The making of the Fox News empire

In just about a week, Rupert Murdoch is going to launch a new publication, the California

Post.

Indigital and print, no less, it's been described as a New York Post for the Left Coast.

If Mr. Murdoch seems unbothered by reports of the death of media, perhaps that's for

a reason, Murdoch media isn't dying.

Former Fox News personalities are currently running the Department of Defense and Transportation.

One is the borders are, one is the director of National Intelligence, and Donald Trump

you may recall is in the White House.

Rupert Murdoch knows what he's doing.

He has been one of the most important kind of media owners, not only for what he owns,

but also for the way he's used it.

He has had this fascinating, but for many people, poisonous impact on political discourse,

on politics more generally.

Today, I'm today explained a rerun of a show we ran last fall.

My co-host Sean Ramos firm on how Rupert Murdoch remade the world.

Do you remember?

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Do you like the feeling of power you have as a newspaper provider?

I would be able to formulate policies for a large number of newspapers in every state

of Australia.

Well, if anyone on it knows that it's worth enough, yes.

The quote one enjoys the feeling of power.

I think Rupert is a very good and tough businessman.

We've only seen one side of Mr. Murdoch at the present moment.

We won't stand people like him.

We don't like people like him.

He's too powerful.

He's got too much money.

People like him.

Spit on people like us.

Treat us like dirt.

Is Rupert Murdoch a Neppo baby?

Murdoch is absolutely a Neppo baby.

If the term Neppo baby was in existence in 1931, yes, he is a Neppo baby.

My name is Des Friedman and I am a professor of media and communications at Goldsmiths University

of London.

My name is Matthew Richardson and I'm a professor of communication at Deakin University in Melbourne,

Australia.

One of our former prime ministers, Malcolm Turnbull, who tangled with Rupert Murdoch,

has described him as Australia's deadliest export.

His whole presentation is of this kind of scruffy rebellious outside of figure, shaking

his fists at the establishment and the elites.

The reality is that when he was born in 1931, his father was the managing director of a

big newspaper group in Australia.

They lived in possibly the wealthiest of suburb in Melbourne in Australia, went to Oxford

University and then his father dies in 1952 and leaves him one afternoon newspaper in

Adelaide, which is another city here in Australia.

His father, Keith, really pioneered tabloid journalism in Australia.

My name is Graham Murdoch.

No relation.

And I'm an emeritus professor at the University of Loughborough in the UK.

Keith Murdoch realized that newspapers had the power to bring down politicians.

So Rupert inherited not just newspapers, but actually a whole kind of philosophy, if

you like, of what newspapers could do and how they operate it.

He's very clear from very early on that he wants to learn everything about running newspapers

and then very quickly from about 1954, he starts expanding.

And he always had the reputation for being quite ruthless.

He was trying to get a deal done and this politician was being obstructive.

So he said to him, look, I can either give you favourable publicity or I can pour a bucket

of shit on you every day.

What's it to me?

Surprisingly, the politician decided he'd rather have the favourable publicity.

It's kind of illustrative of the sort of idea that you can make and break reputations.

And that was really part of the sort of family philosophy.

The main ambition was to make his father proud and to do better than his father, to internationalize

the father's operation and he was willing to throw everything at it to get there.

He moves into England in the late 1960s.

When he came to Britain, he bought the use of the world which was this humongous, best-selling

Sunday tabloid, a huge commercial success.

Murdoch took over the news of the world in January, since then it's circulation has risen

by more than half a million.

This old family business just off Fleet Street is now his power base in the newspaper world

was buying into the news of the world your own idea or was it suggested from someone else.

So Tali, my own idea.

It had pretty impressive, but they weren't used for most of the week, which was un-economical.

So he began looking around for a daily title and he fixed on the sum.

Which at that point is an eiling newspaper and he turbocharges that.

Murdoch's plans for the sum are still uncertain.

It seems that it will be a spicier version of the daily mirror.

It depends what you call by spice and sex and salaciousness.

I would think I'm going to avoid a subject, but it's not going to be a dirty paper, of course not.

He immediately converted it into a tabloid, became famous for having these semi-nude mortals.

Topless women on page three.

Tabloid newspapers have been sensational for a long time and for him that is the key message

that's, you know, those kinds of stories will drive circulation.

The most famous or infamous example of this some years later is when he publishes the fake diaries of Adolf Hitler.

He's advised these diaries of fake by a historian, he famously says,

fucking publish.

Fucking publish.

And he's, you know, he's questioned about that.

His answer is twofold, which were first is,

we'll remember we're in the entertainment business and, you know, I'll take the additional hundreds of thousands of copies in circulation that we got from this.

The sun, it became enormously popular, enormously influential both with, through the size of its audience and through its ability to shape politics.

His rise in the UK, co-incised with the rise of Margaret Thatcher.

And they share a kind of notion they're both outsiders.

She's a grossest daughter from a provincial town, not part of the old English establishment.

And the old English establishment also very hostile to Rupert.

But that becomes an advantage because with Thatcher, he finds a kind of a fellow traveller.

They share a kind of neoliberal sort of philosophy of free markets and antagonism to public ownership.

And I mean, Murdoch's papers were very much in support of that, that's a gender.

He already owns two of the most popular newspapers.

And he wants to buy more, an opportunity comes up to buy the times in the Sunday times.

And under the law at the time, there's a requirement that this matter is referred off to the monopolies and mergers commission,

Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

She ensures that that doesn't happen so that he is able to buy the times in the Sunday times.

The classic kind of paper of record in the UK.

Because he wanted to have that entree into the elites.

He wants the prestige, he wants the power, and he wants the audiences.

If you look at Rupert's career, he's always had the popular newspaper that can address, you know, the masses.

But you also have an elite newspaper, so you're speaking to the insiders,

but you're also speaking to the mass of the people.

That's what gives him his influence, that he can pull the strings at both levels, if you like, yeah.

Mr. Murdoch, we've called this program, who's afraid of Rupert Murdoch.

And it seems that many people are afraid,

principally because they can't believe that you won't interfere and alter the character of the newspapers

you've bought the Sunday times and the times.

What do you say to that?

Well, I certainly didn't buy them to change them,

and I certainly have the right to insist on excellence.

It was alleged that in the Australian election, when Fraser beat Whitlam,

your paper's actually distorted the news in favour of your candidate

in both occasions you had industrial trouble.

We, in fact, had trouble with a number of left-wing journalists

because we took their distortions out of their stories.

We were not the only newspaper saying that the government should change.

The Forkland Islands and their dependencies remain British territory.

When Margaret Thatcher and her government launched the war in the Falklands,

Murdoch's newspapers give a lot of editorial support for that.

Gotcha!

Our lads sing gumbo and whole cruiser.

Headline, the Sun.

Maggie sends in the troops, headline, the Sun.

The paper that supports our boys.

This was central to cementing the relationship to Murdoch and Fatcher.

If you were asked to name the two key people

who reshaped Britain in this more neoliberal vein in the 1980s,

it'd be hard to think of to other people, the Margaret Thatcher and Rupert Murdoch.

These stories you're telling us about Rupert's time in the UK, in the 70s and 80s,

they establish, I think, three major themes.

One, a ruthlessness, a willingness for a newsman to lie

if it sells more papers or does good business.

And then three, not just a desire to inform the public about politics,

but to drive politics himself.

That is a good summary.

And you can see the fruits of this,

if you like, the bitter fruits of this,

decades later in the form of the phone hacking scandal in the United Kingdom,

in the mid-2000s.

The newspapers were declining in revenues and readership.

So that kind of forced them to be even more militant in looking for sensation.

Newspapers owned by Rupert Murdoch,

that is, most of the sun in the news of the world,

hacked into the phones of members of the Royal family, celebrities,

but also, and this is crucial, also ordinary people, not famous people.

It's discovered that they've hacked the phone of this dead teenage girl,

Millie Dowler.

The face of Rupert Murdoch,

after he apologized, privately and publicly, to the family of Millie Dowler.

I was appalled, the bad I wanted to have it.

I'm quite an appologized, and I had nothing for this.

People are revolted, it creates a huge public reaction.

In the view of the majority of committee members,

Rupert Murdoch is not fit to run an international company like B-Sky B.

You know, the Murdoch's could not control the revulsion.

They could not kind of put a lid on it.

They were forced to do something that Murdoch has almost never done in his career,

which is to close a newspaper.

He closed the news of the world instantly, it folded overnight.

And then, of course, a official government commission of inquiry.

Murdoch sat down in front of a parliamentary committee.

He looked old.

It was an amazing performance.

He forgot all the details when they were put to him.

And he said,

I would just like to say, one sentence.

This is the most humble day of my life.

Pretty soon, after that, once he got out of the committee room,

he magically regained his memory and regained his posture and his poise.

And, of course, he has gone on to live his life in full.

Rupert is undoubtedly one of the most important figures in the media.

Certainly the last 50 years, not only for what he owns,

but also for the way he's used it.

Australia was the training ground.

The UK was where he could really find his feet and wield political power.

Many, many millions of newspapers sold every day,

which gives him the capital, but also the influence.

All of those lessons are to be applied in the US

and ultimately the rest of the globe.

Rupert Murdoch in America, when today explained returns.

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Rupert Murdoch's first foray into the American media isn't on TV.

It's not in New York.

It's in San Antonio, Texas of all places.

Well, I mean, yeah, but then it very quickly moved to New York.

Start spreading the new.

So he bought the New York post in midnight in Sony's to establish a base.

He gets access to all sorts of at the political level gets access to.

Heavy hitters in the commercial world in the political world in the cultural world.

You know, the New York Post historically had had back Democrats.

When he buys the New York Post, they campaign vigorously for Reagan's Reagan to become the president.

Bones run hot after big debate.

Reagan wins TV poll 2 to 1, the New York Post.

He is in sync with Ronald Reagan ideologically and with the sort of Republican party values.

In that's a big city, but it's a narrow elite.

Trump's relationship with Murdoch does go back to the 1980s and to the New York Post.

Murdoch had a very low opinion of him.

This is a man who'd lost money running a casino.

But good gossip column is another one of Murdoch's, you know, must-have in his formula for use paper success.

Page 6 is most definitely a very successful gossip column.

Trump is one of its key sources, you know, they kind of have that symbiotic relationship

where they're constantly pumping him up and he's constantly feeding them stories

because he's a bit of a gossip magnet himself.

Marla Bostur pals about Donald, quote, best sex I've ever had.

The brashness of Trump is very different to the much more considered strategic,

studious, long-term thinking of Murdoch.

It is not like it's an immediate marriage.

But he realizes pretty quickly that he can make a lot more money in television.

And that's when, you know, he buys 50% of 20th Century Fox

and that's the beginning of the Fox Network, of the legacy we are now very familiar with.

He is the guy who's company, Benchroll.

The Simpson's ideologically is not the kind of thing you might think would sit that easily

with a small-sea conservative like Rupert Murdoch.

He has made several chemiar appearances where he was introduced as...

Rupert Murdoch, the billionaire turned.

He's willing to take a hit for the greater good of the company.

You know, this is a man who will do anything to increase the ratings and the audiences.

He's also buying up film studios.

With Titanic as a movie that his studio financed,

it could have ruined him, the gamble that he took on Titanic

and instead it made him.

Was it over a billion dollars that Titanic took?

He's got those mediums which make a lot more money

and he's also doing similar things in Australia and in the UK.

He develops a global media empire is what he does.

But I think his ambition is always to come back to news.

The Simpson's doesn't get you into the White House

or the front or the back door of number 10 downing street.

Being a news mogul does.

The other piece of the puzzle in helping him develop in America

is the regulatory environment.

There was this thing called the fairness doctrine

which came up after the Second World War.

What that said was that if you were going to cover contentious affairs on television,

you had to present both sides of the story.

Reagan was all about deregulation, getting rid of as much regulation as you can.

So the fairness doctrine goes and what happens then is that unleashes or unlocks the door

for the rise of people like Rush Limbaugh.

Welcome to the Rush Limbaugh program, a program exclusively designed for rich conservatives

and right-minded republicans and those of you.

You know, the idea of balance and Rush Limbaugh don't exist in the same sentence.

Any race of people should not have guilt about slavery its Caucasians.

It opened the space for overtly partisan television

as you didn't have any longer to give the other side of the story.

Roger Ailes, who was the key founding person for Fox News and Murdock and Ailes,

they look at what the success that Rush Limbaugh is having

and they look to see if they can transplant that into television.

And that opened the space for Fox News.

By this stage, in terms of cable news, you've got CNN which began in about 1980.

We're going to report the news whether it's Afghanistan or Botswana or Moscow or whatever.

Ailes and Murdock, they realize that instead of having lots and lots of correspondence everywhere

they'll have the bare bones.

You know, you'll do the reporting of the news but it won't be a lavish suite of foreign correspondence.

It's much, much cheaper and you will bring in guys primarily from radio like, you know,

Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity and so on, to provide opinions about the news, you know,

what it means, how to think about it, etc.

The number that really scares me, African Americans on food stamps is up by 58%.

You have to rethink ludicrous.

All corporate America in my opinion needs to rethink their responsibility to their country.

And so you put those people on in the evening, Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity and they blow the aid on demand.

You know, they don't just have opinions, they have big opinions and theatrical opinions.

Tonight, I can report the sky is absolutely falling.

We are all doomed, the end is near.

The apocalypse is imminent and you're going to all die, all of you.

At least that's what the media mob and the Democratic Extreme Radical Socialist Party would like you to think.

Tabloidization, that's what is applied to Fox News.

It changes the media landscape in the sense that the predominant thing being,

tell me what to think about the news, make me angry or upset or whatever about the news.

It's an enormously profitable business, you know, you've ceased being a news or journalism outfit at that point

and you've become something quite different, which bears a much closer relationship with propaganda.

Murdoch has always run his media empire in, you know, different parts of it work with different parts of an audience.

The upmarket respected newspapers versus the downmarket ones.

The Wall Street Journal was on Rupert Murdoch radar for a long time.

This was a newspaper that was unbiable for him, that the family who owned it said,

not in a million years will we sell to a man like Rupert Murdoch.

And yet, within a matter of months, they had sold to Rupert Murdoch.

And when you're Rupert Murdoch and you have both Fox News and the Wall Street Journal,

again, it positions you in such a, you know, you have that powerful role,

who is really going to go against you.

Do you think Rupert Murdoch surpassed his own expectations?

Oh, undoubtedly, undoubtedly.

Well, who knows? I'm not in his head, so I don't know.

But if he could have looked into the Crystal Ball and seen himself in, you know, from 1952 to 2025,

I think it's very hard for him to, would have been very hard for him to conceive of being where he is now.

He certainly transformed the British media, the Australian media and the US media.

He has had this fascinating, but for many people, poisonous,

impact on political discourse, on politics more generally.

Democrats have finally realized what cost them the election in 2024,

and the answer is being A-hole.

Are you legal or illegal?

You're illegal?

Yeah.

Welcome to America.

Thank you.

You can stay.

All right, thank you. Thanks so much.

For now.

Now, you can see how much damage the company has done to journalism, to democracy.

It's like Victor Frankenstein and his monster.

You know, they've created a monster, which has now gotten away from them,

and there's actually two monsters.

The first monster is the Fox News audience, and the second monster is Donald Trump.

Our show today was produced by Peter Boundon Rosen.

He had help from Jolly Myers, Denise Garra, Laura Bullard, Patrick Boyd, Adrian Lilly,

and Sean Ramesfram, that's me.

Thanks to our guests, Des Friedman from Goldsmiths University of London,

Graham Murdock from the University of Loughborough, also in England,

and Matthew Richardson from Deakin University in Melbourne, Australia.

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