In October 2003, the nonpartisan
Program on International Policy Atti-
tudes published a study titled “Mis-
perceptions, the media and the Iraq
war.” It found that 60 percent of
Americans believed at least one of the
following: clear evidence had been
found of links between Iraq and Al
Qaeda; W.M.D. had been found in
Iraq; world public opinion favored the
U.S. going to war with Iraq.
The prevalence of these mispercep-
lions, however, depended crucially on
where people got their news. Only 23
percent of those who got their in-
formation mainly from PBS or NPR
believed any of these untrue things,
but the number was 80 percent among
those relying primarily on Fox News.
In particular, two-thirds of Fox devo-
tees believed that the U.S. had "found
clear evidence in Iraq that Saddam
Hussein was working closely with the
Al Qaeda terrorist organization.”
So, does anyone think it’s O.K. if Ru-
pert Murdoch’s News Corporation,
which owns Fox News, buys The Wall
Street Journal?
The problem with Mr. Murdoch
Isn’t that he’s a right-wing ideologue.
If that were all he was, he’d be much
less dangerous. What he is, rather, is
an opportunist who exploits a rule-
free media environment — one creat-
ed, in part, by conservative political
power — by slanting news coverage to
favor whoever he thinks will serve his
business interests.
In the United States, that strategy
has mainly meant blatant bias in fa-
vor of the Bush administration and
the Republican Party — but last year
Mr. Murdoch covered his bases by
hosting a fund-raiser for Hillary clin-
ton’s Senate re-election campaign.
In Britain, Mr. Murdoch endorsed
Tony Blair in 1997 and gave his gov-
ernment favorable coverage, “ensur-
ing,” reports The New York Times,
“that the new government would al-
low him to keep intact his British hold-
ings.”
And in China, Mr. Murdoch’s or-
ganizations have taken care not to of-
fend the dictatorship.
Now, Mr. Murdoch’s people rarely
make flatly false claims. Instead, they
usually convey misinformation
through innuendo. During the early
months of the Iraq occupation, for ex-
ample, Fox gave breathless coverage
to each report of possible W.M.D.’s,
with little or no coverage of the subse-
quent discovery that it was a false
alarm. No wonder, then, that many
________
Of Al Qaeda,
Anna Nicole
and The WSJ.
________
Fox viewers got the impression that
W.M.D.’s had been found.
When all else fails, Mr. Murdoch’s
news organizations simply stop cover-
ing inconvenient subjects.
Last year, Fox relentlessly pushed
claims that the “liberal media” were
failing to report the “good news”’ from
Iraq. Once that line became untenable
— well, the Project for Excellence in
Journalism found that in the first
quarter of 2007 daytime programs on
Fox News devoted only 6 percent of
their time to the Iraq war, compared
with 18 percent at MSNBC and 20 per-
cent at CNN.
What took Iran’s place? Anna
Nicole Smith, who received 17 percent
of Fox’s daytime coverage.
Defenders of Mr. Murdoch’s bid for
The Journal say that we should judge
him not by Fox News but by his stew-
ardship of the venerable Times of
London, which he acquired in 1981. In-
deed, the political bias of The Times is
much less blatant than that of Fox
News. But a number of former Times
employees have said that there was
pressure to slant coverage — and ev-
eryone I’ve seen quoted defending Mr.
Murdoch’s management is still on his
payroll.
In any case, do we want to see one of
America’s two serious national news-
papers in the hands of a man who has
done so much to mislead so many?
(The Washington Post, for all its influ-
ence, is basically a Beltway paper, not
a national one. The McClatchy papers,
though their Washington bureau’s re-
porting in the run-up to Iraq put more
prestigious news organizations to
shame, still don’t have The Journal’s
ability to drive national discussion.)
There doesn’t seem to be any legal
obstacle to the News Corporation’s
bid for The Journal: F.C.C. rules on
media ownership are mainly designed
to prevent monopoly in local markets,
not to safeguard precious national in-
formational assets. Still, public pres-
sure could help avert a Murdoch take-
over. Maybe Congress should hold
hearings.
If Mr. Murdoch does acquire The
Journal, it will be a dark day for
America’s news media — and Ameri-
can democracy. If there were any jus-
tice in the world, Mr. Murctoch, who
did more than anyone in the news
business to mislead this country into
an unjustified, disastrous war, would
be a discredited outcast. Instead, he’s
expanding his empire.
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