LONDON— To read and watch the reaction of people who have hated Fox News from its creation, one might think it resembles dancing on someone’s grave, but at 92, Rupert Murdoch remains very much alive and his influence, not only on Fox, but in much of journalism, will likely continue for some time.
It may be coincidental, or not, that the announcement of Murdoch’s stepping down as chairman of Fox and News Corp. coincides with the release this week of Michael Wolff’s book “The Fall: The End of the Murdoch Empire,” which predicts the end of the cable network. Wolff and others may wish it so, but I am doubtful. Again, critics have been predicting and hoping for the network’s demise since it was launched in 1996. Why the antipathy toward a network that should be considered part of the diversity of ideas many claim to endorse?
The answer comes from Murdoch’s note last Thursday to his employees: “Self-serving bureaucracies are seeking to silence those who would question their provenance and purpose. Elites have open contempt for those who are not members of their rarefied class. Most of the media is in cahoots with those elites, peddling political narratives rather than pursuing the truth.”
If you didn’t attend the same schools as these elites, if your material doesn’t appear in elite newspapers like The New York Times and The Washington Post, you are considered illegitimate and trespassers on their territory. They tolerate those breaking our laws to cross our Southern border, but have no tolerance from especially those with a conservative worldview who seek to “invade” their spaces.
I spent 19 years as a Fox News Channel contributor and believe there would likely be no Fox News Channel, or talk radio, were it not for the monopoly the left has enjoyed for years in deciding what is news and what isn’t and slanting their reporting to fit their mostly liberal political positions. If the broadcast news divisions had hired some openly conservative reporters and producers, Fox might never have happened. Ideology and elitism have overcome sound business decisions. Opinion polls consistently show most Americans no longer trust the media.