Murdoch, Jr lachlan

---

big tucker booster

ailes got him booted?

also John

see james not denier

---

an 9 25

Rupert Murdoch has succeeded in securing his vision for the future of News Corporation, the global media empire he has always thought of as his family business.

To achieve this, he has torn apart his family. He has also ensured his media outlets, especially Fox News, remain committed to his hard right-wing views.

With hindsight, this deal was inevitable. The 94-year-old mogul had just one remaining job to do as chairman emeritus of News Corp: to ensure that when he dies, the company he built and moulded remains in his image.

This announcement says he has found a way, which may give him some comfort but is profoundly disappointing to anyone who cares about public interest journalism.

There’s no longer any prospect of his children from his first and second marriages, Prudence, Elisabeth and James, who are now known as the “departing beneficiaries”, staging a coup after his death to wrest control from Rupert’s chosen successor and elder son Lachlan, who has headed News Corporation and Fox Corporation since Murdoch stepped aside in 2023.

Lachlan has taken a lesson from Rupert’s dealmaking playbook. He has thrown money at the problem by paying his three siblings more than he had previously offered for their respective shares. According to The New York Times, the three siblings will receive US$1.1 billion (A$1.7 billion) each for all their shares in the company.

Their agreement brings an end to the bitter battle the three siblings fought with their father and brother over the latter’s infamous attempt to revoke a seemingly irrevocable trust created at the end of Murdoch’s longest marriage, of 32 years, to Anna Murdoch (now Anna Maria dePeyster).

She had hated how her husband pitted their children against one another in the battle for succession, so she negotiated an agreement that would give each of the four children from the first two marriages a vote in the family trust. It also ensured Rupert retained enough votes in the trust so he could not be outvoted by his four (voting) children.

When Rupert anointed Lachlan his successor, upsetting the others, speculation was aired that when Rupert died, and his votes with him, the three siblings might oust Lachlan as chief executive and take control of the company. Worse, in Rupert’s eyes, they might change the editorial direction of the company, in particular Fox News.

That is what has changed. The family trust has also been re-engineered with an increased lifespan from 2030 to 2050, and folds in Murdoch’s daughters from his third marriage, to Wendi Deng – Grace and Chloe. This shores up the trust so they can’t sell out and dilute Lachlan’s shareholding.

Under the deal, a new company called Holdco, owned by Lachlan, Grace and Chloe, will own all the remaining shares of News Corp and Fox Corporation that previously had been held by the Murdoch family trust. The departing beneficiaries will sell their personal holdings in News Corp and Fox so none of them has any interest in either business. What’s more, they’ve agreed to a standstill clause that prevents them or their affiliates buying back in.

In 2019 alone, the company News Corporation made a reported US$71 billion (A$107 billion) from the sale of its entertainment assets to Disney. After that sale, the children were each given US$2 billion (just over A$3 billion).

Having already been referred to in the litigation as “white, privileged, multi billionaire trust-fund babies”, the three departing siblings have been made even wealthier by this agreement.

It was announced in a company press release on September 8 with an uncharacteristically sedate headline: “News Corp announces resolution of Murdoch family trust matter”.

It appears the decision to settle was in part driven by signals emanating from the probate court in Reno, which last year ruled in favour of Prudence, Elisabeth and James. Recently, however, the presiding appellate judge, Lynne Jones, appeared supportive of Rupert and Lachlan, saying “Who knows better than Rupert Murdoch the strengths and weaknesses of his family and his children?”

This may have weakened the three children’s bargaining power and forced them to accept some sort of buyout.

James may have contributed to this by granting an interview to The Atlantic which was published in February, in which he was highly critical of his father and gave away inside information from the probate hearings. Rupert and Lachlan’s lawyers pushed for James to be punished, a move that appeared to have support from the Reno court.

Clearly it was wishful thinking to believe Prudence, Elisabeth and James would stage a takeover and restore sensible programming to the Murdoch media. But it remains an irony, in a case replete with them, that it was James’ candid comments in an insightful 13,000-word profile casting much-needed light on a notoriously secretive family, which weakened the three siblings’ bargaining position.

Those comments helped ensure Rupert, and ultimately Lachlan, will be able to continue running their media empire as they see fit. Initially, that will mean little change, which is of course the problem. If News mastheads and Fox News continue as they have, we can look forward to more coverage denying the need to urgently act on climate change, more distortion of important issues and more support for assaults on democracy by the Trump administration. This is the kind of content that prompted James, if not all of the departing beneficiaries, to protest in the first place.

At least now we know the answer to this question: What choice would three multi billionaires make if they were offered another billion dollars each or the opportunity to transform a global media business for the better?

Andrew Dodd, Professor of Journalism, Director of the Centre for Advancing Journalism, The University of Melbourne and Matthew Ricketson, Professor of Communication, Deakin University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Newsweek

https://www.newsweek.com › adl-asks-lachlan-murdoch-cancel-tucker-carlsons-jan-6-documentary-fox-nation-1643696

ADL Asks Lachlan Murdoch to Cancel Tucker Carlson's Jan. 6 ... - Newsweek

In an October 28 letter to Fox Corporation CEO Lachlan Murdoch, Jonathan Greenblatt, the CEO and national director of the ADL, encouraged Murdoch to cancel the show over claims about the insurrection.

===

thom 3

an 9 24 no lnx

this week may well see a court decide the fate and future of Fox “News” and thus the Republican Party, at least in its current hard-right neofascist form. And odds are Fox viewers are blissfully ignorant about the pitched battle that just played out in a Reno courtroom over the future of their beloved propaganda outlet.

Sir Keith Murdoch was the notoriously racist and misogynist owner of a small newspaper chain in Australia. It was inherited by his son, Rupert, who — using sensationalism and bigotry — turned it into a multi-billion-dollar enterprise that spans three continents.

Former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd called Rupert Murdoch “the greatest cancer on the Australian democracy” in the pages of The Sydney Morning Herald, the New York Times of Australia. Noting that Murdoch owns about “two thirds of the country’s print media,” Rudd wrote:

“In Britain, Murdoch made Brexit possible because of the position taken by his papers. In the United States, Murdoch's Fox News is the political echo chamber of the far right, which enabled the Tea Party and then the Trump party to stage a hostile takeover of the Republican Party. In Australia, as in America, Murdoch has campaigned for decades in support of tax cuts for the wealthy, killing action on climate change and destroying anything approximating multiculturalism.”

When Rupert was divorcing his second wife he put most of the family’s businesses into a trust, apparently to prevent her from grabbing a larger share of his wealth. The terms of that trust stipulate that when Rupert dies, his four children — Lachlan, James, Elisabeth, and Prudence — would share equal votes and power over the business dynasty their father had inherited from his father.

But now Rupert — who’s 93 years old — is having second thoughts, because James, Elisabeth, and Prudence are apparently not all that enthusiastic about Fox “News” and other Murdoch media outlets nakedly lying to and whipping up hatred among their viewers and readers, both here, in Australia, and in the UK. Only Lachlan, Rupert’s oldest son, is loyal to his father’s vision of peddling-hate-for-billions-in-profits.

So, Rupert went to court in Reno — the proceedings are sealed, but the case began last week and wrapped up yesterday (although we don’t yet know the result) — to try to break the trust and hand exclusive or primary control of his fiefdom to Lachlan.

Fox “News” viewers have no idea that they’re being constantly lied to, both by commission (like telling them the 2020 election was stolen by voting machines) and by omission. They think they’re seeing the world “as it is” and getting fair and balanced “truth” and “straight talk,” which is why Fox “News” is so potent.

Without Fox “News” there probably never would have been a January 6th coup attempt, and, given how thin their margins were, likely no 2000 Bush or 2016 Trump presidencies.

The stakes here are enormous. Some media observers believe that a major role in Barack Obama’s 2008 victory was Air America broadcasting my program and others to well over two-thirds of America with big stations in 62 major markets. (That ended when Mitt Romney decided to run for president and had his company buy Clear Channel, then flip all of the stations Air America was leasing from them from progressive talk to sports, killing the network in 2010.)

Similarly, the rise of Fox following Reagan fast-tracking Murdoch’s US citizenship has played a huge role in Republican victories across the nation and the solid hold the GOP has on red state America, where Fox and rightwing hate radio predominate.

Activist investors in the Fox media caliphate have tried to force a vote at the upcoming shareholders’ meeting that would require Fox “News” to label their opinion programming — which constitutes most of their programming — as “opinion.” An attorney for the activist shareholder group, Luke Morgan, told US News & World Report:

“There can hardly be a more significant issue for Fox than its misinformation problem. This is precisely the sort of issue that is appropriate for shareholder input.”

Nonetheless, to Murdoch’s great delight, no doubt, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) ruled last week that Fox doesn’t have to start informing its viewers when their talent crosses the line from reporting to indoctrinating.

Weirdly, this drama within an Australian family may well determine the fate and future of the Republican Party and the conservative and MAGA movements in the US. The future of democracy in America.

It’s a real-life Succession drama and may take months to resolve.

Keep an eye on this story. While it’s probably the most under-reported major news story in America right now, the outcome will have far-reaching consequences for all of us.

8 23 lachlan makes excuse?

down 45% in demo, 30% overall?  post tucker?  watters flat out lies on biden $? legal jeopardy?

https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/fox-news-prime-time-ratings-continue-crater-lachlan-murdoch-downplays-collapse

WAIT WHAT?!

mma 4 23

[part amic, no goodbye]

...Carlson has been a singular force driving Fox News’ extremism to new lows, single-handedly introducing the white supremacist “great replacement” conspiracy theory into mainstream American politics and becoming a kingmaker in the Republican Party as a result. A 2022 New York Times investigation found that Carlson “amplified the idea that Democratic politicians and others want to force demographic change through immigration” in more than 400 episodes.

Since the November 2016 launch of his prime-time show, Tucker Carlson Tonight, he has been a hero to hardcore racists and extremists for repeatedly hosting guests with ties to white supremacy and defending the QAnon conspiracy theory. He has also been the vanguard of January 6 conspiracy theories on the network.

As a result of Carlson’s success, Fox Corp. CEO Lachlan Murdoch made him the face of Fox's streaming service. Murdoch backed Carlson every step of the way, repeatedly defending his bigotry and conspiracy theories, even as advertisers fled.

Media Matters has extensively documented Carlson’s extremism, including examples of white supremacist commentary going back to 2004, and he was named Misinformer of the Year in 2022, which included a non-comprehensive research file featuring over 350 examples of his misinformation. In 2019, Media Matters unearthed racist and misogynist comments by Carlson on the shock jock radio program Bubba the Love Sponge. Media Matters’ years of coverage drove a massive advertiser exodus from his program.

Below is just a small sampling of the worst of Carlson on Fox News over the years.

• In September 2017, Carlson claimed that striving for diversity “gets you to civil war.”
• December 2017: Carlson fearmongered that Democrats want “demographic replacement” with a “flood of illegals” to create “a flood of voters for them.”
• In July 2018, Carlson characterized“hate speech” as “a made-up category designed to gut the First Amendment and shut you up.”
• In September 2018, Carlson said America “was a better country” when it was less diverse.
• Carlson warned his audience about threats of white “genocide” in October 2018.
• In December 2018, Carlson said immigration makes America “poorer, and dirtier, and more divided.” He subsequently doubled down on the comments, even as advertisers began to flee his program.
• Carlson has repeatedly defended Infowars’ Alex Jones. Carlson was a guest on Infowars in 2015, when he claimed then-President Barack Obama was pushing “Nazi” racial politics, and the former Fox host also sourced stories on Tucker Carlson Tonight from the conspiracy theory network.
• In December 2019, Carlson labeled children separated from their parents at the border as “people who have no right to be here.”

• After the murder of George Floyd, Carlson’s coverage of protests and victims of police brutality hit a new low. In June 2020, he said it’s a “good question” to ask why he is “required to be upset about” Floyd’s death at the hands of a police officer. Two days later, Carlson dedicated his opening monologue to showing photos of unarmed Black people killed by police and smearing them to justify their deaths.
• On June 4, 2020, Carlson and his guest agreed the time for “vigilante justice” against protesters is near. He also told his audience that Black Lives Matter protests are “definitely not about Black lives. And remember that when they come for you.” Carlson lost nine major advertisers as a result of his commentary.
• In January 2021, Carlson warned his audience they could be thetarget of a “war on white supremacists.”
• The following month, Carlson claimed President Joe Biden would release MS-13 gang members “into your neighborhood.”
• September 2021: Carlson describedBiden’s immigration policy as “the great replacement” and “eugenics.”
• In January, Carlson accused Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX) of “blood libel” against white people.
• In March, Media Matters reported that texts revealed in Dominion Voting Systems’ defamation suit against Fox News showed Carlson had shared a column a Holocaust denier had written for a white nationalist website.

https://www.mediamatters.org/amazon/influencers-and-right-wing-figures-are-promoting-crypto-gambling-and-sports-betting-young

no lnx tet

mma 5 23

right-wing influencer and Andrew Tate fanboy Adin Ross sits behind his computer and streams brightly colored slot games, blackjack, and roulette to his audience of loyal fans. Ross has blown through gargantuan sums of money while gambling on his livestreams and has won big jackpots.

“You have like tons of different emotions throughout your whole entire body,” Ross said about the euphoria of online gambling during an interview. “It’s just dopamine release.”

If Ross’ audience members are interested in following in his footsteps, he is setting them up to fail.

Ross is an example of influencers and right-wing figures who are promoting crypto gambling and sports betting ventures to their young audiences. Many of these figures, including Ross, have landed major sponsorship deals with gambling companies and are sometimes given house money to gamble with, removing the actual risk associated with online gambling.

Influencers are promoting these games to young viewers as gambling addiction rises among adolescents and horror stories about streamers and followers draining their bank accounts are popping up across the internet.

Meanwhile, a number of streamers have enormous and devoted followings across social media, and the lucrative industry is constantly evolving. Teens and young adults in particular have a fondness for watching livestreamers. According to a report in Wired, 21% of the users on Amazon-owned streaming platform Twitch are between 13 and 17 years old. 

Twitch has had a complicated relationship with gambling and casino streamers on its platform and has placed limits on the kind of gambling that is allowed. Some influencers have spoken out about the unrealistic expectations that gambling streamers create for their fan bases.

Influencers promoting gambling and betting companies

High-profile streamers, influencers, and celebrities have aligned themselves with gaming organizations like Stake, a crypto gambling and sports betting website. These figures share videos and pictures of themselves using Stake, gamble while livestreaming, promote the website, and sometimes share gambling earnings on social media.

For instance, rapper Drake has become an official partner of Stake, and the site has sponsored a handful of other influencers.

One of the most high-profile Stake-sponsored streamers is Ross, who has a “huge, dedicated fanbase” and exclusively streams on Twitch rival Kick. Kick is a new streaming platform that is reportedly backed by Stake and is a safe haven for white nationalist-linked content creators. The website features various gambling categories that viewers can join and watch streamers play.

On Kick, Ross labels some livestreams with “#AD,” appearing to indicate that the gambling he is doing on his stream is part of a sponsorship deal. At one point, Ross was reportedly making nearly $1 million a week from his Stake sponsorship.

Adin Ross Kick gambling

CitationScreenshot from Adin Ross' Kick profile

An 11-year-old Ross fan reportedly admitted to gambling on Stake after watching Ross’ streams.

Ross has publicly acknowledged that young kids watch his gambling streams and that past projects he has sponsored have been scams.

“By the way, that MILF token shit that I did a while back, I already told you guys, don't buy that shit,” Ross said during a livestream about a past crypto project he promoted. “I got paid a bag to do that shit. Like, I don't give a fuck. I hope none of you guys actually bought it."

During an interview on the H3 Podcast, Ross was told about the potential harms that could come from promoting crypto gambling.

“I’m learning a lot, bro,” Ross said after hearing about the potential harms gambling can have on his audience. “I’m honestly overwhelmed right now in my life. Because it’s just — it’s so new to me.”

“You make me rethink about it now, bro. …. It’s just something I — that just doesn’t click right for me,” Ross later added.

But following this interview, Ross did not stop working with Stake and airing gambling streams.

Video

CitationFrom the July 20, 2021, edition of H3 Podcast

Some of Ross’ sponsored streams are bombarded with racist and antisemitic comments, which could also have a negative impact on young viewers.

Ross recently sat down with UFC president and Trump superfan Dana White for an in-person gambling event. Following their meeting, Ross claimed that White hopes to connect Ross with Trump for a stream closer to the 2024 election. (White’s UFC also has an official partnership with Stake as well.)

Jake Paul, a right-wing influencer and professional fighter who has a massive following on social media including many young fans, co-founded Betr, a “microbetting-focused gaming company” that allows users to make monetary bets on specific plays or events, rather than betting on a team losing or winning a game. Paul appears to be hoping that the instant gratification of making money on small bets drives his young audience to Betr. Additionally, Paul has previously been accused of promoting gambling to kids.

Betr also appears to be targeting users on social media platforms that are frequented by young people, including TikTok and Instagram. The company has large followings on both platforms.

Other right-leaning influencers, including professional poker player Dan Bilzerian and gambling streamer Trainwreck (real name Tyler Niknam), have worked as sponsors for gambling companies in the past.

Major media companies are getting in on the sports betting action

Other outlets and platforms in the right-wing media ecosystem have aligned themselves with the gambling and sports betting industry.

Fox Corp., the parent company of Fox News and Fox Sports, is associated with Fox Bet, a mobile app and website that allows users to make monetary bets on professional sport competitions and play casino games. 

Fox Corp. CEO Lachlan Murdoch has boasted about Fox’s foray into the sports betting world, describing the venture as “a huge opportunity” for Fox Sports’ portfolio.

And in 2021, Fox acquired right-wing sports website Outkick, which includes sports wagering and betting infrastructure. During a 2021 quarterly meeting with investors, Murdoch celebrated Outkick as an outlet that “will deepen our investment in the sports wagering ecosystem.”

The right-leaning media company Barstool Sports, founded by misogynist Dave Portnoy, operates Barstool Sportsbook, a sports betting platform and mobile app that is associated with Hollywood Casino.

Adolescent gambling addiction on the rise

Reports indicate that gambling addictions are increasing among teens and children, and experts are sounding the alarm.

The legal age to gamble in the United States is 18 or 21 years old depending on the state. This has not stopped influencers and gambling and sports betting companies from promoting their products and games to adolescents.

The earlier kids are exposed to gambling, the more likely they are to become addicted to the practice, according to a gambling treatment organization. Gambling addiction has the potential to “completely derail a person’s life,” cause mental health complications, and become a “gateway drug” to other adrenaline-inducing and potentially dangerous activities like drug use.

According to research from the International Centre for Youth Gambling Problems and High-Risk Behaviors, 4% to 6% of high school students are addicted to gambling. Compared to the 1% of adults addicted to the activity, this is a worrisome trend.

Researchers point to adolescents' underdeveloped brain functioning and emotionally driven decision making to understand why teens and children fall victim to gambling addiction.

Some sports betting and gambling groups have been fined for targeting their offerings to people under the legal gambling age.

While speaking with ABC News, Gary Schneider, a national board member of Stop Predatory Gambling, explained that these companies are targeting young users. “They want the next generation. They label it gaming,” Schneider said. “It's really gambling."

https://www.mediamatters.org/foxdominion-lawsuit/lachlan-murdoch-sheepishly-denies-what-crystal-clear-fox-knew-it-was-spreading

rupert and lachlan approve big lie bs to recover from az call vs oan newsmax

dominion discovery --> mma 3 23

The recently released legal filing in Dominion Voting Systems’ $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News shows the extent to which multiple Fox executives and anchors knew that the network was pushing lies about the 2020 presidential election results on air. The filing also contains a startling statement by Fox Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch: that Fox News executives who knowingly allowed lies to be broadcast should potentially be fired. From the filing (emphasis in original):

Q. What should the consequences be when Fox News executives knowingly allow lies to be broadcast? A.  They should be reprimanded – They should be reprimanded, maybe got rid of.Rupert Murdoch, Chairman, Fox Corporation.

The filings also show the extent to which Fox executives knowingly spread the conspiracy theory that Dominion Voting Systems had rigged the election at least in part in order to keep up with its far-right media competitors. These decisions now leave multiple Fox executives implicated as potentially worthy of firing, according to Rupert Murdoch’s own declared standard.

Rupert Murdoch

First off, and most obvious, is Rupert Murdoch himself. As chairman of the Fox Corp., Murdoch could have intervened at any time and stopped the hosts and guests featured on his network from spreading lies about the 2020 election, a fact that he bluntly admitted under questioning by Dominion’s lawyers. From the filing:

Q. And you could have said to Suzanne Scott or to the hosts, “Stop putting Rudy Giuliani on the air”?

A. I could have. But I didn't.

Furthermore, Murdoch did nothing about the entreaties by Fox board member Paul Ryan, a former Republican speaker of the House, who argued according to the filing “that Fox News should not be spreading conspiracy theories.”

Murdoch did, however, take direct action to get rid of a Fox executive who told the truth. On November 20, 2020, Murdoch personally signed off on firing vice president and Washington managing editor Bill Sammon, who had been involved in the network’s projection that President Joe Biden had won Arizona, which assured Biden his Electoral College victory. “Maybe best to let Bill go right away,” Murdoch said, per the filing, adding that this move would “be a big message with Trump people.”

Lachlan Murdoch

Rupert Murdoch’s son and Fox Corp. CEO Lachlan Murdoch is also clearly guilty under the standard that his father enunciated, as he helped tailor the network’s messaging to help promote lies about the election. As just one example,Lachlan instructed the network to give positive coverage to a “Stop the Steal” rally on November 14, 2020,which served as a prelude to the January 6 insurrection, and to brand the violent and far-right event as a “celebration of the president.”

The Dominion filing further alleges that in addition to Lachlan’s close interactions with his other key executives, “specific evidence shows he attended the November 13 afternoon editorial meeting” that preceded an episode ofLou Dobbs Tonight that featured disgraced Trump-allied attorney Sidney Powell.The then-Fox Business host Lou Dobbs repeatedly called Powell a “great American,” while she claimed that Dominion had been “created to produce altered voting results in Venezuela for Hugo Chavez, and then shipped internationally to manipulate votes for purchase in other countries, including this one.”

Suzanne Scott

Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott also played a clear role in spreading lies and suppressing the truth on the network. Under questioning, Scott affirmed that she had always believed, since at least when the network itself had called Arizona and thus the election on November 7, 2020, that in fact Biden had won legitimately.

And yet on multiple occasions, Scott reprimanded on-air talent who called out the lies and conspiracy theories. Examples include her involvement with Lachlan Murdoch in reprimanding then-anchor Leland Vittert’s coverage of the November 14 “Stop the Steal” rally, as well as her reported “screaming” about negative coverage by anchor Dana Perino and then-Fox reporter Kristen Fisher of the infamous November 19 press conference by Trump attorneys and election conspiracy theorists Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell. “The audience feels like we crapped on [them] and we have damaged their trust and belief in us….We can fix this but we cannot smirk at our viewers any longer,” Scott said at the time.

The filing also reveals that Scott worked personally to preserve the network’s relationship with right-wing billionaire conspiracy theoristMike Lindell, CEO of MyPillow, assisting him in spreading dangerous lies about the election and Dominion Voting Systems. In mid-December, after Lindell publicly claimed that Fox was supposedly “in on” stealing the election, the filing details that Scott sent a personal note and a gift to Lindell. She further suggested that shows should book Lindell in order to “get ratings.” (Rupert Murdoch himself admitted that Fox went out of its way to preserve its relationship with Lindell, one of the network’s largest advertisers, to shore up its profits.)

When the network later hosted Lindell on the January 26, 2021, edition of Tucker Carlson Tonight, the star prime-time host depicted his network’s top advertiser as a champion of free speech, rather than challenging him on his false claims about the election or his apparent effort to urge Trump to impose martial law.

Viet Dinh

Fox Corp. chief legal and policy officer Viet Dinh also admitted during his testimony that Fox executives had a duty to “prevent and correct” falsehoods.

Q. But when the executives at Fox News know that hosts of shows are broadcasting allegations that the executives know or believe to be false, in that situation, the executives have an obligation to act, right?

A. If they are within the chain of command and if they -- and if they come to that knowledge, yes.

Q. And by “act,” that means to put a stop to it, right?

Q. They have an obligation under those circumstances, the executives do, in the chain of command, to put a stop to those broadcasts, right, sir?

A. Yes, to prevent and correct known falsehoods.

Dinh confirmed under questioning that he had “pretty easily” been able to look up and debunk the claim that Dominion was owned by a Venezuelan company and founded in order to rig elections for the late dictator Hugo Chavez. But the filing suggests Dinh failed to require Fox News hosts and guests to debunk such easily discredited lies. On the contrary, the network aired that bogus claim over and over again.

Raj Shah

Fox Senior Vice President Raj Shahsent numerous internal communications about the damage to Fox’s reputation among conservative viewers, including the supposed “brand threat” posed by Fox figures who openly debunked Trump’s fake claims of mass election fraud. On November 13, he sent a “Brand Protection Unit Roundup” to Lachlan Murdoch, Dinh, and Scott, stating there was “strong conservative and viewer backlash to Fox that we are working to track and mitigate.” He further explained that “[p]ositive impressions of Fox News among our viewers dropped precipitously after Election Day to the lowest levels we’ve ever seen.”

In order to mitigate this damage, at one point he pitched the idea of “some sort of public mea culpa for the AZ call,” or “some programming that’s focused on hearing our viewers grievances about how we’ve handled the election.” In other words, Shah wanted the network to apologize for actually broadcasting a truthful story.

In another instance, when host Tucker Carlson briefly feuded with Sidney Powell, Shah instructed a producer for Carlson’s show to downplay the extent of her ludicrous claims. At the same time as Shah described Powell’s claims as “so fucking insane,” he also advised Carlson’s team to “pivot to being deferential.”

Shah suggested the phrasing “we hope she is able to provide the evidence in court and we’ll bring it to viewers when they do” — even though he knew no such evidence existed or could ever be offered in court. In another message just the next day, Shah described Powell’s claims as “MIND BLOWINGLY NUTS.”

Jay Wallace

Fox News President and Executive Editor Jay Wallace is also responsible for his inaction on the network’s continued lies about the election, even as a Dominion consultant repeatedly :{reached out to him personall:(style="background-color:#ffff66;"):}:y (citations removed):

The day before the WSJ editorial and article appeared—November 16— Dominion’s Communications Consultant Tony Fratto, former Deputy White House Press Secretary under President George W. Bush, personally brought the false allegations to the attention of the two top executives at FNN—Scott and Wallace— telling them that Dominion, “as you know, has received a great deal of attention on FoxNews [sic] and from the President. An enormous amount of misinformation -- actually, completely and verifiable wrong information—is finding its way on-air.” Fratto offered to provide the two of them a briefing about Dominion and concluded: “I think this situation is crossing dangerous lines.” Scott responded asking Wallace to provide his thoughts, and Wallace and Fratto then spoke over the phone. When Lou Dobbs again broadcast lies about Dominion that very night, Fratto reached out again to Wallace. He forwarded part of the transcript to Wallace and told him: “More fucking out [and out] lies. Honestly. He is a disgrace.”

Irena Briganti

Irena Briganti, Fox News senior executive vice president of corporate communications, also presided over the network’s continued inaction, even as it was clearly brought to her attention via a press inquiry (citations removed):

On December 1, a reporter with The Washington Post emailed FNN stating that Powell had appeared on both Dobbs and Hannity’s programs the day before making claims of voting machine fraud. The reporter asked,

[D]oes Fox News Media management have any concerns about the veracity of the claims that Powell has been making on network shows? Is Sidney Powell welcome to appear on any Fox News Media show? Has Fox News Media encouraged show hosts to fact-check claims about voter fraud?

Irena Briganti forwarded the inquiry to Scott and Wallace, stating “FYI—we spoke with Lauren [Petterson] and Meade [Cooper] and there’s nothing to combat this, so we are not responding.”

David Clark

David Clark, senior vice president for weekend news and programming, was directly responsible for Fox host Maria Bartiromo’s Sunday Morning Futuresprogram, in which she hosted Giuliani and Powell. The filing reveals that he also agreed with the statement that there was “no credible evidence of massive cheating or fraud,” and yet he allowed her to continue spreading conspiracy theories by hosting figures such as Powell and Giuliani, and to not push back on them. Interestingly, the Dominion filing notes the ways in which Clark took active steps to temporarily rein in Fox host Jeanine Pirro, but he seemingly failed to do so with Bartiromo.

Fox Business executives

Fox Business executives Lauren PettersonandGary Schreier spoke of using Fox Business shows to grab viewers who were going away from Fox News proper, by supporting the election lies. (They just couldn’t be as open about it, compared to Fox’s far-right competition at Newsmax.) From the filing (citations removed):

The night of November 7, after Fox called the election, Fox Business Network (“FBN”) President Lauren Petterson wrote FBN executive Gary Schreier that she had turned off Fox’s coverage: “I don’t know how we work here. Honestly. We are going to look back at this week and know this was when we lost a significant part of our audience who won’t come back. As soon as Facebook starts telling people to go to [N]ewsmax.” But Schreier and Petterson saw an opening: “You know though between us. This is a problem for the channel yes. But if we keep doing what we do, fbn will get a bunch of the disenfranchised folks too.” Petterson responded: “100 percent. I was talking about exactly that with my husband last night.It’s actually an opening for us.” Schreier: “Yes. We just can’t play for it openly like newsmax and oan.”

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A new court filing in connection with Dominion Voting Systems' lawsuit has revealed on Fox News analyst was lambasted and ousted for his “smug” coverage that was described as being consistently too “anti-Trump.”

According to Mediaite, the incriminating behind-the-scenes remarks madeby former Fox News anchor Leland Vittert are now coming to light.

At the time, Vittert became a target of criticism for his coverage following the 2020 presidential election as former President Donald Trump continued to spin conspiracy theories to explain his election loss.

READ MORE: 'Shockingly reckless': Fox News hosts spread Donald Trump’s election claims knowing they were 'total BS'

Per Mediaite:

One section details the way then-Fox anchor Leland Vittert — who has since moved on to an anchor role at NewsNation— was targeted for criticism in a pipeline that went from Fox Corp CEO Lachlan Murdoch to Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott right to the control room because his 'anti-Trump' coverage was deemed 'smug and condescending.'

Excerpts from the filing have also been highlighted:

... Lachlan continued to advise on how Fox should cover the news related to the 2020 Presidential Election. For instance, he told Scott on November 14 during Fox’s coverage of a rally in support of Donald Trump that 'News guys have to be careful how they cover this rally. So far some of the side comments are slightly anti, and they shouldn’t be. The narrative should be this is a huge celebration of the 25 president.' Ex.627; see Ex.130, L.Murdoch 116:4-119:11.

The excerpt also noted: "Scott responded: 'Yes thanks'; and when Lachlan then criticized Leland Vittert’s coverage as '[s]mug and obnoxious,' Scott said she was 'calling now' to direct Vittert’s producer to fix the issue. Ex.627; Ex.130, L.Murdoch, 122:1-15. And indeed she did. Executive David Clark reported: 'Also got called by Jay who heard from SS that Leland was being smug and condescending. I texted him and told him to cut it out and DC EP spoke to him.' Ex.628."

READ MORE: Donald Trump accuses Fox News of hiding poll showing him 'crushing' Ron 'DeSanctimonious'

"Lachlan even gave his input on the chyron that appeared at the bottom of broadcasts, telling Scott that 'the ticker at bottom of screen is all wrong. Way too wordy and long. And anti trump whenever possible.' Ex.629," it also reads.

Responding to the latest filing, a public relations representative for Fox News released a statement addressing the situation.

"Dominion’s lawsuit has always been more about what will generate headlines than what can withstand legal and factual scrutiny, as illustrated by them now being forced to slash their fanciful damages demand by more than half a billion dollars after their own expert debunked its implausible claims," the statement reads. "Their summary judgment motion took an extreme, unsupported view of defamation law that would prevent journalists from basic reporting and their efforts to publicly smear FOX for covering and commenting on allegations by a sitting President of the United States should be recognized for what it is: a blatant violation of the First Amendment."

READ MORE: Watch: Mike Pence tells Fox News that prosecuting Donald Trump would be 'terribly divisive for the country'

https://www.vice.com/en/article/n7byqw/rupert-murdoch-climate-change-fox-news-news-corp

vice no lnx

Rupert Murdoch Has Known We’ve Been in a Climate Emergency Since 2006, Documents Show

Murdoch’s News Corp has spent the past 15 years mitigating its own climate risk while giving media outlets like Fox News carte blanche to deny climate change altogether.

By Geoff Dembicki

September 23, 2021

When Kevin Rudd was prime minister of Australia, he lived in fear of Rupert Murdoch. The Labor Party leader came to power in 2007 promising to address the climate emergency, but attacks from Murdoch-owned outlets were relentless to the point where Rudd said he’d “wake up every morning and wonder how they would seek to crucify us that day, with rusty nails.”

Papers such as the Australian, the country’s equivalent of the New York Times, ran high-profile pieces attacking Rudd’s Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, an attempt to force companies to pay for the climate-warming carbon they release into the atmosphere, including a front-page story about an industry report claiming the policy would cost 23,000 resource sector jobs. And it worked: Australian Parliament eventually voted against Rudd’s carbon-reduction effort, his public opinion rating tanked, his own Labor Party led a coup against him, and he resigned in 2010. 

“If there was no Murdoch media here, or if, say, they only owned half the media instead of two-thirds of the media,” Rudd told VICE News, “we would have a carbon price today.”

What few people knew during all this is that the parent company of these Australian news outlets, Murdoch’s News Corporation, actually thought carbon pricing was a good idea. News Corp has meticulously documented its own carbon footprint since 2006 and sought to “take a leadership role on the issue of climate change” by reducing it, according to hundreds of pages of publicly available documents reviewed by VICE News.

Even as Murdoch-owned outlets tore down Rudd in 2010, News Corp was advocating “market-based mechanisms to support carbon reductions” in the U.S. and other places. This is according to documents submitted to the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), a nonprofit group that has for two decades catalogued and rated environmental reporting from more than 300 companies including Apple, Coca-Cola, and Ford Motors.

No one forced News Corp to make disclosures to the CDP, which the group publishes in a database on its website. And far from altruism, News Corp’s disclosures are cast as corporate self-interest. In 2010, for example, a filing explained that doing so would give the company “valuable expertise when responding to mandated reporting requirements” under a potential carbon pricing system, should any country implement one.

News Corp also modeled the potential financial damage it faced due to extreme weather, wildfires, and other physical dangers intensified by climate change. “The company believes it is in a better position than others to mitigate those risks,” the documents read.

News Corp has submitted yearly reports on its environmental progress to CDP since 2006, often receiving “A” grades for its efforts from the organization. Ateli Iyalla, North American managing director of the CDP, said News Corp’s disclosures place it among the world’s more responsible media corporations. “They have a strong understanding of climate issues and climate risk,” he told VICE News.

VICE News reviewed more than a decade’s worth of those submissions, and the documents show a company that’s taking steps to protect its operations and thousands of employees from a climate emergency it knows is getting worse, while giving a massive media platform to people who say the emergency isn’t real.

The documents show that News Corp privately acknowledged climate change is making hurricanes worse, even as a Wall Street Journal Europe editorial writer claimed in 2012 that “‘climate change’ shouldn’t be blamed for Hurricane Sandy.” The company in 2019 briefed employees on the dangers they could face from Australia’s “climate-related” bushfires as the Australian ran an editorial saying, “Experts keep telling us there is no direct link between climate change and bushfires; we know many fires are lit by arsonists.”

Murdoch’s company in its 2020 disclosure cited severe droughts in California that lead to wildfires as a potential example of the “physical aspects of climate change.” But his top-rated Fox News host, Tucker Carlson, attacked Democrats for “insisting without evidence that climate change is causing California wildfires.”

[News

Trump and Fox News Are Ripping Off Australia's Climate Denial Playbook

GEOFF DEMBICKI

09.16.20 ]

In its 2020 disclosure to CDP, News Corp said it carefully evaluates the risk of sea-level rise and flooding when deciding to acquire new facilities. That disclosure states that “members of the board are periodically updated” about the company’s sustainability initiatives and the risks it faces from climate disasters. The board of directors includes Murdoch himself. It also includes his eldest son, Lachlan, who is co-chairman of News Corp as well as CEO of Fox Corporation, the current corporate owner of Fox News. Meanwhile, one of Fox News’ rising stars, Greg Gutfeld, said this May the climate crisis “does not exist.”

VICE News presented a detailed list of questions asking about these events to News Corp, Fox News, Dow Jones (which publishes the Wall Street Journal), Fox Corporation, and the Australian, but none of these outlets and companies responded.

“If there’s a buck to be made, he’ll make a buck.”

Taking serious measures to reduce corporate emissions while spreading climate denial might seem like a huge contradiction. But there may be a simple, coherent strategy at work. Murdoch is saving tens of millions of dollars due to the green initiatives, and at the same time earning record profits by feeding his global audience rage-inducing content attacking “out-of-control” liberals and downplaying the crisis.

“If there’s a buck to be made,” Rudd said of Murdoch, “he’ll make a buck.”

Rupert Murdoch, now 90, seemed to abruptly decide in 2006 that the climate emergency was real.“Until recently, I was somewhat wary of the warming debate,” he said that year during a speech in Tokyo outlining political and economic challenges facing Asia and the world in the decades to come. But he had become convinced that “the planet deserves the benefit of the doubt.” Murdoch had also made a financial calculation. “Being environmentally sound is not sentimentality,” he said. “It is a sound business strategy.”

The following year, Murdoch held an event in midtown Manhattan that was webcast to all News Corp employees. The company would be launching a Global Energy Initiative, he said, whereby it would use renewable energy and energy efficiency to become carbon-neutral by 2010. Murdoch wanted to shrink his audience’s emissions, too.

“We can set an example, and we can reach our audiences. Our audience’s carbon footprint is 10,000 times bigger than ours. That’s the carbon footprint we want to conquer,” he said. News Corp’s vast array of newspapers, TV stations, and movie studios could make the case for aggressive environmental change. “The challenge is to revolutionize the message. For too long, the threats of climate change have been presented as doom and gloom—because the consequences are so serious,” Murdoch explained.

He wanted to make the issue “dramatic, make it vivid, even sometimes make it fun. We want to inspire people to change their behavior.”

Some of News Corp’s papers seemed eager to follow their boss’s lead. “Go green with the Sun,” declared a weeklong series in 2006 on eco-friendly living run by the London-based media outlet,which had previously run stories skeptical of climate change. Australia’s Daily Telegraph that same year published multiple editorials criticizing the government for not taking climate change seriously enough. The New York Post during this period ran articles promoting New York’s Go Green Expo.

[News Fox News Totally Lost It Over Biden’s Vaccine Mandate

PAUL BLEST 09.10.21 ]

This was an era when awareness of climate change was reaching unprecedented highs, and even prominent Republicans like Sen. John McCain of Arizona were calling for a price on carbon. But there may have been a personal reason for Murdoch’s newfound enthusiasm. “The primary mover behind it was James—Murdoch’s son,” said David Folkenflik, NPR media correspondent and author of Murdoch’s World, echoing an argument that other observers of the family have made. James at the time was chief executive of British Sky Broadcasting. “I don’t think it happens without him,” Folkenflik said.

(James Murdoch has an ownership stake in VICE Media Group through his holding company, Lupa Systems.) “James is traveling and not participating in interviews right now,” spokesperson Juleanna Glover wrote to VICE News.

During this period, Lachlan Murdochwas distancing himself from the company due to personal feuds with company executives in which Rupert sided against him. That gave James, a political moderate whose wife, Kathryn, was becoming increasingly involved in climate issues, more influence over his father, Folkenflik said. In 2006, James helped arrange to have Al Gore present his film An Inconvenient Truth at a five-day gathering of News Corp executives and employees entitled “Imagining the Future” at the Pebble Beach resort in California. 

But even at that early stage, tensions were visible. After the screening, Andrew Bolt, then a columnist for News Corp’s Herald Sun paper in Australia who frequently questions the science of climate change, got up to speak, according to an account in the Bulletin:

“Bolt opened his comments by congratulating Gore on his performance, then began to attack claims made by Gore in his film. Soon, according to one onlooker, the pair were involved in ‘a full-on barney.’ Gore ended up shouting at Bolt. ‘It was brilliant,’ says one onlooker. ‘Embarrassing,’ recalls another.”

In an email to VICE News, Bolt said, “I most certainly did not congratulate him on feeding the audience fake news.” He went on, “Nor was there a ‘full-on barney.’ I calmly and politely asked him to explain three misrepresentations in his presentation, and he then went red and started shouting. This is more properly described as a meltdown.”

Editors at the Australian were apparently not in agreement with Murdoch’s climate ambitions either. Asa Wahlquist, a former environmental reporter at the paper, said during an academic conference in 2010 that she had frequent fights with editors over her climate change coverage, calling it “torture” and “unbearable.” The paper’s then-editor-in-chief Chris Mitchell said at that time that “any reading of the (Australian’s) editorials on climate change would make it clear that for several years the paper has accepted man-made climate change as fact.”

In the U.S., however, Murdoch was confident he could get Fox News anchors such as Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly interested in doing more climate coverage. “Probably Sean’s first reaction will be that this is some liberal cause or something, you know? But he’s a very reasonable, very intelligent man,” Murdoch said in 2007 in a rare sit-down interview with the environmental media outlet Grist. “He’ll see, he’ll understand it. As will Bill—he just likes to get debate going between people. And that has its benefits—someone says, ‘No there isn’t,’ someone says, ‘Yes there is,’ and they have it out for 10 minutes and it’s entertaining and creates more consciousness.”

Around this time, as Murdoch’s World recounts, Fox Studios created a public service announcement featuring the head of Fox News, Roger Ailes, as well as Kiefer Sutherland, star of the studio’s hit show 24. But while Sutherland proclaimed that “global warming is a crime for which we are all guilty,” Ailes’ contribution was much more muted. “I was very clear,” he says in the video, “that energy was gonna be one of the things that was going to determine leadership for countries in the future.”

“Ailes’ line is fascinating,” Folkenflik said. “He came up with something that sounded supportive but committed him to nothing. The real question is, what was Murdoch committing himself to?”

By some measures, News Corp was doing a lot. “The company has made 24 the first major television production to be carbon-neutral, helped to pioneer the use of lighter-weight eco-friendly DVD cases in the home entertainment industry, launched a global tree planting campaign tied to the DVD release of the film Avatar, built the world’s largest and most energy-efficient print plant in the U.K., commissioned a study on the most effective way to communicate to the public on climate change policy, and committed to build the largest commercial solar PV installation at a single site in the U.S.,” reads its 2010 filing to CDP.

“These are just a few examples of ways in which the company is taking action on the issue of climate change,” it explained, “and avoiding the risks faced by those companies that are slow to do the same.”

But viewers of Fox News were receiving a much different message. President Barack Obama’s election in 2008 caused a backlash among grassroots conservatives, culminating in the far-right Tea Party movement, many of whose adherents were hardcore climate change deniers. One of the movement’s targets was a major piece of U.S. carbon-pricing legislation proposed by Democrats called cap and trade. “Stopping cap and trade is a key priority for the Tea Party activists,” reads a 2010 Fox News opinion piece, referring to legislation somewhat similar to what Prime Minister Rudd had proposed in Australia.

Several months later, with Republicans and some conservative Democrats declining to support the policy, cap and trade died in the Senate.

Fox News hosts like Hannity, Glenn Beck, and Neil Cavuto cheered the Tea Party movement on, in some cases broadcasting live from Tea Party events and encouraging viewers to join the protests. This was much different than the approach to coverage taken by outlets like CNN and the New York Times. “The mainstream media hates the Tea Party,” claimed Fox News VP of News Bill Sammon in 2010.

Around that time, Sammon sent an email to Fox News staffers telling them to stress scientific uncertainty in the network’s coverage of climate change. “Given the controversy over the veracity of climate change data,” Sammon wrote in the email, which was later leaked, “we should refrain from asserting that the planet has warmed (or cooled) in any given period without IMMEDIATELY pointing out that such theories are based upon data that critics have called into question. It is not our place as journalists to assert such notions as facts, especially as this debate intensifies.”

As Fox News became more successful at denying climate change, Murdoch’s views also appeared to shift—at least in public. “Climate change has been going on as long as the planet is here, and there will always be a little bit of it. At the moment, the North Pole is melting, but the South Pole is getting bigger,” he said in a 2014 interview with Sky News. The following year, Murdoch tweeted an aerial photo of Arctic ice. “Just flying over N Atlantic 300 miles of ice,” he wrote. “Global warming!”

Internally News Corp continued to take climate change seriously. By 2011 it had achieved its goal of becoming carbon-neutral across its global operations. To celebrate the occasion, James Murdoch gave a speech that was broadcast to the company’s employees.“Almost four years ago, our chairman, my father, asked us to ‘imagine the future’ for News Corp,” he said. “The goal was not superficial change, but to embed the principles of efficiency and sustainability in the core of our business.”

James Murdoch claimed that the company’s investments in green technologies—including a 4.1-megawatt solar power system in New Jersey—resulted in $180 of savings for every ton of carbon reduced. A project to more efficiently integrate News Corp’s data centers would reduce costs by $20 million per year, he said. And even smaller initiatives, such as putting heat-reflective coatings on the roofs of some facilities, could save $1.5 million annually.

“Our company continues to grow—yet, for the first time, our absolute carbon footprint is shrinking.”

“Really, the results speak for themselves,” he said. “Our company continues to grow—yet, for the first time, our absolute carbon footprint is shrinking. Imagine a future in which every company is on this same path.”

A year and a half after James’ 2011 speech, Hurricane Sandy slammed into New York City, killing 44 people, displacing thousands, and causing more than $19 billion in damage. The Wall Street Journal ran an opinion piece by two climate experts making the link to climate change. But its other opinion coverage of the intense and unprecedented storm was dismissive of the connection. “The idea that you can take one weather event, any given weather event, and attribute this cause to it, is from the standpoint of the research, it’s sort of a nonsense question,” Wall Street Journal Europe editorial writer Anne Jolis stated in 2012.

“There are no signs that human-caused climate change has increased the toll of recent disasters, as even the most recent extreme-event report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change finds,” read a separate 2012 opinion piece in the paper by University of Colorado at Boulder professor Roger Pielke Jr.

But that’s not how News Corp saw it. “In 2012, News Corporation was affected by Superstorm Sandy through filming interruptions, plant shutdowns, and box office closings in the Northeast U.S.,” its 2013 disclosure to CDP reads. “The storm indicated that News Corporation can be negatively impacted by climate-related weather impacts.”

The Wall Street Journal’s opinion coverage of Sandy wasn’t an isolated occurrence. When researchers with the advocacy organization Climate Nexus later analyzed 20 years of opinion pieces in the paper about climate change, they found a “consistent pattern that overwhelmingly ignores the science, champions doubt and denial of both the science and effectiveness of action, and leaves readers misinformed about the consensus of science and of the risks of the threat.”

[News Fox News’ Bret Baier Has Been Spreading Climate Misinformation Since 2009: Report

GEOFF DEMBICKI 06.16.21]

There was a similar disconnect during the horrific Australian bushfires in early 2020, which razed an area larger than all of South Korea, resulted in at least 34 deaths, and killed millions of wild animals. It was obvious to scientists the fires wouldn’t have become so extreme without dry conditions brought on by global temperature rise, yet Murdoch-owned papers instead pushed a narrative that environmentalists and arsonists were to blame.

“Bushfires: Firebugs fuelling crisis as national arson arrest toll hits 183,” read a headline in the Australian at the height of the fires. After receiving complaints, the Australian Press Council later investigated the reporting that went into the story, and while it found that the article was not misleading, it “accepts that the publication’s initial representation of the data may have led readers to consider that an unusually high number of ‘arsonists’ had been arrested since the beginning of the 2019-20 fire season.” In reality, most of the major fires were sparked by lightning.

“Our coverage has recognized Australia is having a conversation about climate change and how to respond to it,” the company said in a 2020 email to the New York Times. “The role of arsonists and policies that may have contributed to the spread of fire are, however, legitimate stories to report in the public interest.”

The story on arsonists was the top-read item on the Australian’s website that day and was given an international platform by people like Donald Trump Jr., who tweeted to his more than 6 million followers: “Truly disgusting that people would do this! God Bless Australia.”

As with Hurricane Sandy, the Australian’s parent company, News Corp, knew full well there was a strong link between the disaster and climate change. “Climate-related events such as floods, cyclones (for example, those that regularly occur in Northern Queensland), and bushfires also have an impact on News Corp Australia's ability to operate efficiently,” reads its CDP filing for 2020. “The 2019-2020 Australian wildfires added additional strain on our logistics and on our effectiveness to deliver our products to our customers.”

News Corp explained in that same document that for years it has taken measures to protect its own employees from climate-related dangers. “Prior to each bushfire and cyclone season, the Workplace Health and Safety (WHS) team works with the business units in properties that may be exposed to these weather conditions to ensure safety for staff such as editors, photographers, and journalists while they are out in the field,” it reads. “The WHS team brief staff on risks and ensure protocols are in place to secure their safety.”

News Corp also fretted about the climate risks faced by employees in the U.S. “Climate projection models make it difficult to know exactly which businesses or locations are most prone to the physical aspects of climate change,” it wrote in its 2020 CDP filing. “However, it is clear from past severe weather events that some of News Corp’s businesses are susceptible to such extreme events. Extended and severe droughts in California and Colorado that lead to an increased frequency and intensity of wildfires are a concern, and could impact employees, facilities, and productions in the region.”

You wouldn’t know about the connection between climate change and disasters from watching Fox News’ coverage of the record-smashing 2020 wildfire season on the U.S. West Coast.

“Massive wildfires unprecedented in their scope continue to sweep across huge portions of the West tonight,” Tucker Carlson said in a September 2020 broadcast. “How did climate change do that? They didn't tell us, but they just kept saying it. In the hands of Democratic politicians, climate change is like systemic racism in the sky: You can't see it, but rest assured it's everywhere and it's deadly.”

The top executive at Fox knew that there was in fact a connection between climate change and extreme weather. As co-chairman of News Corp and member of its board of directors, Lachlan Murdoch was “periodically updated” about the company’s climate and sustainability reporting to the CDP, as News Corp’s 2020 disclosure states. And as CEO of Fox News’ parent company, Fox Corporation, he wrote in the 2020 Corporate Social Responsibility report: “We believe our main climate risk is related to business continuity in the event of more extreme weather events.”

In the summer of 2020, James Murdoch decided to step back for good from the Murdoch media empire. “My resignation is due to disagreements over certain editorial content published by the company’s news outlets and certain other strategic decisions,” he said at the time. Earlier that year, James and Kathryn had released a statement criticizing News Corp and Fox’s “ongoing denial” of climate change “given obvious evidence to the contrary.” 

JAMES MURDOCH WITH HIS WIFE, KATHRYN, IN 2015 WHEN HE WAS CEO OF 21ST CENTURY FOX. OBSERVERS OF THE FAMILY SAY JAMES IS A PRIMARY REASON WHY NEWS CORP STARTED TAKING CLIMATE CHANGE SERIOUSLY. PHOTO BY DAVID PAUL MORRIS/BLOOMBERG VIA GETTY IMAGES

But James Murdoch’s climate change legacy lives on at News Corp. His father said in 2019 during a shareholders meeting in New York that “there are no climate deniers around, I can assure you.”

The company’s 2020 disclosure to CDP explains that “our News Corp global real estate team reviews climate change risks when deciding where to purchase or lease new facilities around the world. These risks include hurricane/storm potential, water-stressed areas, and flooding risks.”

The company is attempting to reduce its emissions in line with meeting the 1.5 degrees Celsius warming threshold that scientists say is our best shot at keeping the emergency under control. Meeting previous climate goals has saved the company at least $18 million, Murdoch said during the 2019 New York meeting.

These days, even News Corp’s stridently climate-change–denying Australian media outlets may be changing their tune. According to the New York Times, several Murdoch-owned papers as well as the 24-hour Sky News channelwill next month publish “features and editorials” that promote net-zero emissions by 2050. The new editorial position “could be a breakthrough that provides political cover for Australia’s conservative government to end its refusal to set ambitious emission targets,” the Times said.

Rudd, the former Australian prime minister, is skeptical, tweeting that the apparent rebrand is “Murdoch’s attempt to ‘greenwash’ themselves in the lead-up to the Glasgow climate conference. It’s all politics.”

It’s clear that Murdoch’s empire isn’t earning huge profits by making earnest statements about climate change to its viewers. In Fox Corp’s third quarter financial update for 2021, Lachlan Murdoch told investors, “Fox News channel finished this last quarter as the most-watched cable network in primetime and finished March as the most-watched cable news network overall.”

Lachlan Murdoch attributed some of this success to the launch of Gutfeld!, a new late-night program hosted by longtime Fox host and panelist Greg Gutfeld, which Lachlan said is currently drawing an audience larger than NBC’s The Tonight Show. 

In May, Gutfeld did a segment attacking President Biden’s climate policies. “By the way, if you want to make electric cars the choice for Americans, you don’t try to hit them with guilt and virtue-signaling and tying it to a climate crisis that does not exist,” he said.

Gutfeld assured his viewers that extreme weather in their communities has nothing to do with global temperature rise. “Because our own data says that is not actually happening,” he said. “That is not due to the climate crisis.”

Follow Geoff Dembicki on Twitter.

TAGGED:

MEDIACLIMATE CHANGEWORLDNEWSRUPERT MURDOCHNEWS CORPMURDOCHFOX NEWSCLIMATE DENIALKEVIN RUDDAUSTRALIAJAMES MURDOCH

https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/lachlan-murdoch-architect-fox-news-extremist-turn-may-soon-gain-even-more-power

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On Election Night 2020, Fox News seriously scooped the competition when its decision desk, under Chris Stirewalt, called Arizona for Democratic now-President Joe Biden — a bombshell that confirmed how much of a swing state Arizona, once a deep red hotbed of Barry Goldwater/John McCain conservatism, has evolved into. And other media outlets subsequently confirmed Fox News’ reporting.

Fox News’ decision desk was ahead of other major media outlets when it came to Arizona and the 2020 presidential election results, and Political Editor Stirewalt was the person who, more than anyone, Fox News had to thank.But instead of giving Stirewalt a promotion, they fired him.

Former President Donald Trump and many other MAGA Republicans angrily railed against Fox News for calling Arizona for Biden, claiming that Arizona was stolen from him because of widespread voter fraud — a false claim that has been debunked time and time again. And Fox competitor Newsmax TV promoted itself as the cable news channel that was more pro-Trump and more right-wing than Fox News and Fox Business.

READ MORE: [George Will: 'Infant' Josh Hawley feeds the 'degradation' of politics and journalism

Stirewalt candidly addresses his termination in his new book, “Broken News: Why the Media Rage Machine Divides America and How to Fight Back,” which has an August 23 release date on Amazon. And according to a book excerpt discussed by journalists Blake Hounshell and Jeremy W. Peters in the New York Times on August 19 and by Tom Porter in Business Insider on August 22, Stirewalt is vehemently critical of Fox News for promoting nonsense conspiracy theories in the weeks following the 2020 election.

Hounshell and Peters report, “After a decade at Fox News, Chris Stirewalt was suddenly shown the door in January 2021, becoming a casualty of restructuring — or, at least, that was how Fox described his and other layoffs that swept out longtime journalists who were part of the network’s news division. Stirewalt, who was part of the team at Fox News that projects election results and whotestified before the House January 6 committee this summer, suspects there was a bigger reason behind his firing, which he explains in his new book, ‘Broken News: Why the Media Rage Machine Divides America and How to Fight Back.’”

Fox News has denied that Stirewalt was fired for offending Trump and his supporters; they have characterized the termination as simply a matter of corporate restructuring. But Stirewalt has his doubts.

Porter reports, “A network representative told Insider, in January 2021, that Stirewalt had parted company with them as part of a restructuring process. In his memoir, said the Times, Stirewalt alleged the network is playing a key role in the radicalization of the U.S. right, accusing it of spreading ‘black-helicopter-level paranoia and hatred.’ In the book, he says that during Trump's term in office, the network fed viewers what they wanted to hear, provoking the firestorm of criticism he encountered from Republicans after the Arizona call.”

READ MORE: Ex-Fox News political editor breaks down the 'red mirage' — and explains how Trump tried 'to exploit this anomaly'

In an excerpt from “Broken News,” Stirewalt accuses his former employer of telling far-right viewers what they want to hear — regardless of whether or not it is factual.

Fox News’ former political editor writes, "Even in the four years since the previous presidential election, Fox viewers had become even more accustomed to flattery and less willing to hear news that challenged their expectations. Me serving up green beans to viewers who had been spoon-fed ice cream sundaes for years came as a terrible shock to their systems.”

In recent years, opinion host Tucker Carlson has had some of the highest ratings at Fox News — even higher than long-time Fox host Sean Hannity.

Stirewalt, in “Broken News,” writes, “Carlson is rich and famous. Yet he regularly rails about the 'big, legacy media outlets.' Guests denounce the 'corporate media' on his show, and Fox's CEO calls Carlson 'brave' for discussing controversial topics. Yet somehow, nobody even giggles. It does not take any kind of journalistic courage to pump out night after night exactly what your audience wants to hear.”

READ MORE: [Chris Wallace trashes Fox News: 'I wanted to put all of that behind me'

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nICOLLE WALLACE (HOST): You know, I had this thought, Tim, that what I thought this signaled was the weakness internally of people like Dana Perino and Brett Baier, I guess Chris Wallace is over at CNN now, and the strength and the almost, you know, abandonment of fighting for anything resembling a news network by -- I guess Martha McCallum sometimes anchors news events. I actually thought that inside Fox, it was an interesting moment that -- where there might have been a path to have been a battle between people like Chris Wallace and Brett Baier and the forces like Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham and Sean Hannity. It looks -- it's not even clear that battle was waged.

TIM O'BRIEN (GUEST): Well, and you're leaving the most important actor out, Lachlan Murdoch. Rupert Murdoch's son runs that network. The family controls the company. If they wanted that network to do something other than engage in propaganda and to delude people and to serve other goals, he could put anybody he wants in that anchor seat. Tucker Carlson exists because Lachlan Murdoch wants him to exist. So, the Murdochs also have to be held accountable as owners in terms of what they're putting on the air every night. 

WALLACE: Eddie, I also came to the conclusion as this night wore on that we don't need 100 percent of Americans to do anything. And so I'm not -- I think, you know, Adam Kinzinger, a member of the Select Committee, sort of fixated on Fox and gave them a hard time for not carrying it. I don't think that's the point. I think it's about reassembling the coalition, the voting coalition in 2018, the voting coalition in 2020, and reminding them what President Obama reminded them today that nothing less than the state of our democracy is on the line.

EDDIE GLAUDE (GUEST): Right.There are -- there's a segment of the American population that's concerned about government taking away their guns, government taking away their liberty, but there's also a segment of the population who's concerned about folks trying to take away our democracy. And I think this committee has to make not just simply truth claims. It has to appeal at the visceral level, at the level of the passions around our commitment to democracy.

But I should say this to connect it to our first segment, Nicolle. Remember, there are three -- there are four elements to democracy functioning. They are, of course, the legislative branch and we've experienced a gerrymandered House, a dysfunctional Senate. There's the executive branch. We've experienced the distortions of an imperial presidency. We've experienced the politicized judiciary. But there's also the fourth estate. The fourth estate. The role of the press in creating the deliberative space so citizens can engage in the back and forth exchange.

And so we've seen the kind of corruption of the other -- the three other various portions, our institutions of democracy. With Fox News, it's not about the fragmentation of media. It's not about social platforms or social media. With Fox prop, as it were, we're seeing the corruption of an aspect of the fourth estate that contributes to the crises of American democracy. That we began with, with President Obama's remarks, and we need to understand it as such.

msnbc chris hayes pt out skillful realtime edit to keep truth from fox, no ads in 2 hr so no channel surf

https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/humiliation-bret-baier-and-fox-news-side

thursday was a night of humiliation for Bret Baier and his “news side” colleagues. It was also a perfect encapsulation of the total lack of respect the Fox brass has for its “news” division, whose staff have endured waves of layoffs, reduced hours of programming, and constant signals from network leaders that they are imminently replaceable cogs with no influence compared to Fox’s right-wing propagandists. Fox is Tucker Carlson’s network, and now everyone at the network knows it.

Baier, per the bio on Fox News’ website, is his network’s “chief political anchor.” But at 8 p.m. ET on Thursday night, Baier wasn’t on Fox preempting its regular programming to introduce coverage of the first hearing of the House select committee investigating the January 6 insurrection, unlike his theoretical peers with similarly lofty titles. Instead, he and fellow anchor Martha MacCallum had been relegated to Fox Business, its lightly watched sister channel. 

Meanwhile, Carlson was airing his Fox show in its usual prime-time timeslot. “This is the only hour on an American news channel that will not be carrying their propaganda live,” he said in an opening monologue. “They are lying and we are not going to help them do it. What we will do instead is try to tell you the truth.”

Carlson was using the royal “we,” laying down the network’s editorial line that its own right-wing agitprop was of greater value than honest coverage of the congressional investigation into the sacking of the U.S. Capitol by violent Trumpists bent on suborning the 2020 presidential election. Then he spent an hour regurgitating debunked lies about that coup attempt.

Baier reportedly protested to top network executives seven months ago when Carlson explored paranoid, “false flag” conspiracy theories about January 6 in Patriot Purge, a three-part special for Fox’s streaming service. He and Chris Wallace, another longtime “news side” stalwart, “shared their objections with Fox News Media CEO Suzanne Scott and its president of news, Jay Wallace,” NPR reported, and “those objections rose to Lachlan Murdoch, the chairman and CEO of the network's parent company, Fox Corp.” At the time, those complaints had no apparent impact.

Thursday’s programming shows that Carlson's victory over Baier, Wallace, and their “news side” colleagues was total.

Fox provided Carlson a platform to endorse the motives of the rioters and push the same baseless and obscene conspiracy theories that had drawn criticism from Baier. The network aired his program and Sean Hannity’s during the following hour commercial-free, sacrificing advertising dollars in apparent effort to keep the audience from channel-surfing during breaks and discovering any of the chilling revelations the committee provided — even on Baier’s Fox Business coverage.

Baier, meanwhile, was relegated to Fox’s B-channel to cover the prime-time hearing. At 10 p.m. ET, while CNN and MSNBC were still providing analysis of the hearing, he signed off, and Fox Business aired a docudrama about Ben Franklin. Only at 11 p.m. ET, when it was time for viewers to nod off, did Baier get access to Fox’s airwaves.

The message about the relative positions of Carlson and Baier in the network hierarchy sent by these programming decisions was obvious to all. On Twitter, a Carlson guest with an accurate read on the situation dunked on Baier’s tweet promoting his hearing coverage.

[twt ned ryun]

baier was left impotently touting what little access the network was giving him to its airwaves.

[twt]

meanwhile, Chris Wallace was a fixture during live coverage of the hearing – but on CNN. He decamped to that network last year, ending his nearly two-decade career at Fox after Carlson’sPatriot Purge conspiracy theories reportedly proved the final straw. Wallace has since become the latest former Fox employee to criticize its programming as right-wing propaganda. “I’m fine with opinion: conservative opinion, liberal opinion,” he told The New York Times in March. “But when people start to question the truth — Who won the 2020 election? Was Jan. 6 an insurrection? — I found that unsustainable.”

Baier, to this point, apparently finds it eminently sustainable for Carlson and his cronies to question whether January 6 was an insurrection — in prime time, on the network where he putatively serves as “chief political anchor.”

The declining influence of Fox’s “news side” has been underway for some time. But on Thursday, it was on display in prime time, obvious for anyone interested in seeing it. Fox’s brass may occasionally tout the “news” division as a talking point for advertisers, but they will yield to Carlson and his conspiracy theories every time.

fox News CEO says white nationalism 'comes with the territory' because his network is 'number one'

David Badash The New Civil Rights Movement

May 24, 2022

**Lachlan Murdoch**, the executive chairman and CEO of the parent company of **Fox News** does not appear concerned about the far right-wing network’s embrace of white nationalism, saying the growing criticism just

Tucker Carlson’s 'nakedly fascist propaganda' leads to resignations, internal outrage, public fury — and a silent Murdoch

David Badash and The New Civil Rights Movement November 22, 2021

Two longtime Fox News contributors very publicly quit the far right wing cable channel this weekend over "Patriot Purge," a January 6 revisionism series created by the network's star anchor, Tucker Carlson. But other veteran Fox News anchors internally were so outraged their concerns went all the way to the head of Fox Corporation, the parent company of Fox News, who did nothing to stop its release and is reportedly refusing to comment.

Conservatives Stephen Hayes and Jonah Goldberg, the latter a staple on other news outlets as well, resigned in protest Sunday night. NPR reports the pair "pointed to a breaking point earlier this month: network star Tucker Carlson's three-part series on the Jan. 6 siege of the U.S. Capitol that relied on fabrications and conspiracy theories to exonerate the Trump supporters who participated in the attack."

"It's basically saying that the Biden regime is coming after half the country and this is the War on Terror 2.0," Goldberg tells NPR. "It traffics in all manner of innuendo and conspiracy theories that I think legitimately could lead to violence. That for me, and for Steve, was the last straw."

Goldberg's and Hayes' "resignations reflect larger tumult within Fox News over Carlson's series 'Patriot Purge' and his increasingly strident stances, and over the network's willingness to let its opinion stars make false, paranoid claims against President Biden, his administration and his supporters."

But NPR also reports that Chris Wallace, the top anchor at Fox News for nearly two decades, and Bret Baier, another top Fox News anchor and the network's chief political correspondent, were so outraged they "shared their objections with Fox News Media CEO Suzanne Scott and its president of news, Jay Wallace. Those objections rose to Lachlan Murdoch, the chairman and CEO of the network's parent company, Fox Corporation. Through a senior spokeswoman, Scott and Wallace declined comment. Murdoch did not return a request for comment through a spokesman."

At HuffPost senior reporter Christopher Mathias says "Patriot Purge" is "the most nakedly fascist piece of propaganda Carlson has ever produced. And it comes at adangerous moment: The insurrection is on its way to becoming as noble an enterprise as the Boston Tea Party for large parts of the American right."

"Carlson's insurrection agitprop sparked a similar wave of warnings from many experts on fascism and misinformation," Mathias adds. "Propaganda like this, they argued, could one day render the shocking events of Jan. 6 as amere preview of the right-wing violence to come."

Nicole Hemmer, author of “Messengers of the Right: Conservative Media and the Transformation of American Politics," described “Patriot Purge" as “an overarching fantasy about the insurrection that goes like this: It was not an insurrection," she wrote for CNN. “To the extent there was violence, it was stirred up by members of the government and left-wing agitators.All of it was orchestrated so that the full force of federal law enforcement could be unleashed against Trump supporters, marking them as enemies of the state." FALSE FLAG

Goldberg and Hayes at their conservative website The Dispatch describe Carlson's "Patriot Purge" as "a collection of incoherent conspiracy-mongering, riddled with factual inaccuracies, half-truths, deceptive imagery, and damning omissions. And its message is clear: The U.S. government is targeting patriotic Americans in the same manner —and with the same tools—that it used to target al Qaeda."

Earlier this month Rolling Stonesaid "Patriot Purge" is both "profoundly dishonest" and "profoundly dangerous."

https://www.mediamatters.org/tucker-carlson/tucker-carlson-guest-pfizer-vaccine-available-us-not-fda-approved

lachlan and rupert

https://www.mediamatters.org/coronavirus-covid-19/fox-has-undermined-vaccines-nearly-every-day-last-six-months

no lnx vid

https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/murdochs-want-tucker-carlsons-blood-soaked-conspiracy-theories

The Murdochs want Tucker Carlson’s blood-soaked conspiracy theories

WRITTEN BY MATT GERTZ

PUBLISHED 09/23/21

Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show is a toxic combination of Infowars-style conspiracy theories and Stormfront-esque xenophobia because that’s what network founder Rupert Murdoch, parent company CEO Lachlan Murdoch, and network CEO Suzanne Scott want in their 8 p.m. hour. Fox executives keep making excuses for Carlson’s malignant commentary, he correctly interprets their defenses as a green light to be ever more extreme, and all the other stakeholders in the network are willing to go along with it. 

Amid a gleefully dishonest Wednesday night screed, Carlson accused Democrats of wanting “to change the racial mix of the country” through immigration, adding, “This policy is called ‘the great replacement,’ the replacement of legacy Americans with more obedient people from far-away countries.” That is, in fact, what white supremacists call that conspiracy theory.

Video file

CitationFrom the September 22, 2021, edition of Fox News' Tucker Carlson Tonight

When Carlson similarly claimed in April that Democrats want to “replace the current electorate” with “more obedient voters from the Third World,” the Anti-Defamation League called for his firing, with ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt noting in a letter to Scott that Carlson was invoking a “classic white supremacist trope” that has “lit the fuse in explosive hate crimes.” But Lachlan Murdoch sent a letter in response claiming that Carlson had actually “decried and rejected replacement theory” and been simply talking about voting rights. Carlson responded by putting the “great replacement” theory at the center of his show, creeping closer and closer to the line until last night’s broadcast, which definitively destroyed Murdoch’s defense.

Fox’s response thus far has been to promote Carlson’s latest invocation of the bigoted conspiracy theory his boss had previously claimed he rejected.

Also on Wednesday, Carlson hosted a guest, Navy Cmdr J.H. Furman, who suggested that the vaccines for COVID-19 might be more dangerous than the virus that causes it. Furman has written a memo arguing that mandating the COVID-19 vaccines “may compromise U.S. national security due to the unknown extent of serious vaccine complications,” which was picked up by right-wing media outlets. During his appearance, he told Carlson’s audience that the coronavirus “has a harm rate, or a mortality rate of 0.001%. Compare that with the VAERS harm rate where COVID vaccination harm over the last 20 months has taken almost half of the total harm's totals in the VAERS database, the 20-years long VAERS database.”

Video file

CitationFrom the September 22, 2021, edition of Fox News' Tucker Carlson Tonight

In May, Carlson began promoting the lie that thousands of Americans have died in the “single deadliest mass vaccination event in modern history,” citing data from VAERS, the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System. When journalists debunked his claim, noting that VAERS data is publicly sourced without verification, Lachlan Murdoch stood by him, falsely claiming that Carlson was saying “nothing the CDC itself isn’t saying.” Carlson’s program has continued peddling the VAERS falsehood ever since as part of what seems like his single-minded devotion to limit vaccinations. His campaign, and that of his right-wing media colleagues, has had devastating consequences.

The Murdochs or Scott could have stepped in after Carlson started parroting blood-soaked white supremacist conspiracy theories or lying to his viewers about the safety and effectiveness of a safe, effective vaccine that Rupert Murdoch and more than 90% of Fox full-time employees have apparently taken. But this is the kind of network that they want to run, so they’ve made him its face.

There’s no signal from the Fox Corp. board, including former House Speaker Paul Ryan, that the network should change course. And chief political anchor Bret Baier and the rest of Fox’s “news” division seem content to look the other way and continue cashing their paychecks.

https://www.alternet.org/2021/06/fox-news/

david n kos

Fox News surprised everyone—including their own Donald Trump-loving viewers—on Election Night last November by calling the race in Arizona for Joe Biden before the other networks, who waited several days to do the same. It seemed the longtime wellspring of right-wing disinformation might actually be displaying some journalistic integrity, at last.

It didn't last long. The Trump White House erupted in fury, as did millions of Trump fans, who popularized a #BoycottFoxNews hashtag on social media. Its ratings briefly plummeted. In the months since, the executives behind the decision were given the boot.

Moreover, as Brian Stelter reveals in an excerpt from his new book on the Trump-Fox connection, Fox has subsequently completed its utter radicalization as a Trumpian right-wing disinformation outlet, embracing and broadcasting a nonstop parade of outright lies, as well as the authoritarian and racist politics that have now similarly subsumed the Republican Party: "We turned so far right we went crazy," one anonymous source told him.

The slide from being a partisan news source into an outright font of extremist disinformation came about, as Stelter suggests, as a result of pressure from the same authoritarian, fake-news-loving audience that Fox had created during Trump's tenure. The beast that they had created turned out to have an insatiable appetite for extremism.

"Fox is a really different place than it was pre-election," one of Stelter's Fox insiders told him after Biden was inaugurated.

"Fox News has always walked a fine line between trying to look like an independent news organization and supporting conservative politics," observed TV critic Eric Deggans to *The Guardian*."There have to be moments where they act like an actual news organization in order to maintain their veneer of being an independent news organization."

The wrath of Trump's followers descended on Fox immediately after its election-night call. Trump himself went on Fox and Friends and complained about the network: "What's the biggest difference between this and four years ago," he asked rhetorically. "I say Fox. It's much different now."

Outside Arizona's main election-counting center in Phoenix the day after the election, pro-Trump "Stop the Steal" protesters chanted, "Fox News sucks!"

Fox's main problem, as Stelter recounts, was that it now had competition to its right in the form of the far-right Newsmax and One America News networks, which unabashedly feature right-wing conspiracy theories and false information about the election and other political topics.

Newsmax refused to initially call Biden the president-elect. One of its hosts, Greg Kelly, repeatedly claimed that Trump could remain in office another four years. "IT ISN'T OVER YET," Newsmax's website banners read.

"We're bleeding eyeballs," one Fox producer told him in December. "And we're scared."

On Facebook, the dismay among longtime Fox fans was furious. "Time to switch to Newsmax or One America News," one post read. "Fox News has officially joined the corrupt media."

Another declared simply: "F FOX News," adding: "They have sold their souls and lost the respect of millions of loyal viewers , [thinking emoji] [crying emoji].Boycott and show them the power of the almighty [money bag emoji] dollar."

Fox executives decided to fix the problem, as Stelter says, by running "even further to the right." News Media CEO Suzanne Scott decided to lure viewers back by giving them, as he notes, what they wanted: "False hope."

On Fox, Trump was treated as a political genius, not a lame duck who failed to win reelection. Some of the network's key shows waded deeper into the voter fraud depths, eventually spurring massive defamation lawsuits by voting machine companies Dominion and Smartmatic.

"It's really emotionally taxing," a dissident Fox contributor told me as the Covid-19 case count exploded and Trump's legal challenges imploded. "We denied the pandemic and now we're denying the election outcome."

Media Matters' Matt Gertz assembled a laundry list of Fox News' post-election embrace of Trumpian disinformation:

:{ Fox and its associates did everything they could to support Trump's autocratic maneuvers. In the two weeks after media outlets called the race for Biden, Fox personalities questioned the results of the election or pushed conspiracy theories about it nearly 800 times. They put the credibility of the network behind deranged lies about fraud plucked from the internet fever swamps, beaming batshit fantasies out to a huge national audience. It worked—polls following the election showed a majority of Republicans believed that the election was stolen from Trump.

But hosts, contributors, and guests went further than simply lying to their viewers—they pushed for action. They attacked Republican state officials for being insufficiently committed to Trump's scheme; called for the arrests of election workers; suggested that Republican state legislators in states Trump lost should "appoint a clean slate of electors" who support him; promoted fake Trump electoral slates for supposedly keeping Trump's "legal options open"; suggested a "do-over" election as "the only remedy"; called for congressional investigations; endorsed a lawsuit by Republican state attorneys general asking the Supreme Court to throw out results in four states Biden won; urged Republican governors not to certify unfavorable results; and denounced Republican members of Congress for "destroying the Constitution" by voting to count the electoral votes.}:

Recently, Fox has gone so far as to embrace right-wing extremist ideology, particularly the strange flavor of white nationalism that has been getting airtime on Tucker Carlson's evening program, which is Fox's top-rated program. Carlson has promoted eco-fascist themes related to immigration; endorsed the idea that Republicans are being forced to abandon democracy and eventually embrace fascism because of liberal hegemony; defended the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrectionists as being ordinary conservatives and decried their prosecutions; and spouted white-nationalist "replacement theory" in claiming that immigration is an attack on democracy itself.

Carlson's most disturbing recent episode, however, came last week when he attacked Biden's speech in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on the 100^th anniversary of the Tulsa Massacre. Biden had decried the continuing existence of violent racist hatred, saying:

I didn't realize hate is never defeated; it only hides. It hides. And given a little bit of oxygen—just a little bit oxygen—by its leaders, it comes out of there from under the rock like it was happening again, as if it never went away.

And so, folks, we can't—we must not give hate a safe harbor.

As I said in my address to the joint session of Congress: According to the intelligence community, terrorism from white supremacy is the most lethal threat to the homeland today. Not ISIS, not al Qaeda — white supremacists. (Applause.) That's not me; that's the intelligence community under both Trump and under my administration.

This set off Carlson, who insisted on his program that evening that this meant Biden intended to target ordinary Republicans:

Yeah, you're not surprised. It's always the same people, isn't it? Those white Republican men—the very ones that just today Joe Biden warned us are more dangerous than ISIS.These are the people who have been beating up elderly Asian women in our cities, you've seen that plague unfold. These are the ones who don't believe in science, who have no decency, they're the problem.

The next night, he insisted—despite abundant evidence to the contrary—that white nationalist violence is not the most lethal threat to the American public: "There is no credible way to argue that white supremacy is the most lethal threat that we face. That's not an argument. It's its own form of racial attack."

Carlson has been diving headfirst into this abyss, as Gertz has reported, with the blessing of Fox CEO Lachlan Murdoch, who even tried to claim that a review of Carlson's remarks show "that Mr. Carlson decried and rejected replacement theory."

However, Carlson also let the curtain slip a bit this week in an interview with right-wing pundit Mollie Hemingway about election misinformation. While introducing Hemingway—whose new book, titled Fixed,offers a wholly Trumpian take—the Fox host asserted that "so many people are lying at such high volume about the 2020 election, it's hard to know exactly what happened."

That, in fact, is the point of how the right now deals with reality: Just throw so much misinformation out there that the public becomes unable to discern fact from fiction—at which point right-wing authoritarians will naturally embrace their lying propaganda.

As Deggans told the Guardian,GUK Fox encouraged this kind of extremism for many years while working to maintain a veneer of journalistic credibility—and has now been finally dragged into the abyss, forced to abandon any such pretenses, by the monster it created.

"What's happening now is the Republican party is getting more strained, and there's more and more of a sense among Fox News viewership that anything that contradicts a worldview that is supportive of conservatives is wrong," Deggans said. "I think it's getting harder and harder for Fox News to ride that balance."

At this point, it's clear they no longer are even trying.

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https://www.mediamatters.org/black-lives-matter/lachlan-murdoch-full-shit

mma tag

https://www.mediamatters.org/murdoch-family

https://www.mediamatters.org/murdoch-family/fox-corp-ceo-lachlan-murdoch-endorses-tucker-carlsons-white-replacement-theory

openDemocracy

an ->

Why the Murdochs backed Donald Trump’s COVID-19 denialism

2020/4/17 01:00 (BST)

©openDemocracy

Table of Contents

Hammy contrition

Murdoch’s miscalculation

Sean Hannity, one of Fox News's biggest stars, said that the coronavirus was a "new hoax" in March. | Fox News

Earlier this month, Fox News aired a one-hour special, ‘America Together’, that featured some of its biggest stars. In a radical departure for the fiercely partisan network, the show ostensibly marked the launch of a new “editorial initiative” aimed at promoting national unity. The content of the special, however, remained typically Fox. “As we face this COVID-19 crisis, you, me, our kids, our parents and our grandparents: We can and should turn to one place for comfort – the Holy Bible,” host Peter Hegseth advised viewers with a commendably straight face.

This was the same Peter Hegseth who alleged on air on 28 February that Democrats were “rooting” for the infection. “They have yet to find a reason to drag down the presidency of Donald Trump,” he said. Sean Hannity, one of Fox’s most famous names and a close ally of Trump similarly told viewers, “If you are over the mass hysteria, if you're over politicizing and weaponizing the coronavirus, you are not alone.” With only one exception – the extreme right-wing host Tucker Carlson– Fox News repeated the line that COVID-19 was nothing to worry about, no more dangerous than the flu, or “a hoax” that was being used to “bludgeon Trump”, in Hannity’s words.

:{

}:

This was not simply a matter of a big media outlet getting the story wrong. This was the biggest, most consequential mistake of Fox News chairman Rupert Murdoch’s career, including the Hitler Diaries farce and the UK phone hacking scandal, which cost his companies well over £300 million. Fox’s support for Trump’s line, from January to mid-March, that the threat from the virus was negligible and that the spread was, in any event, under control may have cost lives among its devoted viewers who, with a median age of 65, are most at risk from the often fatal outcome of the disease.

Fox not only failed to report the chaos and missteps in the White house, it also cheered the president’s denial and delay, the effects of which are writ large in the United States coronavirus figures. At the time of writing, the US has had 609, 516 reported cases of COVID-19 and 26,057 deaths from the virus, a third of which have occurred in New York State. The disease is spreading rapidly from big conurbations, which are largely Democrat to the Midwest and South, which tend to be Republican.

This week, Trump clashed with state governors, including those in his own party, over who has the ultimate authority to reopen states and when. Meanwhile, protests have erupted in some conservative and rural counties demanding an end to stay-at-home measures.Fox News's Laura Ingraham was among those heaping praise on protesters, tweeting that it was "time to get your freedom back".

Hammy contrition

Fox’s lets-bring-America-together-again response is reminiscent of the hammy contrition displayed by Murdoch’s News International after the phone hacking scandal, but it is unlikely to silence the anger over Fox’s coverage. MSNBC, CNN, the New York Times, Boston Globe and the Washington Post regularly remind their audiences of how Trump and Fox News supported each other’s denialism. Trevor Noah’s ‘Daily Show’ on Comedy Central gathered all the clips from Fox and other corona-sceptics in one item, which they called the “Heroes of the Pandumbic”.More seriously, an open letter signed by 74 journalism professors criticised the company for spreading misinformation that endangered the public. In addition, Washington non-profit WASHLITE has filed a suit against the company alleging it “wilfully and maliciously deceived the public.”

Fox viewers were far less likely to take the crisis seriously... 90% said that they were not staying at home.

Since its founding under the former Nixon aide Roger Ailes, Fox News has been seen as a damaging and divisive force in journalism. But now, there seems to be striking evidence that actual, physical harm may have been caused by Fox’s editorial line on COVID-19 before its mid-March volte face. A poll by Survey 160 and Gradients Metrics carried out between 13-16 March shows that Fox viewers were far less likely to stay at home, or take the crisis seriously, which is important given that its viewership is particularly at risk from the virus. Of those who identified as Republican and who had watched Fox News in the past 24 hours, 90% said that they were not staying at home. That fell to 70% among those Republicans who had not watched Fox News.

The link between cause and effect will never be conclusive. Nonetheless, it is significant that when asked whether the threat from COVID–19 had been exaggerated, 60% of Republicans who had watched Fox New said “yes”, while only 40% of those Republicans who hadn’t watched agreed. The difference between the two may be a measure of Fox News’s influence.

Murdoch has promised a robust defence of the case brought by WASHLITE and this, too, is reminiscent of the company’s initial response to the phone-hacking allegations, when it threw everything at the Guardian newspaper, which published the allegations over several years, and its then editor Alan Rusbridger. “They went round the lobby (in Parliament) saying it was all lies,” he recalls, “issued a statement that it was all lies, published pieces in the Sunday Times and Times saying it was all lies. Let’s not forget this was a public company making dishonest statements.”

:{

}:

Fox Corp, which owns Fox News, is also a public company, although the Murdoch family have 39% of the voting power. Rupert Murdoch, 89, executive co-chair of Fox News and his eldest son Lachlan, 48, co-chair and chief executive, have clearly decided that the only way to deal with this disaster is to pretend it never happened. That is why Fox now promotes uplifting stories of Americans helping each other. They are counting on mass forgetfulness and hope Sean Hannity, its biggest star, will be believed when he said of the journalism professors, “It’s the same Democrats, media mob and liberal professors who are so lazy they won’t even look at what I’ve said about the virus… I never called it a ‘hoax’. I said it was a hoax for them to be using it as a bludgeon on Trump.”

Hannity’s contortions are a footnote to the national tragedy. The bigger story is about Fox’s journalism and Murdoch’s credibility as a media owner. While every other established outlet can point to Trump’s record and hold him to account in the run up to the election on 3 November, Fox must abjure because of its past support for the president’s calamitous policy failings.

Murdoch’s miscalculation

Even though those who, like me, regard Rupert Murdoch and his interests as an international menace, still credit him with a sure judgment when it comes to using politicians to further the interests of his company. In the past, he has never had a problem shedding long-standing allies to catch a new political wind. He famously deserted the British Conservative Party in the mid 90s to support Tony Blair’s New Labour, despite the Tories’ support for him through his fight with the print unions. In 2016, he quickly discarded Jeb Bush in favour of Trump in the run up to the primaries, but not before tweeting in 2015, “When is Donald Trump going to stop embarrassing his friends, let alone the whole country?” Trump is more than an embarrassment now. The economy is tanking, a depression is threatened, thousands of Americans are dying and record numbers of them are filing for unemployment, but Fox can’t apply itself to the job of scrutiny without questioning its own role.

When Murdoch plumped for Trump in 2016, it seemed a sensible business decision. No obstacles were placed by the Trump administration in the way of the $71 billion sale of Twenty-First Century Fox’s film and TV assets to Disney, although Trump was revealed to have tried to block a very similar merger between AT&T; and Time Warner which also went through a year ago. The new Fox Corp which runs Fox News and is headed by Lachlan Murdoch is doing well financially, reporting total quarterly revenues of $3.78 billion, a 5% increase from the $3.58 billion of revenues in the prior year quarter.

Being shackled to a lunatic is all very well if it serves your purposes – until that lunatic drags you into the path of an oncoming train. For Fox, it’s too late to escape: Lachlan Murdoch has failed to create a distance between his company and Trump. In an article in the New York Times that pulled no punches, the media correspondent Ben Smith blamed Lachlan Murdoch. “Fox failed its viewers and the broader public in ways both revealing and potentially lethal. In particular, Lachlan Murdoch failed to pry its most important voices away from their embrace of the president’s early line: that the virus was not a big threat in the United States.”

How could Rupert Murdoch and his son make such a catastrophic error of judgment? Why are they still chained to Trump as he loses support and, in the face of the daily death toll, can only react with a repellent display of narcissism and self-interest? The answer is surprisingly simple. Supporting Trump wasn’t just a strategic choice, but Rupert Murdoch’s personal political conviction. It has all the hallmarks of the same crude conservatism evident in the editorial line pushed by his Australian media outletswhich heaped blame for last year’s bushfires on environmentalists.

As with climate change, Rupert Murdoch put his politics ahead of business interests by pushing coronavirus skepticism. It’s bad for him and Fox, but much, much worse for humanity.

https://www.alternet.org/2019/09/life-after-trump-paul-ryan-is-now-embarrassed-by-the-president-and-is-pushing-fox-news-to-dump-the-him

report describes the behind-the-scenes crisis emerging at Fox, which has been thrown into turmoil as the Democrats’ rapid impeachment push knocks the network off-kilter. Most dramatically, that disruption has played out in an on-air feud between hosts Shep Smith and Tucker Carlson. Sherman found that Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott and President Jay Wallace felt compelled to intervene and tell Smith to back off, though a spokesperson for the network denied this claim.

The report continued:

The ultimate referee of this fight will be Lachlan Murdoch.In recent months, Rupert’s oldest son has been holding strategy conversations with Fox executives and anchors about how Fox News should prepare for life after Trump. Among the powerful voices advising Lachlan that Fox should decisively break with the president is former House speaker Paul Ryan, who joined the Fox board in March. “Paul is embarrassed about Trump and now he has the power to do something about it,” an executive who’s spoken with Ryan told me. (Ryan did not return a call seeking comment.) But a person more sympathetic to Trump has told Lachlan that Fox should remain loyal to Trump’s supporters, even if the network has to break from the man.

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mma 419

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https://www.alternet.org/2019/03/fox-news-could-being-trumps-personal-propaganda-network-and-hannity-is-losing-it-report/

Fox News has served as a full-blown propaganda network for President Donald Trump for the first two years of his presidency, but a revolt within the network’s news department is spurring talk of change.

*Vanity Fair’s* Gabriel Sherman reports that Lachlan Murdoch, the son of Fox-owning media mogul Rupert Murdoch, is not a big Trump fan and is wary of having his network seen as the president’s personal Soviet-style Pravda.

Although the editorial changes that Murdoch is considering making aren’t expected to be too drastic — the network will continue to be a right-wing news network — they’re reportedly still enough to scare Fox News host Sean Hannity into believing it will hurt Trump politically.

“Hannity told Trump last year that the Murdochs hate Trump, and Hannity is the only one holding Fox together,” one source tells Sherman.

Additionally, some sources within Fox believe that the Murdochs will try to create some distance between Fox News and the president as part of a larger strategy to sell the network off to another buyer.

“Everyone thinks they’re going to sell it,” one Fox News anchor tells Sherman. “It’s too small to be independent.”

Read the whole report here.

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12/18 F&F, coulter (rush?) call trump a squish (basically) so he shuts gov't proudly for 5 billion vs 1.6$

Fox News has always lied. But during the Trump administration, the network has managed to hit new lows. Fox is full of white nationalism, Trump propaganda, casual bigotry, and a lack of any ethical standards.

This is not happenstance. This is a choice. And it is ultimately the choice of one man, executive chairman for 21st Century Fox Executive Chairman Lachlan Murdoch, the Misinformer of the Year for 2018.

Media Matters senior fellow Matt Gertz elaborates: "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. ... Lachlan Murdoch is ultimately accountable for Fox’s programming. If he wanted the network to operate as a responsible media outlet, he could make that happen. Instead, he suggests that any attempt to rein in his network’s stars would constitute unacceptable censorship of their opinions. ... Lachlan Murdoch is gaslighting America about the damage Fox News is doing to the country."

Media Matters president Angelo Carusone adds: "Lachlan Murdoch is steering the ship at 21st Century Fox and shaping the strategic direction of the company. It’s Lachlan who is ultimately responsible for Fox News now and in the future.Under Lachlan, Fox News has actually gotten worse -- more bigoted, more extreme, and more deceitful, and morphing into a full-fledged propaganda operation."

Fox News wants it both ways: They want to push bigotry while being accepted as just another media outlet. Murdoch is emblematic of that. When questioned recently, Murdoch compared Fox News to other media outlets and said that he was not embarrassed by the propaganda and bigotry of its personalities.

But it is not sustainable. At a normal media company, leadership would step in to address this level of bigotry and extremism. But at Fox News, such things are only encouraged. In response, advertisers have fled Fox News this year.

As long as Lachlan Murdoch is in charge, it's only going to get worse.

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Rupert Murdoch is reportedly planning to step down as CEO of Fox News parent company 21^st Century Fox "and hand that title to his son James," according to CNBC. James Murdoch previously resigned his role as the head of News International -- which published several tabloids and newspapers abroad -- amid the widespread scandal over phone hacking at News of the World,a since-shuttered UK tabloid he oversaw. As part of the fallout from that scandal, Murdoch also resigned his position as chairman of UK satellite broadcaster BSkyB.

According to CNBC, "Rupert Murdoch will continue to be the executive chairman of Fox, while his son Lachlan would also become an executive co-chairman of the company."

James Murdoch has reportedly drawn the ire of Fox News chief Roger Ailes, who allegedly called him a "fucking dope" over his inability to contain the hacking scandal. (Fox News media critic Howard Kurtz claimsthat despite James Murdoch's new position, "Ailes will still report to Rupert.")

A source quoted by CNBC claims "James will have the primary role in running Fox while Lachlan will take on a broader strategic role from his co-chairman position." Lachlan Murdoch has also reportedly butted heads with Ailes in the past.

As Media Matters previously noted, James Murdoch donated between $1,000,001 and $5,000,000 to the Clinton Foundation, which has been the target of a smear campaign by conservative media figures, including near-constant scandal-mongering on Fox News.

According to federal filings, James Murdoch donated $2,300 -- the maximum amount allowed for an individual -- to Hillary Clinton's 2008 presidential campaign. A review of the OpenSecrets database shows Murdoch has donated to both sides of the aisle, including multiple donations to the National Republican Congressional Committee and various elected Republicans like Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Senator Lindsey Graham, as well as Democrats like Sen. Cory Booker and Rep. Steny Hoyer.

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