We were blessed recently with two unanticipated bits of news from the fringes of legitimate journalism that may signal one day — if we all live long enough and learn to turn off our television sets — a return to some kind of sanity in American political life.
Rupert Murdoch, 92 years old, resigned as the imperial boss of Fox News.
And Michael Wolff’s new book, “The Fall: The End of Fox News and the Murdoch Dynasty” (Henry Holt & Co.), hit the shelves, predicting the death of Fox as many of us have come to know and loathe it.
Wolff’s book predicts the end of the Murdochs’ murderous corporate stewardship of Fox, murderous because since they arrived on these shores from Australia a few decades back, the family’s properties have helped kill something precious in the body politic of America.
Where our political leaders once reached for common ground, they now exist in an atmosphere of bared fangs. Fox News has contributed mightily to that division, and to the antagonism that permeates so much of American life.
They’ve lied to their vast audience, and done it consistently, in spite of the family’s actual views, according to Wolff, whose previous book on Murdoch was the 2008 bestseller “The Man Who Owns the News” (Crown).
Wolff says the Murdoch family believes Fox News is an embarrassment. He calls Rupert Murdoch’s politics “generally anti-left, pro-business, suit-and-tie stuff” — not out of line, in other words, from Ronald Reagan, who would be ostracized from today’s GOP.
Wolff says Murdoch’s sons are “comically at odds with the Fox brand.” He quotes Murdoch calling Donald Trump “an idiot,” “a fool” and “plainly nuts,” even though Fox has been Trump’s biggest propaganda arm.
He writes that Murdoch’s children, who will accumulate added corporate muscle as Rupert fades from the picture, “hated Fox. Really hated it. And they all hated Trump. F—ing hated him.”
But the ratings, and the money, came in too big for Fox to change a successful formula.
As Wolff tells it, the philosophical blame goes to Roger Ailes, the late, disgraced bully who ran the daily Fox News broadcasts for the Murdochs for years, and sneered at a cornerstone of all basic journalism: a belief in facts.
And so the other day, within hours of each other, we had Wolff’s book and the elder Murdoch’s announced retirement. One goes with the other. Wolff sees the family changing Fox’s programming to better reflect some sense of reality — or better yet, selling the business, worth billions, once Rupert’s not around to stop them.
We should all live so long.
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