [former Republican House Majority Leader Eric] Cantor said, ‘Our country was founded on the principle.’”

There were brief periods in the past in which Fox News would clean up its anti-immigration rhetoric to be more in line with Rupert Murdoch’s own positions. But those days are so long gone, they seem quaint in comparison to the conservative media of today.

Media Matters: Fox News is pushing white nationalism because the Murdochs want it to

Fox News has traditionally treated bigotry as a core part of its business model. But since the political rise of President Donald Trump, the network’s commentators have adopted talking points that had previously been the province of hardcore white supremacists. The reported manifesto of the gunman who murdered 22 people at a Walmart in El Paso, TX, on Saturday is all but indistinguishable from transcripts ripped from its prime-time shows. This shift is not an accident but a programming decision, one the network has pursued even as its hosts’ racist rhetoric has triggered costly ad boycotts.

Rupert Murdoch and his son Lachlan Murdoch are ultimately responsible for this toxic programming. Rupert, chairman of parent company Fox Corp., laid the foundation for the shift. He then ceded much of the day-to-day authority to Lachlan, who maintained that heading as the Fox Corp.’s executive chairman and CEO.

Fox is feeding its audience a poisonous stew of bigoted, xenophobic conspiracy theories because that is what the Murdochs want the network to do.

A New York Times Magazine investigation found that in recent years, the Murdochs’ media empire has been “instrumental in amplifying the nativist revolt that was reshaping governments not just in the United States but also across the planet,” with their outlets fueling xenophobia and ethnonationalism to achieve political aims in the U.S., the United Kingdom, and Australia.

In the United States, that meant taking advantage of a rare opportunity to reshape Fox News following the removal of network co-founder Roger Ailes and the swift departures of longtime network hosts Bill O’Reilly, Greta Van Susteren, and Megyn Kelly.

Stepping in as acting CEO to replace Ailes, Rupert responded to the vacancies by giving Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham their own prime-time shows.

Carlson, a Rupert favorite, had already amassed a staunch following among white nationalists for his denunciations of diversity and fervent airing of white grievances.

Read more.

Media Matters: Blame the Murdochs for Tucker Carlson

If you want to stop the Fox host, focus on the money behind him

Tucker Carlson is responsible for the vile rhetoric he spews to the Fox News audience every night. But it is Rupert Murdoch and his son Lachlan, the billionaires who pay his salary, who decided to make him the unaccountable face of their right-wing propaganda network.

Carlson turned his show into a clearinghouse for white nationalist talking points, denouncing the immigrant “invasion” he claimed was ushering in the systematic “demographic replacement” of Americans and making the country “poorer, and dirtier,” because that’s what the Murdochs wanted.

After the Fox host spent 2020 pushing lies about the novel coronavirus that endangered the lives of his viewers, spreading bigoted invective about Black activists seeking an end to police violence, and encouraging violent right-wing vigilantism, the Murdochs promoted him.

So when he denigrates pregnant active duty U.S. service members, then lies about the massive backlash he received from rank-and-file members of the military, veterans, the brass, and the Pentagon in order to paint himself as a victim, he does so knowing the Murdochs will have his back.

Carlson is now Fox’s lodestar. He has its highest-rated show, his commentary is regularly injected into the rest of the network’s coverage, and his work is the lynchpin of Fox’s new push to generate sign-ups for its Fox Nation streaming platform. Like his colleague Sean Hannity during the Trump administration, Fox treats Carlson as too big to fail, too important to restrain.

The Murdochs made Carlson the face of Fox even as advertisers have abandoned his program. Its commercial blocks now effectively consist of spots for a right-wing pillow company; ads the network is purchasing from itself; and tumbleweeds. Thursday night’s show featured a single ad break with a total of six commercials, one of which was a Fox promo.

Changing the calculus for the Murdochs means ensuring that Carlson’s brand is no longer an asset to their other revenue stream.

That means encouraging corporations that don’t want their own brands tarnished with his bile to remove their advertising from the entire Fox network. And it means that people who don’t want to be inadvertently supporting Carlson should push their cable carriers to stop financing his bigotry.

The Murdochs care about money. The best way to reduce Carlson’s malignant influence is to make him less profitable for them.

Media Matters: Murdoch wants empathy for Fox hosts who push propaganda and racism

Amid growing pressure on advertisers to distance themselves from Fox News, Lachlan Murdoch, executive chairman of 21st Century Fox, told CNBC host Andrew Ross Sorkin that critics should be more tolerant of what airs on the network. Talking to Sorkin at The New York Times’ DealBook conference, Murdoch also claimed that the “biggest critics of Fox News are not watching Fox News,” and that President Donald Trump does not like Fox News, but rather “dislikes us less than everyone else.”

Murdoch refused to take any responsibility for the company that he runs, instead offering a load of horseshit for an elite audience. While Murdoch claimed that Fox News just runs banal conservative programming in prime time, the network is actually broadcasting white nationalist propaganda indistinguishable from the likes of David Duke. And while Murdoch refused to acknowledge a revolving door between Fox News and the Trump White House, Trump is dialing up Fox hosts from the White House, and Fox is hiring people who leave the administration. Murdoch can pretend that Fox News is a normal news organization -- and he wasn’t really pressed on the matter because Sorkin isn’t terribly familiar with what happens on the network -- but the reality is that Fox News is a right-wing propaganda machine.

Murdoch repeatedly pointed to Fox anchor Shep Smith to deny that the network is a pro-Trump operation. The Washington Post’s Erik Wemple discussed yesterday why this is laughable. In fact, the network repeatedly airs claims that Smith already debunked. Contrary to Lachlan’s assertions, Smith does not redeem Fox News. Instead, he reveals Fox News for the cesspool it is.

Murdoch also highlighted Martha Maccallum as an example of straight news coverage, which is even more baffling if one is familiar with her Fox shows.