(Image: Private Media)
(Image: Private Media)

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.

Lachlan Murdoch is unhappy with what Crikey said about Fox News’ role in the January 6 Capitol riots. But maybe he should be more focused on what’s being said by American media instead…

Margaret Sullivan, The Washington Post, January 7 2021, “The pro-Trump media world peddled the lies that fueled the Capitol mob. Fox News led the way”

“Birtherism. The caravan invasion. COVID denialism. Rampant election fraud. All of these found a comfortable home at Fox.

In the Trump era, the network — now out of favour for not being quite as shameless as the president demands — was his best friend and promoter. So to put it bluntly: The mob that stormed and desecrated the Capitol on Wednesday could not have existed in a country that hadn’t been radicalised by the likes of Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham, and swayed by biased news coverage.

Since this is an especially good day for calling out the names of those to blame, here are a few more from the leadership of Fox News: Rupert Murdoch. Lachlan Murdoch. Suzanne Scott…

Success has many fathers, goes the aphorism, while failure is an orphan. But Wednesday’s indelible stain on American democracy turns out to be the one with many parents: Trump himself; his lawyer Rudy Giuliani who called Wednesday morning for ‘trial by combat’; the crazies of QAnon; the dark rabbit holes of social media; and the appalling Republican enablers and fomenters, led by Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri, who was shameless enough to send out a fundraising appeal even as the invasion was underway.

Many fathers. But the pro-Trump media — led by Fox News — has earned its disgraceful place near the top of the list of infamy.

They own this.”

Erik Wemple, The Washington Post, January 11 2021, “Newt Gingrich’s blatant hypocrisy”

“In an appearance on CNN’s Reliable Sources on Sunday, former Fox News contributor Julie Roginsky addressed the network’s role in misinforming its viewers about the election: ‘I want to almost speak directly to my old boss, Rupert Murdoch, to say, you can stop this madness,’ Roginsky told host Brian Stelter. Add Lachlan Murdoch, Fox News Media CEO Suzanne Scott and Fox News President and Executive Editor Jay Wallace to that list.”

James Murdoch (in an interview with the Financial Times), January 16 2021

“Asked whether America’s dominant conservative news network Fox News had played a role in the riot that rocked Washington last week, James Murdoch said media groups had amplified election disinformation, leaving ‘a substantial portion’ of the public believing ‘a falsehood’.

‘The damage is profound,’ Mr Murdoch said. ‘The sacking of the Capitol is proof positive that what we thought was dangerous is indeed very, very much so. Those outlets that propagate lies to their audience have unleashed insidious and uncontrollable forces that will be with us for years. I hope that those people who didn’t think it was that dangerous now understand, and that they stop,’ he added, while noting he had not ‘seen any evidence of that yet’.”

Thomas L Friedman, The New York Times, January 19 2021, “President Donald J. Trump: The End”

“American businesses need to surprise us by telling Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch that their network fueled the Big Lie that led to the ransacking of the Capitol and that they are no longer going to advertise on any show that spreads conspiracy theories.”

Erik Wemple, The Washington Post, January 19 2021, “Never forget Fox News’s promotion of the ‘Big Lie’”

“Fox News has been pumping noxious ideas into the public discourse for decades. Now it had to find a way to analyse the situation without implicating itself. ‘You know, look, the president incited this,’ said Fox News contributor Andrew McCarthy as the horror of the riot settled in that afternoon. ‘It’s his obligation to try to mitigate it to the extent that at this point it can be mitigated, which means it’s not enough to say stay peaceful. He needs to tell people to go home and stand down.’

… That remark, though true, was incomplete: Fox News and other outlets including hardened election-conspiracy-theory promoters Newsmax and One America News amplified Trump’s dangerous rhetoric. That’s because what Trump was saying, Fox News hosts were saying. Along the way, the network managed to slime two companies in the voting-technology business — Dominion and Smartmatic, both of which have sent letters warning of litigation down the road. Some Fox News Media shows have run a segment walking back claims about Smartmatic after a legal threat from the company.

Steven Strauss, USA Today, January 31 2021, “Taking the low road works. Democrats should try it to rein in Republican norm-busting”

“A more effective response [to] this norm-flouting would be for Democrats to hold House or Senate hearings about potential changes to our defamation laws. As part of the fact-gathering process, they could subpoena Lachlan Murdoch, the CEO and Executive Chairman of Fox, to testify about the false information and malicious innuendo Fox repeatedly broadcast about Seth Rich’s murder, Kenya as former President Barack Obama’s birthplace, the Capitol rioters (Fox journalists claim the rioters were Antifa, instead of admitting they were Trump supporters), the purported corruption of the 2020 election by Dominion voting machines, and so on.”

Justin Baragona, Daily Beast, February 7 2021, “How Fox News Primetime Jacked Up Trump’s ‘Big Lie’”

“President Donald Trump faces a Senate trial this week for his role in pushing months of election lies, and ultimately prompting the deadly Jan 6 Capitol riots. But he didn’t do it all alone. The former president had assistance from key allies, including the biggest stars in conservative media.

Fox News’ primetime lineup of pro-Trump opinion talkers, which set an all-time cable news record in viewership in 2020, was key in helping fan the flames of the ‘Big Lie’.

In the two weeks after Fox called the election for Biden on Nov 7 — joining other news outlets — the network began casting doubt on the election results or pushed conspiracy theories nearly 800 times on its airwaves, according to liberal watchdog Media Matters.

Max Boot, The Washington Post, February 9 2021, “Sadly, Fox News can’t be impeached”

“Donald Trump is now on trial in the Senate for inciting a violent insurrection. But what about his collaborators? Fox ‘News’, Newsmax, One America News, and other right-wing outlets relentlessly pushed the ‘Big Lie’ that led to this attack.”

Clive Irving, Daily Beast, February 11 2021, “The Last Act of Rupert Murdoch’s Dynasty May Be Its Ugliest”

Murdoch himself went all-in with Trump, after earlier doubts, giving him the kind of White House access he had always craved … In the end, going with Trump was a bad bargain. He should have read Rick Wilson’s message: Everything Trump touches dies or, in the case of Fox News, turns to crap. Without realising it, Murdoch became Trump’s puppet. Fox News was complicit in the catastrophic response to the pandemic and equally complicit in the Capitol insurrection. Murdoch cannot escape that judgment. The family dynasty, so important to Murdoch, is terminally ruptured by the disgrace of Fox News … Of the Murdoch children, only Lachlan ‘Jackaroo’ Murdoch, Rupert Redux, remains steadfastly loyal to the Fox News mission. Now the two of them are doubling down and, in doing so, signing off on the legacy of Murdoch’s empire, and it’s ugly.”

Erik Wemple, The Washington Post, March 8 2021, “Fox Corp. chief advances fiction that Fox News is just a mirror image of MSNBC”

“So: When was the last time MSNBC orchestrated such a lie campaign about a presidential election? Please tell us, Mr. Murdoch.

In his comments to investors, Murdoch talked about Fox News’s political orientation. ‘We very much focus on the center right. We think that’s where America is. You know, 75 million people voted for a Republican president, you know, sometimes in spite of his personality at times. And, so, they believe in those politics. They feel strongly about those political and policy positions, and that’s what we represent,’ said the CEO.

Though the idea that Fox News represents conservative America is an uncontroversial proposition, that Murdoch himself admitted it has drawn some discussion. CNN’s Brian Stelter, on Sunday’s edition of his show Reliable Sources, said it was an example of ‘giv[ing] up the game’, and his colleague Oliver Darcy called it ‘refreshing’. That’s because, until 2017, the network had insisted that its product was ‘fair and balanced’. It was never true, of course; the slogan only served to cloak a propaganda network in the trappings of an actual news network. ‘If you come out and you try to do right-wing news, you’re gonna die. You can’t get away with it,’ late Fox News chief Roger Ailes once said.

Perhaps Ailes’ bit of wisdom about ‘right-wing news’ explains why Murdoch uses the term ‘center-right’, a bland catchall that has the benefit of meaning very little. To judge from Fox News’ prime-time fare, though, ‘center-right’ means ‘loaded with hatred, hypocrisy and lies and calibrated to attract large audiences’.”

Charles Sykes, Politico, May 4 2021, “Paul Ryan, It’s Time for You to Stand Up to Fox”

“Fox hosts continue to push the Big Lie about the election, attempt to whitewash the January 6 attack on the Capitol, spread disinformation about the pandemic, and embrace ugly racist narratives.”

Brian Stelter, author of Hoax: Donald Trump, Fox News, and the Dangerous Distortion of Truth, via CNN, June 8 2021, “‘We turned so far right we went crazy:’ How Fox News was radicalized by its own viewers”

“When Donald Trump lost the presidency last November, Fox News lost too. But unlike Trump, Fox was never in denial about its loss. The network’s executives and multimillion-dollar stars stared the ratings in the face every day and saw that their pro-Trump audience was reacting to the prospect of President Biden by switching channels or turning off the TV.

‘We’re bleeding eyeballs,’ a Fox producer remarked in December. ‘And we’re scared.’

To fix the problem, Fox ran even further to the right. And here’s the thing: It worked. It was toxic for the American political system, but it was profitable for Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch …

‘Rupert is not happy’ was the prevailing impression Fox insiders had; even if they never heard from him directly, they felt media tycoon Rupert Murdoch’s influence everywhere. His son Lachlan boasted on Election Day that ‘we love competition’, but that flex was looking worse and worse by the day. Fox News Media CEO Suzanne Scott and the management team needed to find a way to lure the Fox audience back home.

They did it by giving the viewers what they wanted: false hope. On Fox, Trump was treated as a political genius, not a lame duck who failed to win reelection. Some of the network’s key shows waded deeper into the voter fraud depths, eventually spurring massive defamation lawsuits by voting machine companies Dominion and Smartmatic.

‘It’s really emotionally taxing,’ a dissident Fox contributor told me as the COVID-19 case count exploded and Trump’s legal challenges imploded. ‘We denied the pandemic and now we’re denying the election outcome.’

The next step was to silence those dissenters.

Oliver Darcy, CNN Business, October 28 2021, “Rupert Murdoch is letting his media empire spread January 6 and election conspiracy theories”

“Through its programming decisions, Fox News has elevated Carlson as the face of the right-wing channel, despite the host’s history of using his platform to push white nationalist talking points and anti-vaccine rhetoric. In addition to his 8pm prime time show, Carlson has a documentary series and a daytime talk show on Fox Nation. Carlson’s documentary specials receive considerable promotion and his commentary has often been featured throughout the day on different shows on Fox News.

Those programming decisions are ones that are apparently agreeable to Murdoch. If they were not, he could easily reverse them. The same goes with The [Wall Street] Journal’s decision to publish Trump’s letter promoting the Big Lie. He could have stopped it if he wanted.

In fact, Murdoch is known for being hands on, especially with regards to the opinion arms of his media organisations, which he has often used to advance his personal viewpoints. This context makes Murdoch’s decision to at least implicitly green-light content promoting 1/6 trutherism and election denialism so intriguing. If he wanted to put an end to it, he very well could. But he is not — and that is notable.”

David Corn, Mother Jones, November 1 2021, “It’s Time to Use the F-Word for Fox”

“This is what fascism looks like. Big lies, martial music, scare-‘em imagery, and the accusation that a corrupt elite is waging a secret war against the common folk and true patriots — including the 1/6 marauders and Fox viewers. This agitprop is even more dangerous than Carlson’s usual yapping. Anyone who buys his latest guff would certainly feel justified in resorting to violence. After all, if they’re hunting you, don’t you need to take extreme measures in response? (One prominent white supremacist now being sued for his role in organising the deadly 2017 ‘Unite the Right’ rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, has submitted court filings showing how he was encouraged by Carlson’s broadcasts.) …

Carlson is not only playing with fire. He is attempting to detonate a bomb. Just as there is no bottom with Trump, there is no limit to the depths Fox will plunge to foment tribalism and terror …

Greenblatt insisted that Fox and the Murdochs had a ‘moral responsibility’ not to show this Carlson atrocity. Moral responsibility? That train left the station a long time ago for Lachlan and his father. In 2016, they decided that the best course for Fox was to become state television for Trump. Now they have steamed full speed into fascist territory. And everyone who works with Fox — every host, every reporter — is complicit … it is time to recognise that Fox has gone far beyond serving merely as a purveyor of right-wing and pro-Trump spin. With this new Carlson joint, Fox is fully embracing the hallmarks of fascism. Any reluctance to call it that only assists the fascists.

Oliver Darcy, CNN Business, January 5 2022, “Analysis: What Hannity’s newly unveiled texts reveal about him and how Trump viewed his advice”

“… it’s time for actual news organisations to stop calling Fox a news network. It’s not. It’s a right-wing talk channel that has spent the past year misleading viewers about January 6 with a flood of lies and conspiracy theories designed to sanitise the events of that day. That has happened all while the network’s top hosts, as we now have evidence of, privately knew the truth about what happened. A news org’s primary job is to inform viewers with the best version of the truth. What Fox has repeatedly done — on pretty much every major topic — is to misinform …”

Sarah Ellison and Josh Dawsey, The Washington Post, April 9 2022, “Lachlan Murdoch, once the ambivalent Fox heir, makes his views clear”

“The younger Murdoch’s personal ideology been the subject of much curiosity as his influence has grown in his father’s empire — and as Fox’s programming has turned more heavily to opinion than straight news, and beyond standard Republican sensibilities to a stronger allegiance to Trumpism.

Murdoch was troubled last fall by trailers for prime-time host Tucker Carlson’s Fox Nation special that floated specious theories that the Jan 6 2021 attack on the US Capitol was an inside job by the government to target Trump supporters, according to people who spoke with him. (Two prominent Fox contributors left the network in protest over the airing of the unfounded claims, and after departing Fox for CNN, veteran anchor Chris Wallace expressed discomfort with the drift of Fox’s programming.)

Yet Carlson’s special aired nonetheless on Fox Nation, the network’s streaming service. And Murdoch has otherwise repeatedly expressed pride in Fox’s programming. He declared the network last year the ‘loyal opposition’ to a Biden administration.”

Nicolas Confessore, The New York Times, April 30 2022, “How Tucker Carlson Reshaped Fox News — and Became Trump’s Heir”

“Mr Carlson would be both instigator and beneficiary of Fox’s civil war. He forged a relationship with Lachlan Murdoch, the Murdoch family’s heir apparent, who would become his most public supporter at Fox. And while Mr Murdoch and Fox executives have often couched their defence of Tucker Carlson Tonight as a protection of free inquiry and controversial opinions, the reality is less high-minded. From the beginning, Mr Carlson’s on-air provocations have been part of a painstaking, data-driven campaign to build and hold Fox’s audience, according to former Fox executives and employees — an experiment that has succeeded wildly in bolstering Mr Murdoch’s profit machine against the long-term decline in cable news subscriptions.

He has aggressively defended the insurrectionists who stormed the Capitol on Jan 6 — an attack that Mr Carlson, borrowing the former president’s ‘deep state’ canards, has portrayed as a false-flag operation masterminded by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Ambitious Republican lawmakers now echo his embrace of the ‘great replacement’ conspiracy theory, once relegated to the far-right fringe, that Western elites are importing immigrants to disempower the native-born.

Judge Eric M Davis, Superior Court of Delaware, June 21 2022, US Dominion Inc. v. Fox Corp

“These allegations support a reasonable inference that Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch either knew Dominion had not manipulated the election or at least recklessly disregarded the truth when they allegedly caused Fox News to propagate its claims about Dominion. Thus, Dominion has successfully brought home actual malice to the individuals at Fox Corporation who it claims to be responsible for the broadcasts.”

Erik Larson and Mike Leonard, Bloomberg, June 22 2022, “Fox News Parent Has to Face Defamation Suit Over Vote-Rigging Claims”

“Fox News’s parent company can be sued by a voting-machine maker because Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch may have acted with ‘actual malice’ in directing the network to broadcast conspiracy theories alleging the 2020 presidential election was rigged against Donald Trump.”