Rupert Murdoch had never had a US president in his pocket before Donald Trump landed there in 2016.
It was the biggest missing piece on his global chessboard. An Australian by birth and a patriotic American citizen for the past 35 years, Murdoch has been grovelled to by almost every Australian and British prime minister for five decades. But until Trump, no president had chosen to follow that sycophantic route.
The only other US leader who dealt with Murdoch, but at a distance, was Ronald Reagan. I watched the dynamic of that relationship during the sharemarket crash of 1987 which sent all stocks, including News Corp, plunging.
Working from his father’s old office alongside mine at The Herald in Melbourne, a deeply agitated Murdoch emerged soon after the crash to tell his senior executives “I’ve spoken to the president” and that he and Reagan had agreed the media’s pivotal responsibility during the crisis was to talk up capitalism. All editors followed suit.
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Now Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch can finally boast they not only influenced, but created an American president.
The only problem is how they achieved this exercise in power: through a “constant drumbeat of stories promoting fear and mistrust, eroding confidence in institutions and our democracy”, as Alex Wagner described it in The Atlantic last October, months before Wednesday’s riot at the Capitol building.
“From a television screen tuned to Fox News,” she wrote, “it’s not all that hard to see the brownshirts on the horizon or the paedophiles in the pizza parlour, whether you’re a self-styled militiaman — or the commander in chief.”
What drove the Murdochs to deploy Fox News as Trumpism’s populist platform, and The Wall Street Journal as its serious mouthpiece? Simple and straightforward: their motive was (and always is) money, not ideology.
Fox News grew its ratings and advertising during the Trump era as it exploited the base instincts of its audience. It’s the same calculating formula News Corp has exploited in London, New York and Sydney for decades. Fox News earns about $2 billion a year in profits (that’s profit, not revenue), making it possibly the most profitable single-brand media business in history.
That the Murdochs made large profits from propagating Trump’s lies and aggressively supporting an anti-democratic charlatan arguably makes their role even worse.
They did it for money, not even for principle.
“Day after day, hour after hour, Fox gave its viewers something that looked like news or commentary but far too often lacked sufficient adherence to a necessary ingredient: truth,” wrote media critic Margaret Sullivan in The Washington Post after the riot. “Birtherism. The caravan invasion. COVID denialism. Rampant election fraud. All of these found a comfortable home at Fox.”
As former US government communications bureaucrat and now a fellow at the Brookings Institution, Blair Levin, told The New Yorker: “Fox’s great insight wasn’t necessarily that there was a great desire for a conservative point of view. The genius was seeing that there’s an attraction to fear-based, anger-based politics that has to do with class and race.”
Now that Trump has imploded, the Murdochs are in damage control. Using an editorial gymnastic device cultivated at The Sun in London known as a “reverse ferret” — a shameless, highly visible 180-degree U-turn executed brazenly after your journalism has been exposed as fakery — they will act as though the years of slavish support for Trump never happened.
The Wall Street Journal led the charge in an editorial last Friday, after four years of unrelenting Trump boosterism, by formally advising the president that “his best path would be to take personal responsibility and resign” and that “this week has probably finished him as a serious political figure”. Whoa.
Most of the company’s big-name commentators in print and broadcast are also executing reverse ferrets with aplomb. Expect the Murdochs to do the same, just as they did after the ignominious phone hacking disasters in the UK, when a doddery Rupert famously declared “this is the most humble day of my life” to a parliamentary inquiry.
Of course, as in any corporate culture, the deception and obfuscation starts at the top.
In an interview at a New York Times investor conference in 2018, Lachlan Murdoch described Fox News as the only mass media company in America “with conservative opinions … frankly, I feel in this country we all have to be more tolerant of each other’s views … we’ve come to this point where we are more and more intolerant of each other, and frankly, that has to change”.
Tolerance? After all the distorted coverage of Trump by Fox News, The Wall Street Journal, New York Post, Sky News Australia and The Australian, none has been detected. Instead the past four years have been quite a contribution to public life, even by Murdoch family values.
For more on how Murdoch helped give us Trump, go here.
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I am rarely disappointed in an edition of Crikey.
Maybe this episode has been led off-track because two politicians are contributing. Maybe Crikey is more passionate about the media industry because Crikey is a publisher.
There was one great truth standing out. Governance works better in Canada and New Zealand than it does in Australia.
But is that because of Murdoch? Sure Fox is (unaccountably) prominent. Sure Fox is biassed. But the way I see it, today’s articles all get the cart before the horse. All Australian major industries are oligopolies. Our big banks are all in the world’s top 50. Our communications industry is dominated by a few. Mining. Retailing. Why is it so, everywhere you look?
Because the political parties have used the donations system as a bagmen to look after their mates. It is not unique to Murdoch and media.
It is rampant corruption, and when Turnbull and Rudd had their opportunities to reform it, they failed. Howard’s gift of $12bn of Australia’s gas to Woodside went unexposed.
Media is not the only corrupted industry.
An excellent depiction of our current mess.
“Too big to fail”?
Let’s give it a red hot go!
Too big to bail? Fingers crossed.
The problem is the oligopolies of which speak – the “big 4” banks, the biggest miners, Coles and Woolworths- are all majority foreign owned, and if they aren’t aligned with the national interest their licences to operate/ do business in this country should be revoked.
As are the mineral extraction megacorps, a sizeable chunk of agriculture (70-90% exported, depending on product), insurance companies now dependent on Munich & Zurich RE (which are trying to get out of the losing game asap) and the “entertainment” industry – just the one.
Did I forget to mention the minor matter of print media?
Doesn’t matter, not as if we are heading to a post literate future.
The reverse ferret on Trump has already occurred in The Australian. Greg Sheridan, after urging a Trump reelection in November as being best for the world and Australia due to his skills, charisma, statesmanlike and world leading diplomacy etc etc, solemnly opined last Saturday that Trump was a danger to Australia, democracy, the world order, the economy etc.
I was going to compare Sheridan to a ferret, but ferrets are likeable in some ways.
And definitely cuter than Sheridan…
As well as far less vicious or cowardly.
When Turnbull got stuck into Sheridan on the ABC, the old papal hack’s startled/outraged expression reminded me of Bacon’s version of Velazquez’s portrait of Pope Innocent X!
Hey Gary I think that was Paul Kelly. On Q&A late last year?
I’ve now checked out Bacon’s Pope Innocent X; yes I’m sure it’s Paul Kelly you mean.
Sheridan had a reasonable reputation, especially on Asian affairs, his speciality. However, he has lost that in recent years by his blind promotion of NewsCorp, LNP or IPA tropes or talking points including Sinophobia, even to criticising/dribbling about Angela Merkel and Pope Francis for their humanity on immigrants and refugees. One wonders what is his view on oldies in aged care, and thier protection, in times of Covid, like Abbott’s?
Sheridan certainly had/has a reputation on Asian matters – last year he was lauding the war on Vietnam as defending democracy and halting Soviet (SIC!) expansionism.
None so blind…
Yeah, I’m far from clear as to what. might serve as evidence for Sheridan’s “expertise” in Asia. Yet he is certainly one to follow a lead be it from a Democrat or a Republican.
I’m reminded of the old HMV record label except that the dog showed more discernment.
Not sure I totally agree with the assessment of this article. The Murdoch ideology is whatever yields them the greatest profit. If they believe that is free-market capitalism, then free-market capitalism is the political ideology they will throw their full weight behind. Ditto if they believe their profit is best served by an authoritarian oligarchy. They clearly reached the decision in favour of an oligarchy four years ago. I doubt they will abandon that belief simply because Trump is no longer president.
What makes the Murdochs so dangerous is that they are seen as part of mainstream media. Many people who would dismiss OANN as fringe nutters will believe every word they hear spouted on Fox or Sky because of their supposed legitimacy.
I believe in freedom of speech and freedom of the press. However; the Murdoch empire is not a member of the press. It is a private propaganda network aimed solely at furthering the best interests of its owners with no consideration for the damage it might do to any other parts of human society. It is a direct threat to democracy and freedom around the world and, through its platforming of climate change denialism, an existential threat to the human race.
It needs to be shut down.
A-bloody-men!
Agreed, its licence to operate/do business can be revoked. Why aren’t Rudd and Turnbull initiating a legal action along these lines?
Thanks for making that quite clear what has murkily seemed obvious
It’s a fantastic piece in a fantastic edition, EC, crammed full of impressive Bylines going head-on after Keith Rupert Murdoch, at long last. Rightly so, if long overdue. Bravo, all. Be gone, Rupe. You were never a journalist. And the game is up on your fifty years of filthy hustling to that effect. Yours is toxic junk information now, matey: not needed or wanted any longer by decent Humanity or civic society.
But forgive me for pointing out this, Crikey. Some of us have been desperately trying to take on Murdoch’s propaganda just like this – head-on, in real time, as it is spewed out – for the entire two decades in which this here contrarian publishing platform ‘Teh Interwebz’ has existed. In my case, in long, messy, unpaid, amateur screeches for Margo Kingston’s SMH Webdiary, way back in 2000. Margo got Murdoch – and for that matter, Trump – decades before any of the ‘professionals’ now lining up to go after his mournful influence so eloquently (and bravo). Recognised that this Information Age/War was actually more of…an epistemological street fight. A bit by bit fight over bit-by-bits of truth. You have to turn over the furniture of the information, get down and dirty into the details of it. Pull the specific lies out of it, and then apart, with forensic care. Fight them, the little lies. Call them out. Correct them. Take them on head on, fudge by fudge, ‘spin’ by ‘spin’, ‘alternative fact’ by ‘alternative fact’. It’s dull, it’s time and space consuming, it’s tedious, endless…and so most legacy meeja just didn’t bother. Still do not. Get swept up in ‘politics’ and ‘epic ishoos’ and big picture leadership intrigue, instead. Largely let slide by, all the little lies…little lies on terrorism, on Iraq, on climate change, on refugees overboard…on elections and vaccines and face-masks.
And if you do go after the little lies – which unlike the Big Lies, can be called out and shown to be lies, grounded as they are in the material world, of fact, numbers, empirical observations, things that we can prove/disprove – it’s only then that the big liars like Murdoch recognize you as a real threat. At once, instinctively, like all bullsh*t-artists do, when you start asking granular questions of material detail that can’t be fudged away. And that’s when they sic their goons onto you, hard and fast and viciously. In these trolling days Ur-Murdochian (Trumpian) character assassination is a commonplace norm, but let’s never forget whence it came. From personal experience I can assure you that today’s online viciousness is, absolutely, a Murdochian invention, and Margo Kingston was a very early victim. She and we were targeted, viciously and repeatedly, by Murdochian thugs like Tim Blair, Piers Akerman, the Sheridans, Bolts, Kennys, Devines. But sometimes the ‘good guys’ had a go, too, when it suited them. It was that oh-so-posh sophisticate Bob Carr who unleashed one of the most vicious Murdochian attacks on Kingston of all – leveraging the Bali bombings and the Canadian prototype alt.right grub Mark Steyn – simply because Margo tripped him up in a presser one day over developer donations – details, details, granular detail and logic that can’t be lied away – and Carr, cornered, wouldn’t back down.
NSW gallery colleagues attacked MK for it, too.
This is all…nearly two decades ago. This is fifteen years before Rupert/Trump’s later incarnation of ‘attack the media’ as the ‘enemy of the people’ arose.
The point? Well, this Murdoch toxicity isn’t new, journalists and journalism, politics and politicians. None of this Rupert shtick is new. None of it sprang up ‘overnight’. Or even only since Teh Don. Overwhelmingly the people writing all these fine anti-Murdoch pieces at long last, in the awful wake of the Trump cleansing implosion (we hope it’s cleansing)…have, until a few days ago, been quite content to ‘live with’ Keith Rupert Murdoch. If not ‘within’ News, if not (often) benefitting from its information largesse…then at least leaving it professionally and vocationally untroubled, as it has thrived and thrived and thrived.
So please admit (at least to yourselves) this much: frogs don’t boil overnight. Big Lies don’t take hold unless the very first little ones are excused. Ignored. Or even just ‘lived with’. When it came to Rupert Murdoch…for three, four, five decades now…most of us…mostly…did. We let the bully be the bully. And that’s solely why he was such a bully.
It’s right to call that bully to account now. But for it to matter and mean anything, we shouldn’t blame Murdoch’s toxic lies alone, for Trump’s toxic-lie-fueled ascent. Lies are only toxic if the world lets them fester, un-challenged as they appear. And that’s what we mostly all did.
Congratulations again, EC and Crikey. A truly fantastic issue, exactly why we all subscribe.
To paraphrase the bloke watching the Hindenburg burn – “oh, the prolixity, the prolixity!”.
Kruddy would approve.
yeah harsh but all too true
Wot razza sed… sighs as another pillar crumbles.
To be fair to Jack, this kind of stuff ought to be introduced about mid way through Yr9 and be complete, with literary and historical references by the end of Yr11. It is never gonna happen for the reasons contained in the piece.
What does pass for social studies and English in Australia would be regarded as indoctrination in Asia.
As to prolixity most of it will be new to some subscribers otherwise there would be no problem.
Ag, Raz, note on my turgid (often appallingly profane) style and prolixity. Have never claimed to be any great writer, certainly not a professional journalist. Jesus, god forbid. I rant, I bluster, I swear appallingly, often I’m very unpleasantly obnoxious, including to specific people, including bylines here. I’m not a very nice or pleasant writer. On Teh Interwebz, at least.
But who could possibly want to be? In these epistemologically violent, mendacious, f***ed up times? One of the primary ways propaganda works is of course by slyly imposing its ‘meta’ form and on everyone it seeks to bully into acquiescence. Over its century plus rise to conversational dominance mass meeja legacy forms and modes – radio, telly, mass print forms – have come to defacto ‘define’ what ‘good’ public writing is and is not, by a kind of consumption reverse engineering. Because the mass meeja model is predicated on vast audiences, you need vast diverse content (something for everyone), which means short piecemeal coverage of everything. This epistemological truncation has accelerated as technology has sped up the production and distribution cycle – it’s now down to 140 characters in instantaneous Tweets, and sub-minute Tik Toks. Naturally the printed press ‘professionals’ who trained us to think inverted pyramid, lede-driven, short par, unattributed-quote peppered ‘punchy’ style = good writing hate the online ‘professionals‘ who are even shorter and snappier, with our tl;dr, our multi-ironic snap refs, our hyperlinks, our cached self-quoting.
And our foul mouths. And also our capacity to write 10,000 word essays, if we choose. And self-publish them. ‘Prolixity’ is all in the eye (ear) of the audience and the ability of the writer’s voice to hold it. The reason I swear so much and write such long comments is because…I can. And I just refuse to automatically buy into the epistemological oppression that is mass meeja form and style. I can write short when I can be bothered. But any writer (in any forum) who thinks that being lullingly polite, prissily succinct and stylistically disciplined is more vital than being technically precise, empirically comprehensive and appropriately urgent in tone, when ‘discussing’ our impending climate change species extinction…is f***ing insane.
Can’t disagree with your points.
I do, but can’t give a good reason why.
True Jack. Got onto this site in late 90s, not long after it started. Have been howling to the moon ever since. Pleasingly I can report that my bleatings have had almost as much effect as the Berlin Cabarets of 1930s and their successful satirising of Nazi Germany. That showed ‘em, what!
As Peter Cook said in Swingin’ 60s London when he started the EYE and Behind the Fridge (as he called it ever afterwards due to a malapropistic cabbie).
Satirists! Satirists! We need more satirists, for the fascists have come, and only the satirists can save us now…
We must face the fact the the people have failed the project and will have to redouble their efforts to ever again regain it. In the meantime a new Demos must be found for the progressive to follow, being clearly ordained leaders.
Why, Hitler was so humiliated by 1939 that he invaded Poland out of enraged spite…