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| Image courtesy LA Times |
It is often touted as "conservative" media, but it really is a conglomerate without genuine political affiliations or values. Rupert has only one talisman, and that is, and always has been, the almighty dollar.
Put simply, Murdoch's papers and television channels supply biased and misleading coverage to support his business interests. This is, and has been, his business model for about fifty years, as demonstrated by his support of politicians as different in their values as Sir John McEwen, Gough Whitlam, and the UK's David Cameron.
Apart from the phone hacking scandal of 2011, Murdoch's relentless pursuit of the almighty dollar has worked well for his corporation. News Limited packages and sells news, they do not report it. The "news" they sell can best be described as what they believe their audiences want to hear or read, or watch. Much of it walks a wobbly line between news, salacious gossip, stories designed to generate outrage, and total rubbish.
Hence Fox News' enthusiastic reporting of conspiracy theories about the "stolen" 2020 presidential election. The corporation knew that this would attract an audience, and would improve ratings and profit. The fact that the Fox hosts knew that they were repeating lies, was neither here nor there.
Now, as the cliche goes, this practice has come back to bite Fox News (and Rupert) on the backside. The recent Dominion settlement is unprecedented in both value and consequence.
Whether this makes any difference to the media landscape, especially in the USA, remains to be seen, but there is no doubt that the legal precedent it has set will resonate across boardrooms all over the country, and may encourage a slightly more respectful attitude towards both the truth and consumers of corporate media.
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