Paper teams with Big Tech to gag right
on grounds of inspiring race violence
Dean Baquet, editor of the New York Times
Rupert Murdoch's media empire has had a hand in mass shootings by racists, according to the New York Times. The newspaper said that Murdoch has
"amplified and mainstreamed" a "global ethnonationalist fervor" that is prompting the killings, adding that Murdoch has made a practice of "vilifying people of color."
In the process, the paper put down President Trump's fans as "nativists" and "ethnonationalists." In addition, the Times targeted "Fox opinion hosts’ embrace of nativism and white nationalism during Trump’s rise." The Fox media company is controlled by the Murdoch family.
The article repeatedly accuses the Murdoch empire of pushing a white supremacist line in its support of Trump. The press baron, the N.Y. Times charges, uses a formula of white racism, right-wing politics, sensationalism and wheeler-dealing to make himself a powerful force in America, Britain and Australia. The Times tied the success of the pro-Brexit vote to what it sees as the Murdoch press's habit of stoking the flames of resentment against nonwhites and Muslims.
In recent months, the Times has run stories chiding Big Tech for not taking offline people and sites that it accused of racism and "conspiracy theories." The newspaper has been part of a movement to prevent "alt-right" conservatives from influencing the next presidential election via the internet. Further, those who support "America first" are viewed by the liberal press with contempt. Anti-Trump media have been conflating conservatism and white supremacy as they lobby Big Tech to muzzle more internet voices.
Gunning for Fox
The Times was particularly eager to criticize Murdoch's Fox News network, headed by the very conservative Murdoch son, Lachlan.
For example, the Times tied Fox News to the Pittsburgh synagogue massacre. The paper said that "some Fox News hosts and guests had been moving ever closer to openly embracing the most bigoted sentiments of the white-nationalist movement. A few days before the anti-Semitic attack on a Pittsburgh synagogue that killed 11 Jewish worshipers, a guest on Lou Dobbs’s show had said that a migrant caravan headed to the United States border from Honduras was being funded by the Soros-occupied State Department. (The network apologized.) The shooter, according to a post he made on social media, had come to believe that Jews were transporting members of the migrant caravans."
Murdoch has received many awards for his pro-Israel stance, and many brickbats from critics who say he goes overboard in his support for the Israeli right-wing's foreign policy.
The Times also tied Murdoch to the New Zealand massacre:
The Times report, which was compiled from the work of 150 reporters, observed that Rupert Murdoch's father, Keith, "was a member of the Eugenics Society of Victoria and in an editorial once wrote that the great question facing Britain was will she, if needs be, fight — for a White Australia?"
Hint of homophobia
At another point the paper spotlighted what it deemed Murdoch's preference for racists:
The Times added, "When Megyn Kelly, who sealed her fame by clashing with Trump, left Fox in early 2017, Murdoch opted not to replace her with another Trump antagonist."
Rupert Murdoch and Jerry Hall, who is now Mrs. Murdoch
The Times made no mention of Carlson's crusade for freedom of internet speech, or of Carlson's on-air alliance with the leftist journalist Glenn Greenwald, who has long agreed with Carlson that Russiagate is bogus and who, like Carlson, takes a dim view of mainstream media.
Times lashes commentators
The Times targeted "Fox opinion hosts’ embrace of nativism and white nationalism during Trump’s rise." In particular, the paper targeted Carlson, citing the Daily Stormer, which it identified as a neo-nazi website, which "had praised Carlson for 'covering all our talking points'.”
The Times also knocked Sean Hannity for appearing on the campaign trail with Trump, arguing that this act had made the Murdoch empire and Trump "one." The Times did not mention that a commentator like Hannity is in a position similar to that of a newspaper columnist. Whether the Times would permit one of its columnists to appear on stage with a candidate is not obvious. But, why would it be objectionable, especially if that columnist had made clear her or his undiluted support of the candidate?
The Times's attack on Fox landed soon after the paper's relentless "Russian collusion" coverage was abruptly and embarrassingly nullified by Attorney General William Barr, who said that Special Counsel Robert Mueller had found no evidence of collusion or conspiracy between Russians and members of the Trump campaign team.
The attack piece also serves as payback for the oft-repeated theory of Fox commentators that the Times, as a leader of "the liberal media," had compromised its integrity with slanted, heavily unfavorable coverage of Trump. The Times, and other liberal media, bent over backwards to imply to readers that there was certainly something to the collusion yarn, which was first pushed by the Clinton campaign and Obama intelligence officials. The Times avers that the Murdoch press slants its news for racist reasons, as well as to gain and hold political power.
Editor's caution irks watchdog
Yet, it should be noted that the Times's editor, Dean Baquet, initially rejected calls for reporting on the Russia collusion rumor. "There were disagreements about whether to hold back. There was even an actual draft of a story. But it never saw daylight. The deciding vote was Baquet’s, who was adamant, then and now, that they made the right call," according to an account by Liz Spayd, public editor of the Times.
“We heard about the back-channel communications between the Russians and Trump,” Baquet said in Spayd's account. “We reported it, and found no evidence that it was true. We wrote everything we knew — and we wrote a lot. Anybody that thinks we sat on stuff is outrageous. It’s just false.”
Spayd's article upbraids Baquet for not plunging into Russiagate early on. The public editor is considered a voice of the readers and an objective in-house critic.
Trump, Russia and the news story that wasn't
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/20/public-editor/trump-russia-fbi-liz-spayd-public-editor.html
The Times devoted much attention to family dynamics, especially the rivalry between Murdoch's sons, Lachlan and John, sourly noting that Lachlan is a hard-line conservative. It is hard to say whether part of the motive for the hit piece was to embarrass the family into replacing Lachlan with the hipper, more "moderate" John once the 88-year-old patriarch dies or is decommissioned. The Times was highly interested in a recent fall that sent the elder Murdoch to a hospital, seeing it as a portent of the end of life.
In a strange twist, the paper did not include the racism charges in a summary that accompanied the long article.
In the process, the paper put down President Trump's fans as "nativists" and "ethnonationalists." In addition, the Times targeted "Fox opinion hosts’ embrace of nativism and white nationalism during Trump’s rise." The Fox media company is controlled by the Murdoch family.
The article repeatedly accuses the Murdoch empire of pushing a white supremacist line in its support of Trump. The press baron, the N.Y. Times charges, uses a formula of white racism, right-wing politics, sensationalism and wheeler-dealing to make himself a powerful force in America, Britain and Australia. The Times tied the success of the pro-Brexit vote to what it sees as the Murdoch press's habit of stoking the flames of resentment against nonwhites and Muslims.
In recent months, the Times has run stories chiding Big Tech for not taking offline people and sites that it accused of racism and "conspiracy theories." The newspaper has been part of a movement to prevent "alt-right" conservatives from influencing the next presidential election via the internet. Further, those who support "America first" are viewed by the liberal press with contempt. Anti-Trump media have been conflating conservatism and white supremacy as they lobby Big Tech to muzzle more internet voices.
Gunning for Fox
The Times was particularly eager to criticize Murdoch's Fox News network, headed by the very conservative Murdoch son, Lachlan.
For example, the Times tied Fox News to the Pittsburgh synagogue massacre. The paper said that "some Fox News hosts and guests had been moving ever closer to openly embracing the most bigoted sentiments of the white-nationalist movement. A few days before the anti-Semitic attack on a Pittsburgh synagogue that killed 11 Jewish worshipers, a guest on Lou Dobbs’s show had said that a migrant caravan headed to the United States border from Honduras was being funded by the Soros-occupied State Department. (The network apologized.) The shooter, according to a post he made on social media, had come to believe that Jews were transporting members of the migrant caravans."
Murdoch has received many awards for his pro-Israel stance, and many brickbats from critics who say he goes overboard in his support for the Israeli right-wing's foreign policy.
The Times also tied Murdoch to the New Zealand massacre:
Thousands of miles away, another consequence of the global ethnonationalist fervor that the Murdoch empire had amplified and mainstreamed was playing out in New Zealand, where an Australian white nationalist, Brenton Tarrant, stood accused of killing 50 worshipers at two Christchurch mosques on March 14. There was no direct connection between Tarrant and Sky Australia [a Murdoch television company], but critics of the network quickly drew attention to its consistently anti-Muslim rhetoric. In an online comment, unearthed by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Tarrant had described Trump’s election as “one of the most important events in modern history.” He was also a fan of the white nationalist Blair Cottrell, whose appearance on Sky Australia over the summer caused American Express to pull its ads from the network. Following the massacre, a young Muslim employee of Sky News in Australia quit in protest. “Over the past few years, I was playing a role — no matter how small — in a network whose tone I knew would help legitimize radical views present in the fringes of our society,” she wrote in a post on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s website."Murdoch has carefully built an image during his six decades in media as a pragmatist who will support liberal governments when it suits him," the paper said. "Yet his various news outlets have inexorably pushed the flow of history to the right across the Anglosphere, whether they were advocating for the United States and its allies to go to war in Iraq in 2003, undermining global efforts to combat climate change or vilifying people of color at home or from abroad as dangerous threats to a white majority."
The Times report, which was compiled from the work of 150 reporters, observed that Rupert Murdoch's father, Keith, "was a member of the Eugenics Society of Victoria and in an editorial once wrote that the great question facing Britain was will she, if needs be, fight — for a White Australia?"
Hint of homophobia
At another point the paper spotlighted what it deemed Murdoch's preference for racists:
Not long before the deal closed, Lachlan’s old Ten host Andrew Bolt was brought in to do a nightly political program. Immediately after the purchase, Sky signed up as a host and commentator Caroline Marcus, a columnist for The Daily Telegraph of Sydney who had supported a ban on burkinis in France and lamented what she described as reverse discrimination against whites in cultural debates. Ross Cameron — a former member of the Australian Parliament prone to anti-gay slurs who later spoke at an event hosted by a far-right organization that describes itself as Australia’s leading anti-Islamic group — co-hosted a program called “The Outsiders.” He and his fellow hosts described themselves as “Trump’s Aussie mates” and half-joked that their show would provide “absolutely no balance whatsoever.” After one host, Mark Latham, was fired for making a series of offensive comments, including a homophobic remark about a high school student who participated in a video for International Women’s Day, he ran successfully for state office as a member of One Nation, the country’s far-right anti-immigrant party. Soon after Lachlan took over, an old political ally, Tony Abbott’s former chief of staff, Peta Credlin, became a prime-time host on Sky. Still closely allied with Abbott, she used her platform to argue that Australia should slow down its efforts to combat climate change, take a stricter line on immigration and resist the liberal drift of Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, a bitter Abbott rival.After the 2016 presidential election, Murdoch moved "forcefully" to support Trump. When Greta Van Susteren, a former CNN host and a somewhat ideologically unpredictable presence in the Fox lineup, left the network, Murdoch "enthusiastically endorsed" the suggestion that she be replaced by Tucker Carlson. The Times billed Carlson as "a conservative writer and a founder of the Daily Caller website who was earning praise from white nationalists heading into Trump’s election," adding that "Murdoch marked the occasion by taking Carlson out to brunch with Jerry Hall [Murdoch's current flame and Mick Jagger's former girlfriend]."
Known as Sky After Dark, the opinion-heavy, almost-uniformly right-wing lineup was an entirely new phenomenon in Australian TV. Its nighttime ratings spiked as the network quickly became required viewing for the country’s political class.
The Times added, "When Megyn Kelly, who sealed her fame by clashing with Trump, left Fox in early 2017, Murdoch opted not to replace her with another Trump antagonist."
Rupert Murdoch and Jerry Hall, who is now Mrs. Murdoch
The Times made no mention of Carlson's crusade for freedom of internet speech, or of Carlson's on-air alliance with the leftist journalist Glenn Greenwald, who has long agreed with Carlson that Russiagate is bogus and who, like Carlson, takes a dim view of mainstream media.
Times lashes commentators
The Times targeted "Fox opinion hosts’ embrace of nativism and white nationalism during Trump’s rise." In particular, the paper targeted Carlson, citing the Daily Stormer, which it identified as a neo-nazi website, which "had praised Carlson for 'covering all our talking points'.”
The Times also knocked Sean Hannity for appearing on the campaign trail with Trump, arguing that this act had made the Murdoch empire and Trump "one." The Times did not mention that a commentator like Hannity is in a position similar to that of a newspaper columnist. Whether the Times would permit one of its columnists to appear on stage with a candidate is not obvious. But, why would it be objectionable, especially if that columnist had made clear her or his undiluted support of the candidate?
The Times's attack on Fox landed soon after the paper's relentless "Russian collusion" coverage was abruptly and embarrassingly nullified by Attorney General William Barr, who said that Special Counsel Robert Mueller had found no evidence of collusion or conspiracy between Russians and members of the Trump campaign team.
The attack piece also serves as payback for the oft-repeated theory of Fox commentators that the Times, as a leader of "the liberal media," had compromised its integrity with slanted, heavily unfavorable coverage of Trump. The Times, and other liberal media, bent over backwards to imply to readers that there was certainly something to the collusion yarn, which was first pushed by the Clinton campaign and Obama intelligence officials. The Times avers that the Murdoch press slants its news for racist reasons, as well as to gain and hold political power.
Editor's caution irks watchdog
Yet, it should be noted that the Times's editor, Dean Baquet, initially rejected calls for reporting on the Russia collusion rumor. "There were disagreements about whether to hold back. There was even an actual draft of a story. But it never saw daylight. The deciding vote was Baquet’s, who was adamant, then and now, that they made the right call," according to an account by Liz Spayd, public editor of the Times.
“We heard about the back-channel communications between the Russians and Trump,” Baquet said in Spayd's account. “We reported it, and found no evidence that it was true. We wrote everything we knew — and we wrote a lot. Anybody that thinks we sat on stuff is outrageous. It’s just false.”
Spayd's article upbraids Baquet for not plunging into Russiagate early on. The public editor is considered a voice of the readers and an objective in-house critic.
Trump, Russia and the news story that wasn't
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/20/public-editor/trump-russia-fbi-liz-spayd-public-editor.html
The Times devoted much attention to family dynamics, especially the rivalry between Murdoch's sons, Lachlan and John, sourly noting that Lachlan is a hard-line conservative. It is hard to say whether part of the motive for the hit piece was to embarrass the family into replacing Lachlan with the hipper, more "moderate" John once the 88-year-old patriarch dies or is decommissioned. The Times was highly interested in a recent fall that sent the elder Murdoch to a hospital, seeing it as a portent of the end of life.
In a strange twist, the paper did not include the racism charges in a summary that accompanied the long article.
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