The Rupert Murdoch-owned New York Post and Wall Street Journal ― both previous boosters of Donald Trump ― put the blame for the GOP’s less-than-stellar showing in the 2022 midterm elections squarely on the former president and his choice of candidates.
On its Thursday front page, the Post depicted Trump as the hapless nursery rhyme character Humpty Dumpty. “Don (who couldn’t build a wall) had a great fall — can all the GOP’s men put the party back together again?” the tabloid newspaper asked:
Gladiator of “Free Speech” is suing Crikey for a single sentence why? Because he can.
Lachlan Murdoch helped turn Fox News into a bastion of white supremacist talking points, election subversion, and anti-vaccine conspiracy theories while shredding its “news side” operation. Now he may be rewarded with even more power.
Prominent right-wing commentators are condemning Sen. Lindsey Graham’s (R-SC) proposed national abortion ban. But their concern isn’t that they oppose threatening doctors with up to five years in prison if they perform an abortion on a patient who has been pregnant for more than 15 weeks. It’s that they know Graham’s bill endangers the GOP’s chances of gaining power and thus having the opportunity to ban abortions.
Without Ronald Reagan, there would almost certainly have been no Fox “News.” He paved the way for this abomination, made room for a cable station devoted to spreading lies that served people in Rupert Murdoch’s wealth demographic by monetizing and manipulating the news, offering the nation what was, without embarrassment or irony, a version of the news they promoted as “fair and balanced.”
Will Lachlan Murdoch sue Chris Stirewalt? Of course not! Stirwalt has no problem publicly outlining the intended mis and disinformation broadcast on Fox News and it has nothing to do with Murdoch’s ideology. Their alliance is soley with business and wealthyconservatives whose primary interest was fattening themselves on profiting from others. The Murdoch’s aren’t purveyor’s of news or information but influncers hired guns for sale and nothing offends them more than any drive to reveal or prevent them from that goal. That’s why they have taken to threatening Crikey in Australia and not Stirwalt in the US because the laws say they can and the world gets the message.
Nonetheless, in his memoir, Stirewalt maintains that Fox News’s alliance with Trump and other Republican political candidates has nothing to do with ideology. Instead it has everything to do with delivering ratings and fattening profits, without caring that its top-rated host, Tucker Carlson, endorses conspiracy theories that radicalize violent, far-right white supremacists, including ones who staged the deadly January 6 Capitol attack.
Lachlan Murdoch CEO of his family interests claims the Murdoch’s aren’t running a Trump/GOP/ Extreme Right Agenda In the US. He’s threatening to sue journalists in Australia who claim the Murdoch’s were co-conspirators in the Jan 6th riots, why? Because Australian law says he can. Even though Murdoch media’s Fox News were named apologists and even deniers that a riot had even taken place. The Murdoch’s have always denied any moral responsibility for anything their organisation does and even uses the laws of countries as a smokescreen. In fact his father Rupert Murdoch aided in breaking the laws in the UK and came close to being jailed saved only by the right-wing of the Tory Party.
News Corp’s Sky News Australia were cut off by the NZ government because they were more than eager to keep shooting the Christchurch massacre of Muslims “live”. When asked to stop they didn’t because there organisation doesn’t exist there. The Murdoch’s run their global media organisation not as a News organisation but as thugs, propagandists and influencers for sale to a narrow set of political and financial interests and are currently fighting a profitable but losing political battle. They more than anyone have lowered the bench mark for news and information in a Democracy and raised fake news as the hallmark in it’s place
Fox News prime-time host Tucker Carlson has long been at the forefront of pushing the deadly “great replacement” conspiracy theory, seeking to bring an idea from the white nationalist fringe into the mainstream of American political discourse. In the latest ominous sign, both Carlson and the network’s supposedly “straight news” programming are pushing his ideas for the Republicans’ midterm platform, a development that should raise alarm bells given the long history of Fox News controlling the Republican agenda.
Fox News amplifies Trump’s veiled threats of political violence after Mar-a-Lago search | Media Matters for America
FoxNews.com ran an article featuring direct comments from Donald Trump responding to the fallout of the FBI search of his residence. The title of the piece was, “Trump ‘will do whatever’ he can to ‘help the country’ after FBI raid: ‘Temperature has to be brought down.’” Far from helping to bring down the “temperature” of the public debate, Fox has just promoted Trump’s veiled threats that his supporters will carry out more political violence against federal law enforcement — as he simultaneously worked to stir them up to even more bedlam — unless the Justice Department stops investigating him.
The story was also given prominent placement on the front page of the Fox News website, with an additional tagline noting that the country is now in a “very dangerous time.”
In response to recent reporting that former President Donald Trump was illegally in possession of classified material – including nuclear secrets – at his Mar-a-Lago resort, Fox News hosts and Trump himself lied that his predecessor, former President Barack Obama, had also kept millions of government documents in his possession. After Trump and his right-wing media allies promoted these lies, the National Archives and Records Administration released a statement refuting them.
Idiots abroad. An Australian who once shamed us and is still regarded as one of us- News Corp the Goebbellian Murdoch PR Corporation
Fox News personalities have repeatedly denounced Monday’s FBI execution of a search warrant at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence by claiming that the agency should instead have subpoenaed the documents the former president illegally took from the White House, which the bureau was reportedly seeking. In their telling, Trump is a naif who may have accidentally taken some documents he should not have, but sending federal agents to seize the documents is a massive escalation which revealed that President Joe Biden’s administration is targeting a political opponent for partisan gain.
If the Murdochs didn’t want all this to happen, it wouldn’t happen. Rupert gave Carlson a job and a show, Lachlan reportedly speaks to him regularly, and together they made him the face of their network, which has defended him against any and all criticism for years.
“I’m 100 percent [Rupert Murdoch’s] bitch,” Carlson once said. “Whatever Mr. Murdoch says, I do.”
The Murdochs may want some credit from the establishment for having their relatively high-brow outlets, the Journal and the Post, criticize Trump. But they also want to speak to the party’s Trumpist, pro-insurrection base. And so they are cheering on Tucker Carlson’s blood-soakedwhite nationalism, his deadly anti-vaccineconspiracy theories, and his reprehensible 1/6 trutherism.
Murdoch Media sets the lowest global standard for media in the English-speaking world
With its recent commentaries on a terrible rape case in Ohio, The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board has demonstrated yet again that it exists simply to put a seemingly respectable face on the most disgusting vitriol from right-wing political circles.
A couple of nights ago, Ohio’s Attorney General thought that it was his duty to cast doubt on the story by going on Fox News with Jesse Watters, calling it likely “a fabrication.” “This young girl, if she exists and if this horrible thing actually happened to her, it breaks my heart to think about it, she did not have to leave Ohio to find treatment,” Yost said. Also, another lie, as Ohio’s so-called “Heartbeat Law” makes no exceptions for rape or incest. That was unfortunate as it turned out, as less than 24 hours later a Columbus man was charged with impregnating the 10-year-old Ohio girl.
reporting now confirms that the story was true all along. Around noon on Wednesday, Columbus Dispatch reporter Bethany Bruner published an article confirming that Gershon Fuentes, an undocumented man living in the Columbus area, had been charged with the rape of the 10-year-old girl. The crime is a first-degree felony in Ohio. Bruner noted on Twitter that she was the only reporter in the courtroom covering the story.
Murdoch media isn’t just a fake News Corporation by what it reports but also by what it omits. It collects ratings from fake, and no news alike which they onsell to moneyed interests. That’s private and political interests alike to misguide the public while calling it information.
Can advertisers sell a product as crudely and in that way? Is there any public obligation in America to sell truth or is that only in a courtroom with its bible? It appears there’s none as even the courts, and the very highest in the land, can be bought.
Of great interest will be the outcome of Murdoch vs Dominion voting machines for the current future of American News and the current ongoing sale of press propaganda.
Fox, by shielding its viewers from the information the committee details, is continuing its complicity in Trump’s effort to subvert the election and the resulting mob attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Paranoia sells, and Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News enterprise likes to scare the hell out of its viewers for fun and profit if there’s good money to be made — especially when it’s got skin in the game. But this time the political stakes are much higher than usual: America’s future as a democracy is on the line.
Looking for blame in all the wrong places is looking to distract from reality and it’s Murdoch and Carlson intent
“Oh, so the lockdowns dramatically increase the incidence of mental illness among young people and in 10 days, we’ve seen two mass shootings by mentally ill young people. Could there be a connection?” he asked. “Now, that’s not finger-pointing. It’s not to blame [Dr. Anthony] Fauci for yesterday’s shooting. We’re not that low. We’re not Joe Biden. But if people are becoming mentally ill because they’re disconnected from others, what can we do to connect them to others and thereby reduce the incidence of mental illness? That’s a real conversation.”
It’s never the racist that is to blame for racism. It’s always someone else’s fault.
Murdoch said, “I think when you’re in the news business, and you’re number one … you get a lot of heat and it just comes with the territory,” he told Axios.
The son of Rupert then ignored what right-wing hate hosts like Carlson, Hannity, and Ingraham are vomiting daily into the airwaves, and gave this lame justification of them.
I think the world is more divided and on edge than it has been, you know, for a very long time,” Murdoch said in an interview last week. “I think on the noise around it, so much of it is politicized … And so, you’ve got to be tough about it.”
Which network is dividing the country?
Which network is acting more like a Republican candidate recruiting station than a supposed news and information service?
Which network allows their airwaves to be used as a fundraising vehicle for pro-Trump lawmakers?
Today’s white supremacists tend to wear expensive suits and to work out of corporate or political offices. You will find more than a few at 1211 Avenue of the Americas in New York City, which is the headquarters of News Corp and its subsidiary Fox Corp, and in the big white building that sits atop of Capitol Hill in Washington DC. All these men and women, without exception, are firmly within the Republican Party.
If the west could find the courage, it would order an immediate freeze of Rupert Murdoch’s assets. His Fox News presenters and Russia’s propagandists are so intermeshed that separating the two is as impossible as unbaking a cake.
Murdoch Practice. In the UK criminal phone taps anything to get ahead of the competion. In US largely PR staging Interviews & promoting Republican interests while trashing the Dems. In Australia, simply being the largest private player in the nation’s quid pro quo cash for comment business.
On Friday, CNN reported that Fox News anchor Maria Bartiromo supplied former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows with questions in advance of interviewing former President Donald Trump.
It was the third time in recent months Putin has blasted the so-called “cancel culture”. Which is exactly what Trump, Tucker Carlson, and the Republican party have blasted for several years.
“When you deal with such a dishonest propagandist—and that is what he is—there’s nothing you can take out of context, because none of it is real,” Stewart said. “He’s admitted when he’s cornered, he lies. It’s all a game and a performance. I mean, honestly, I have no idea what the fuck that guy believes, truly.” That goes for the whole network and its chairman Rupert Murdoch, who Stewart says is “trying to destroy the fabric of this country.” “I don’t know if it’s ideological or he just thinks, this is where the money is.
But how somebody can in good conscience put a shithead like that on television every night to say those types of things, that’s where the responsibility lies in my mind,” Stewart said. And now, for your edification, here’s Stewart telling Carlson who he was 18 years ago. The pinhead has only gotten worse since.
Fox News clips of Tucker Carlson and Tulsi Gabbard trashing Ukraine and the Biden administration were a mainstay of news coverage this week on Russian state television.
Carlson, it must be reminded is a supporter of dictatorships. He likes, scrapes and bows to Hungary’s Orban’s authoritarian anti-democratic stand. He supports Putin as did Trump. His posture on American action is to abandon all its allies in the EU, UK, and NATO. Just as Trump abandoned the Kurds in Syria.
Anti-war advocates on the Left who oppose Carlson certainly don’t hold the same position Ther no equivalence between the protest in Washington and Jan 6th or between ANTIFA and White Nationalists.. Trump and Carlson are now arguing that those two events are the same. Yet he didn’t call in the National Guard at Capitol Hill.
The strangest of bedfellows currently oppose a confrontation with Russia.
The persistense in delivering false and intended misinformation to Americans on Climate, pollutants and vaccinations has resulted in the unnecessary deaths of thousands. “Jump off the Empire State Building you wont die” isn’t an opinion it’s tantamount to murder when broadcast over and over again phishing for those that will listen. False advertising is illegal, Ponzi schemes are indictable, yet Fox News can get away with murder.
USA Today’s headline contains all the contradictions: “Boosted Americans 97 times less likely to die of virus than unvaccinated; CDC predicts 75,000 more deaths by Feb. 26.” If we know the first part of the headline, why are we having all those further deaths, when boosters are free and universally available? To a large extent, the reason for all those deaths is the Republican Party. Eric Kleefeld at Media Matters shows that for-profit news organizations have been reluctant to call out the Republican Party on its deadly vaccine disinformation campaign. Fox “news” tells people that the vaccines have been a failure (they have not).
There is, and will be, no turnaround by Murdoch Media in this up and coming election. They are currently the Government’s media voice and have had an 8- year investment in place to keep the LNP in government. It’s simply their business model. The undeclared sponsorship of the L-NP voiced across Australia.
Since the start of President Joe Biden’s term, Fox News has hired at least nine editors who previously worked for former President Donald Trump’s administration, Republican campaign offices, or Republican politicians. Many of those editors now cover politics for FoxNews.com. Fox’s Republican hiring spree has come as the network has further cast aside its so-called “news” division in favor of right-wing opinion and Republican-friendly “reporting.” (The division between Fox News’ “opinion” and “news” division has always been a sham.)
Unfortunately, there is only one Democratic Party in America that protects or seems to protect Democractic processes. It’s not the Republican Party. There needs to be a redefinition of what “news ” is and a re-examination of the First Amendment Protection given. Julian Assange a publisher and journalist is accused of a crime he didn’t even commit in America and is being extradited without bein afforded any First Amendment Protection. He is recognized by the rest of the world as a member of the press and has won awards in recognition of that. Fox News is in America and is recognized as the very antithesis of news but receives that protection. America isn’t the living example of a Democracy it professes to be.
By Heather — December 19, 2021 As we’ve discussed here many times (and others have as well), the rest of the corporate media needs to stop treating Fox as a legitimate news outlet, and start acknowledging that they’re nothing more than right-wing propaganda dressed up as “news.” The recently revealed January 6th texts between Mark Meadows and many of the anchors on Fox has forced networks such as CNN and others to finally start treating Fox in the manner they deserve, with Don Lemon wondering why they’re even allowed into the White House press room to ask questions: This was met with the reaction you might expect from Media Buzz host Howard Kurtz, who opened his show this Sunday complaining about Lemon. Kurtz pointed to Fox’s defense of Jim Acosta (who had his press badge revoked after Trump lost it during one of his insane briefings, because he didn’t like a question Acosta asked him) as justification that Fox is somehow worthy of the same professional courtesy from CNN now. Kurtz followed up by bringing on Special Report host Bret Baier to join him in complaining about Lemon. Baier also helped play cleanup on aisle five over the mess the network finds themselves in now that
The very ability to keep America culturally divided is the alchemy that provides America’s Fascist Extreme Right and the those within and out of the Republican Party the power to have the tail control wag the dog. Organize chaos, extreme armed elements you have a key, control the message and you have a coup. Jan 6th was close.
The Kaiser Family Foundation has a new poll out this week, also reported on by The Washington Post, showing the alarming extent to which COVID-19 misinformation has penetrated among American adults, but particularly Republicans and people who consume right-wing media. The really scary thing: A lot of people actually believe the things they see on Fox News and further right networks like Newsmax.
There is no greater need th our education system than learning the skills of Critical Thinking. Skills which the extreme Right in the world want done away with and replaced by their absolutist dogmas and facts like “the Steal” “CRT” ” Anti-vax” “Covid Hoax” etc etc etc
In the same post defending Breivik, the Norwegian terrorist who killed 77 people at a summer camp, Yarvin compares Breivik to Nelson Mandela: “No one who condones Che, Stalin, Mao, or any other leftist murderer, has any right to ask anyone else to dissociate himself from a rightist who didn’t even make triple digits. ABB is a terrorist. Nelson Mandela is a terrorist. … If you ask me to condemn Anders Breivik, but adore Nelson Mandela, perhaps you have a mother you’d like to fuck.”
Fox News’ Tucker Carlson is facing backlash for his latest attempt to use the Nazi-inspired “replacement theory” to accuse Democratic lawmakers of importing violent criminals into the country for political gain. On Wednesday, August 11, Carlson appeared on “Fox & Friends” where he spoke with the panel of hosts and shared details about the so-called “scandal involving the border.” Carlson chimed in saying, “I mean, you know what this tells you honestly? What’s happening at the border is not a crisis. A crisis is a flood in Bangladesh, it’s an act of God. This is an intentional act.” “This is the administration bringing felons, violent criminals into our country on purpose,” Carlson claimed. “Why would you do something like that? Only to destroy it. I mean, there’s no other explanation for this. It’s not an act of compassion. It’s an act of hostility against the United States in order to change it forever. I think this is the greatest scandal of my lifetime, what’s happening on the border right now.” Carlson went on to claim that Democrats have a “strategy” that includes importing “violent criminals” to increase their voter roll.
When Fox News turned to Bret Baier for comment shortly after the conclusion of Tuesday’s hearing of the House select committee investigating the January 6 storming of the U.S. Capitol by pro-Trump rioters, the network’s chief political anchor was adamant that it would be impossible for anyone to downplay the devastating testimony heard that day. Over the previous several hours, four police officers had described in searing detail how they had risked their lives defending Congress from a violent, bigoted throng that sought to halt the counting of electoral votes formalizing President Joe Biden’s election. “If you were watching, you saw compelling, at times damning, emotional testimony from these four officers who fought the line to try to protect the Capitol and the lawmakers inside,” Baier said. Highlighting the officers’ descriptions of how they “fought to hold on to their lives,” he added that while Republicans are trying to argue that the investigation is politically motivated, “you can’t watch the testimony and say that’s not a big deal.”
Fox News has not mentioned recent remarks in which retired Gen. Michael Flynn, former President Donald Trump’s first national security adviser, expressed support for a military coup in the United States.
The Murdochs’ purge of rational voices and gutter intensification of the crackpot corral have paid off. Fox News has regained its cable-news ratings supremacy, it’s projected to trounce CNN’s primetime audience this month, and its ad revenues have never been better. All that in profitable service to Trump and, more so, the millions of lobotomized lowlifes who adore him. Trump is, of course, repaying the network with his traditional gratitude. Yesterday he grabbed his Crayon kit and scrawled: “It was the day that [Paul] Ryan went on the board of Fox … that Fox totally lost its way and became a much different place.” But the Murdochs don’t care, as long as they rake in the dough.
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.”
In its ongoing 11 month smear of critical race theory, Fox News has mentioned the topic no less than 552 times. Fox’s coverage began in the summer of 2020, focusing on schools attempting to fold anti-racism teachings into their curricula. First, Fox’s opinion side hosted Christopher Rufo, an anti-civil rights activist who has targeted critical race theory, and ginned up controversy over purposeful misreadings of the approach — before the network’s self-described “news” side took over to report on state attempts to ban the study of systemic racism in classrooms. The network’s coverage steadily climbed in 2021 and featured a massive spike in April, with 235 mentions in that month alone.
As has been well documented, the violent incursion of the Capitol by thousands of white nationalists, armed militiamen, and a who’s who of MAGA-faithful was sparked by widespread, yet false claims about a stolen election, promoted for months by the most powerful man in the world in his public pronouncements and his social media channels. These lies found a reliable echo chamber in the right-wing corporate media ecosystem—Fox, affiliates of Sinclair Broadcasting, One America News, and a countless array of local and national voices that rhetorically agitate listeners every day on political talk radio. Nevertheless, it was social media that received the majority of the public backlash after the riot.
Throwing Derek Chauvin under the bus should have been a no-brainer for the “I’m not a racist” crowd. The pretense behind “blue lives matter” has been that it’s not that conservatives are racist but that Black Lives Matter goes “too far.” They argue that most police killings are unfortunate accidents to be tolerated in the name of greater social safety and that the “few bad apples” who do it on purpose can be held to account without widespread reform.
olddogthoughts 