Rupert Murdoch delivers a keynote address at the National Summit on Education Reform in San Francisco, California, U.S., October 14, 2011. /Getty
Editor's note: William Jones is a Washington policy analyst and a non-resident fellow of the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies. The article reflects the author's opinions and not necessarily the views of CGTN.
The name Rupert Murdoch has often been associated with the seamier side of journalism, the tabloid press, which is the usual media for making big waves through scandalous exposures – whether factual or fictional – often ending successful political careers. For true or false, the very aroma of "scandal" can spell the end of one's political career. Murdoch's "News of the World," a now defunct publication, thrived off of this type of "yellow journalism."
While "News of the World" was closed down in the aftermath of a hacking scandal, Murdoch has attempted to move up out of the gutter into "more respectable" society through his purchase of London's Times and the U.S. Fox News, bringing the gutter with him. While Murdoch's Fox News' support of Donald Trump was no doubt a big factor in his 2016 electoral victory and remained an outlet for Trump during his entire presidency, in 2020, it was the same Murdoch who made the call to put out the news that Joe Biden had won in Arizona, swinging the election to Biden.
Even after the Trump defeat, however, that same Fox News continued to spew out the line that the election had been "stolen." And while Murdoch himself has taken personal precautions to avoid the coronavirus, the Fox Network is still hosting the "deniers" who refuse to get vaccinated or wear a mask in the name of "personal freedom."
Fox, in line with Murdoch's Australian outlets, was also instrumental in pushing the hoax about the Wuhan Institute of Virology as the source of COVID-19, even though this hypothesis had been totally debunked by the World Health Organization (WHO) team which had traveled to central China's Wuhan to investigate the origins of the virus. Donald Trump, who was then the president, is, of course, most responsible for spreading the "China virus" hoax among the general public. But the fact that Fox News was putting out this bogus claim nightly after Mike Pompeo coined the label may well have edged Trump, who watched Fox shows religiously, to make it into his own calling card, giving the claim an authority which it previously didn't have.
Peter Navarro speaks to members of the press outside the West Wing of the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., June 18, 2020. /Getty
Every night, Fox hosted all the China-bashers, like Mike Pillsbury and Peter Navarro, to talk about the "China virus" and the "Wuhan cover-up" and other fictions in order to create a negative view about China among the U.S. population. It was the same principle that Josef Goebbels used in Germany: Repeat a lie enough times, and people will believe it is true. It's clear in Murdoch's native Australia, for instance, which during previous administrations had been quite positive toward China, that the Murdoch networks targeted the pro-China Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, using the same blatantly anti-China rhetoric. And at this point, the Murdoch networks have largely poisoned the wells in Australia for any productive relationship with China.
While Murdoch's own anti-China stance may be the result of his free-market, Friedmanite bias, his failure to enter the lucrative Chinese media market no doubt added to the animus he holds toward China. His year-long concerted effort to court his way into the "China market" hit a "brick wall," as he put it, when China banned the use of satellite TV. Murdoch said that he had lost millions in the endeavor. That has undoubtedly not endeared him to his China hosts, whom he now consistently denigrates.
More importantly, Aussie Murdoch has also been close to the wheels of power in Great Britain. For example, his relations with Margaret Thatcher, then prime minister, helped lift him into the British "upper crust" by facilitating his purchase of the Times and the Sunday Times.
Generally, the traditional role of the press has been to report the news and keep the public informed of events. But with the passage of time and the increased costs of production, some media outlets have become largely a tool of moneyed political cabals for spreading their own message. And in Murdoch's case, one must look closely at his British oligarchical friends as well as his American connections to find the real origins of his endeavors. While his networks are spewing out the filth, it is the political forces aiming at preventing China's rise who are formulating the message. Because the only way they can convince the general public that there is a "China virus" or a "Wuhan cover-up" or a "China threat" is to repeat the false message enough times so that a gullible public will learn to accept the policy changes these forces are pushing. And the unprincipled Rupert Murdoch is an ideal medium for pushing this message.
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