If there has been one consolation about Fox News’ ongoing subversion of our political discourse — and even of democracy itself — it has been the near-certainty that 93-year-old Rupert Murdoch does not actually have a pact with the Lord of the Underworld and will at some point depart this vale of tears. His rabidly right-wing son Lachlan Murdoch, who Rupe put in charge a few years ago, is outnumbered by three of his siblings, and they reportedly have more moderate views.
Now that is in danger. On Wednesday, The New York Times published a deep dive (free link) into legal steps Murdoch is taking that are aimed at ensuring Lachlan’s continued reign after Rupert himself has departed the scene. Reporters Jim Rutenberg and Jonathan Mahler write that the old man is seeking to rewrite the terms of a trust that specifies four of his many children will share equal control of his media empire:
The trust currently hands control of the family business to the four oldest children when Mr. Murdoch dies. But he is arguing in court that only by empowering Lachlan to run the company without interference from his more politically moderate siblings can he preserve its conservative editorial bent, and thus protect its commercial value for all his heirs.
The toxic effects of a ruling in Rupert’s favor can’t be exaggerated. We in the media like to focus on how Mark Zuckerberg has profited by allowing Facebook to be weaponized by shadowy, malignant forces and how Elon Musk has transformed the cesspool that was Twitter into a far worse place that indulges far-right extremists and conspiracy theorists like, well, himself.
But Fox News is without question the single most influential player on the right, flagrantly promoting lies of omission and commission, including the Big Lie that the 2020 presidential election was somehow stolen from Donald Trump. Fox had to pay a $787 million settlement to the Dominion voting machine company for deliberately lying that Dominion had switched votes from Trump to Joe Biden. But other than firing its biggest star, Tucker Carlson, for reasons that have never been fully explained, Fox has continued on its lying, hate-mongering way.
It’s disheartening to think that this might continue long after Rupert Murdoch’s departure.
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It will always be a mystery to me why FNC agreed to pay that Dominion lawsuit. Here’s why:
1. During discovery, Dominion engineers admitted that “our sh17 is just riddled with bugs” and had found “critical” errors “leading to INCORRECT results.”
https://raheemkassam.substack.com/p/fox-vs-dominion-discovery-docs-show
2. Before the 2020 election, it was the Democrats – including Kamala and our own Liz Warren – who had claimed that voting machines were susceptible to hacking. Why were conservatives punished for saying the *very same thing* that Democrats had said only months earlier?
https://x.com/KanekoaTheGreat/status/1648462770936115202
By the way, CNN has also paid out defamation suits (January 2020, Nicholas Sandmann) and currently faces a $1 billion defamation suit which is ongoing as we speak, although you won’t hear about it on NPR.
https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/nicholas-fondacaro/2024/06/24/cnn-could-be-forced-pay-upwards-1-billion-defamation-suit
Thank you.