Murdoch’s Threat to Democracy

I’m neither shocked nor sorry to see Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson get unceremoniously kicked off Fox News, as he, along with his predecessors Bill O’Reilly, Lou Dobbs, Sean Hannity and  Laura Ingraham have been some of worst political blabber-mouths on any major network. These far-right commentators have been promoted to dispense and propagate the worst America has to offer. 

It would appear that the only one who was shocked may have been Carlson himself, as he “found out about his firing 10 minutes before it was announced, according to the Wall Street Journal,” a publication owned by Rupert Murdoch.

His departure from the faux news network while being outed for lying in the Dominion Voting Systems defamation lawsuit would seem to be just dessert for this blowhard. What doesn’t seem to get addressed by other media critics is that he was fired for doing the very thing he was hired to do at Fox News. The true scandal here is not that he’s a racist, nor that he intentionally lied to viewers repeatedly about the 2020 election, but that he did it with the full knowledge and approval of his management — specifically Rupert Murdoch the chair of Fox Corporation and executive chairman of News Corp. If anyone should be fired, banned from media ownership and sued repeatedly it’s Murdoch himself.

For the last 40 years he has built a media empire on the values espoused by Carlson and others that has inspired the worst instincts of many Americans, mostly in rural red states, that rely heavily on cable news, often as their sole news source.

Is it any wonder that in some parts of this nation, people have been fed this propaganda for decades, continue to swallow this crap-news-opinion menu and then rise up in insurrection to defend a grifter like No. 45?  What is curious is how so many people in Southern California, who have other options, have imbibed in this gutter of misinformation.

Now don’t get me wrong, I enjoy a good debate of opposing factions as much as anyone else, but that is not what’s on Fox News. In fact, over the last 50 years, the media consolidation in this country has eliminated the majority of independent sources, and independent voices, so much so that vast portions of this nation have become  “news deserts” and independent media like RLNews have become increasingly rare. What’s even worse than the corporate control over the news is the consolidation of radio, live entertainment bookings, book publishing, and almost every form of cultural expression under one or two corporations. This has been the counter-revolution to what came out of the 1960s. We may have changed the music, but we didn’t change who controls the means of producing it. Thus, people like Rupert Murdoch. If there is a culture war in America, it is between those who create it and those who control its consumption.

 And beyond the worst is that corporate media is monetized by ratings and money chasing. Not reporting the truth or adhering to fact-based journalism or even promoting quality over pop-culture at the box office. Note how they rate blockbuster movies by how much the movies rake in on a weekly basis rather than how good they are.  The chasing of “celebrity status” has just become such a farce that all one needs to do is become a TikTok influencer or a billionaire who buys Twitter and blows up rockets in Texas. But I digress…

Rupert Murdoch and the other billionaires behind the largest media conglomerates are the poster children of capitalism-run amuck and are the very threat to our republic that the founding fathers warned us about. Thomas Jefferson feared that great wealth inequality would threaten to destroy the nation, creating class differences that would overwhelm the shared commitment to the rights, responsibilities, and benefits at the core of the American republic’s design. And the continued consolidation of media and culture has done as much to divide America as Carlson’s racism and fact-free lies.

Carlson’s ouster doesn’t change the fact that Fox News is rotten to the core. For over six years, he has provided a platform for hate, lies, and racism. It is a far right-wing propaganda machine that will do anything to advance its ratings and agenda, while raking in millions and millions of dollars in profits. The entire Fox News network should be held accountable (Murdoch in particular) and for the sake of the nation, it should be dismantled.

In just a couple of weeks, these corporate advertisers will likely be striking new deals with Fox News for the next year. AT&T, General Motors, and Subway have the choice to stop future advertising deals with Fox News or to continue funding the hate and lies that undermine our democracy.