Murdoch Speaks: Fox Civil War Deepens
This is less about a Fox civil war than it is about Murdoch using his media empire to try to elect the next president. It’s deeply disturbing.
Why can’t people see that they’re being used? This man cares about nothing but benefiting his own corporate interests. Do people really want to wake up one day to find that the U.S. has become a wholly owned subsidiary of News Corp.? What do they think life will be like in America, Inc.?
I can guarantee them it’s not going to be an Ozzie & Harriet redux. It’ll be whatever increases Murdoch’s profit margin, the common working class be damned.
Palin & Beck are a perfect fit for his plan in more ways than I care to think about right now. What they probably don’t realize in the heat of their lust for fame & fortune, is that they’ll be expendable once Murdoch gets what he wants.
Rupert Murdoch has sent some new signals about where he and NewsCorp may stand in the brewing battle between the GOP establishment’s preferences for the GOP presidential ticket in 2012 (led by paid Fox New contributor Karl Rove) — which pointedly do not include Sarah Palin — and the increasingly probable “rogue” presidential candidacy of Palin (also a paid Fox New contributor).
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In a little-noticed interview with the Australian Financial Review, Murdoch, echoing Palin, has announced in no uncertain terms he stands with Beck — a “very genuine, extremely well-read libertarian” was his description of his star. Perhaps to underline the point that his top talent ought to get with the extremist Beck/Palin program, he trashed top-rated host Bill O’Reilly for a relatively even-handed interview of Hillary Clinton. “Disgraceful,” Murdoch called O’Reilly’s handling of that interview. Murdoch’s disgraceful statement — and its message to all of Fox’s on-air talent and producers — shows once again the cynicism and deception behind the slogan “Fair and Balanced.” (Bill, I have tried to be booked on your show for years without success. I would be happy to come on soon to defend your handling of the Clinton interview and analyze your boss’s trashing of you.)
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This, itself, telegraphs far and wide within Fox that Murdoch’s prior statement that Fox should not support the Tea Party or any political party is no longer operative (doesn’t look like it ever was anyway, except when Fox humiliated Sean Hannity by yanking him off a Tea Party fundraiser at the eleventh hour). But words matter when you are the boss, and Murdoch has now flip-flopped. When asked by the Australian interviewer, “Are you worried by the attacks on Fox for bias and its support for the Tea Party and Republicans?” Murdoch replied, “Noooo…People love Fox News.”
But there is more to suggest Murdoch has shown his hand — not just in standing with Beck — but by signaling that he will throw the weight of his powerful political apparatus disguised as a media empire behind Palin as his favored GOP nominee.
In the same interview, Murdoch quoted Mike Bloomberg as telling him that after Bloomberg met with Obama, Bloomberg “came back and said I’d never met in my life a more arrogant man.” Murdoch, a close personal friend and political supporter of Bloomberg, who used the New York Post to help elect the mayor, endorsed Bloomberg’s purported views of Obama.
What’s behind Murdoch’s Bloomberg boosterism? Probably boosting Sarah Palin.
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