Rupert Murdoch Admits Fox News Sold The War
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in History, Iraq, Media, VideoI can’t believe I haven’t seen this until now. He just flat out admits it.
Of course many people don’t see Fox as an objective news organization, but for Murdoch to confirm exactly that is stunning.
My question: what are the grounds for getting a broadcast license revoked? Isn’t there some sort of rule that says news organizations must supposed to maintain some semblance of impartiality?
Regardless, Murdoch and the war enablers at Fox should be ashamed of themselves.
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June 10th, 2008 at 10:22 am
“Isn’t there some sort of rule that says news organizations must supposed to maintain some semblance of impartiality?”
Spoken like a true leftist. It is always depressing to me to hear people whine about impartiality of news organizations, as if there was ever such a thing. To believe that objectivity is possible to is wish for something that can never be – there is too much information known and unknown, too many of those in power with an agenda (see Ted Turner), and finally too many journalists and newsmakers who believe their role is to change the world rather than report the news.
FOX news succeeds not only because they put out a superior product, but because to many America they are an equalizer to what is an overwhelmingly liberal news media. It is your fault that FOX thrives, and when we hear of your ’solution’ to shutting down who disagree with you by revoking licenses, we are reminded of just where fascism was born – on the left.
Somebody has to tell America’s side of the story – God bless FOX News!
June 10th, 2008 at 10:57 am
Fox is crap.
Isn’t there a law against using propaganda against the American public ?
Rupert is a prick and Fox is garbage.
June 10th, 2008 at 11:05 am
Fox tells America “You are smart”. Then they brand themselves as “Fair and Balancedâ€. To admit they are not requires a person admit they made a poor decision. People like to think of themselves as smart, not wrong – Fox rules.
It has nothing to do with the news. It is pure marketing. Sorry, were you caught in that web of deceit?
June 10th, 2008 at 11:23 am
Evrviglnt, that was a parody of a right-wing commenter, right? Good lord I hope so…
Tom, I wasn’t fooled by Fox News. I mean, I work in marketing so I saw exactly what they were doing VERY early on when I worked at a Fox affiliate here in Kansas City. But I NEVER thought Murdoch would out and out admit it. This is a massive, massive shock.
Basically what he says in this video is that his network is not fair and balanced, is lying to everybody and there seem to be no repercussions for that. Free speech I’m fine with, but false advertising I’m not…and companies can be sued for lying.
One last note to kabster…I understand you’re angry, but this site isn’t a place to vent. Please don’t use that language here anymore. Thanks.
June 10th, 2008 at 11:56 am
Fascism was born on the left? You cannot be serious. Johan Goldberg makes an absurd argument that has never been made before in the history of the world and you swallowed it hook line and sinker?
Even Ann Coulter and Michelle Malkin can’t make that statement with a straight face.
Listen, if you want to say the there are parallels between the left and communism, you can make an argument, but fascism has its root in the kind of close-mindedness pushed by Murdoch and Fox and the right.
See (walks to one side of room), here is the left and if you go a couple doors down you will find communism. Now, (walks to other side of room) and here is the right and if you wander down the hall that way you find fascists and Bush & Co.
Please, if you want to be taken seriously, try to make a serious argument next time. Otherwise, all you’re doing is rousing the rabble or making yourself look silly.
June 10th, 2008 at 12:02 pm
Well, at least Murdoch is honest. If anybody is trying to trick people into the guise of impartiality it is CNN, MSNBC, PBS, ABC, CBS, ect… not to mention the gray lady, the WAPO and every other mainstream news publication by framing left-wing bias as objective reporting. Oh ya, and every acedemic institution in the United States, which supposedly are to teach students objective accounts of history and current events. I wonder what Ted Turner thinks about Bush Administration policy. Ya, I bet he had no influence on the content of CNN broadcasts.
The thing about cable news is, its mostly ed-op columnists hosting talk shows anyway; its mostly analysis with 10 minutes of headlines thrown in every hour – the whole point is that they are supposed to give opinions. So their analysts weren’t critical of the war and aren’t praising Obama enough. Watch MSNBC at primetime, or listen to NPR for that side of the spectrum.
June 10th, 2008 at 1:02 pm
All media is biased. We need to accept that. At some point, a human being decides what stories to run, what words to use, what images and colors and music and inflexion. As stated by other posters, Fox’s right-lean is more than balanced by a laundry list of broadcasters who lean left.
Also understand this: we rarely, if ever, see our own biases. To a reporter at CNN, they’re not leaning left, they’re “correct.” To an analyst of Fox, they’re not leaning right, they’re “balanced.”
I’ll offer the same advice I’ve offered to students of mine: get your information from multiple sources–competing sources, sources that you know have different points of view (biases). Try to uncover the source of the news, understand the context, and THEN develop your own opinion. That’s what I love about the new media: information is available a thousand different ways.
June 10th, 2008 at 1:13 pm
Oh, and I’m not sure if fascism was born on the left, but it can exist there. Any position, taken to an extreme, can devolve into fascist behavior. This can absolutely include the need to control media because it says things that are mean or wrong or upsetting or that we simply don’t like.
In terms of Fox and their selling of the war, I’d recommend looking at what the other cable media (and broadcast, and ‘Net) were saying about the prospects of war around that time. Was Fox alone in its views or were there competing opinions in the marketplace of ideas? If it was alone, then there were plenty of other messages for people to view/hear/read. If it wasn’t alone, then you can’t really just blame Fox–blame them all.
June 10th, 2008 at 2:18 pm
The difference between communism and fascism is that one is nationalist, and the other is internationalist. You can’t take the socialist out of “National Socialist Workers Party.” (heh, the socialist workers party of San-Fransisco probably held an anti-bush rally the other day). Goebbels even recorded a BBC interview where he praised FDR’s new deal and the confiscation of private property and enterprise by the state.
Tell me, is North Korea fascist or communist? Can something be so fat that its skinny, or so tall that it is short? Communists and Nazis were competing for the same people. If you take leftist thinking as far as you can go, you get fascism or communism or both. If you take conservative thinking as far as you can go, you get anarchy. Obviously, modern conservatives and liberals are both tempered by elements of eachother’s ideology today.
Regarding media, all we hear from right wing talk show hosts is that the mainstream media has a liberal bias. In fact, thats half of what they complain about all day. That being said, do you hear any call from the right to institute a “fairness doctrine” to regulate media bias? No, not a single one ever. Only leftists seek government monitoring of speech; it happens on college campuses all the time; it has infected our everyday discourse through political correctness – all in the name of “equality”
June 10th, 2008 at 5:29 pm
My question: what are the grounds for getting a broadcast license revoked? Isn’t there some sort of rule that says news organizations must supposed to maintain some semblance of impartiality?
Fox News is a cable outlet, not a broadcast network. Granted, nowadays that is for all practical purposes a distinction without a difference, but as a rule the FCC, fairly or not, still doesn’t hold cable outlets to the same content standards as broadcast networks. That goes for political bias as well as indecency.
June 10th, 2008 at 5:41 pm
With all do respect, color me amused by the following pearl:
This coming from Donklephant which is 90% Donk and 10%phant. In which Obama is covered like a Messiah. If it is just me tell me, I could be wrong. But I think a statistical analysis of the posts would show a very significant slant for Obama and the Democrats. And for years, Donklephant has billed itself as a home for moderates and centrists. Moderate steps are taken so there is at least minimal attention to the other side. Fox and Donklephant are very similar in some respects and I watch and read both. That is how I find my personal centrism. True centrist and moderates should love Fox, because while they are not “fair and balanced”, their existence makes media on a whole more “fair and balanced.”
June 10th, 2008 at 6:38 pm
There is of course no possibility that the Republican party has drifted so far to the right that no one who has a claim to moderation can reasonably support it. Of course not.
June 10th, 2008 at 8:45 pm
Justin having looked at Evrviglnt’s blog. I think the comment was not in jest.
June 11th, 2008 at 4:26 am
Fascism is ultranationalist, reverence for the state, hence the term fatherland/motherland, this is a distinctly rightist view, it is right statist, because the economy tends to be state controlled, towards the goal of expansionary foreign policy via the military. This is basically what the neocons are espousing. The only linkage that Fascism has to the left is that many fascists were disillusioned socialists/marxists, much like many neocons were disillusioned liberals.
Anarchy is not the end result of conservativism, but rather Libertarianism, yet Libertarianism is not right or left, it in fact exists across both sides, which is why the end result of marxist socialism/democratic socialism is the end of government, Communism on the other hand is statist, Left statist, as opposed to Fascism which is right statist.
Saying that the Left is the birthplace of Fascism is false, saying that Socialism is nationalist is false.
June 11th, 2008 at 8:05 am
Whoa! I guess he’s serious. He’s a hard core true believer, all right.
June 11th, 2008 at 9:30 am
[...] June 11, 2008 by prayeramedic I can’t believe I haven’t seen this until now. He just flat out admits it. Hat tip to Donklephant: [...]
June 11th, 2008 at 9:40 am
So which is it Avinash, is North Korea fascist or communist?
I’ll give you some hints:
1)Kim Jung-il and his father Kim-Il sung claimed that Koreans were the supreme race, and in fact, the the Korean people were descendants of Gods. The government strives for ethnic purity and hyper-nationalism with every element of cultural identity monitored and regulated by the government. The punishment for disloyalty to the state is death.
2) There are statues of Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin all over the place, The Manifesto is required reading for all students, the hammer and sickle is a national insignia, and there is no private property – all wealth production and distribution in society is managed by the government.
June 11th, 2008 at 9:42 pm
Jimmy, Since you asked I will explain. First off let me quantify what I mean by statist, when I say statist I am referring to the idea of the government control of the economy, an economy directly controlled by the government or directly influenced by the government towards a goal would fit under this. Now the goals towards which this government ontrol of the economy is directed is different for a fascist than a communist. Fascists would direct this towards building up the country towards the goal of expanding aggressively, a Communist however would be more concerned about building up the country to the point where it could achieve the revolution that Marx had described.
Now by Communism i’m am referring to the form of communism referred to as Leninism, the reason is “Communism” has many flavors, from Trotskyism which is only different from socialism/marxism as it applies to states not yet fully industrialized, like Russia of the early 1900’s, yet still espouses concepts of direct democracy, to Stalinism, which was essentially a dictatorship and had many similarities to fascism, as Stalin did form a cult of personality around himself and did carry out ethnic deportations, in addition Stalin believed in “socialism in one country”, a concept which was opposed to Marxism and Leninism, whereas other communists wanted to support communist groups in other states to spark off worldwide revoltions of the Proleteriat, Stalin wanted to devote the contry towards strengthening Russia alone (one reason why I do not use the Stalinist brand of communism in my example and why Stalinism is closer to Fascism than other Communist systems are).
Lenin didn’t believe that Russia was capable of true socialism at the time, not having truly industrialized, as a result his system lacked the true dictatorship of the proleteriat that was intended in the Marxist revolution. His system was to creat a Vanguard which would direct the country to the point where a true socialism would occur. In addition unlike Stalinism, Lenin did not believe in only a revolution of one state, rather he wanted to influence and support the revolution in other states, in this way Leninism was closer to Marxism/socialism than Stalinism was.
Now then on North Korea, it is not a Communist nation, as it is the military not the proleteriat which is given highest status, North Korea has a Military first doctrine, in many ways this is more fascist in nature. It seems that the nation went from Stalinist to Fascist over time.
June 12th, 2008 at 1:22 am
[...] didn’t think they could get this clueless, but between Murdoch admitting they sold the war, the terrorist fist jab incident and then this nonsense, they’ve once again [...]
June 12th, 2008 at 2:45 am
[...] It’s called racism, sexism, and it is as clear as Rupert Murdoch’s bias. [...]
June 12th, 2008 at 8:25 am
All-in-all, that’s a pretty good breakdown. However , you left out that Stalin eventually dropped the iron curtain over half of Europe and supported communist insurrections in east asia – including Korea; and he claimed “socialism in one country” was an expansion of Leninism, not a rejection of it – it was more like “socialism in Russia first, because the Western European proletariat fucked up their revolutions in the 1920’s.”
Also, Mussolini and Franco are considered fascist, but they did not appear to have any territorial ambitions other than those lands where their own countrymen or ethnicities had lived. Same as North Korea, or Maoist China (which is supposedly communist). And in all those fascist countries, the military is supposedly an expansion of the proletariat, thats why every citizen is a potential conscript and they are always called “the people’s army” or some crap like that.
The point I was making, and the point you seem to have proved for me, is that the veil separating communism and fascism is very thin, perhaps artificial in many cases. The transition from one to the other could happen without even noticing, and there really isn’t any clear formula on how that happens. They are not opposites – they often conflate and are confused.
Both are defined primarily by socialism, as you seem to acknowledge, and socialism is a product of leftist thinking. Group identity, social justice, income redistribution, government regulation of the economy and social service, “equality.” The opposite of socialism is individualism, not nationalism (hence you can have national socialism i.e. fascism), and is embodied in conservative thinking. Individual identity, moral justice, capitalism, private property, “liberty.”
June 12th, 2008 at 1:34 pm
Wow you are wrong on so many points, first it depends on the flavor of Communism, contrary to Stalin’s claims Leninism and other brands like Trotskyism were nothing like Fascism, as I pointed out, did you actually read my points? Trotsky and Lenin wanted to continue to try and expand the revolutions, Stalin did not, and Trotsky wanted to create a dictatorship of the proleteriat, a form of direct democrcy, Stalin did not. Stalinism is the one where the route to fascism was most likely to occur, in fact Maoist philosophy tends to hold stalin in high regards, many maoist branches consider Stalin to be the last true communist leader of Russia.
Actually Mussolini did have territorial ambitions, he just knew that the Italian military was not up to it, however after he joined the Axis powers late, he jumped at trying to get a share of the conquest for himself
Wrong neither is defined by socialism, as socialism does not espouse statism, socialism actually espouses volutary collectivism, not through control of the state. You once again didn’t read, what I said they both had in common was statism, not socialism, you cannot have fascism from socialism, as you fascism cannot exist in a voluntary system, it must be imposed, hence statism. As I said Leninism was different than socialism, because Lenin did not feel that russia could achievetrue socialsim, as a result his view was to use communism to get to the point where the country could have the socialist revolution, which is why he chose the statist economy and the vanguard to rule to direct the country to that point, however his gaol was socialism, it was not a part of his system however, as it was not voulntary.
So again you are wrong, you can’t have fascism and socialism, as fascism is state controlled, while socialism is not, in fact the opposite of socialism is not fascism, but actually closer to what China is today, a dictatorship with a capitalistic economy. What you can have is a control economy, that begins to exhibit things like cult of the leader, and a single state view and ethnocentrism, basically a stalinist communism is the one that can become fascist, however stalinist communism is nothing socialism.
In addition Socialism has the concepts of social justice and liberty, as it espouses equality and direct democracy, but without the dictatorship of Burgeois, it has individuality, but the people choose on their own to put that aside for the betterment of society. A pipe dream really as people will not do so, people are greedy, hence why a pure socialism is impossible to maintain. Conservatism actually lacks the concepts of justice and fairness, it is actually liberaterianism that has those concepts, yet Liberaterianism has both right and left flavors, depending on the views of voluntary socialism.
February 7th, 2009 at 12:08 am
The excuses by the Right Wing are delicious. So now that Murdoch admits Fox doesn’t tolerate facts, the new talking point is “Well… all media is biased. So Fox News still rules!”. Sorry, but that’s a non-sequitur. You’ve first consistently defended Fox News as “fair and balanced”, but now that Murdoch says, clear as day “We DO NOT tolerate facts” you go on to change the subject and retain that all media is biased, and that therefor this doesn’t make a difference. Delicious lol. So what happened to the talking point “It was taken out of context!”?
February 19th, 2009 at 10:41 pm
Rupert’s Fox is the only news network talking about the “fairness doctrine,” calling it censorship of free speech and claiming that Obama is secretly planning to bring it back. Yet the only blog I’ve ever been moderated out of was a Fox network blog. My sin, and the one that earned my toss, was to mention Rush Limbaugh’s unfortunate bout with drug addiction. Talk about censorship. It’s shameful to think that most Americans think Fox is just another news network that reports the news. How can we be so uninformed in this country with so much “news” available?