One important thing has been lost in all of the obituaries of Roger Ailes’ career at Fox News. The Roger Ailes we know, the one who built a conservative-leaning network from scratch and enforced its philosophy without compromise, would not exist if not for his corporate patron, Rupert Murdoch.
Without Murdoch’s nearly unconditional support, Ailes would never have been able to make Fox News the political-media earthmover it became. It was right at home in Murdoch’s global media business, whose news properties already had a record of nudging — more like shoving — politics to the right on at least three continents, often with the same raucous populism that’s so identified with Fox.
Murdoch’s new role as the interim chief of Fox News, pending the naming of a successor to Ailes, is a genius move. If there’s anyone whose understanding of the network’s core audience of older white traditionalists is close to that of Ailes, it is Murdoch.
But Murdoch, 85, is serving as a bridge to something else at Fox News. What that will be rests in part with his two sons, Lachlan, 44, and James, 43. Rupert Murdoch elevated them to top jobs at 21st Century Fox and its sibling News Corp 18 months ago.
They are already putting their own stamp on the (publicly traded) family business, mostly in its non-news — non-controversial — entertainment divisions of television and film. Now, with Fox News, they are finally wading into their father’s gladiator pit, where politics is the blood sport.
And, to the extent that he defers to their judgement, it could offer the first glimpse of where they would take a media empire that, under Rupert Murdoch, asserted itself into the political ethos of the US, the UK and his homeland of Australia in ways not seen since the days of William Randolph Hearst.
American politics
For now, though, the billion-dollar-plus (a year, in profit) question is whether their involvement in the succession plans at Fox News fundamentally changes a network that has functioned at times as a more influential, conservative presence in American politics than the Republican Party itself. The Murdochs are still in crisis mode at Fox News.
The network was rocked yet again Friday, this time by a devastating article in “New York” magazine by Gabriel Sherman, who reported that Fox News paid a $3 million settlement to a booker who said Ailes carried on an abusive 20-year relationship with her — at times using company resources and personnel to facilitate it.
It immediately raised new questions about whether the Murdochs would be forced into a bigger house cleaning of Ailes’ remaining team of lieutenants at Fox News. Ailes’ departure from the network leaves a huge vacuum in its own right. He drove it to pursue the stories that helped define the strife of the Clinton, Bush (No 43) and Obama eras.
He made it a TV headquarters for the patriotism-infused Bush war marketing effort; the false accusations that Barack Obama was a “socialist” of dubious citizenship, and, most recently, the Trump movement. Rupert Murdoch abided by it all, even when it conflicted with some of his own views, such as his support for a path to citizenship for certain undocumented immigrants.
But as often as not he seemed to be in line with Ailes, at least based on how he portrayed himself on Twitter.
Leanings
Though executives who have worked with Lachlan Murdoch say they assume he shares some of his father’s conservatism, they also say he does not readily advertise his views, which is in itself a major departure from the elder Murdoch.
As for James Murdoch, his leanings are in plainer view than his brother’s, and they are decidedly different from his father’s (with an important exception, friends say: free-market fiscal policy). James Murdoch’s wife, Kathryn, is a trustee of the Environmental Defence Fund and a former director at the Clinton Climate Initiative.
The couple started Quadrivium, a foundation that focuses on the “sustainable use of resources” and “scientific understanding”. James Murdoch has spearheaded initiatives to make the company “carbon neutral”.
In an essay in Time magazine in December, he wrote, “Entrenched and compromised interests spin the fiction that science is more divided than united, and they sow seeds of uncertainty on issues of unquestionable priority: namely, the survival of our species on this planet.”
His views have heartened producers and executives at National Geographic, which 21st Century Fox took greater control of last year. Fox News’ reporting often tells a much different story.
Its hosts don’t hesitate to report that “the science is still in question,” or that warnings about climate change are emanating from “people aligned with the political left in the scientific community,” as host Steve Doocy said in April while promoting a film purporting to debunk climate change.
Even before Ailes’ ouster, climate activists were hopeful that James Murdoch would force changes to sceptical coverage of climate change at Fox News, as well as its corporate cousin The Wall Street Journal, whose editorial page has great sway with congressional Republicans. To nudge it along, one group, Partnership for Responsible Growth, has run ads with both outlets reminding Republicans that their leaders used to support market-based solutions to climate change — and calling on The Journal’s editorial page to acknowledge humankind’s role.
Carbon trading system
David Fenton, a longtime strategist for progressive causes whose agency, Fenton, made the ads, said its main goal was to push a bipartisan solution in the form of a carbon trading system. The Murdoch outlets have been standing in the way, he said, by creating a “false reality bubble denying science” that scares amenable Republican politicians away from the cause.
Even if some of Fox News’ programming drives one or both of the brothers bananas, it is still a major cash generator for 21st Century Fox, with $1.6 billion (Dh5.8 billion) in operating profit in fiscal 2015, according to Brian Wieser, an analyst at Pivotal Research Group. Fox News’ raison d’être was to fill a void that conservative-leaning viewers sensed in the mainstream media.
That guiding philosophy has provided a steady compass, and a lucrative revenue stream, as its competitors have struggled with their own paths.
That could provide a strong argument against drastic change, especially for the elder Murdoch, who is by all accounts enjoying his new role running the network and is saying he won’t rush into picking a successor to Ailes.
It seems a near certainty that he will stay through the election.
