Tangle - Rupert Murdoch steps down.

Episode Date: September 27, 2023

Rupert Murdoch steps down. On Thursday, 92-year-old Rupert Murdoch announced he was stepping down from his role as chairman of Fox Corp. and News Corp, two of the largest and most influential media holdings in the world. He also owns several large conservative news outlets and founded the Fox broadcast network. Murdoch sold many of his media assets to Walt Disney Co. in 2019, but is still an influential force at Fox News, The New York Post, and The Wall Street Journal, three of the most influential conservative media outlets in the United States.You can read today's podcast here, today’s Under the Radar story here, and today’s “Have a nice day” story here. You can also check out our latest YouTube video here.Today’s clickables: Correction (0:50), Quick hits (1:51), Today’s story (3:52), Right’s take (6:23), Left’s take (11:06), Isaac’s take (16:05), Listener question (19:09), Under the Radar (22:20), Numbers (23:27), Have a nice day (24:36)You can subscribe to Tangle by clicking here or drop something in our tip jar by clicking here.Our podcast is written by Isaac Saul and edited by Jon Lall. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75. Our newsletter is edited by Bailey Saul, Sean Brady, Ari Weitzman, and produced in conjunction with Tangle’s social media manager Magdalena Bokowa, who also created our logo.--- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/tanglenews/message Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight.

Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, and welcome to the Tangle Podcast, a place where you get news from across the political spectrum, some independent thinking, and a little bit of Isaac's take. I am your host, John Law. I am filling in again today for Isaac. His schedule while here in LA got filled up pretty quick, so

this allowed me another opportunity to get to host, which I'm pretty excited about. On today's episode, we're going to be talking about Rupert Murdoch, who recently announced that he would be stepping down from his role as chairman of Fox Corp and News Corp. Before we get started, we do have a correction. In last week's Friday edition, we published the following two sentences. Anyone who has even tangentially followed the hearings around the January 6th riots knows that there is widespread suspicion FBI agents were involved in the events of the day. We know for a fact there was at least one, which shouldn't surprise anyone given the reach of the FBI's spies. The second sentence should have read, we know for a fact there was at least one informant. As published,

the sentence implies there was one known FBI agent involved in January 6th, which is not accurate. We've corrected this in our story. This is our 92nd correction in Tangle's 220-week history and our first correction since September 6th. We track corrections and place them at the top of the newsletter in an effort to maximize transparency with readers. Okay, with that out of the way, we're going to get started today with our quick hits. First up, more than 20 Senate Democrats called for Senator Bob Menendez, the Democrat from New Jersey, to retire yesterday. Though in an unusual twist, some congressional Republicans have rallied to his support. Number two, President Biden endorsed demands being made by the United Auto Workers Union in Michigan and became the first sitting president to join a picket line.

Number three, ahead of a New York civil fraud lawsuit, a state judge ruled that former President Donald Trump committed fraud by exaggerating his net worth on financial records. Number four, Hunter Biden sued Rudy Giuliani for accessing and sharing private data from his hard drive. Number five, the FTC sued Amazon, alleging it maintains monopoly power with anti-competitive business practices. And a little side note here, the second Republican presidential primary debate begins at 9 p.m. Eastern Standard Time tonight. He is the owner of a global media empire and one of the richest men in the world. But 92-year-old Rupert Murdoch is stepping down as chairman of his holding company, News Corp.

Breaking news this morning, a new line of succession at Fox News. Rupert Murdoch announcing just last hour that he will be stepping down as chairman of Fox and News Corporation. The 92-year-old will hand over the reins to his son, Lachlan Murdoch, who will become the sole chair of News Corp and will continue as executive chair and chief executive officer of Fox Corporation. His U.S. holdings include the Wall Street Journal and New York Post, but here he's best known as the creator of Fox, the first broadcast network in the history of television to successfully take on the country's big three. On Thursday, 92-year-old Rupert Murdoch announced he was stepping down from his role as chairman of Fox Corp and News Corp,

two of the largest and most influential media holdings in the world. He also owns several large conservative news outlets and founded the Fox Broadcast Network. Murdoch sold many of his media assets to the Walt Disney Company in 2019, but is still an influential force at Fox News, the New York Post, and the Wall Street Journal, three of the most influential conservative media outlets in the United States. Murdoch, who is Australian, inherited a newspaper in Adelaide, Australia from his father in 1952 that he parlayed into a global media and entertainment enterprise. In Britain and Australia, Murdoch also owns The Times, Sunday Times, and Sun Newspapers, as well as the satellite broadcaster Sky. Widely considered the most influential media mogul of his generation, Murdoch and his media empire could shape news narratives at large,

and political candidates often sought out his approval in hopes of receiving more favorable coverage. Murdoch had a notoriously complicated relationship with former President Donald Trump, whom he was widely reported to have disparaged behind closed doors, despite his popularity with Murdoch's audiences. Though Murdoch is in his 90s, the announcement that he is stepping down as chairman of Fox Corp and News Corp took some by surprise given how active his role has been in the companies recently. His son Loughlin, who is already serving on both boards, will take over. Most media onlookers are not expecting any immediate or noticeable changes

to the media conglomerates. While Murdoch has reshaped the industry and launched several wildly successful enterprises, the last year has been noticeably challenging for Fox News and Fox Corp. Fox News had to pay a $787 million settlement to Dominion Voting Systems in a defamation lawsuit for knowingly airing false claims about the 2020 presidential election being stolen. A few months later, the network parted ways with its most popular host, Tucker Carlson, who has since launched his own show on X, formerly Twitter, that has repeatedly challenged the network with counter-programming. Murdoch is a divisive figure among news consumers in the English-speaking world. Today, we're going to share some reactions to his legacy from the left and the right,

and then Isaac's take. First up, we'll start with what the right is saying. The right mostly praises Murdoch for his contributions to the conservative movement in the U.S. Some say he was a smart businessman who saw an untapped market for conservative viewpoints and created a media empire for it. Others argue that Fox News and its other media entities have ultimately hurt the country. In The American Spectator, Jeffrey Lord wrote about Murdoch's legacy as a founding father of conservative media. Along with National Review's William F. Buckley Jr., our own American Spectator's R. Emmett Tyrell Jr., and talk radio's Rush Limbaugh, Murdoch helped

create a mass media response to what had come to be recognized as the routinely left-centered worldview of major mainstream media outlets such as the broadcast networks ABC, CBS, NBC, and the government-created PBS. Not to mention print outlets such as the New York Times and the Washington Post, Lorde said. Unlike the owners of the major media outlets in the U.S., Rupert Murdoch was a conservative, an ally in Britain of the Tory party's Margaret Thatcher. In America, he fashioned Fox News as the conservative go-to on television. Thus came television's conservative stars with names like Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, and later Laura Ingraham, Tucker Carlson, and Greg Gutfeld,

not to mention early morning's Fox and Friends. Suffice to say, the ratings were and are huge. Combined with the talk radio revolution headed by Rush Limbaugh and spreading conservative talk radio shows of national and local origin across the land, the revolution that became conservative media was now firmly in place. Murdoch has been a major force in leading the revolution that is today's America's conservative media. It is his legacy, or one of them. Conservatives have much to thank him for. For that matter, whether they recognize it or not, so too do all Americans. In town hall, Cal Thomas said Murdoch's influence will likely continue for some time. 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, Thomas wrote. Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes, the man he hired to create the network, saw a market that felt ignored and stereotyped when attention was paid. Like any good business, and journalism is a business, they set out to reach that market. Ratings, profits, and viewer loyalty quickly followed. Fox News continues to dominate cable news and on occasion has beaten broadcast network ratings.

ratings. 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 most liberal political positions, Thomas added. Rather than learn from Fox's success, the elites continue to deride and put it down, deepening the loyalty of the people who see the network as defenders and proclaimers of their beliefs. One of the canards hurled at Fox for years has been it tells people what to think. In fact, it reflects beliefs conservatives already hold. For his contributions to news media, Murdoch deserves not only the gratitude of conservatives, he ought to have the gratitude of everyone in journalism. In The Daily Beast, Matt Lewis explained why he can never forgive Rupert Murdoch.

Count me among the conservatives who were initially cheering on the network's arrival. As a fan of Rush Limbaugh's radio and TV shows, I believe that liberal media bias was a serious problem and that alternative outlets would help. For one thing, the network constituted a red dot in a sea of otherwise blue media. An average person's news diet might consist of their local newspaper, a morning show like Good Morning America, local TV news, Tom Brokaw, or Dan Rather, anchoring the nightly news, and maybe some CNN. Fox News, I hoped, would provide some semblance of a counterbalance to the liberal-leaning media, Lewis said. Fox News had some good early ambitions, but fairly early

on in its existence, the network pivoted far away from straight news and intelligent conservative commentary and leaned heavily toward the loudmouths. And after that, it went from promoting the bloviators to platforming the outright liars. And that was the moment the network completely jumped the shark and pivoted from presenting alternative viewpoints to presenting an alternative reality. This is Rupert Murdoch's most meaningful political legacy, dutifully carrying water for Trump's MAGA movement that banished real conservatism, Lewis wrote. Instead of elevating conservatism, Murdoch helped undermine conservatism as a serious philosophy, skewing instead toward tabloid conspiracy theories like birtherism and rigged election allegations. All right, that is it for what the right is saying,

which brings us to what the left is saying. The left is highly critical of Murdoch's legacy and think he did significant harm to Western democracies. Some say Murdoch is behind the rise in political polarization and misinformation that culminated in January democracies. Some say Murdoch is behind the rise in political polarization and misinformation that culminated in January 6th. Others suggest his influence may be overstated by those on the left looking for a scapegoat. In CNN, David Zurowicz said Murdoch helped wreck media and politics. Murdoch leaves behind a legacy of reckless partisan journalism

and commentary that has contributed to a citizenry so angry and so polarized that our very democracy seems threatened, according to some analysts. And with Murdoch handing off day-to-day control of the empire to his son Loughlin, Fox's dangerous way of doing business does not seem likely to change for the better. While there are other factors contributing to the polarization, like politicians and global economics, Murdoch's Fox News has played a role even in those by showcasing the loudest and most transgressive members of Congress and scapegoating various groups from immigrants to Democrats for the

nation's economic challenges. Murdoch also opened the cable news floodgates to propaganda, misinformation, and disinformation. And he laid down the template for what has become a powerful right-wing messaging machine. And look where we are now as we struggle to find media platforms we can trust in an effort to make sense of beyond the pale political actions like the attack on the Capitol on January 6th, 2021, or the refusal of the defeated president to promote a peaceful transfer of power, Zerowick wrote. In a commercial sense, Murdoch is an incredibly successful media figure. If you worship money-making moguls and risk-taking captains of industry, he's your guy. But as he now retires behind his wall of money, we are left to try and clean up the political wreckage he leaves behind. In The Guardian, Gabby Hinsliff wondered whether

Murdoch's current influence is overstated by the left. Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. The Murdoch press has earned a fearsome reputation among progressives as a kind of giant toad squatting in the road, blocking the way to everything from higher taxes to gay rights, and above all, closer relationships with Europe.

Few did more to pave the way for Brexit than the immigrant-bashing Brussels-baiting Sun, whose once-cheeky Euroscepticism had descended by 2015 to the nadir of a Katie Hopkins column describing migrants drowning at sea as cockroaches, Hensliff wrote. But if the right is sold too easily on silly populist conspiracy theories about a woke liberal elite controlling everything, the left has its own version. To see Murdoch as a wizard of such supernatural gifts is to misunderstand the origins of his power. Put simply, people. What would happen to British politics if Murdoch's iron grip lessened? Just look around. It's already happened. Power has been quietly ebbing away for years from

his titles, alongside the rest of the mainstream media, towards Facebook and X, formerly Twitter, and YouTube, platforms founded primarily by liberal tech bros and now swamped by white supremacists, Russian propagandists, haters, and cranks. It's new, not old, media increasingly driving the political volatility that has so destabilized Western democracies by taking what Murdoch did, giving the punters what they seemed to want, to new extremes. His genius lay in a gut feeling for what angered or moved or titillated millions, long before algorithms made that easy to work out. In the New Republic, Alex Shepard said, good riddance to Murdoch, who made the world worse.

The worst thing that you can say about Rupert Murdoch, who resigned from the board of the Fox and News corporations on Tuesday, is that no one has had a greater influence on the news over the last half century. Murdoch's influence is both incalculable and fantastically corrosive. It is impossible to look at all of the most malignant aspects of the current news environment—its pace, its callousness, its rancor—without seeing his impact, Shepard wrote. Fox News was his greatest and most destructive creation, and the network existed as an answer to long-standing conservative complaints that the media had a liberal bias. It portrayed itself as

a fair and balanced corrective. It was instead a new and powerful partisan machine. It worked immaculately. There is already hope in some corners that things will improve at Fox after Rupert's exit. There is no reason to believe this will be the case, however. His son Lachlan, who is taking over, is a close friend of Tucker Carlson, describing himself as a political independent. He's shown no interest in shifting Fox's coverage in any direction, particularly one that would hurt its profitability, Shepard said. The cable news business is changing and shrinking. It is possible that this is the beginning of the end for Fox News and that Rupert Murdoch's quasi-retirement will be seen as a shift in

the network's fortunes. But there is no reason to believe that that will happen anytime soon. The network is still built in Ruper that will happen anytime soon. The network is still built in Rupert's monstrous image, and it is built to last. All right, that is it for what the left and the right are saying, which brings us to Isaac's take. Just to be clear, this is Isaac's take, but I will be reading it in the first person. So my feelings about Murdoch are complicated. On the one hand, I loathe much of what network and tabloid news has become, and he played a huge role in that. Fox News entered the space with a purpose, to offer a conservative perspective that network television was missing. It succeeded

in that endeavor for a while, but it became the mega-influential media powerhouse it is today by feeding viewers the news equivalent of junk food. Once it started crushing other cable news outlets like CNN, MSNBC, and other networks, they responded by doing their best Fox News impressions, but for the left. The result is that cable news today is full of genuinely garbage information, which is part of Murdoch's legacy. On the other hand, what he's done is aspirational. He started with a single news outlet and created a global empire, one that influences entertainment and politics all across the planet. From an entrepreneurial perspective, and as someone trying to build his own media company, it's hard not to be blown away by his accomplishments. Even if you just limit the scope to American politics, it is genuinely

stunning how much power and influence Murdoch's media outlets have. It's hard to know how often and to the extent to which he flexed that power, but there is no doubt that those Murdoch-owned entities can drive entire political narratives while damaging or elevating political careers at the drop of a hat. So I can look at Murdoch and cringe at the damage some of his networks and news outlets have done to the media, but also see someone who I find genuinely impressive. Of course, news media had needed more conservative voices for a long time, and what Murdoch brought to that space was important for bringing balance to that universe. I think our media ecosystem is now pretty balanced in that it's mostly a fair fight between the left and the right. In that regard, maybe his end goal was accomplished. More

conservative voices are represented, and our media is far less captured by the center-left political worldview. As for Fox News, his most valuable asset and the one most relevant to American politics, I wouldn't expect much change. They have a formula that works. Induce rage and fear and give viewers as much of their own worldview as they can take. It's the same formula MSNBC and CNN now use. Fox is just better and more experienced at it. They know exactly what they're doing, and I'd be lying if I said anything nice about

Fox's cynical approach. Simply put, I think the way Fox delivers news is bad for the country and bad for people's brains, and the last year has taught us they're willing to lie to their own viewers if it means good ratings. And if bringing some balance to the media universe is part of Murdoch's legacy, that damage is undoubtedly part of it too. It's hard to know what Lachlan will do next, but given how many people tune in every night, even in the absence of their star talking head, Tucker Carlson, I don't see much incentive for him to change course. I don't know if there's

another way that is more profitable, but I sure wish he'd go looking for it. All right, that is it for Isaac's take, which brings us to your questions answered. This one is from Tom in Pilger, Nebraska. Tom writes, I've seen so many articles in which the far left supports the big push of green energy, electric vehicles, and wind power. The question I have is, why does the far left not support natural gas, a very clean energy source? Yes, it requires drilling, which in my mind is not always a bad thing. This is not that much different than mining the metals for batteries. We don't have to dig a big hole to dump old natural gas like we do with used up wind turbines or batteries. There is no old natural gas that I know of that we would have to dispose of.

As the only reason, or the real reason, the far left won't support this is because it has their major monies tied up into the support of electric batteries and wind power? Or is natural gas really a very bad thing? Okay, let me start by saying that every fuel source has its own strengths and weaknesses. Every strength you list for natural gas compared to wind or solar also applies to petroleum. After both oil and gas are burned, there isn't anything left over to dispose of. They both share the same weaknesses, though. They emit atmospheric carbon, and increased atmospheric carbon causes higher global temperatures, which is the driving force behind anthropogenic climate change. While you're right to say that natural gas is relatively clean when compared to oil, though it produces methane instead of carbon dioxide, which is a stronger greenhouse gas,

it still has that disadvantage relative to renewable energy sources. Though, to be fair, a lot of people on the left and the right concerned with climate change do favor natural gas to other fossil fuels precisely because it is relatively cleaner. You're also right to point out that every energy source requires some environmental cost to obtain it, with solar energy requiring mining for heavy metals, wind power requiring manufacturing and construction, hydroelectric power requiring massive amounts of concrete and damming, and oil and natural gas requiring drilling. And while mining required for battery materials like lithium seems to have worse local

environmental effects than drilling for natural gas, the localized effects are all comparable, even if some are worse than others, while the effects on global climate simply are not. So that's the leftist argument. Costs to the global environment are a higher priority than costs to local environments, and therefore even the cleanest burning fossil fuel is less preferable to less advanced renewable energy technologies. And to be transparent, I agree with it. As far as it relates to global warming, as it relates to the global economy, I think we should be pursuing an all-of-the-above approach to energy. Solar cells get more efficient, wind turbine blades become more reusable, and we find cleaner and safer ways to get the minerals

we need for those energy sources. And we better hurry up and do that. It's not like there's some dense fuel source we can take from the ground safely, refine in a way that is environmentally safe, get energy from in a way that contains all of its dangerous byproducts, and produces a massive amount of energy without relying on foreign adversaries or emitting any atmospheric carbon. Well, besides nuclear energy, but that's a whole other conversation.

Next up is our under-the-radar story. In 2014, Iran initiated a quiet effort to bolster its image on global security issues, including its nuclear program, by building ties within a network of influential academics and researchers. A cachet of Iranian government correspondences and emails reported in on Semaphore shows they had more success than previously known, with at least three people they positioned to advance their goals becoming top aides to Robert Malley, the Biden administration's special envoy on Iran. Malley was placed on leave this June and had his security clearance suspended. The documents offer deep and unprecedented new insights into the thinking and inner workings of Iran's foreign ministry at a crucial time in their nuclear diplomacy. Even as Tehran's portrayal of events is questioned, it is not flatly denied

by others involved in the IEI, the report says. They show how Iran was capable of the kind of influence operations that the U.S. and its allies in the region often conduct. Semaphore has the story, and there's a link in today's episode description. Okay, next up is our numbers section. Rupert Murdoch's estimated net worth as of September 26th is $8.14 billion, according to Bloomberg. Murdoch's highest estimated net worth at any point in his career was $19 billion, and that was following the 2019 sale of all entertainment assets within the Fox Corp for $71 billion. of all entertainment assets within the Fox Corp for $71 billion. The price Murdoch paid to buy the New York Post in 1976 was $30 million. The price Murdoch paid to buy the Wall Street Journal publisher Dow Jones in 2007 was $5.6 billion. The revenue generated by Fox's television segment in

the first half of 2023 is $8.7 billion. The revenue generated by Fox's cable news segment in the first half of 2023 is $6 billion. The number of Murdoch's children, Lachlan, Elizabeth, James, and Prudence, who are equal beneficiaries of a trust that holds 39% voting stake in News Corp and 42% voting stake in Fox Corp, is four. Murdoch has six children in total. All right, and last but not least, our have a nice day story. Hodan Artan works as a cleaner in Somaliland's capital, Haragisa. She was never taught to read or write and has only managed to earn enough to afford a small hut for herself and her baby daughter. A few months ago, she found out about an app called Daris, which, according to their user

data, has now helped over 410,000 people across the region become literate. Through only a few hours of daily use, Artan gained the ability to read stories in her native Somali. And Artan is not alone in her struggle. The Horn of Africa is especially rural and has long struggled with schooling its widely dispersed population in teaching literacy. But Ismail Ahmed and his charity, the Sahayima Foundation, believe apps like Daris could provide the answer. It used to take us to go to class to learn our own mother tongue, he says.

And now we have thousands of users who are able to be functionally literate in their own language without going to a class. The BBC has this story and there's a link in today's episode description. All right, everybody, that is it for today's podcast. And as always, if you want to support our work, please go to readtangle.com and sign up for a membership. It's been a fun couple of days doing the podcast. I hope you all enjoyed it as much as I did. And maybe we'll do it again sometime in the future. Who knows? Isaac will be back tomorrow. In the meantime,

hope you all are having a great day and we will talk to you then. Peace. Our podcast is written by me, Isaac Saul, and edited by John Law. Our script is edited by Ari Weitzman, Bailey Saul, and Sean Brady. The logo for our podcast was designed by Magdalena Bokova, who's also our social media manager. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet75. For more on Tangle, please go to readtangle.com and check out our website. We'll see you next time. of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+.