Under the current terms of the trust, upon Murdoch’s death, his four oldest children – Lachlan, James, Elisabeth and Prudence – will have “an equal voice” in determining the future of the news empire.
Why is Keir Starmer’s Labour Party reportedly agreeing not to introduce reforms to British media in exchange for the support of right-wing media baron Rupert Murdoch?
. “At the most basic level of how journalism should operate, executives in charge of news in the public interest should not be suppressing news. It’s a pretty simple bar, and Will Lewis has failed to clear it,” says Chris Lehmann, D.C. bureau chief for The Nation.
The Murdoch empire’s attempts to distract our attention from the monster it created and its legitimising of one of the most toxic candidates for the presidency of the US should be called for what it is, a last-ditch attempt to prop up an ugly and increasingly strident faux-populist demagogue who has only ever been interested in his own, personal gain and who will cheerfully destroy whatever remains of justice, democracy and decency in his path.
We have a major problem with the damage that Rupert Murdoch has done to newspapers in Australia, and any self-respecting government should take steps to correct that as soon as possible.
Murdoch’s vast empire of toxic right-wing propaganda, from the British tabloids to the Wall Street Journal to Fox News, has poisoned the brains of millions and made the world dramatically worse.
Quid pro Quo backroom deals, Fake photo shoots, and Dismantling of the ABC to Maintain this nation’s colonial course. News Corp & Abbott are determined to show we are White, Christian, and Monarchist. Murdoch has appointed a psychopath with a trail of broken promises and hate to a governor of Rupert’s interests down under. The American media invasion will continue with a wannabe Knight on the board who still dreams of being PM.
Tony Abbott’s appointment to the Fox Corporation board next month will formalise a long and fruitful relationship between the former prime minister and the Murdoch family.
(1) 1946 post-war confessional prose by the German Lutheran pastor Martin Niemöller (1892–1984). Wikipedia:
First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out –
Because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out –
Because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out –
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me –
And there was no one left to speak for me.
By Anthony Haritos Yes, we were cheap. And we were very nasty. Yes, we did fuck your mind over. Yes, it’s true; we did twist your moral compass completely out of shape so that you’d never ever remember you ever ever had one. Because – and this is a tad difficult since I feel we’re…
Why is he voting No in Australia? This just might be a clue
Lachlan believes in the reality of “systems” agreeing with Tucker Carlson’s “great replacement theory”. Which makes him more Hansonite and fiercely anti- Multiculturalist. But when it comes to Indigenous Australians who can’t be deported from their land, and can’t be “sterilised”, as proposed by Lang Hancock Gina’s land-grabbing father, he claims like Dutton and the No campaign there is no “systemic racism in Australia”. Only a Woke lack of acceptance and antipathy to be allowed to complete a process of unfinished re-education or Assimilation. Which has continuously failed for 250 years or should we be clearer for 50 years since the 1969 referendum recognizing Australia’s First People.
In fact, if it’s not racist, why does it sound so very pro-Chinese leaning toward their necessary process of the re-education of the ethnic Uyghurs? Or so Russian where Siberia is a place elected for the special psychiatric re-education of any individual opposition to Putin. Murdoch like Dutton like all No campaigners is all over the shop encouraging neo-Nazis to come out and openly walk our streets at the behest of the No campaign.
He has also defended Tucker Carlson’s airing of the “great replacement theory,” a conspiracy theory that falsely alleges that white people are intentionally and systematically being replaced by immigrants, and continuously argued that Fox News’s coverage is both balanced and fair.
He owns 175 Non-News but poisonous Opinion Papers around the world and “Floods the Anglosphere with Shit”. However, since his $750M loss to Dominion Systems truth has pushed back and is defending more cases globally. His last chance at reprieve is to ensure Trump’s election win in 2024 but knows he can’t trust him or even his own family after he’s gone to maintain his poisonous empire.
Rupert Murdoch’s announcement that he is handing over the reins to his son has drawn a range of positive and negative responses across the political world.
That story in particular was always dangerous, but especially so in recent years as the Murdoch family’s leaders told themselves — or at least their audiences — that the world would be a better place with Donald Trump in charge.
That Brexit would be “wonderful” for the UK.
That Australia would be better off without the ABC. And that global warming “is good for us”.
On display in Australia for a century, these Murdoch family traditions — of power-lust and self-interest disguised as patriotism, using media assets to play politics — have had a global impact.
Rupert Must be begging for James or Elizebeth to come back. Lachlan is such a loser
Media executive Lachlan Murdoch has paid Crikey more than a million dollars in legal costs incurred during his aborted defamation suit.
Media executive Lachlan Murdoch has paid Australian publisher Private more than a million dollars in legal costs incurred during his aborted defamation suit against Crikey.
Mr Murdoch, CEO of Fox Corporation, has paid more than 1.3 million to Crikey’s publisher Private Media – in excess of the $1.1 million requested by the publisher.
Murdoch profits yes, but trashes everything he builds. The Sun, The News of the World, Sky News Australia, Fox News and even his marriages. What he calls family is only held together by money and no doubt his will after death.
Fox also ranked last for “accurate” coverage of the 2020 election in the poll, with only 12% of Americans saying that the network’s 2020 coverage was “almost always accurate” and less than half saying it was “mostly accurate.” These values were lower than that for CNN, MSNBC, ABC, NBC and CBS in both categories with percentages for those networks ranging between 56% and 58% for the “mostly accurate” poll.
The Murdochs long ago discovered that vast profits could be made from a media outlet that functioned as a political party, selling grievance, victimhood and conspiracy theories of demonic “liberal elites” to older white Americans. Trump is the avatar of the Murdoch business model, whatever personal feelings Rupert may have about him.
Lachlan Murdoch was forced to abandon his own defamation case against Crikey. Using the excuse of their very own phishing for subscriptions as Crikey’s business tactic. Attention-seeking actions like the one he employed against Crikey was to be used to sell his own subs. However, the case was dropped because he needed the Dominion Systems’ evidence against Fox News buried. That evidence showed the Murdoch’s extremely malicious and intentional media malpractices which had to be swept under the carpet from widespread public knowledge. The Australian case against Crikey threatened to shine a light on them if the case went ahead.
Individuals can’t claim Tax Deductions. When we lose defamation cases or suffer unintended costs. However, Fox News can and who other than us, individual Taxpayers, lose out when the corporation makes a ginormous tax claim?
Furthermore, surely Crikey has a right to recoup the legal costs suffered against Murdoch’s failed vexatious attack and return the Go Fund Me donations received?
“Mr Murdoch remains confident that the court would ultimately find in his favour, however, he does not wish to further enable Crikey’s use of the court to litigate a case from another jurisdiction that has already been settled and facilitate a marketing campaign designed to attract subscribers and boost their profits,” he said.
The “case from another jurisdiction” referenced above is the defamation claim Fox News and Fox Corp were facing from Dominion Voting Systems. The case settled this week for US$787.5 million (just over a billion in Australian dollars), roughly half the damages Dominion was seeking.
Crikey
We stand by our position that Lachlan Murdoch was culpable in promoting the lie of the 2020 election result because he, and his father, had the power to stop the lies. How do we know? Because Dominion sued Fox News for promoting the lies and Fox just paid $1.17 billion to Dominion to settle the case.
Murdoch’s lawyer made the absurd suggestion, in his statement of defeat today, that his client “remains confident that the court would ultimately find in his favour, however, he does not wish to further enable Crikey’s use of the court to litigate a case from another jurisdiction that has already been settled and facilitate a marketing campaign designed to attract subscribers and boost their profits.”
The fact is, Murdoch sued us, and then dropped his case.
Many suspect that Murdoch was promoting the idea that his behaviour showed a mental impediment, in order to avoid being called to give evidence. However, it seems to have backfired if this was indeed the fact. Giving away a $3.5M diamond didn’t help show a judge he was a fruitcake and prevent him from being subpoenaed to testify.
As an aside, the judge overseeing these matters was approached by the legal team representing the defendant mogul to have him excused from giving evidence in person due to his age and general doddering condition.
The very astute judge questioned, ‘was this the same defendant of whom he had been reading was anticipating betrothal and marriage and looking forward to doing much travelling and lounging on beaches with his new squeeze who, he had just presented with a $3.5 million 11-carat diamond solitaire engagement ring?’ The judge sensibly dismissed the application.
Is this article a defense of the Murdoch’s, The Current Israeli Government, The Russian Invasion of the Ukraine and Donald Trump? Even a broken clock is right twice a day.
It is perhaps as Oscar Wild once put it “that sometimes you have to do something bad to do something good”.
Or, to boil it all down: What this all suggests is that Fox News leadership is genuinely worried that their viewers will perceive them as a propaganda outlet, instead of a news organization. Why that bothers them is hard to suss out. As the court filings show, the leadership of Fox News felt pressure from their audience to downplay actual facts and play up conspiracy theories. It feels like theirs is not an audience who cares about facts, or even the illusion of facts. But watching Fox’s machinations around this case, it seems that they believe keeping up the pretense that they are “news” matters to their viewers, even if no one actually believes it.
Murdoch will do everything to protect the family wealth.
Rupert Murdoch’s companies are set to be sued out of existence after Rupert gave evidence under oath that Fox News commentators knowingly lied to their audience about the 2020 presidential election being stolen from Donald Trump and Rupert said he could have stopped the lies but didn’t.
This evidence was released in the US (27/2/2023) in a redacted court filing by Dominion Voting Systems in their $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox Corp and Fox News. (Click here to read Dominion’s redacted filing)
Murdoch is now singing from his UK playbook and says he’s ready to sack his staff.
Details from the Dominion Voting Systems’ deposition of Fox News chair Rupert Murdoch are now coming out, and once again, it shows that the Fox executive suites were all fully aware their on-air hosts were “endorsing” hoaxes about the 2020 presidential election that they knew to be false. Rupert Murdoch himself admitted he was aware that several of his hosts were promoting the hoaxes, including Jeanine Pirro, Sean Hannity, and Lou Dobbs, and Murdoch was even willing to allow that Fox executives should “maybe got rid of” if it was proven that they knew the network was airing lies.
When the heat is turned up we know Murdoch runs the other way. He did it in the UK blaming his employees, closing down a newspaper and like Alan Bond did feigning a medical condition before escaping to America. He hasn’t changed his methods but rather amplified them by creating Fox News. He’s now blaming and disagreeing with his staff just as he did in the UK in order to avoid any personal blowback.
Trump claims that Murdoch’s testimony in which the Australia-born executive expressed doubt over some of the TV network’s popular commentators’ statements would “kill” Murdoch’s defence against the lawsuit brought by Dominion Voting Machines following the 2020 election.
Generational Wealth is Murdoch’s Immortality, His great, great, grandkids will never have to work to live or even live to work.
On both sides of the Atlantic, Rupert Murdoch’s news empire is built on a hate-for-profit business model — engaging in migrant bashing, election denial, and anti-LGBTQ hysteria to drive ratings and make him and his hosts rich.
It’s too early to know if there was any connection between Rupert Murdoch’s deposition in the Dominion case and days later pulling a massive plan to recombine News Corp. and Fox Corp., but the timing of this withdrawal is certainly interesting.
Fox has argued it had a right to report on election-fraud allegations made by Mr Trump and his lawyers, and that Dominion’s lawsuit would stifle press freedom.
A judge rejected the network’s bid to toss the case in December 2021.
“From the highest levels down, Fox knowingly spread lies about Dominion,” the election machine company said in a statement.
Mr Murdoch is expected to be questioned in person in Los Angeles on Thursday and Friday by lawyers for Dominion, according to a filing in Delaware Superior Court.
In any case, the Murdochs have inflicted so much racism, sexism, virulent lies, and damage in the USA. This is by no means the case for the USA only. It similarly applies to the UK and Australia.
Why are so many of these old white dudes getting the DCM (don’t come Monday) in the Murdoch media empire ? Is it something to do with the quality of people Murdoch has attracted and promoted over the years ? Is it only now that Lachlan has taken over that action is finally being taken ? Who knows, suffice to say that young Murdoch still has a way to go until these stables are free of excrement !
Most references to these shenanigans come from sources other than Newscorp and that could be part of the problem, that a news organisation refuses to recognise or record its own failings :
You could add so many more to this list such as O’Reilly D’Souza, then others that have jumped willingly not to even consider the UK that came close closing Murdoch down entirely
Witness, written long before the Lehrmann trial. It was the issue about which she was invited to speak to the Women Lawyers Association of the ACT at their gala dinner on 21 October this year. It is a matter of obvious public interest. But Milligan has now found herself under attack, not only in The Australian and on Sky News, but in the Commonwealth parliament, for things she did not say and does not believe.
This is News Corporation’s version of “cancel culture” – a phenomenon it has so often condemned.
Its army of culture warriors see themselves as defenders of free speech – especially against the Twitter guerrillas and student censors who ‘cancel’ people of whose views they disapprove. For The Australian’s Janet Albrechtsen it has been a favourite topic.
Lachlan Murdoch’s own barrister Sue Chrysanthou has thrown him and his company News Corp under a bus, not once but twice, in his defamation claim against news website Crikey.
One Tel, Ch 10, Crickey. Lachlan certainly hasn’t shown dad he deserves his big boy pants has he? The Advocate of Speech Freedom wants to prove money talks and make Crikey walk but they’re not going away. So now he wants to change the rules of the challenge to punish and rid himself of them by sending them broke.But the umpire said “No Way”. Now dad wants to change the company structure will he put little Lachie in charge?
It is difficult to reconcile Murdoch’s submission when NewsCorp Australia will, in all likelihood in future defamation cases, rely on and even hope to expand the application of the very defence that its heir-apparent has just labelled as worthless. If Murdoch’s argument succeeds at trial, he may win this battle against Crikey, but his stable could lose many major wars in the future.
Lawyers for Lachlan Murdoch are arguing a new public interest defence isn’t applicable for Crikey in the media mogul’s defamation case against the online publication.
There is no better example of how Australia’s defamation laws enable the rich and powerful to intimidate their critics than Lachlan Murdoch suing Crikey.com over a comment piece concerning Fox News, Donald Trump and the Washington insurrection of January 6, 2021.
Is News Corp America taking note of their massive fail in Australia to heart? Are they focusing away from Trump in order to save the same embarassment in the November Midterms they experienced here if they focus on Trump in ther un up. The Democrats would dearly love to see Trump the Nth Korean Russian, Saudi despot loving crime boss center stage supporting his crew of crony GOP sycophants leading up to November. His White Nationalist evangelical camp followers would turn their backs as would the party moderates jump ship.
1% of the attention Murdoch gave to Hilary is being given to Trump’s multiple on multiple crimes currently being revealed by the investigations federal congress and states are presently running. Where and when will Murdoch find another Trump the gift that once kept giving and giving and now isn’t?
The rise of community independents is the standout story of the weekend elections. But it has been accompanied by another major story: the failure of News Corp’s national and capital city outlets to keep the Morrison government in power.
In a 24/7 news cycle this isn’t abandonment the reality will be closer to truth after the mid terms. Conservative America fears Trump will announce his hand before the up and coming elections. Murdoch hate backing losers and he’s simply laying the path for a Trump return. post November.
Powerful media owner Rupert Murdoch is no longer supporting Donald Trump as the next president of the USA, as Alan Austin reports.
Why Murdoch looks to be swinging against Trump pre November is he’s a threat to the GOP controlled Senate
The prospect for Democrats holding a filibuster-proof Senate after the 2022 midterm elections keeps getting better. That’s not conventional wisdom, nor a mainstream media narrative.
How naive is this analysis given Murdoch’s spread and history. Has there been any noticeable movement on Fox News that he’s turned his back on Trump?
July 24, 2022This is what it looks like when Rupert Murdoch decides that Donald Trump isn’t going to be the Republican nominee in 2024. Both the NY Post and the Wall Street Journal ran editorials condemning Trump for his actions and inaction on January 6 in the span of a few minutes of each other.
So, in the depths of this darkening winter, as COVID variants are roaring back at us and as this most dangerous threat from radically indecent Republicans and assorted fascists imperils the best that is in us, we slog on toward Christmas, carrying our soggy list of hope and desires through the rain, snow, and cold of this dark winter, some of us echoing that famous question Joseph Welch posed to Joe McCarthy back when we were kids: “At Long Last, Have You No Sense of Decency?”
There is perhaps more truth in the phrase ‘COALition propaganda rag’ than I first thought. As much praise as this and other Murdoch rags have heaped on Morrison, he himself is not the target. Murdoch is not defending Morrison as an individual, but rather the Liberal Party as a brand.
Fox Corp. CEO Lachlan Murdoch, the son of international media magnate Rupert Murdoch, defended his company’s flagship cable news network in a rare interview Wednesday with Insider, calling Fox News’ primetime host Tucker Carlson “brave” for espousing the nativist “replacement theory” and defending the provocateur’s false statements on COVID-19 vaccines. “Obviously our opinion is center-right,” Lachlan said at one point of Fox News, his company’s profit center. But despite the network’s increasingly fevered pitch on controversial culture war issues, he laid the blame for our current age of partisan rancor at the feet of social media companies, which “algorithmically drives people into echo chambers.”
On December 18th, before nearly anyone else was eligible, billionaire Murdoch got his COVID shots. Now he rakes in the Billionaire Bucks from Fox News suckers who watch their top stars discourage vaccination.
Imagine half a million Australians, a record 501,876 to be precise, petition for a royal commission into your patron, rabid reactionary, Rupert Murdoch, billionaire media monopolist and monster powerbroker. Does our PM, whose Liberal Party is effectively a wholly-owned subsidiary of News Corp, act democratically? No. Head Office steps in. Sharri Markson and Richard Ferguson of Murdoch’s The Australian publish an article, Kevin Rudd’s Bangladeshi ‘bots’ in media royal commission petition, Thursday 11 February, quoting a “Nicholas Smith”, who claims to have paid an overseas freelancer to “sign” the petition “hundreds of times” in order to “demonstrate to you how easy it is to manipulate our own government’s website”. Smear tactics. Neither mud-slinger Markson, nor feckless Ferguson take the next responsible step: concede that even without this stunt, there are more names on Rudd’s e-petition that any other. Ever. And just who is this Smith and his podcast The Turncoat? The story is a fake. SBS notes that The Turncoat’s Facebook page is littered with posts that have been flagged as misinformation, baseless claims about the effectiveness of hydroxychloroquine, and others, expressing support for President Trump. Shades of Craig Kelly, MP for Hughes, who despite his dressing down from his PM, immediately returns to Facebook to promote more toxic nonsense about fake cures for Covid-19 and to sow doubt about vaccines. Former furniture rep Kelly appears regularly from his chair on Murdoch’s Sky News, beaming his dangerous disinformation around the country and -via the internet- around the globe – from whence it came. There’s a restless, recycling in Kelly’s quest. As Crikey’s David Hardaker observes, “the outrageous nonsense spouted by the renegade Liberal MP is mostly spun from generic alt-right conspiracies and ideas.”
At elections, Murdoch has two priorities. One is always to try to ensure the new regime, whatever its political colour, does not implement regulatory change that will disadvantage the business.
When Rupert Murdoch decided to shut down 112 regional newspapers around Australia he did it in the typical Murdoch fashion. He was not satisfied with the returns from these regional mastheads so rather than sell them off to people who weren’t so concerned about a bottom line but who had a passion for journalism and for their community and who could make them work, he decided to completely shut-down 36 and move 76 behind a digital paywall.
olddogthoughts 
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