The legacy of one Rupert Murdoch has been hailed as transformative in right-leaning publications since last week’s retirement announcement. I can’t argue with that. Fox News has altered the country, its journalism, and its politics. And not for the better. That — I would argue — is Murdoch’s true legacy.
It started overseas in Australia, where a former prime minister said this week that Murdoch did “enormous damage to the democratic world” by creating “an anger-tainment ecosystem” that left the US “angrier and more divided than it’s been at any time since the Civil War”.
The legacy grew next in Britain with minor disgraces in the tabloid world, exploiting women and cheapening journalism with his page three topless photos, and subsequent major journalistic crimes of hacking the phones of ordinary citizens, politicians, law enforcement, celebrities, royalty, and even crime victims. A scandal that forced Murdoch to shut down the scummy News of the World tabloid.
But the most notorious damage done by News Corp. and its immoral leader was done here in the United States by the ratings success of its cable propaganda outlet falsely named Fox News. By its own lawyers’ account, it is not a news outlet, but right-wing hate entertainment designed to echo the worst qualities of America that had been hidden in the shadows.
From white nationalism, the replacement theory, COVID misinformation, destruction of our institutions from the courts to the electoral process to the media itself, Fox News — led by Rupert Murdoch — has left this country worse than when it started in 1996. Let me count the ways.
It began way before Trump. Fox News constantly promoted the false charges that Barack Obama was not born in the United States, elevating the crackpot Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio’s bogus investigation into Obama’s birth certificate.
Next, was the “what about her emails” excuse to each bonafide Trump scandal exposed in the 2016 campaign. Scandals such as “grab them by the (genitals)” to campaign manager Paul Manafort’s meeting with Russian agents.
Rupert Murdoch’s political legacy is Donald Trump. He helped put him in office, made excuses for him while in office, and his network backed his claims of election fraud in 2020, which cost his network $787.5 million in damages because it carried and promoted the false claims that Dominion ballot machines were controlled by Venezuelan communists.
Fox, led by Rupert Murdoch, promoted wild conspiracy theories about the January 6th Insurrection. Its anchors and commentators routinely minimized the storming of the capitol, often repeating the claim that the rioters were merely “tourists” on an unauthorized tour of the seat of American democracy. Its most popular host publicized the bogus claim that the armed protest was led by Antifa, rather than The Proud Boys and other white nationalists.
Fox was also a major player in the disinformation claiming the capitol riot that killed 5 and injured 138 was a false flag operation. Tucker Carlson’s “documentary” on FOX Nation and on his nightly show falsely claimed that the FBI instigated the attack on the capitol. Murdoch’s disinformation on COVID-19 and vaccines cost human lives among its very viewers. Giving a platform to anti-vaxers and disrupting the national effort to control the virus through mass vaccination. A Yale study found that after the vaccine was made available, Democrats got the jab, while many Republicans did not. The result: the death rate in Republican states was 43 percent higher. Now, that is a legacy.
And perhaps just as damaging is the Murdoch contribution to the division in America. Pre-Fox, most Americans got their news from the three major networks — ABC, CBS, NBC, and CNN.
Objective reporting with no opinion was the gold standard. A media that helped the country through crises such as the Vietnam War, the Civil Rights movement, and Watergate, by shining the light on facts. Exposing the Pentagon lies that the war was going well, disinformation that Blacks were treated equally in the South, and beyond, and the coverup of the Watergate break-in.
But in 1996 with the invention of Fox “News” — designed by the former Nixon propagandist Roger Ailes, who was forced from power at Fox by his sexual harassment antics — that gold standard changed. Much of America still turns to CBS, ABC, and NBC for its straight news, but Fox is the leading cable outlet, and it nightly masquerades right-wing opinion as news, a formula that led to MSNBC morphing from straight news to opinion from the left, and even CNN reacting to Donald Trump by becoming more opinionated.
The landscape was changed from broadcasting to narrowcasting. Each outlet is now an echo chamber of its most extreme viewers.
There is no doubt Rupert Murdoch is a transformative figure. A foreign billionaire, who rejected American values, and destroyed many of them. He provoked racism, fascism, and exploited the hate that some Americans always had, but hid from sight.
It is a legacy, but a destructive one on too many levels. Farewell and good riddance.
Jim Avila previously served as a weekly columnist for Barrett News Media. An Award-winning journalist with four decades of reporting and anchoring experience, Jim worked as Senior National Correspondent, 20/20 Correspondent, and White House Correspondent for ABC News. Prior to his time with ABC, he spent a decade with NBC News, and worked locally in Los Angeles and Chicago for KNBC, and WBBM. He can be found on Twitter @JimAvilaABC.
