Murdoch’s Politics
By David McKnight
Pluto Press
Pbck. £12.99
Julius Streicher was the founder and publisher of the nazi
newspaper Der Sturmer, which became a
central feature of the Nazi propaganda machine. This book prises open the iron
doors of secrecy surrounding Murdoch and his empire to chillingly remind us of
how his role so closely resembles that of Streicher, but done more subtly.
Those who automatically pooh-pooh
conspiracy theories will be seriously disabused by this book. McKnight doesn’t
anywhere spell-out that Murdoch is involved in a worldwide conspiracy, but the facts
and information he conveys leave one with no alternative conclusion. Murdoch
uses a semi-secret network of right-wing ideologues all over the
English-speaking world to promote his virulently right-wing perspective and to
manipulate the political process to ensure he gets his way business-wise as
well as ideologically.
As McKnight demonstrates
perceptively, Murdoch doesn’t so much tell his readers and viewers what to
think, as set the agenda for political discussion in the English speaking
world. Murdoch himself admits that his papers and TV stations aim to do this.
They help fashion a climate of opinion – from bringing down Hilary Clinton’s
health service reform bill in the States, fighting positive action to fuelling speculation
about Obama’s American credentials.
While Murdoch is first and foremost a businessman out for
profit, he is more insidiously a highly manipulative and clever operator on the
political stage; his self-declared aim is to influence public opinion.
Most of the flagship newspapers
he owns actually make a loss, but are cross-subsidised by the lucrative
entertainment arm of his global business. He uses them to open doors to the
political elite. He is not interested in
facts or journalistic ethics, as was well demonstrated during the Levenson
enquiry, but in promoting right-wing ideas and peddling scurrilous gossip. His
Fox television station and papers use very few journalists and instead employ key
conservative opinion formers. He doesn’t have to tell his editors and
journalists directly what to say, he simply appoints those who are subservient
enough to agree with him.
Research in the States shows that
viewers of Fox News – the virulently right-wing ‘news’ channel - are more
misinformed than those who use other sources for their news. When liberal media
go to great lengths to check facts and to debunking or ridiculing material used
on Fox News, the latter just shrug it off once again as ‘liberal bias’. His
news outlets were instrumental in fuelling the hysteria leading to the Iraq War
and providing media support for George Bush’s crusade. Interestingly, while
liberal and left-wing media are continually outraged by the excesses, the calumnies,
distortion and rampant right-wing agenda propagated by his media, it is simply
water off a duck’s back for Murdoch and his acolytes. They simply shrug it off
as yet more evidence of the dominating ‘liberal bias’.
His media aggressively push
stories that they want taken up by the political class – and they usually
succeed. What is less well known about Murdoch is how he uses his enormous
wealth to fund right wing think tanks and candidates for government office,
from Reagan, Thatcher, Howard in Australia
to Sarah Palin and the Tea Party. This book is a wake-up call to everyone who
values the idea of a free press and informed political debate to ensure that
Murdoch’s empire is toppled before we do one day wake up in a Murdochian neo-nazi
world.
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