Asked if his News Corp. managed to shape the agenda on the war in Iraq, Murdoch said: “No, I don’t think so. We tried.” Asked by Rose for further comment, he said: “We basically supported the Bush policy in the Middle East…but we have been very critical of his execution.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
“We tried”? “We basically supported the Bush policy in the Middle East”? How’s that, exactly? One might get the impression that maybe, just maybe, Murdoch was referring to his “news” network’s propagandistic efforts on behalf of the Bush administration. Shocking, I know.<\/p>\n
On a more substantive note, Murdoch’s complaints about media “pluralism” strike me as inherently misguided.
\n
\nThe News Corp. CEO reportedly noted the rise of news websites, blogs, and podcasts as undermining the power of the traditional TV news outlets.<\/p>\n
I enjoy some occasional blog triumphalism as much as the next guy, but Murdoch’s complaints come across as misplaced whining. Blogs and podcasts can’t drive the national political discussion like television can. It’s not even close. The lowest rated program on MSNBC still has a larger audience than almost any blog online. FNC heavyweights like O’Reilly and Hannity bury most of the A-list bloggers combined.<\/p>\n
Fox News may be on the decline, with lower ratings and weaker influence, but if Murdoch is looking for an explanation, the answer isn’t to blame media “pluralism.” The network is a pathetic joke that no one can take seriously. If Murdoch wants FNC to have more power, he might look into giving it more credibility.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Once in a great while, a Fox News exec will slip and acknowledge the network’s ideological agenda. At the Davos conference last week, it was none other than News Corp. chairman and CEO Rupert Murdoch. In a session moderated by Charlie Rose and available via Webcast, Murdoch lamented the fact that big media conglomerates have […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9831","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9831","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9831"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9831\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9831"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9831"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9831"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}