The Murdoch Empire's Greatest Test

[Stavros]

Surely Tony Blair is no longer a mate, given all the reports about his relationship with Murdoch's ex-wife.

You may be right, they were certainly close at one time, have not looked into it closely enough these days to know. I guess it depends on how useful they might be to each other.

[broncofan]

I didn't see the post before you edited it, but the point might be that Murdoch retains his so-called 'News' outlets because they feed his colossal ego as a political agitator who can walk into the White House of Downing Street any time he wants and expect to be listened to, to even have his ideas put into practice -such as his persuading Ronald Reagan -via the Federal Communications Commission- to drop the Fairness in Broadcasting in 1987. One wonders why it is even called 'news' when Murdoch has established a media culture in which so-called journalists are expected to invent the news that doesn't exist, or distort the news that does, all in the name of some vague libertarian idea of 'freedom' which enables Murdoch to be mates with Bill Clinton and Tony Blair (godfather to one of Murdoch's children) and the con-man sitting in the Oval Office today. A nasty piece of work. But that's not news.

The post basically said that if he unloads his news empire, there is a chance over time that the culture would change. Disney would be paying partly for its right-wing customer base but its only imperative would be to deliver news with a right wing slant to satisfy that base.

The way Murdoch runs things is not just based on making money through sensationalism but also seems deeply personal. As you point out there's also a lot of vanity and ego-gratification involved. I was just thinking with new ownership it might over time develop some standards of decency and be an outlet for conservative talking points but require its commentators to steer clear of conspiracy theories and outright lies. That is all mooted by the fact that Murdoch really does want to hold onto it...probably for the same or similar reasons he runs it the way he does.

[Stavros]

You may or may not be aware that Murdoch has been trying for some years to purchase the remaining interest in the Sky network in the UK he doesn't already own. The deal is being investigated by the Competition and Markets Authority but with the sale of 20th Century Fox to Disney there are hints that if Murdoch doesn't get Sky he will sell it, and that the Sky News Channel will either fold or be put up for sale. His original bid floundered because of the revelations and trials around the phone hacking scandal, but in any case Murdoch has never been able to transport his poison into tv news, retaining newspapers like The Sun for that. I don't get Sky News on my tv but I have seen it on other people's boxes and it is nothing like his papers and is a fair and sound broadcaster, though that may also be due to the laws on balanced reporting we have in the UK which do not exist in the US. We also have an issue here with market share and the view that Murdoch already owns enough with regard to news print and broadcast journalism, or too much from where I sit.
There is an article on the Sky bid here-
http://www.radiotimes.com/news/2017-...-news-at-risk/

It is even possible that Murdoch is not that much interested in the UK as he used to be. He was at The Times victory party on election night earlier this year and allegedly stormed out when the exit poll revealed his relentless attacks on Corbyn and the Labour Party had failed. He does not have as close a relationship with Theresa May as he had with David Cameron and Tony Blair, though that is probably because nobody has a close relationship with her, other than her husband. He may see the prevarications over Brexit as an important fight, being a keen leaver, but he can't compete with the hysterical Daily Mail which has become the primary voice of angry Britain, or angry Paul Dacre, its absurd and often nasty editor.

Murdoch is said to have deep emotional ties to newsprint, because he inherited his father's business, and it seems his outfit has missed the boat on new developments in streaming which is why he doesn't see 20th Century Fox as worth competing with Netflix and the new kids on the block, but newsprint is no longer lucrative -or influential- as it was in the days of Citizen Kane so it remains to be seen how he manages his businesses -in Asia as well as in the US-, as well as who gets what out of the various children he has had from three marriages.

[Stavros]

Here is a cute irony -the most effective challenge to Murdoch's media empire may take place and be most effective where it all began: in Australia.
https://www.theguardian.com/media/20...murdoch-empire

From a purely business perspective, it is hard to deny that Murdoch has been one of the most successful businessmen of the 20th century, considering both the global scale of his businesses and the shareholder value that underpins the success of business in monetary terms. To what extent the newspaper segments have suffered in recent years is not clear, given the diversiity of his titles, but to some it may not be the fact that Murdoch is successful, but the means whereby he achieved it, and what he did with it.

Here, there are some emerging trends which may challenge Murdoch, apart from the enquiry in Australia.

The first is that within his own family, James Murdoch has all but jumped ship owing to a disagreement with the parent company's dismissal of/denial of/ critique of climate change. Whether this means he loses his inheritance or sells his shares, I don't know. He can consider himself a lucky man for escaping prosecution over the phone hacking trials that took place in the UK when he was CE of News International.

The second, perhaps the most remarkable, is the position Fox News in the US has taken on the outcome of the 2020 election, where even an extremist like Tucker Carlson could not stomach the outragous drivel peddled by Sidney Powell, even though she remains Michael Flynn's lawyer, and it is clear she has been dumped for media reasons, whereas it would be quite typical if the President believed Hugo Chavez, Bill Clinton and George Soros denied him a second term. For a man who regards loyalty as one of his most nobel values, the dis-loyalty of Fox News has unleashed a fury once associated, prosaically, with jilted lovers.

But the significance is not so much commercial -Murdoch's empire can survive without Fox News, but political. For Murdoch has used his media influence for over 40 years to make a link betweeen what 'the man in the street' thinks with government policies in the UK, the US and his native Australia. From this perspective, Murdoch has been the classic libertarian businessman, a man who believes markets are better than goevernment, who has promoted low taxation and low-to-non existent regulation of business, and who has opposed what he sees as 'cartel' like market manipulation by the European Union.

For the US in particular, he played a key role in persuading Ronald Reagan in 1987 to abandon the Fair Broadcasting principle that has meant the emergence of a vicious sectarian media.

In the UK he is associated with a culture of vulgarity and gossip replacing news, but also a racist reporting of the news, not as fact, but as opinion, often supplied without any journalistic investigation, by the police. When a policeman was murdered in a gruesome manner during the Broadwater Farm riots in London in 1985, it wasn't long before The Sun had identified the killer and embarked on a campaign of accusation and vilification, even though some years late it was proven the man targeted wasn't even in Tottenham when the policeman was killed. As for the notorious Page 3 girls, it has rarely been reported in the US, I think, that the feature more than once used topless 16 year old girls, this being the kind of soft porn that would land Murdoch in prison in much of the US, and forced to register as a sex offender.

Losing his political influence with the US President, be it the 45th of the 46th might not matter to a man who can't be far away from reporting directly from eternity, yet just as important to me is how, so many years after he was an adviser to Reagan and Thatcher, their legacy is being trashed, but by Conservatives, so called, rather than by wicked Socialists or Communists, whether they arrived in his native land as Convicts, or chose to become so because they live there.

After all, Thatcher was one of the most enthusiastic supporters of the Single Market or the European Union. She campaigned in favour of the UK remaining in the EEC as it was in the 1975 Referedum, and for all her scepticism about 'Ever Closer Union' and monetary union in particular, I doubt she would have voted Leave. Yet the Leave campaign has relied on depicting the EU in terms which are almost opposite to hers, while Boris Johnson's use of Brexit as the ideology that identifies who a Conservative is -leading to the expulsion from the party of so many life-long Conservatives, would I think have at least puzzled her. For in reality, she was more pragmatic than idealist. And as a manager, her leadership of the Party for 16 years is unlikely to be repeated, while her almost obsessive attention to policy detail sits in complete contrast to Boris Johnson, whose ignorance and indifference to the detail has often made him look stupid in public.

More broadly the Libertarian project Murdoch has championed has been, if only temporarily, felled by Covid-19 with the UK and US Governments spending other people's money without any concern for the long-term repayment of such staggering borrowing, though UK Chancellor Rishi Sunak has hinted we will have to pay more income tax to pay off the debts.

And that is where Thatcher came in, when in 1979 her election campaign pivoted on a promise to cut taxes, same as with Reagan in in the 1980 campaign, in both cases, with Murdoch's full approval.

Where are they now, we ask? In the dustbin of history. And for Murdoch, perhaps the bin men are on their way to his home.

[Stavros]

Crikey! It's all going down, down under. Rumoured to be the laziest businessman in America, Lachlan Murdoch has decided his and his dad's firm should be allowed to broadcast verifiable lies on the grounds that free speech means giving air time to lies even when it may have defamed another commercial firm -making one wonder, did Fox Executives ever consider the consequences of broadcasting lies when it led not just to illegal attempts to overturn a democratic election by Trump (for which the Georgia investigation may be his nemesis), but the violence of Jan 6-?

Crikey, indeed!

‘What game is he playing?’: Lachlan Murdoch, Trump’s election lies and the legal fight against a small Australian website | Australian media | The Guardian

[Stavros]

"A Fox spokesperson responding to Insider's queries about Hannity and Ryan accused Dominion of trying to "publicly smear" the company just for reporting the news."
Rupert Murdoch said Sean Hannity was 'privately disgusted' by Donald Trump for weeks after the election: court filing (yahoo.com)

If only it were that simple. To begin with Fox, as with other of Murdoch's outlets around the world, is often more concerned with creating the news than reporting it, which is what Tucker Carlson is there for.
Second, the denial of Biden's victory in the election was relentless, made day after day even though the people making such claims never believed it -so the news they were reporting was the bogus news, but not the news that as journalists, they could have investigated. One can assume journalists ask the day-to-day questions of people in public life, to find out what they think, or in events, to find out what happened. None of the journalists investigated claims of vote rigging, they didn't need to because they knew it was rubbish.

Can Fox and Murdoch get away with it again, as Murdoch did over phone hacking in the UK which has cost millions with some cases still in litigation? I am biased and don't think Murdoch is fit to run a business in the Uk, but he seems to do what he wants and get away with it. And he was central to the repeal of the Fair Broadcasting Doctrine in 1987 -but wouldn't this very Doctrine have prevented Fox News from reporting only one side of the story?

[filghy2]

The greatest test for the Murdochs now seems to be whether they can deliver the Republican nomination for De Santis. It's clear they see him as a more reliable vehicle for delivering their policy objectives, but as always they are afraid of alienating the Trump fans in their audience.
https://www.politico.com/news/magazi...oting-00084839

[Stavros]

Given that at the height of his Hacking crisis, Murdoch shut down the News of the World newspaper, is it so far fetched to believe that the Fox News brand is now so tainted -and a financial liability- that Murdoch will just shut it down? He can do as he likes, and he has done so in the past -but is the potential for Fox News to cost more than its worth a good reason?

In the meantime this article exposes what a worthless hypocrite Tucker Carlson is, though probably no surprise to Americans here.

So Tucker Carlson secretly hates Donald Trump … is anybody surprised? | Arwa Mahdawi | The Guardian

[filghy2]

I'd say they were willing to sacrifice down News of the World because they still had other media outlets to advance their political agenda in the UK. There's no such alternative for Fox News. They will want to keep it going as long as it advances their political agenda, and what matters from that perspective is whether it is tainted with the target audience.

I'm not sure how Tucker Carlson's exposure will affect his audience - will they even know about it if they rely on Fox for their info? If your primary criteria for accepting something is whether it fits your prejudices, does it matter whether someone believes their lies or only how effectively they are performed?

[Stavros]

Can Fox be sued for not telling the truth? If it is a News organization, is it not also the case that it can invent the news rather than report it; or report whatever it is that people say because they say it?

One thing that puzzles me is that if a journalist wants to be taken seriously, is it not a basic function to ask a counter question to a politician when he or she says, for example 'policy x is a great success' -not to ridicule or demean the politician, but to obtain through questions more detail as well as being critical?

It would mean that if someone, Y says the Earth is Flat, the journalist would ask for proof and so on. So if Giuliani or Trump says the election was 'rigged', ought not the journalist to ask for proof, and maintain an inquisitive stance?

But there is no law against it; unless by reporting a statement it knows to be false, that causes violence, and an insurrection against the US Congress, as defined by the Constitution. But then I assume there must be a proven link between the report on Fox News and the insurrection.

This aside from the defamation case, a matter in law that I cannot judge.