The early returns from the Lachlan era of Murdoch media are starting to come in. In the United States, they’re already showing a big shift from the brash ideological leadership of the father Rupert to a more cautious follower-ship in the son, who’s displayed a willingness to sacrifice political power for the comfort of cash flow.
Meanwhile, News Corp’s Australian mastheads — left to their own devices while Rupert and Lachlan were busy across the Pacific juggling the hot potato that is Trump — have spent the summer break desperately scratching around for an issue that will ignite the local culture war and reverse their continuing declining revenues.
Surprisingly, it was Florida Governor (and wannabe Republican presidential candidate) Ron DeSantis who called out the sudden weakness of Murdoch media.
Fox News was now just part of Trump’s Praetorian Guard, he said last Friday: “They just don’t — they don’t hold him accountable because they’re worried about losing viewers and they don’t want to have the ratings go down.”
His complaint followed Fox’s “pathetic surrender” to Trump earlier in the week by agreeing to a live town hall discussion at a time and in a format demanded by the former president to spike the official Republican debate on CNN.
DeSantis should know. Rupert’s Fox News spent its last couple of years desperately trying to turn the governor into a national figure. It was just the latest in a rolling series of efforts by the older Murdoch since he sacked Fox News founder Roger Ailes in 2016 to wrestle ideological leadership of the political right back from Trump.
After paying the price for whipping up the “stolen election” conspiracy in 2020, Rupert spent his final Fox News years making Trump a “non-person” (as Brian Stelter says in his latest book Network of Lies). Yet, this week, as the US primary season began with the Iowa caucuses, all the polling shows that the Republican Party is still firmly — happily — stuck in Trump’s MAGA world.
Lachlan’s Fox News has seemingly figured it needs to go along, if it wants to get along.
But this is a story about more than just another right-wing institution falling underneath the Trump juggernaut. It’s about the end of the Rupert business model (and the model of his father, Sir Keith), which saw money and power go hand in hand, each boosting the other. Trump has forced the Murdochs to choose — and Lachlan has chosen the money.
DeSantis demonstrates that the US political class has recognised that Trump has shattered the perception that the older Murdochs traded on: the fear that the family’s media could make and break candidates and governments.
“It’s The Sun Wot Won It” bannered the UK masthead following the 1992 election with a boastful honesty. “Tasteless and wrong” a more humble Rupert reckoned some 20 years later, in the wake of the hacking scandal, relying, it seemed, on the public protestations of politicians that media bias cuts both ways — on average, at least.
But “The Sun Wot Won It” brag in the UK and the 1996 launch of the overtly right-wing Fox News on US cable encouraged academics to have another look. An analysis of British elections between 1997 and 2010 put a number on it, concluding The Sun’s support was worth about 2% of the vote. In the US, a 2007 study found that between 1996 and 2000 both the Republican turnout and vote went up significantly (in a statistical sense, at least) in towns where Fox News was on cable.
It’s not just Trump forcing the change. The fragmentation and siloing of audiences shift focus from the power of persuasion to the revenues arising from confirming the biases of the audience you already have. (It’s why Lachlan figures having a Biden to attack is good for Fox.)
But in a more relaxed, less MAGA-polarised Australia, News Corp is struggling to implement this US-shaped “give them what they want” content, with the company’s latest summer range — from pin-wearing flight attendants to Australia Day merchandise — set for the remainder bin.
The company’s tightly paywalled Australian news mastheads seem to have hit a ceiling, with under a million subscriptions (and, by my guestimation, around 650,000 subscribers, taking into account people who take both The Australian and the tabloids).
The Murdoch’s flagship tabloid franchise, the increasingly hysterical Herald Sun — the heir to the mastheads that founded the family’s power through its patriarch Sir Keith — languishes at about 150,000 print and digital subscriptions (according to the Delaware company’s filings with the US Securities and Exchange Commission).
Once, its front pages were feared by state and federal governments alike. Now, they’re publicly laughed off. That’s the cost of trading power for cash flow.
Fox is in a difficult position. The product they are selling – Trump – is exactly the same product they were selling in 2016 and seemingly old and stale because of that. What can possibly be said of Trump for either good or ill that hasn’t been said a hundred times already, and while it all seemed like a jolly good laugh eight years ago, haven’t we all had more than enough of him already? And isn’t the thought of another FOUR years positively nauseating? Unless you are a Trump supporter, of course, but then you are so besotted with the man that anything Fox has to add is superfluous. Plus, Fox can’t afford to rev the outrage machine much higher than it has already, firstly because if it does so it risks driving a good part of its market into apoplexy but, more importantly, the whole country is on the brink of civil war and Fox can’t afford to any more petrol on the fire. Raged unreason is good for business; social disintegration not so much.
It’s like one of those nightmares where you know something unthinkingly bad is about to happen and are desperate to wake up, but you can’t.
Great contribution Graeski I believe that it would be very interesting if the US did indeed erupt into civil war mode if Trump wins the White House this year. Surely the US business sector should make a stand against Trump now. The other important factor that I think that has not been discussed widely is that there is also a half senate + half HofR election.
God forbid if the GOP regains a majority in the US Senate.
One third of Senate, all of HoR, in US.
Don’t make the mistake of thinking it will only erupt if Trump wins. I think it could actually be more likely to erupt if he loses.
If Trump gets back in, you think it will only be one term? Of only four years? The question is “would the US democracy last 4 years under Trump? “
Trump will be term-limited. He cannot be elected again, unless he can engineer a change in the US Constitution.
Seriously, how difficult would it be for Trump to engineer a change in the US Constitution, specifically a revocation of the 22nd amendment? The Trump mind virus right now is so acute that anything is realistically possible.
It’s actually pretty difficult. 2/3 supporting vote in both houses to propose, and then supported by 3/4 of the States to enact.
It’s a struggle to imagine the US Constitution ever being amended again, to be honest.
Even if he could, surely not even Trump could engineer a change in his life expectancy.
There is the possibility that if Trump does get elected and does go rogue re payback, then that puts the US military in a conflicted position. He will surely request that they turn their guns inwards which will compromise military leadership. Homeland security will already be gaming and strategising on how best to handle a Trump win. One thing is for sure. Trump will be going everywhere in the Beast. There’ll be a big increase in JetA1 fuel costs as those F35s stay airborne over DC 24/7. He’ll be highly aware of the grassy knoll incident in Houston (JFK).
I think Trump supporters are quite happy to live in their echo chambers (much like me), and are happy to hear the same Trumped up platitudes repeated ad infinitum. Think South Park’s memberberries.
A civil war sure would sell papers though.
South Park was my analytical guide preceding Trump’s election avoiding MSM noise; the power of nostalgia playing on emotions of older and/or low info types; see Brexit and many quasi democracies driven by pensioner populism and ‘maintaining their rage’.
day took our jerrrbbzz
Both money and influence, the latter often overrides the former?
One’s concern is how their model of influence over audiences is being implemented in cooperation with other RW print, FTA tv, cable and radio (ABC pushed back into background), for the LNP and with think tank input, see The Voice Referendum and regions…..
Luring and conditioning older regional voters who may have been more centrist in the past, but subjected to a RW echo chamber of socio cultural issues…. see Brexit and Trump.
Senko’s ‘The Brainwashing of My Dad…. tries to understand the transformation of her father from a nonpolitical Democrat to an angry Republican fanatic, she uncovers the forces behind the media that changed him completely: a plan by Roger Ailes under President Richard Nixon for a media takeover by the Republicans, the 1971 Powell Memo urging business leaders to influence institutions of public opinion (especially the media, universities, and courts)….’ (Wiki).
(ABC pushed back into background)
The AWBC with its false equivalence is now just a repeater of the RW media (the morning starts with ‘what the [Murdoch] papers say’), no analysis.
That last link in the article is interesting.
Indeed, the Herald Sun count a paltry 150,000 subscribers; however, they somehow claim an “audience” of 4.2 million. How does that work?
Meanwhile, Andrew Bolt has now drunk the kool aid … today’s piece was about how Trump is a victim of a left wing vendetta and that January 6 wasn’t an insurrection. Wow, how quickly he fell into line.
It would be interesting to know the audience for Sky, Bolt and Credlin. To what extent is the influence of these people overplayed? Could it be that they’re kidding themselves just as the “Sun wot won it”?
I have to wonder if the real reason for so many of the government decisions that favour Big Commerce isn’t just the lobbyists, think tanks, advisers and ex-politicians who are happy to stay hidden behind the scenes, in complete contrast to the brazen approach of the Sun’s family.
Tuesday’s ratings were:
BOLT 55,000
CREDLIN 51,000
MURRAY 40,000
But they do create a lot of YouTube clips, and it’s a handy way for Sky News to keep the headlines reporting their opinions as news coming … “Albanese SLAMMED for incompetence” etc.
Indeed, when I installed Windows 11, the ‘newsfeed’ feature was an onslaught of that sort of headline. Doesn’t seem ethical.
(source: tvtonight.com.au)
The youtube clips are where they get most of their audience, in particular american conservatives.
Agree, objective seems to make content that can also be used offshore via social media, for further traction….
Another good reason to stay with Windows 10.
The thing with people like Bolt is the same as the thing with authoritarian governments, and that is deciding which is worse – they really do believe this stuff, or they don’t really believe this stuff but it gives the the power they seek.
Each paper is read 2,800 times.
Dougea
Trump seems to be fundamentally anti democratic yet he seems to have a different relationship with the military industrial complex than Biden, he is more isolationist than most presidents suggesting his personal revenue and popularity is not reliant on them. That is a quandary on paper which suggests it is a ruse or he is a loose cannon aimed at those that don’t like him.
The grooming that newscorpse has undertaken across the globe with for profit scripted 24hr fear and outrage for decades has a purely corporate motive and has created Trumps image and encouraged his approach.
He gained this power by being too big to fail, a product of Neoliberal capitalism where the taxpayer supports the losses, and profit is eternal.
Many have given Trump too much credit for Trump, when he has been largely platformed by RW MSM and alt right (at times seems to ‘own’ FoxNews?), while it’s claimed more generally that like the GOP, he is ‘owned’ by Koch via conservative Christian nationalist CNP Council for National Policy (see Anne Nelson in ‘Shadow Network’); makes Koch and even Trump far smarter than some guy born in Melbourne…..
We does seem to have wedged a few of the traditional powerbrokers simply by being such an awesomely bad businessman that if he goes down the gurgler will he set off a chain reaction? , a la too big to fail.
He seems to have done well from the GFC and the money printing aftermath, he is his own brand.
Very interesting, in a sad message for the U.S. and Australia. We thought Fox and the Murdoch press were bad now! Once a media company is subjugated to a political movement – think Putin or Xi Jingping or recently in Poland or Hungary – the dictator will use them to maintain control.
If ever Fox starts making sympathetic noises about Putin and Russia, this will be a sign of complete capitulation.
Funny you say that, former PM, UK Trade Advisor etc., new Fox Board member and now ‘researcher’ at the Danube Institute* in Budapest, linked to Atlas or Koch Network’s Heritage Foundation, claimed to support Ukraine in a December WSJ Live Event when asking House Speaker Johnson about Ukraine aid vote (failed).
He needs a heads up as in Hungary the political ecosystem is very anti-Ukraine and anti-EU (* his unregistered advisor also works there), while Heritage hosted Hungarians around Orban to lobby GOP House types to not vote for Ukraine aid…..
Fox has many pro-Russian and pro-Putin commentators, including former presenter Carlson who was sacked, but there have been at least three explanations…..to muddy the water?
Finally, GOP normies and ‘never Trumpers’ including Anne Applebaum who has called out the same Institute, plus Bill Kristol on Heritage, on Twitter (10 Dec 2023):
‘Heritage Foundation and Viktor Orbán are not simply against aid for Ukraine. They are against Ukraine. They hate Ukraine, because a) they’re pro-Putin, and b) they hate liberal democracy, especially one fighting to defend itself against a brutal dictator.’
One reckons there are a lot of nervous people in the Anglosphere who may or may not have been compromised.
This is the former PM who promised to “shirt-front” Putin, and then did … precisely nothing?
Glad-handling around Canberra?
The trouble with these rightwing types is that when they meet a real dictator, they go to water.
27 Australians and a total of 298 people died on MH17, and despite a decade-long slow-motion inquiry by the Dutch, the perpetrators have never been brought to justice. Lest we forget!
Yes, in my opinion Abbott et al. clearly look up to, or identify with strongmen, authoritarianism, ‘family values’ or Christianism, state socialism for the top end town, fossil fuels and following orders…..
Even the younger Murdoch’s smile is disturbing.