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.
If the Murdochs blanch at being called “unindicted co-conspirators” in relation to the January 6 2021 insurrection that Donald Trump organised and inspired, one can only hope they don’t read the views expressed in a wide variety of US media outlets.
“Donald Trump is now on trial in the Senate for inciting a violent insurrection. But what about his collaborators?” wrote The Washington Post’s Max Boot in February last year in a piece titled “Sadly Fox News Can’t Be Impeached“.
“He didn’t do it all alone. The former president had assistance from key allies, including the biggest stars in conservative media,” wrote Daily Beast columnist Justin Baragona in a piece titled “How Fox News Primetime Jacked Up Trump’s ‘Big Lie’“, pointing out Fox News has pushed the election theft lie or promoted conspiracy theories nearly 800 times.
The Murdochs and Fox News “own this” wrote observers after January 6: such as the Post’s Margaret Sullivan and long-term Murdoch critic Brian Stelter at CNN Business — the latter of who would go on to write a book about Fox News’ propagandising, and how the defeat of Trump caused the Murdochs to embrace the election lie.
Neoconservative Thomas L Friedman, a high-profile New York Times columnist, was blunt: “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.”
“Murdoch cannot escape that judgment. The family dynasty, so important to Murdoch, is terminally ruptured by the disgrace of Fox News,” said Clive Irving at Daily Beast. A former Fox News contributor said, “I want to almost speak directly to my old boss, Rupert Murdoch, to say, you can stop this madness.”
“Add Lachlan Murdoch, Fox News Media CEO Suzanne Scott and Fox News President and Executive Editor Jay Wallace to that list,” the Post’s Erik Wemple observed in response. Oliver Darcy of CNN referred to “Murdoch’s decision to at least implicitly green-light content promoting 1/6 trutherism and election denialism”.
At USA Today, Steven Strauss suggested that Congress “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 … the purported corruption of the 2020 election by Dominion voting machines, and so on”.
Dominion decided not to cop the incessant lies from Fox News lying down. It sued the company, and its owners, in Delaware, where News Corp is headquartered for tax-dodging purposes. In its application earlier this year, Dominion’s lawyers said “lies have consequences. Fox sold a false story of election fraud in order to serve its own commercial purposes, severely injuring Dominion in the process”.
On June 21, the judge hearing the case delivered some bad news for the Murdochs. The evidence presented by Dominion made the case for them to be directly linked to Fox News’ scandalous lying, he decided. “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.”
But the harshest criticism came from very close to home for the Murdochs. In the wake of January 6, James Murdoch, who had walked away from his father’s media empire and savaged News Corp’s climate denialism, was asked about the role of Fox News in the insurrection. “The damage is profound,” he replied. “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 didn’t mention Fox News by name, or his own family. Then again, did he even need to?
