Rupert Murdoch

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Keith Rupert Murdoch, AC^{[note 1]} (11 March 1931–) is an Australian-born American ancient, evil fear-monger, and former^[2] Co-Chairman of News Corp (aka News Corp Australia in Australia) and Fox Corporation.^[3][4] He is responsible for the "we report you decide" blatherers known as Fox News (US), Sky News (now in Australia, the UK division since sold), and Sun News (Canada).

He is the publisher of many newspapers, most notably the New York Post, The Sun, and News of the World before it went bust. This man can hack the phones of royal families on the one hand, and crush high-speed internet in Australia with the other; that's some Tywin Lannister shit right there. He's got an Emmy, for crying out loud.

He is also the owner of HarperCollins, one of the Big Five publishers in the English-speaking world. One of the imprints of the company is Thomas Nelson which specialized in religious (read: Christianity) books and notably published Jim Bakker's infamous I Was Wrong and more recently, Heaven Is for Real. It is also published NIV Bible via its imprint Zondervan.

Definitely qualifies as a "right wing bastard", and a heartless one at that. Even by right-wing standards. He has had such an ongoing negative impact on the world that it may never really recover. Also, remember Myspace? Yeah, he's the reason it's dead.^[5]

Later on, he and his family sold the British Sky^{[note 2]} to Comcast and the portions of Fox media empire (21st Century Fox) to Walt Disney. Not included on the sale are Fox News, Fox Business, and U.S. version of Fox Sports.

Old man yells at cloud[edit]

He wants television in the UK to be less regulated, and to become more like India, Japan, or France. He also wants to remove impartiality from news broadcasts, and to do away with the BBC which raises standards that commercial channels have to compete with—a very different tune from what he said in 1968. In an interview he gave with the BBC,^[7] he warned about the dangers of newspapers hiding or distorting the truth, and said they have a responsibility for factual reporting. He argued the best was to ensure this was competition between news outlets. Power corrupts and all that. (Ironically, he once kept a bust of Lenin in his room at Oxford.)^[8]

A hallmark of Rupert's editorial style is to dumb down each magazine he acquires—not so much to broaden its readership, but to toot his populist/anti-intellectualist horn.^[9] Sophistication is a quality he has always hated; he never had much interest in the professional end of the business, and feels more affinity with tabloids like the Star and the Post.^[10]

Murdoch makes no secret of using his empire to promote his "values" i.e. the interests of the Murdoch business empire.^[11][12] How does the relentless persecution of footballers, tattoo shops, fat people and rape victims help his business interests? That stuff is pure ideological bile. The answer: Because they thrive off the boomer generation and that's how they roll. He just aligns his papers with what his readers want to hear: The Sun is read by Leave Voters; The Times, Remain.^[13]

He belongs to no party. Rupert's beliefs line up with conservatism, which is great, and candidates are willing pawns; but as everyone soon learns, there's no particular favouritism.^[14][15][16] Rupert backs politicians until they have outlived their usefulness to him. After that, he uses his papers to undermine and destroy them, while at the same time showering praises on the next Golden Boy. And once they're in office, Murdoch will call in his favours, with the implicit threat of, "I made you, I can destroy you" looming in the background.^[17] He's been doing it since Thatcher and he was insanely proud of himself.

More bugaboos[edit]

But the Murdoch press is not just hack journalism. There is an agenda way beyond selling papers; this is evidenced by The Sun and The Australian running at a loss. The world's discussion of things like social security, taxation, and universal healthcare has been hugely discolored by the editorial influence of Murdoch and the huge reach of his publications. Daily repetition of his viewpoints entrenches those perceptions in the minds of the wider population. It's been decades of slow change, but successful: the general population no longer believes government can be a tool to benefit society at large; they now distrust government, ask why the government takes their money, and resent things like social welfare.

• He can't seem to make up his mind on immigrants. One minute he wants to secure the border, the next he defends them as a source of cheap labor.^[19][20]
• Feeling unknown and you're all alone? Flesh and bone by the telephone? Lift up the receiver, he'll make you a believer.^{[21][22][23][24]}
• He is a champion of fossil fuels.^[25][26] In his mind, one of the biggest effects of climate change is that rich people won't be able to have (as many) massive beach houses (where they currently are). The privilege of the 1% on display.^[27]
• He is vehemently opposed to trade unions, sometimes getting personally involved in disputes.^[28]
• He despises the EU because it weakens Britain’s subservience to the US. RM dropped support for John Major’s government because of what he perceived to be pro-EU politics,^[29] and he was even willing to publicly chastise Thatcher when she veered from the Reagan agenda.^[30] As Murdoch himself once said, "When I go into Downing Street they do what I say; when I go to Brussels they take no notice."^[31]
• Loves freebies but wants others to go without.^[32][33][34]
• Is a thrice-divorced homophobe^[35] who thinks women should know their place.^[36] Hey, remember when Murdoch dumped his trophy wife for saving him from getting hit with a pie, because she emasculated him and made him feel like a real pussy?^[37]
• He's opposed to paid sick leave or equal-opportunity hiring.^[38][39][40]
• Rupert is no friend to the Jews; he just wants his blood money: Israel illegally gave him oil rights to Occupied Syria and now he's come to collect.^[41]
• He naturally sees the ABC, the BBC and other public broadcasters as enemies to News Corp, and his particular conservative ideology.^[42]
• In fairness to him, he made some noises about gun control some years ago.^[43] Solid bloke. Now if only he wouldn't broadcast NRA propaganda in the wake of a fucking school massacre.^[44]

A Song of Ink and Paper: A Feast for Editors[edit]

His heir is set to continue doing exactly the same. There's an infamous speech he gave a few years back which leaves no doubt.^[45] Supposedly his kids are a lot more liberal^[46] so change may be underway if James can pry it out from his cold, dead fingers. Even if Murdoch dies, his five other Horcruxes will be intact. (News of the World was his sixth.)^[18]

In the US[edit]

By United States law, no foreign citizen may own any controlling interest in a company that in turn owns local radio or television stations or networks. Murdoch got around this by becoming a naturalized US citizen in 1985. After that, News Corp (then called "News Limited") bought MetroMedia's TV stations. Murdoch then merged them with 20th Century Fox -- which News Corp bought in 1984 -- and launched the Fox Broadcasting Company in 1986. At first, Fox Broadcasting lost money hand over fist because most of its affiliates were low-power UHF stations. The only strong shows Fox had during this period were The Simpsons^{[note 3]} and Married...With Children.

Then, in 1993, Murdoch dumped a truckload of money into the National Football League's boardroom, cementing a deal that wrested National Football Conference games away from CBS. Longtime CBS affiliates — many of them high-power VHF stations in large markets like Detroit, Dallas-Fort Worth, Atlanta, Milwaukee and Tampa — jumped ship and signed with Fox. Soon, the former also-ran network had solidified its position to the point that Murdoch was able to make his next move. In 1996, Fox News debuted. (And you probably thought that sports had little influence on history!) Ever since, Murdoch and his empire have generally helped to slant American media in a "right-wing" direction.

Murdoch, formerly a Presbyterian, identifies as a tits-on-parade lover born again Christian, with Rick Warren as his pastor, no less. Warren was put off by Rupert's condemnation of pornography while profiting directly from same.^[48]

Worse yet[edit]

And now: the Dow! He also owns the Wall Street Journal and NatGeo.^[49] Also distinguish between the National Geographic Society, which Murdoch does not own, and the NatGeo channel, which Fox had partially owned from 1997 until 2019.^{[note 4]}

He also publishes TV Guide, which once published hard-hitting multi-issue investigative journalism about the TV industry. Since News Corp bought it, TV Guide has become little more than a gossip magazine. It doesn't even include local listings any more, which was its original selling point.^{[note 5]}

Fox Interactive, i.e. the video game-hating Fox & Friends, and IGN Entertainment were both owned by the same company: News Corp. They say there are two sides to every story, and criminal billionaire Rupert Murdoch knows it's a good idea to control both.^[50] IGN’s “original properties” include garbage like AskMen.com and TeamXbox. Thankfully, this division went bust and the assets were sold to Ziff Davis (IGN) or outside investors (Myspace, which later bought out by Time Inc. and now became a Meredith Corporation division)

He idolizes Nixon,^[51] and forged relationships with William Casey, Roy Cohn, and others in the CIA.^[52]

#RupertsFault[edit]

On January 9, 2015, in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo massacre in Paris, Murdoch took to his Twitter account to share his words of wisdom. He took the opportunity to share his Islamophobia, saying, "Maybe most Moslems[sic] peaceful, but until they recognize and destroy their growing jihadist cancer they must be held responsible."^[21] Rupert is apparently unaware that literally every time a jihadist attack occurs, Muslims are among the first to disavow it, the Paris shooting being no exception.^[53][54] Needless to say, the response was less than amicable. One particularly virulent attack on Murdoch's generalizations came in the form of Aziz Ansari. He started a fun little trend on Twitter, "#RupertsFault", detailing all the horrible things Christian extremists have done from which Murdoch has failed to properly distance himself.^[55]

In the UK[edit]

Murdoch made his first entry into the British market in 1968 when he bought the News of the World, and under a year later the Sun, once a proper newspaper but later turned into an irrelevant tabloid, partly due to his approval of splashing tits all over Page 3. By 1986, he also owned the Times and Sunday Times, giving him a scope across the high-brow and low-brow press. Television was conquered in the 1990s with the creation of Sky Television and its partial monopoly over Football Broadcasting in Britain, and the Sky News Channel (which alongside BBC News is one of only two British 24-hour news channels to survive - the ITV News Channel having died in the 2000s and BSB's Now only lasting for a few months in 1990 before BSB's merger with Sky).^[57] All of his publications are right wing and supported the Conservative Party throughout the Thatcher and Major leaderships. In the late 1990s, Murdoch invited Tony Blair to Australia leading to an order to tone down attacks on the left-wing Labour party and the Sun in particular endorsed Blair in the 1997 election. However, all newspapers swung back to the right for the 2010 election, and Murdoch's papers are generally seen as rather right-wing. UK citizens don't like it when foreigners pick their fruit, or nurse them when they're sick, but a foreigner controlling a large chunk of the media is acceptable.

Murdoch attempted to make a bid to control the whole of BSkyB, which fell under attack by MPs across all parties due to having so much power already.^[58] Eventually, he dropped the bid because it turned out he hadn't been entirely legal in the way he'd got stories for some of his papers.

He, and the whole of News Corp., fell out of favour with everyone when it turned out he'd been having phones hacked here, there and everywhere, including those of celebrities and the families of recently-dead kids. He thought that by dropping his BSkyB takeover bid and stopping the publication of News of the World, people would forgive him. They didn't. The hacking prompted the Leveson Inquiry, which had the purpose of nailing Murdoch's coffin down good and tight. (Nah, he'll just dematerialize and flee into the air vents like Dick Cheney.)

Sky was sold to Comcast which originally bid for the 21st Century Fox (which was, later acquired by Walt Disney Company) but later turned its attention to Sky instead.^[59][60]

In Australia[edit]

Murdoch owns a big slice of Australian media and has immense influence. He has 76% of newspaper circulation; radio stations use his newspapers for talking points, and it all carries on from there. Murdoch also owns Australia's only cable TV provider, Foxtel, and makes ridiculous amounts of money from it as he owns the rights to all major shows/movies/networks. He will soon have much more than that: The Turnbull government planned to remove the 2/3rds and 76% media limits.^[62]

Ironically, it was Paul Keating, a former Labor PM, who gave him the greenlight to buy up media. This is why Murdoch, despite being a conservative, always has praise for Keating, and why Keating never had to deal with an ultra-hostile Murdoch.^[63] You can't just use the mechanisms of Democracy to become leader without permission; you have to know your place. Gillard learned that.

He pushed as hard as he could to destabilize the Labor Party, which was a big factor behind their in-fighting (the polls nosedived based on right-wing fearmongering, and that gave a reason to change leaders). They wouldn't have freaked out if not for the relentless fanning of flames through Murdoch's domination of Australian media.^[64]

He's basically the most hated man in Australia.

Technology insights from an octogenarian[edit]

Labor decided to try rolling out the National Broadband Network (fiber node), replacing the country's 80-year-old copper wiring. This didn't fly with Murdoch, as online streaming threatens his monopoly on cable. (No one in their right minds would pay for Foxtel if they had decent internet service.)^[65] He offered to provide media clout, as well as huge piles of money, if the Liberal Party would stop the NBN from being completed, both by making it more expensive and keeping it slower, preventing the internet becoming the primary media distribution method.^[66]

What ensued was a media barrage on the high costs of cord-cutting,^[67] brought to you by same conglomerate owned by, you guessed it, Rupert Murdoch: From stories about:

• asbestos in the pipes (REALLY?? WHAT A SURPRISE WHEN YOU OPEN UP OLD PITS FROM THE 1950's)
• how slow the rollout is
• referring to it as a "video entertainment system"^[68]
• how costly it will be^[69]
• the "people want wireless!" refrain

The Liberals passed as many motions and bills as they could to strangle the NBN in the crib,^[70] turning what would have been a $15B deficit with a high rate of return into a $20B "surplus" and bragging rights for being such great managers for years to come. With the added bonus of taking an ambitious new public utility and using it as a money funnel for their corrupt mates in business. Foxtel is currently in partnership with Telstra to open the network up to private bidding and carve up suburbs into their own fibre micro-monopolies, exactly what the NBN was designed to prevent.^[71] Shades of American taxpayers funding billions of dollars for fibre infrastructure that wasn't delivered by the monopoly providers and still getting shit service.

Australia ended up paying $29 100 billion^[72] to repair several decades-old copper phone lines, Labor shot themselves in the foot, and the conservatives went rabid and eventually voted in arguably the most detested PM in their history.

In China and Cuba[edit]

Rupert Murdoch is a long time collector of Ming Dynasty porcelain; his father was also a war correspondent for China during the 30's. Rupert Murdoch met his third wife Wendi Deng working for his network Star TV as his translator. Star used to carry the BBC, until Murdoch had a friendly chat with the BBC expressing his hope they would stop showing video of the Tiananmen Square Massacre. Shortly thereafter the BBC revealed they had an adamantium spine and soon were dropped due to an independent business decision that was never elaborated on and had nothing to do with the request. In 1996 he partnered with Liu Changle to create the Phoenix network for the select few urban citizens allowed to watch foreign programming. In the early 2000’s Newscorp controlled 9 of the 31 foreign channels.

After giving a speech in 1997 stating communications technology threatened totalitarian regimes everywhere, Prime Minister Li Peng than outlawed private ownership of satellite dishes. To make amends his book publisher HarperCollins published a biography of Deng Xiaoping written by Deng’s daughter, and ferried a troop of acrobats promoted by Deng’s eldest son. News Corp purchased Myspace in 2005 and brought it to China making it compatible with all communist censorship laws, as Microsoft, Google and Yahoo have also done, allowing patriotic users to report inappropriate information to the authorities.^[73]

Fox News designed a website for state broadcaster CCTV, and a NewsCorp team launched the web site of the official newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party, The People's Daily. Rupert Murdoch's networks relay more foreign broadcasting into China than any others.^[74] Business Week discovered memos suggesting he killed a book deal with the last British Governor of Hong Kong because it was critical of communist leaders rather than flattering them over dinner and bestowing upon them gifts like Murdoch.

Although time travel and alternate history fiction are usually banned by the Chinese censors,^[75] they seem to make an exception for the X-Men films of 20th century Fox.^[76]

Rupert Murdoch also does business in the tax haven of Cuba, where his treasure dwarfs anything buried by pirates. Someone inform Glenn Beck of the communist conspiracy involving his boss before it's too late!^[77]

Hello...Newman.[edit]

Time Warner CEO Ted Turner has twice challenged Murdoch to a fistfight: Once when a Murdoch-sponsored yacht collided with his boat, sinking it; the other for supporting the invasion of Iraq.^[78]

Conspiracies[edit]

Conspiracy theorists (some even of the right) will often argue that Murdoch is a front-man for the Zionists/Marxists/Illuminati,^[79] using the media to indoctrinate us and act as a distraction from important issues. Credit where it's due: they're quite correct on the second part.

Murdoch's outlets have also been accused of being "left-wing" (!) by white nationalist extremists, such as Sherman "The Great Aussie Patriot" Burgess, Neil Erikson, Blair Cottrell, and (more recently) Mark Levin, because their stance against radical Islam is not strong enough. You know you've embraced some next-level racism when you accuse Murdoch of being a leftist.

See also[edit]

• Tony Blair — Holy shit. Blair's mistress was Wendi Deng Murdoch? And she's dating Putin? Is there an Olympic medal for gold-digging?
• The Leveson Inquiry — Guess who's back as CEO? James Murdoch & Rebekah "King Charles lookalike" Brooks.^[80][81] They were neatly sidelined during all the palava, then once the fuss had quieted down, they stepped into new roles with, arguably, more power than they had before.
• William Kristol — After the fall of the Berlin wall, the Republicans were split between an isolationist wing and an aggressive, neoconservative wing. Murdoch wanted to steer the American right back towards Cold War-era politics, and in 1995 he launched Weekly Standard. Kristol approached Murdoch seeking funding, but Murdoch took complete ownership and published it as a News Corp title.
• Roger Ailes — Murdoch West.
• The New York Times, which Murdoch is opposed to.^[82] Probably it sates his ego to think he'll be the one to finally kill it.

Videos[edit]

• NBN Blunders and Rupert Murdoch - Not recommended for viewers with high blood-pressure.

External links[edit]

• Really shows you the age of their target audience.

Notes[edit]

References[edit]