This article is part of a series about a legal threat sent to Crikey by Lachlan Murdoch, over an article Crikey published about the January 6 riots in the US. For the series introduction go here, and for the full series go here.
Approaching the two-year anniversary of his election defeat, Donald Trump still has the Republican Party tightly in his grip. After FBI agents searched his Mar-a-Lago property recently, the GOP collectively went berserk. From senior senators to lunatic fringe congresspeople, allegations of politicisation, persecution, dictatorship and even threats of civil war flew thick and fast.
And among Trump’s media supporters? One veteran media analyst described the coverage on Fox News as “downright sycophantic”, saying: “Just like when he was in the White House facing scandal, the network’s top personalities have rushed on air to portray Trump as the victim of shadowy, deep-state forces who are corrupt enough to use the levers of governmental power to damage him.”
The FBI search related to serious allegations that Trump — who remains the favourite to seize the 2024 Republican nomination — had retained top-secret documents from his time in the White House, including signals intelligence and nuclear weapons information, a clear violation of the law.
The reaction was even more febrile outside the Republicans. Calls for armed attacks on the FBI and civil war were widespread online. One Navy veteran, a man long convinced the 2020 election had been stolen from Trump, was killed after trying to attack the Cincinnati FBI field office. As we saw with the deaths that occurred during the January 6 insurrection, propaganda and misinformation lead to people getting killed.
How has America arrived at a democratic cliff-edge, from which civil war or widespread terrorism is not impossible, nor the reelection of a discredited, criminal authoritarian?
The reasons are complex. I’ve been writing about them for years now — including a book on the circumstances that gave us Trump, Brexit and widespread disillusionment with democratic politics, and another book on the lies of Scott Morrison, Boris Johnson and Trump. They include the continuing fallout from the financial crisis; the impacts of neoliberal policies on employment, inequality and community bonds; the endless wars following 9/11; and the social changes that have undermined — to a degree — the once pre-eminent social status of white heterosexual men.
But in that toxic mix is another cause: the Murdoch family and their “media” companies.
It’s no exaggeration to say that Fox News is an existential threat to US democracy. Its entire business model has been to stoke, amplify and feed a perverse sense of victimhood among its target audience of older white Americans — the most privileged people on the planet — and convince them they and the values they hold dear are under threat.
The source of that threat? “Liberals”, people of colour, migrants, feminists, LGBTIQA+ people, the “woke”, Democrats, climate scientists, and moderate Republicans, among others. The mechanism of the threat? An amorphous plot by these “elites” to destroy the American way of life and freedom.
Fox News was present at the creation of the Tea Party movement. It was a vehicle for its bastard offspring, the birther movement. Then it went all in for Trump. Inevitably, it became a vehicle for pandemic and vaccine denialism. This pandering to grievance and promotion of division meant it commanded the biggest cable TV audiences in the US and made billions for the Murdochs.
Support for the Big Lie that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump was an inevitable next step, especially when it became clear that angry Fox viewers would move to even more extreme platforms if Fox wouldn’t deliver. As one US media observer wrote, having radicalised its audience, Fox then became radicalised by its audience.
And this was all done, as so many critics and commentators in the US have observed, with the full knowledge of and encouragement by the Murdochs. If anything, Crikey was decidedly late to pointing out something plenty of American media figures — and the voting machine company Dominion — have been pointing out since January 6 2021.
This isn’t the only issue on which the Murdochs pose a significant threat to the public interest. Not merely in the US, but in Australia as well, News Corp has been the speartip of climate denialism, working assiduously with right-wing politicians and fossil fuel companies to deny the existence of climate change, demonise climate action, and discredit those who have called for action. Just ask James Murdoch, who expressed his disgust on the issue after the Black Summer bushfires.
The Murdochs, their staffers in the propaganda outlets they own, and their supporters will all insist they merely support free speech. As we’ve seen demonstrated over and over in Australia, the News Corp idea of free speech is free speech for them and their allies and for the views they endorse. But should anyone use free speech to express a viewpoint News Corp disagrees with, or to attack News Corp’s allies, then they risk becoming the target of a torrent of vicious public attacks. Yassmin Abdel-Magied. Roz Ward. Gillian Triggs. Robert Manne. Paul Barry. Julian Disney. Just to name a few.
At News Corp, free speech is for punching down, never for punching up. It’s for speaking power to truth, not truth to power.
Now, to repeat the fact that the Murdochs, via Fox News, encouraged the rise of Trump, supported him directly during his disastrous presidency, peddled over and over the Big Lie of the stolen election, sought to downplay the January 6 insurrection and even now to give succour to him, is to offend the sensibilities of Lachlan Murdoch.
Crikey’s mission has always been to hold the powerful to account and to call out those who do not act in the public interest. It’s in ready fulfilment of that mission that we called the Murdochs Trump’s unindicted co-conspirators in relation to the events of January 6. And fulfilling that mission has never been more important, not with the United States teetering on the brink.
If the Murdochs don’t like being associated with the direct results of the propaganda spewed out by their outlets, the solution is simple. Rather than suing, they should return those outlets to being genuine vehicles for journalism, not division and propaganda.
This, and the original article, passes the test set by George Orwell:
“Journalism is printing something that someone does not want printed. Everything else is public relations.”
On May 21 2022 Australia dodged a bullet…
And probably showed them there is a way to break the two party system entrenched to our great cost in the parliaments of the Anglophone world, by electing a viable number of community independents with the personal capacity and sufficient community support to enforce some integrity and adult behaviour on the major party’s hacks. Like independent media, it’s a concept NewsCorpse owners, management and staff have found impossible to figure out.
Electors haven’t voted for a 2 party system for quite some time.
True but unfortunately that’s what they’ve been dealt.
Never mind that the COALition itself is two parties, due to a secret agreement which the electorate is not permitted to read.
Is it too soon – or too late – to be concerned about LibLab coalition?
Would anyone notice?
How would Labor govern differently if it were not in thrall to the same powers?
Barnaby Joyce’s revelation that he did not challenge Morrison’s extraordinary power grab out of fear that PM would claw back a ministerial position Joyce said he wrangled is a somewhat horrifying window into “a secret agreement” that has been challenging good governance for almost a decade. There will be more exposed about the background to the machinations of the Morrison era and the role of the US-inspired right wing media in eroding Australian democracy.
Hopefully we have also dodged an ICBM..!!
For the moment – let’s hope that the promised “review of the lease of Darwin port facilities to a Chinese company” is widened to include PM Gillard’s legs/arms wide open invitation, embrace & facilitation of a US R&R base nearby.
Which, thanks to Scummo (as Minister?) was allowed to expand beyond the agreed limit of 5,000 personnel to 10,000+ (it would be interesting to how many the PLUS means), stockpile munitions (including StS & Sta missiles with NFDs of the warheads) and fighter aircraft & warships – previously only air/sea troop carriers were ‘allowed’.
Presumably the same quarantining from Australian oversight applies to it as with Pine Gap, NW Cape LW monitoring and ‘other facilities’ in that Indian Ocean coastal region.
Colour me totally reassured.
“legs/arms wide open invitation…”. If it had been Rudd or Morrison how would you have painted the “invitation”? Just another misogynistic slur on top of the pile on!
The reference was to R&R for military personnel.
The Top End has ‘enjoyed‘ (sic!) a ‘turnover‘ (sick!) bump & grind in the commercial sex industries.
A slightly tangential point, but I note that Crikey’s house style appears to have embraced the US date form, as have so many others including “The dude . . . ” (My apologies, Dude, for bombing your post with my pedantry.) But it’s a terrible shame, I think. Is this slow creep possibly due to default US computer settings? Maybe.
The form [month] [date] [year] does avoids the problem of starting a sentence a number, but that’s a re-write job, surely ( – add the day of the week). But separating numbers with a word is always clearer than two numbers run together, e.g. 6 January 2020. No need for any punctuation. Much more better-er, as we say in editing circles . . . I hate [month] [date] [year].
Not to mention the vocabulary – ‘step up to the plate’, ‘hail Mary forward pass’, ‘sidewalk’, ‘bathroom’ and the Worm’s constant ‘s/he was, like..’, as well as the loss of the past participle verb form for ‘fit’ & similar words.
I think when it is written as Aug (or whatever month) instead of the number it is fine because it is self-explanatory. But when written as just numbers like 08/22/2022, the US way is just silly.
When written as just numbers it really should be 2022/08/22
Press on BK and colleagues. A terrific
conspectus of it all. Your truth is demonstrated in here.
Excellent news Crikey. Make them accountable. This is why I continue to subscribe to Crikey. A chance to set the agenda by a minnow they would normally expect to silence. They won’t like that.
The only point you make that I don’t agree with is that the dissatisfied Tea Party/ Trumpsters are all privileged white men. The anger that has been generated by the Koch brothers, Trump etc. and been extorted by Fox is powerful as so many Americans live in post industrial poverty. Jobs lost, no health care, little hope. The capitalism of America, offshoring of jobs with no retraining and a limited social safety net has gutted so many. Big banks bailed out after they destroyed the economy birthed the Tea Party.
These often desperate and undereducated are now manipulated by these wealthy white pretenders. There’s a lot of anger to play with and the Murdochs join the billionaires who monetise it.
You are correct, but you fail to mention the vast waves of ignorance and stupidity that is afflicting so many of those unfortunate manipulated men and women, and the awful role of God delusions in the whole sorry show.
This theory of Trumpists being poor and economically downtrodden is a nice thought, in that it would at least gives them some rational background, but it’s clear by now that the reality is most them are pretty well off. Most poor people are too busy making ends meet to voluntarily spend all day being whipped into a state of manic aggression by agit-prop from professional grifters. It’s all about identity and being gullible.