Delighted as I am by the relentlessly cascading developments surrounding Rupert Murdoch’s beleaguered empire, I don’t share the optimism of worthies such as Eliot Spitzer who think Foxworld ought to now be investigated by the DOJ under FCPA, the pretty straightforward Foreign Corrupt Practices Act that News Corp has evidently repeatedly violated. For a lot of reasons, that sort of obviously reasonable thing could never bear fruit here, in the unlikely event that it even happened in the first place. You see, despite the paranoid rantings of water carriers like Tucker Carlson who blame the Liberal Media for Rupert’s woes, News Corp, with FOX as its ruthless enforcer, has effectively cowed that same Liberal Media into acquiescence, if not outright emulation, of both its shoddy journalism and corrupt relationships with politicians. Just as in the UK, politicians from both sides of the aisle are well accustomed to the ritual ring-kissing of Master Rupert, the Clintons being just one especially egregious example, and with few exceptions, the purportedly legitimate media supinely and routinely embrace FOX as one of their own; a self-destructive and aberrant choice that redounds only to the benefit of FOX at considerable expense to their already tattered credibility.
Like it or not, America is now invested in FOX, and though the investment is thoroughly underwater, we’re still unwilling to just turn it over to the bank. For years, utter BS sold mercilessly on FOX, about everything from Clinton’s many murders to weapons of mass destruction and the climate change “hoax” have been soberly presented as “one side” of a supposedly insoluble political argument, never mind the facts. Proven falsehoods about matters great and small are now “out there” in the bloodstream of American politics, and the dumb and shameless media stars who promoted them, despite their counterfactuality, fear the wrath of FOX far more than they fear the wrath of their deceived audiences. After all, if nothing else FOX serves as an employer of last resort for the journalistically disgraced, a fact of which, say, Fred Hiatt couldn’t possibly be unaware.
All this creates a serious conundrum for anyone who might deign to go up against Murdoch’s empire….. First, one can expect a ferocious onslaught of contemptuous smears from FOX itself as a matter of course; then, a tut-tutting, insidery dismissal from Howie Kurtz et al; this followed by synthesized roars out of the Professional Right from Limbaugh on down; and finally capped by the Obama DOJ or FCC giving Rupert everything he wants anyway. Never pick a fight with someone who buys ink by the barrel, they used to say, and ol’ Rupert has figured out a way to once again prove this truism well into the digital era. Amazing what money by the bucketload can buy, isn’t it?
So, despite the lurid revelations and widespread public disgust with News Corp and its erstwhile acolytes across the pond, it would be foolish to hope such a mass awakening could ever happen here; it would simply embarrass too many Serious people in the media who have, out of either cravenness or stupidity, swallowed the FOX ethos hook, line, and sinker, and aren’t about to admit their mistakes because of some petty whining about bribery and whatnot. Those few in the position to meaningfully challenge what News Corp has wrought through its lies and slipshod hackery have, by and large, embraced or at least not forthrightly countered its post-reality notions about the world, from President Obama on down, and therefore are and will continue to take the Fifth.
Rupert may have lost a few billion here and there, but as long as he has FOX, he still has America.
More’s the pity.
