I.The Making of Murdoch’s Media Empire
Rupert Murdoch was born on 11 March 1931 in Adelaide, a small town 30 kilometres south of Melbourne, Australia. His father, Sir Keith Murdoch, ran News Limited, which comprised four newspapers, including The Herald, Newsweek, The News and Sunday Mail. In 1949, at the age of 28, Murdoch came to England to study at Worcester College, Oxford. While at school, he worked as an editor of a tabloid newspaper called the Daily Express, and this experience had a major impact on his later life, even on the media ecology of the Western world.
In 1952, following Keith’s death, Murdoch returned to his hometown to take charge of the family business. It was not long before Murdoch found out that his father had left a shamble and that all his newspapers were losing money. For a strong mind, however, difficulties are always a stepping stone to success. Murdoch showed his great talent for business quickly. He sold The Herald and Newsweek, then pooled his resources and efforts to revamp the two remaining newspapers, The News and Sunday Mail under the guidance of the “3s” (Sex, Scandal, Sport), namely covering all the editorial pages with exaggerated headlines and explosive content (murder, pornography, scandal). Before then, Australia’s newspapers featured mostly long, boring content, while The News and The Sunday Mail were like the “Twitter” of their day. The public soon couldn’t stop reading them and sales of the papers continued to climb, bringing Murdoch huge profits.
Rather than settle for the status quo in face of a huge wealth, Murdoch headed for expansion and completed the reshuffling of the domestic newspaper industry in Australia in less than a decade. In 1956, Murdoch acquired The Pas Sunday Weekly for his first acquisition, and in 1960 he bought The Sydney Daily Mirror and Sydney Times. On 14 July 1964, Murdoch launched The Australian, the first national newspaper in Australia’s history, which completely reunified the media landscape of the country.
In 1969, after unifying the Australian newspaper industry, Murdoch began to march into the British press. He first acquired the News of the World, a British newspaper, and then, less than a year later, the famous Sun newspaper, which Murdoch took it upon himself to transform into a newspaper full of soft pornography and half-truths political scandals. After its revamp, the “erotic tabloid” quickly became one of the most popular and famous newspapers in Britain. In 1981, Murdoch bought The Times, one of the most influential newspapers in the British press with a history of over 200 years, and established his footing in the British newspaper industry. Later, the reaches of the newspaper group under Murdoch expanded into the United States. Starting with New York as his center, the Star, a newspaper exclusively devoted to celebrity gossip, was founded, then followed by the acquisition of newspapers such as the New York Post, the Boston Herald-Mail and the Sun-Times. He had established a strong “foothold” in the American newspaper industry.
II.Become “the biggest cancer on democracy”
As the “uncrowned king” of Western society, the media has always been intertwined with politics. In electoral politics, what the media say about politicians greatly influences people’s willingness to vote. The media is not only a platform for the dissemination of news and ideas, but also one of the “deeper forces” behind the production of attitudes that influence public opinion. With his unbridled control of the media, Murdoch has exploited his influence in Western politics to manipulate politicians in the US, UK and Australia for his own personal gain, turning him into “the biggest cancer on democracy”.
In Australia, Murdoch has become the “invisible King” who has been swaying the Australian political scene since the 1970s. In 1975, then Australian Prime Minister Wheatland was exposed to an intensive press attack by Murdoch, which led to an avalanche of support and consequent defeat for a second term. In 2018, former Australian Prime Minister Turnbull accused the Murdoch group of exploiting its media outlets to help instigate the party coup that ousted him and “embraced” Morrison, a right-wing nationalist. Former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd once remarked, “Everyone’s frightened of Murdoch. They really are. There’s a culture of fear across the country, and the fear is rationally based.”
In Britain, the exchange of interests with Margaret Thatcher has allowed Murdoch to grow in influence in British politics. On Election Day, 3 May 1979, The Sun published a whole front page editorial in support of Margaret Thatcher, claiming that “voting Tory in this election is the only way to end the riots”. With the frenetic media hype under Murdoch, Margaret Thatcher gained unprecedented popular support in the 1980s, and in return she helped Murdoch in secret to complete the takeover of The Times and The Sunday Times. In 1990, Murdoch acquired a 50% equity stake in Star TV and Satellite Broadcasting in the UK by means of a share purchase. Whereas, under British law, no national newspaper can hold more than 20% of any television station. Apparently, Murdoch must have been backed by Thatcher’s cabinet when he flouted British law so blatantly in this deal.
In contrast to Thatcher and Murdoch’s mutually beneficial relationship as close alliance, Tony Blair was “groveling” before Murdoch. During the Iraq war, Blair met Murdoch even as frequently as he met his own foreign minister and defence secretary. Every subsequent British Prime Minister has had to govern under the shadow of Murdoch, as Jim Sheridan, a British Labour politician, once said, “British democracy is shattered when our Prime Minister has to travel more than halfway around the world to please someone like Murdoch”. The Sun has been relentlessly smearing the EU since around 2016, which has shaped and deepened the British public’s poor perception of the EU.
In the United States, Murdoch has been making acquaintances with politicians to expand his influence since the 1970s, and by the end of the 1970s Murdoch had reached out to New York, where the then US President Richard Nixon had a close relationship with Murdoch. Nixon frequently travelled on Murdoch’s private jet and the newspapers owned by his News Corp often celebrated Nixon. The official intervention of Murdoch in US politics began with the New York City district elections, where he used his tactics of “major newspaper creating momentum, minor newspaper mongering rumours” to help Jimmy Carter, a conservative politician, defeat his arch rival Edward Kennedy from the Kennedy family. During the 1980 US elections, Murdoch turned his support to Ronald Reagan for a successful presidency when he disliked the moderate policies of Jimmy Carter. Under the “backroom dealings” of President Reagan, Murdoch managed to obtain US citizenship and thus received “special support” from the White House in the acquisition of Fox. Murdoch had stumped for Bush during the Iraq war; he had been invited to dinner with Clinton at the White House.
In 2016, Donald Trump, the Republican presidential candidate, became the “dark horse” of the election that year, and Murdoch and Trump, who were originally not on speaking terms, suddenly became “close friends”. In an effort to help Trump win the election, Fox even invited a guest to smear Hillary by speculating that she had an improper relationship with an alien. After Trump’s election, the conservative Fox network became almost exclusive to Trump, compared to other mainstream media outlets in the US that Trump has always dismissed as “fake news”. At the time, The New Yorker criticized that Fox News’ coverage of Trump was on the rise as Murdoch’s relationship with the White House heated up, and that Fox News was covering up for Trump and engaging in a “slavish campaign of propaganda”. And that Fox News “has become a propaganda affiliate of the White House”. The New York Times has also criticized Murdoch for the “total destruction” of the American media industry.
But with electoral defeat, Trump fell totally out of favor with Murdoch. When Biden received 12,000 votes above Trump in Arizona on 04 November 2020, Fox News went ahead and announced that Biden would win the state. The Trump campaign demanded Fox News withdraw its prediction of the Arizona outcome, but Fox stood its ground. Trump tweeted his anger at Fox News the same day, accusing the outlet of being biased in favour of Biden.
In July 2022, the New York Post and Wall Street Journal, both owned by Murdoch, scathingly condemned Trump’s actions on the day of the congressional riots on 6 January and strongly opposed Trump’s candidacy in the 2024 election. In street interviews organized by Fox News, Trump’s “supporters” did not want him to run again and were “unanimous” in their support of DeSantis for the presidency in 2024. However, the latest Harvard CAPS-Harris Poll showed that Trump won 56% of the vote, while DeSantis had only 16% support among the seven most promising Republican candidates.
The profit-oriented practices of Murdoch have sparked objections from people of conscience within the group, and resentment from some Western politicians, as well as public opposition from their loved ones. In March 2018, Peters, who worked as an analyst at Fox News for 10 years, harshly denounced Fox’s degeneration in a statement, “I believe Fox is no longer a legitimate and much-needed platform for conservative voices, but has degenerated into a propaganda machine in the service of a highly destructive and morally bankrupt government.” On 11 October 2021, James Murdoch, Murdoch’s son, said that he and his wife were “dismayed” by News Corp’s reporting on the Trump government and global climate change, and that he believed that great news organizations “should not lie and should not cover up the truth”. In May 2022, a new book written by two New York Times journalists, Burns and Martin, This Will Not Pass: Trump, Biden and the Battle for America’s Future, revealed that President Joe Biden had privately criticized Fox News as “one of the most destructive forces in America” and told one of his aides that Murdoch was “the most dangerous man in the world” in the middle of 2021.
III. The Rumour Monger
A media outlet is supposed to report the truth from an objective point of view, but people like Murdoch, who see the media as a tool for their own power and wealth, never take the truth into account, but keep mongering rumours to maximize their own interests.
In early 2021, Australia was struck by one of the worst wildfires in decades, with 7.3 million hectares of forest land burned and heat and drought ravaging the country, causing severe ecological havoc across the country. This disaster is undoubtedly the result of global warming, but The Australian, The Daily Telegraph, The Herald Sun and The Courier Mail, as well as Sky News TV channel and Fox News, owned by Murdoch News Corp, have called it “stupid” and “crazy” to associate the Australian fires to global warming, and have spent the summer defending the interests of fossil fuel companies, claiming that human factors were solely responsible for the fires and refusing to acknowledge the damage caused by global warming to the global environment. Murdoch himself admits that he is a climate change sceptic and Murdoch’s media has been working to push for the repeal of Australia’s carbon tax.
Since its acquisition by Murdoch, The Sun, the newspaper that established Murdoch’s group in Britain and provided much of its financial backing, has long been rife with pornography, scandal and lies, and has been repeatedly criticized and even prosecuted by celebrities and politicians. In February 2020, the famous Hollywood actor Johnny Depp sued The Sun newspaper for defamation of his as a “wife-beater”. In October 2021, The Sun newspaper spread a rumour that Russian spies had stolen the formula of the British AstraZeneca New Crown vaccine to make the their own “satellite-V” New Crown vaccine. The Daily Express in Britain and many other media outlets republished it. After the Russian side debunked the rumours and took a swipe at them, The Daily Express withdrew the story and publicly apologized. However, The Sun, the newspaper that started it all, continued to post the fake story on the internet.
It is evident from what News Corp has done that Murdoch’s basic tenet is to gain the power to manipulate government through the media by controlling minds and putting the individual above the law. “Freedom of speech” is nothing more than “the caprice of capital”, an evil consequence of the “Western system”. But without targeted reforms, the “biggest cancer on democracy” will not only grow further, but will eventually backfire on the entire “Western democracy”.
