On Thursday CNN’s Abby Phillip commemorated Rupert Murdoch’s media legacy in a most appropriate way: A nearly 6-minute long supercut detailing the damage done by Fox News, “the beast of his creation.”
Earlier Thursday, Murdoch announced he will be stepping down as the chairman of Fox News Corp. and will be replaced by his son, Lachlan. It marks a sea change in media, but that Murdoch is also 92 years old, analysis of his decision has tended to read more like obituaries, with much focus on his legacy as a right wing activist and media magnate.
Phillip was blunt in her assessment. “His legacy is outrage porn. Partisan red meat. Stoking relentless culture wars,” she said.
She went on to argue that the idea of a “center-right” news network isn’t inherently bad. “But instead, stoking division seemed to become Murdoch’s mission. So did power, and so did the money,” she said. “Fox became a mouthpiece for Republican administrations. A mouthpiece, really, for Donald Trump. And eventually, a vehicle for his baseless conspiracies.”
So it is that she cued up the supercut, a damning 5 minutes and 55 seconds of Fox News history. This includes openly expressed racism, sexism and other forms of bigotry. A staggering number of baseless conspiracy theories. And by the end of the clip, which by this point is focused on Fox News clips from 2020 and later, lie after lie after lie, and outright attacks on American democracy.
Watch the whole thing here now:
25 years of Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News. At what cost to American democracy? pic.twitter.com/qE2LK0QxHG
— Abby D. Phillip (@abbydphillip) September 22, 2023
