Rupert Murdoch steps down as Fox and News Corp chairman | Hacker News Reader

Rupert Murdoch steps down as Fox and News Corp chairman

bbc.co.uk

51 pointsmellosouls53 comments

There are not many people who have done worse things for this world than Rupert Murdoch. I cannot wish him anything but the karmic retribution for all the hate and suffering he's caused over the years.

The hilarious final paragraph where a billionaire is criticising the "elites" is just the icing on the cake:

> He also criticised other media outlets as being "in cahoots" with a "rarefied class" of elites who he accused of "peddling political narratives rather than pursuing the truth".

I dont think 'wishing karmic retribution' is doing anything. We have been stuck in a world created in the 60s which is not changing because too old people have too much power and wealth. It wasn't alwasy like that and the current situation is a problem for a number of generations now. Age-based inequality needs to be seen as a societal problem.

I don't think age-based inequality makes the sense you think it does. Only a minority of older people are wealthy, imo, and mostly out of a function of the fact earning power accrues over time. But plenty of elderly people are actually homeless or forced to go back to working at Dollar General and Walmart.

It would be more accurate to target wealth inequality, which will disproportionately target the old wealthy people by nature (and also younger people who are wealthy through wealthy prior generation).

> Only a minority of older people are wealthy

Some decades are more lucky than others when it comes to the generation of wealth. That is an inequality in itself and it affects everyone not just the top

I'm arguing that it may not actually affect everyone. In america, the biggest wealth-building tools from the federal government were barred to black people in the previous generation. Banks are still getting hit with racial discrimination in mortgage lending in current year. I don't think we should address inequality by generation if only a minority of that generation got to reap the rewards. It's not like a Latina grandma alive before women were allowed to open bank accounts had a ton of options to her.

the wealth at the top is a side-effect of chronic unfair advantage. Even if that is somehow targetted, the unfair advantages like e.g. the extreme way in which housing markets in free economies evolved won't change.

And we know that wealth tax does not work because of the structure of the world financial system. We can't pretend that if we try again and again it will work.

The inequality of housing in particular is a result of generational demographic factors which led to political choices (low inflation mandate - high interest rates are being imposed on new generations to pay for housing obtained with record low interest rates). These are cases where democracy fails and cannot guarantee the fundamental right to housing (in fact it actively fights it). Bandaids cannot solve this

I agree bandaids cannot solve this. I just disagree we should be targeting a generation and not just targeting all wealthy people, because the generational opportunities you're describing were closed to subsets of people. Like I said, it's not like a Latina grandmother who wasn't allowed to open a bank is the source of the generational global wealth problem-- it's the white managerial class who got preferential federal mortgage loans.

The entirety of the baby boomer voting bloc is centered around the idea that we must do whatever is best for the wealthy, because we've thrown all of our retirement money into their stocks because of the shift from pensions to 401Ks. So it doesn't really matter how rich an individual is, you already know how they're going to react because their future livelihood depends on it.

Even my dad, who has both a 401K and a pension and Social Security and draws $70K yearly from them even though his living expenses are around $20K... he is hardcore into the idea of doing whatever makes the Dow go up, because that to him is the greatest good.

> a "rarefied class" of elites who he accused of "peddling political narratives rather than pursuing the truth".

Is that so, Rupert? A bit like this, perhaps?

https://www.npr.org/2023/02/28/1159819849/fox-news-dominion-...

https://gizmodo.com/fox-news-edits-trump-out-of-photo-with-j...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coverage_of_the_Hillsborough_d...

I mean, it sounds very much like he's describing _his own_ media outlets.

(I think any media company should be very cautious of making claims like this, but it's particularly absurd coming from _bloody News Corp_).

Projection isn’t just for movie theatres.

I think he has caused more damage across the Anglosphere than any outside enemy could ever wish for.

The entire corporate media is exactly as corrupt as this guy is.

Before your comment gets downvoted to where it belongs, this is so spectacularly wrongheaded that maybe you should explain it.

Yeah sure. All these corporate news networks do is propagandize the public with State Dept. talking points all day. That's why we've been in endless wars for the last 20 years in case you missed it. Where this comment belongs is top of mind for the entire country which is being bamboolzed by these networks.

You obviously missed that there's more than one country in the world. Colour me surprised.

As I recall, Murdoch-owned media was very much pro-war in the early 2000s, and dared to call anyone who opposed the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan un-patriotic and pro-terrorist.

Do you consider Fox News to be something other than "corporate media?" Is News Corp. not a corporation? Are they motivated by something other than profit? Please let us know.

Its true that other media outlets are doing it as well. Maybe each one believes they are manipulating and exploiting their audience in the "right" way?

I wish we could get more Cronkite style anchors, who prided themselves on delivering information to the public in an unemotional and straightforward manner. Instead we get emotionally charged news anchors who are trying to incite the strongest reactions they can get.

I always loved the video of Cronkite delivering the news of Kennedy's assassination. https://youtu.be/6PXORQE5-CY?si=papzPPt00V8GC6Hp&t=64

I think that is true, but somehow a "race to the bottom" has been going on and some are more guilty than others of setting it in motion. It can be quite hard not to get drawn into such a situation as a for-profit organisation, the perception is go along or die. But it's a choice, if nobody plays along there is no race.

none of the news anchors should get the kind of dramatic powers they acquired over time. obligatory reference to Network (1976)

here is a fantastic analysis of Network and rise of the news anchors in the framing of Network: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WlCLZIn38ao

>I wish we could get more Cronkite style anchors, who prided themselves on delivering information to the public in an unemotional and straightforward manner. Instead we get emotionally charged news anchors who are trying to incite the strongest reactions they can get.

A level-headed Cronkite-like figure would work well in an environment where "the media" knows to get out of the way when there isn't any urgent news to report (e.g., a 9/11-style emergency). But that doesn't make advertisers or shareholders happy, so we're stuck in a ratchet-up environment where EVERYTHING IS IMPORTANT ALL THE TIME SO KEEP WATCHING KEEP WATCHING KEEP WATCHING!!!

Precisely. Cronkite did one thirty-minute show per day, and he himself was only on for part of it.

It's not difficult to acquire the ten minutes worth of actual news per day. If you're consuming more than that, the problem isn't with the anchor. It's that you want to be entertained rather than informed.

"Elites" is widely recognized to be a coded term for deniably referring to the Jews.

Please don't incite racism.

I'm not inciting it: I'm pointing it out.

Let's make clear what you did. You told us to conflate the concepts of "elites" with "jews" — converting a discussion about class into one about race.

That's what a racist does. A racist sees everything in terms of race. You are seeing everything in terms of race, and telling other people to see things in terms of race.

Please do not inject racism into things that don't have anything to do with race.

You probably think that it wasn't you who started this racist fire — that you're just pointing out something Rupert Murdoch secretly believes, but (a) you aren't a mind reader — you are just assuming his thoughts based on your opinion, and (b) you are still adding fuel to the fire of racism.

You might want to read a little more history

As someone who grew up in the 80's and 90's in America, it's hard to overstate his influence. He was bringing limits-pushing programming (by broadcast standards) to the mainstream via Fox Broadcasting, which arguably had a major liberalizing impact on American culture, while simultaneously shifting the entire conservative movement sharply to the right with Fox News.

Steve Jobs to Murdoch:

> The axis today is not liberal and conservative, the axis is conservative-destructive, and you've cast your lot with the destructive people. Fox has become an incredibly destructive force in our society. You can be better, and this is going to be your legacy if you're not careful.

Rightfully, he should go down in the books as one of history's greatest monsters.

That's a bit dramatic, isn't it? Compared to Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, Mengele, et al, the line of succession to history's greatest monster to Rupert Murdoch is pretty long.

In a word yes.

But also Murdoch is one of the driving forces in this brave new world where you have to be extreme to be acceptable. If it weren't for Murdoch, allegedly, we wouldn't need to call someone actually Hitler in order to be sufficiently devout to our partisanship.

The greatest irony of his success is that the same people who personally trumpet their visceral hate for Murdoch will also tell you with a straight face that the Great Man theory of history is harmfully and false and everyone is only a product of greater historical trends.

Bugger. I was hoping for him to die in office, causing an executive power struggle and sending his media empire into calamitous decline.

He is still chairman emeritus. We could find this means something different than it says.

Glenn Beck

Bill O'Reilly

Roger Ailes

Rush Limbaugh

Alex Jones

Tucker Carlson

Rupert Murdoch

Good riddance, all.

Tucker has never been more successful: hundreds of millions of views on some of his latest twitter/X interviews.

an even wider reach than before

he got something like 480m views on his latest interview with an argentinian presidential candidate

it 2x'd his interview with trump overnight

You guys are crazy if you believe those view counts. Musk just said X/Twitter has 550M monthly users (and a giant bot problem which I'm sure makes up a sizable number there). So 480M views could mean tens of millions of users viewed "an interview with an Argentinian presidential candidate" dozens of times or, in the most extreme, that 87% of Twitter's monthly "users" viewed it exactly once. It just doesn't make sense. In reality, those numbers are juiced to make content look more viral than reality because it's nearly impossible for Twitter to know if a "person" actually "viewed" the content. Many former Twitter engineers said as much when Musk rolled out the new view count.

These "views" are just non-unique impressions ("tweet was for a couple of seconds in some user's viewport", including quote tweets), it surely doesn't mean someone watched the video.

480m does not sound legit. Something doesn't add up when it's a candidate from a country with a population of 46m and twitter has a possible user base of 550m.

For some context Mr Beast videos have ~100m views and his content is geared towards children with a ton of time on their hands.

afaik mrbeast says he also gets more views on spanish videos

the spanish internet base is larger

IIRC views are just impressions, i.e. someone scrolling their for you page sees a clip and keeps scrolling. It doesn't even count unique impressions. Some poor smuck doomscrolling might scroll past it 5-10x that night and each one would be a view.

For some reason he has an enormous following outside of the US.

Some of my friends in Eastern Europe are huge fans, but I can't really figure out why, to me he's just another conservative interviewer/host.

Tweet views don't mean watching video, and are not comparable to TV viewers metric.

We'll see how this X-career pans out. Remember when Facebook used to report massive video viewership, and it turned out to be miscounted nonsense that ruined businesses that pivoted to videos on FB?

That's like telling me that "We've been trying to reach you about your car's extended warranty" calls have never been more successful.

Yes, he's getting impressions. But are people actually watching significant portions of the video? You have no idea at all.

And how's his revenue? That's only one way to measure success, but it's a pretty important one. And you have no idea at all.

Is he really stepping down this time, or is this another paper wall to try and isolate his prodigious assets from the responsibility of the criminal activity his media outlet engaged in?

It didn't work last time; I suppose it remains to be seen whether he's actually abrogating authority this time.

"In his memo to staff, the conservative Murdoch vowed to continue to be involved in the "contest of ideas"."

I would rather wish he didn't. Ah well, can't leave well enough alone. Hopefully the world can bid goodbye to the last of the sith lords one of these days.

> Hopefully the world can bid goodbye to the last of the sith lords one of these days.

It'd take a lot more than Murdock fading from the scene for that to happen. Don't fool yourself into thinking that all will be right in the world because ${prolific figure} is less involved in it. The Mafia didn't cease to exist after Capone, they just learned from his mistakes and didn't make showmen of themselves.

Here's Fry & Laurie in 1995 telling the story of Rupert Murdoch's Soaraway Life:

https://www.dailymotion.com/video/xflqt2

Possibly NSFW

So, is Lachlan Roman Roy or Kendall Roy?

Hope it's because he's dying of something incredibly unpleasant.

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