What's Going On With Murdoch's Media?

 

As distasteful as it is to use valuable pixels on the name Rupert Murdoch, we might have some evidence that the worm is beginning to turn in the relationship (always transactional) between him and the Malignant Fascist.  Following revelations in Murdoch's "jewel," the Wall Street Journal,  of the Malignant Fascist's salacious birthday card to child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, the Malignant Fascist went to his legal intimidation playbook that has succeeded in bringing many a law firm, academic institution, private company, and broadcast empire to heel.  But, so far, not the "jewel" of Murdoch's media empire.

Here's part of an article yesterday by former Republican strategist Stuart Stevens:

... Murdoch has never pretended to like Donald Trump, clearly seeing himself as a real billionaire whose five wives were all a cut above the tabloid trash of the three Mrs. Trumps. Could Donald Trump ever land an ex-wife of Mick Jagger or one of the Trump wives being romantically linked to Tony Blair, as was Wendi Deng (the third Mrs. Murdoch)?

But like Franz von Pappen, the Prussian aristocrat who ushered Hitler into power, Murdoch saw Donald Trump as useful — a buffoonish character whose greatest threat was cringing embarrassment, like the drunken uncle who tells dirty jokes at Thanksgiving. How could one of Jeffrey Epstein’s running buddies ever threaten the Murdoch Empire?

It all worked until it didn’t. Lying about the 2020 election cost Fox $787.5 million to settle a lawsuit from Dominion Voting System, which, as it turned out, was not actually part of an international Space Lasar conspiracy. Smartmatic Voting Machine company is demanding $2.7 billion in an ongoing defamation suit. In a culture where shame seems to have atrophied like a homo sapien tail, no longer useful to humans, the revelation that the biggest stars at Fox were themselves embarrassed by the corporate pressure to deny what every grade school child knew as true was a sweet moment of schadenfreude.

Now the monster that Murdoch’s Fox helped create has turned on Murdoch’s reputation-laundering prize, The Wall Street Journal. To their credit, there remain at the Journal serious journalists working for a major publication, an increasingly rare sighting in the American wild. Given that Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein were the most public of best friends for over a decade, it is another searing indictment of the phony values of Bible thumping MAGA that a creep-to-creep congratulatory birthday letter would be explosive...

Baby steps, but... Now, take a look at this report on the Malignant Fascist's taxpayer-funded golf trip to Scotland this weekend, and particularly the question being asked repeatedly by a reporter with a certain media company: 

 

This is not to say the Murdoch media empire has turned on the Malignant Fascist quite yet.  They may very well be looking at their own polls that tell them that nothing less than releasing the Epstein files is what their viewers are demanding.  A few may be actual journalists with integrity and courage.  But while the majority of Fox "News" folks are still busy trying to distract their viewers from the Epstein files with Obama this and Clinton that, it just feels like they'd rather pull a "Magic Christian" Mike Johnson and run as fast and far away as they can from the scandal that, on some gut level, they must know the Malignant Fascist is at the very heart.