True to their tradition of wielding power without responsibility, the Murdochs, pere et fils, have not commented on the sacking of the Capitol by a mob of Donald Trump supporters. Yet this catastrophe could not have occurred without the hatred, division and madness Murdoch’s media have promoted for years within the United States and beyond.
Murdoch knew Trump very well and did not regard him as a serious or suitable person to be president. But he was persuaded he could win and so threw all of the power of Fox News behind him. Until a few weeks ago Fox News’ relationship with Trump was like that of a state-owned broadcaster in a dictatorship: flattering the great leader, supporting his friends, denouncing his enemies, covering up his failures.
Fox News has promoted and exacerbated America’s deep social and racial divisions, supporting Trump’s exploitation of them at every turn.
When COVID-19 arrived, Fox and Murdoch’s other media outlets were in the forefront denying the reality of the virus, questioning social distancing and mask wearing. In other words denying the epidemiology of the virus just as they have denied the physics of global warming.
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And when the election result was clear, Fox was once again in the forefront supporting Trump in his claims of election fraud, undermining Americans’ faith in their electoral system.
America is weaker, sicker and more divided today than it has ever been, probably since the Civil War. America’s adversaries in Beijing and Moscow are delighted, beside themselves with schadenfreude as they see the Confederate flag carried in triumph through the Capitol, congressmen and senators chased through the corridors by a mob sent by the president.
Murdoch did not directly dispatch the mob as Trump did, but his media, more than any other, amplified the narratives of hatred, division and denial that made the mob possible.
I have been with Trump and Murdoch and the power relationship was all too obvious. Trump was deferential, almost obsequious, to Murdoch. In fact when Trump and I first met he wanted Murdoch to join our bilateral discussion. I told him I wouldn’t do that — something Murdoch did not appreciate no doubt.
Russian interference in US politics was designed to foment division between Americans, mostly on racial lines, and to undermine trust in the US electoral system. Those objectives have been achieved, spectacularly, but it’s hard to give the Russians much credit for it. The heavy lifting was done by Americans — Murdoch above all, followed by other right-wing media and of course the craziness on Twitter, Facebook and other social media platforms favoured by the lunatic right, like Parler and Gab.
Many of Murdoch’s employees, such as Paul Kelly, try to explain the extremism on Fox, Sky News or The Australian as being the consequence of the craziness of social media corrupting traditional mainstream media. (See page 480 of my book A Bigger Picture.)
There is some truth in that, but it does not absolve the owners and editors of mainstream media from responsibility for what they have wrought. Mainstream media has to compete with social media for eyeballs and dollars, but it has enormous reach and credibility that a Facebook post or a Twitter thread does not.
Murdoch’s Australian media has evolved into a version of Fox News. Readers don’t need to be reminded of their consistent climate denialism and the way they cover for their political mates and denounce their opponents.
All of us have to accept responsibility for the consequences of our actions — especially if they were foreseeable. The prerogative of the harlot is how Rudyard Kipling described the press barons’ power without responsibility. Pretty tough on harlots I have always thought.
The Murdochs have said they are simply running a business. So the craziness of Fox News is not propaganda, it’s just giving the market what it wants.
That is no defence. When a drug company poisons its customers, it is no defence to say that the poisoning was unintended — that the directors just wanted to boost their earnings.
The time has come to hold powerful people in the media responsible for the damage they have created or enabled. This doesn’t mean newspapers or broadcasters should be censored, but it does mean that the public and media who report the news accurately and fairly should hold the propagandists to account.
It means businesses that advertise with Murdoch should be asked to explain how they justify supporting platforms that have done so much damage to democracy. It means journalists who do their masters’ bidding should be asked to explain how they justify their complicit collaboration with such destructive political propaganda.
When I made these points to Paul Kelly on Q+A recently he responded with “how dare you?”, indignant that I would seek to hold him to account. Well just as we hold politicians to account, it is about time we hold powerful media voices to account.
Freedom of speech must never mean freedom from responsibility.
For more on how Murdoch helped give us Trump, go here.
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You rather spoil a good argument by the gratuitous inclusion of false claims about Russian “interference” in the US election. Their destruction was all their own work.
But he says exactly that in the next sentence, doesn’t he?
That’s always the problem with so many of these “free speachers”. The rights always belong with them but the responsibilities always belong to others.
All true, but unfortunately Malcolm you can’t put all the blame on Murdoch and ignore the great descent of the Liberal-National Co-alition and other conservatives into the hard right swamp, just like the US Republicans. The fact is that anglophone Conservatism with a capital C demanded that the Left face up to the external realities of 1980s globalisation and a less sheltered world (Paul Kelly’s End of Certainty is a classic example). But when the Left did so, the Conservatives ‘couldn’t handle the truth’ of globalisation. Turns out it brought a lot more than a floating dollar, free trade and tariff cuts. It also brought new religions, displaced people, people ‘who weren’t like us’ and who didn’t even know who Bradman was (excruciating for Howard). Then, different forces brought changes in social justice, sexual mores and ideas about the environment. Somewhere around the time of Tampa the Co-alition’s neural system snapped. Howard, Minchin, Abetz and the machine men saw off anybody in the party with a moderate view. The great centrist tradition of the Liberal Party exemplified by politicians like Holt, Peacock, Bolte, Hamer, Steele Hall, Greiner, Chaney, Puplick etc is hardly even known by anyone under 50. Now the party has a proud new tradition: xenophobic except where the labour market is concerned, tribal, passionate about government as an instrument for increasing the interests of mates and punishing enemies, contemptuous of regulators and institutional checks on political power, sneering at the non-economic aspects of life unless it fits into the anzac/footy/surf/church tradition. And yes, locked in a symbiotic embrace with Murdoch. But let’s not be misty eyed about the past – even the centrist Liberals were chummy with the big newspaper owners and editors. The only difference now is that they dance to a piper who has corrupted the whole world’s media. It’s a great headline for our cultural cringe: “Hometown boy makes good in the bigtime’
It’s tacit, Malcolm is targeting a main aorta, Murdoch
Excellent, BrianD. I am old enough to remember all those names and what they stood for. Howard remade the Libs in his very shrivelled soul likeness. Yes, the left accepted globalisation and what it meant, and for us implemented most of it. The Right have never forgiven them, and as you say never accepted all the other changes that came with it. Now they’re like that obnoxious uncle that you only see at Xmas that everyone in the family can’t stand.
The punch line being that by the latish 80s Howard was almost finished. I’m unsure of the dominoes but Peacock got another job for the boys and Howard got PR coaching lessons.
god knows how but I was on Howard’s love letter list. The content was over the top for those days.
I’m sorry, what? When Trump and Turnbull first met, Trump wanted to Murdoch to join the meeting??
I mean I knew this power dynamic was there all along, I just didn’t realise it was so … out in the open
Democracy hasn’t been damaged – in fact democracy has spoken preferring a mildly brain damaged elderly politician with early vascular dementia to a dangerous megalomanic sitting President. The same way as our system in Australia has removed mal functioning leaders without threat to our version of democratic systems. So Trump has been thrown out by relatively small margin when he has achieved what the electorate required of him.
Too logical for this lot Des. With their thumbs down, their only interest is blood. It hasn’t changed in two millennia.
Fair point Desmond in that the systems of democracy still work. However it dismisses the reality that democracies are by degrees largely governing for the rich and the corporates, and in that sense democracy is very much teetering on the edge.