There’s a few things that are certain. When Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) says that he’s not stepping down as he’s froze up twice in the last few months, believe him. He’s not leaving the Senate unless it’s feet first. When Sir Michael Caine says he’s thinking of finally retiring, don’t believe him. Caine has been acting since before most of our parents, if not grandparents, were born. He’s a very dedicated prolific and versatile actor. He’s still going to be acting and pumping out movies a good 10 years after he passes.
And also, when Rupert Murdoch says he’s stepping down as Chair/CEO of News Corporation, it’s a diversion of something else. At 92, Murdoch will be calling the strings until his final breath. I’m also certain he’ll leave a lot of instructions on how to run things on his deathbed. He says he’s letting his son, Lachlan, take over. But this is like Robert DeNiro’s character in Casino who keeps changing his job title from public relations manager to food & beverage manager. He was still the boss.
The problem is the upcoming 2024 election is going to be a hot one, especially if Donald J. Trump is or isn’t convicted in a court of law. The likelihood we’ll be having a criminal trial for a former President who is also running will make Fox News one of the most watched networks on the planet. But so much has happened in recent years that include the Dominion Voting Systems lawsuit, the sudden firing of Tucker Carlson, the Roger Ailes sexual misconduct scandal and all that happened with Bill O’Reilly. The cracks are starting to show.
Not that I watch Fox News much at all, but the highlights I do see shw even some of the news anchors and TV hosts aren’t buying the bullshit people of their shows are saying now. And now, that you have Newsmax, OAN: One America Network and Right Side Broadcasting Network all jockeying for a shout-out by Trump while Fox News seems ready to cut the monster they helped create. It’s a crazy world with the idea that Fox News might be the respectable network it often touted itself as but wasn’t. If a network has to tell you they’re “Fair and Balanced,” it’s the equivalent of a creep telling a woman he’s “a nice guy.”
In many ways, Fox News gave people what they wanted when it premiered in 1996. As a journalist myself, I can say that different reporters and writers have different angles and different takes on all stories. Our news media has always ignored certain items while focusing too much on others. News media in the 20th Century got the criticism that it had a liberal bias but it was mostly because the Civil Rights movement and the Vietnam War couldn’t be hidden anymore from the public. In 1968, Walter Cronkite basically stopped trusting the government on Vietnam and he lost some fans but gained others.
The news media wasn’t so ra-ra over the war as it was during World War II. And let’s face it, there was no reason for us to be in Vietnam or any of the neighboring countries. The colonization of these countries and the wars eventually led to the Khmer Rouge genocide massacre, documented in The Killing Fields. The tragedy is once the media started ignoring the PR from the Johnson and Nixon Administrations, suddenly they became liberal. Needless to say, a half century earlier, the Tulsa Media helped incite the Tulsa Race Massacre by saying they should “Nab Negro.” Rumor has it, one publication published “Lynch the (N-word)” and many made it out on newsstands before the higher ups pulled them. However, I’ve never seen an actual hard copy, so it could be an urban legend.
No, the media in the late 1960s to mid-1990s started focusing on other people than plain white families and in particular White Anglo-Saxon Protestants. Even Leslie Stahl admitted that they were told to go easy on Ronald Reagan while he was in office. Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein were just some 20-somethings when they broke the Watergate Scandal for the Washington Post. But there’s no way the Philadelphia neighborhood firebombing would go unnoticed and un-reported today. And still many conservative journalist like Cal Thomas, John Stossel (who claims he’s a Libertarian, but Gimme a Break) and O’Reilly claimed they weren’t allowed to go after liberals when they worked on ABC or CNN.
But we really know what they meant. The media in America couldn’t hide the crack epidemic and AIDS epidemic anymore. And they couldn’t do what “that sumbitch Reagan: wanted them to do and focus on the gay and black communities. Something wasn’t making sense to white Americans who were used to hearing the same stories over and over. So, when Rush Limbaugh started telling people what they needed to hear, talk radio became more popular. And Ailes and Murdoch did the same for TV by giving us Fox News. And that’s what people wanted to hear, news that mattered to them, even if it had a biased slant.
Would ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN or MSNBC run the risk of having a relative of a Presidential candidate working the election night news desk and able to call a crucial state for said candidate? Nope. But that’s what Fox News did in 2000 when John Ellis, first cousin to George W. Bush, called Florida for him. Yet, even though the station withdrew the call, it put the spark in people that Florida actually went to Bush. We will never know because Bush v. Gore gave the election win to Bush when people were order to stop counting.
People can talk all they want to about how the 2020 election was called by CNN but it had no family members of Trump’s nor Joe Biden’s. I’d argue that if Fox News wasn’t around in 2000, Al Gore would’ve been the President no questions asked. The network treated Bush with kid gloves through his eight years and spent the next eight years treating Barack Obama as if he was the anti-chirst.
And I wouldn’t doubt that Murdoch helped orchestrate or encourage it. When Ailes had to resign on the sexual misconduct allegations, he could then blame it on O’Reilly. Then, a year later, O’Reilly is forced out and Ailes dies. The network itself could still blame Obama and Hillary Clinton for a lot of things through 2017-2018 without making Trump look bad. And Carlson and Sean Hannitty rose up to take the position O’Reilly had.
Then the insurrection coup attempt happened on Jan. 6, 2021. It’s one thing to favor a President over another. It’s another for people to think you may have help feed a treasonous violent act. Like the “Nab Negro” story and the media encouraging the violence of the 1898 Wilmington, N.C. insurrection, Fox News could be blamed for this. Even if they claim to be an entertainment network, there’s still a limit.
However, I don’t think the government will have the brass cojones to go after a TV network. I mean that’s a First Amendment issue. But it’s no surprise that Fox News is the American equivalent of News of the World, that bastion of bullshit rag that was too much even for British media. And Murdoch was involved with it. But like I said, all they were doing were giving people what they wanted.
I remember the first time I saw Bat Boy in a World Weekly News in a gas station in the town in which I grew up. I was 13 or 14 at the time and the absurdity of it made me roll my eyes. I think the headline was something along the lines of “Bat Boy Escapes.” Who in their right might would buy that and believe it was real? When I was in the third grade, a substitute P.E. teacher tried to tell us he was in Hoosiers. I didn’t believe him even at age 9.
But if you present something in a way that makes people believe it might be true, then they will believe it. That’s usually why O’Reilly and Carlson would often spend most of their shows “suggesting” things. They’re not saying it’s all real or even that it might be real, but we should entertain the notion that it might be possible. That’s why people watch Fox News. There might actually be a Bat Boy or the P.E. teacher might have been in Hoosiers. I’ve known a lot of people who appeared in movies. One of the people I went to school with was in Remember the Titans and shared the scene with Ryan Gosling. Another one of my college friends was in the Hulu series The Act alongside Patricia Arquette. I don’t have to entertain a notion when I know it’s not possible.
But Murdoch said he’ll be Chair Emeritus. Yet is he still going to have a decision in the ongoings of News Corporation? I don’t think he’ll be selling any of his shares, so that’s a big 10-4. And do we really think Lachlan is going to do things his way while Big Daddy is still alive? I think what Murdoch is trying to do is wash his hands of Trump and the MAGA crowds because he suspects a change will be coming and he doesn’t want to be remembered as the Chair/CEO when it happens.
I mean in the past five years, there’s been four fucking Prime Ministers of the United Kingdom and they’re supposed to be the more rational ones, for chrissakes. Theresa May was PM for three years. Then Boris Johnson, their own Trump, didn’t make it three full years. Next, there was Liz Truss, who didn’t get past her 90-day probationary period as she was in office seven weeks. Now, there is Rishi Sunak, who hasn’t been in office a year. But who knows how long he’ll last?
The world is changing and there are many who don’t want it to change. Murdoch has one goal in life – to make money and build an empire. If you can’t help him, he won’t help you. That’s why he and “that sumbitch Reagan” were so simpatico. I’ll be honest that we need to reinstate the Fairness Doctrine. But in a world where any damned fool can start a podcast or drop a blog, we’ve gone past the point of no return.
Who know? Maybe Lachlan, with his preppy GQ model looks, might prove to see the errors of his father’s ways and change things up. But I highly doubt it. And as a firm believer in the First Amendment, I still think journalists and media have to tow the line between what the public needs to know and what is too insensitive to put out in the public. If you can’t handle that responsiblity, you don’t need to be in media in the first place because you’re not a journalist. You’re just a bully.
What do you think? Please comment.
Zane Says 