COMMENT: A Murdoch whistle blower, central to helping to expose the phone hacking scandal, has been found dead in his apartment.
In what seems to be almost obligatory downplaying of the significance of this event, the authorities are already spinning this death as “not suspicious.”
Remember that this case goes to the highest levels of the British government, and to Scotland Yard, as well as to the Murdoch empire.
The [now resigned] head of Scotland Yard was also in charge of counterterrorism for some time.
Note that Sean Hoare expressed fear for his life, before he was found dead, in circumstances that the authorities immediately labeled “not suspicious.”
And, of course, the media–chickens all–have gone along with this dance, as usual.
Recall, also, that, in addition to his profound relationship with the GOP and far right in this country and the United Kingdom, Murdoch’s second largest stockholder is Prince Alwaleed, closely affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood.
EXCERPT: The man who launched the entire phone hacking scandal had become a paranoid recluse who believed someone was out to get him, a friend has revealed.
Sean Hoare, who was found dead at his flat in Watford, Hertfordshire, had spent much of the last weeks of his life ‘hiding’ in his flat with the curtains drawn.
A post mortem examination revealed that there was no third party involvement in the death. Officers are not treating the death as suspicious although it will be several weeks before they have full toxicology results.
A friend and neighbour claimed Mr Hoare, 47, had become increasingly reclusive and paranoid in recent weeks.
‘He would talk about someone from the Government coming to get him,’ he said.
‘He’d say to me, “If anyone comes by, don’t say I’m in.” . . .
There’s a 2 minute clip of News of the World jouralist Paul McMullan’s 11/29 testimony in the ongoing investigation in this article. The entire testimony (which is a cspan so it might be available in the cspan online archives) is worth watching as a peep into the inner world of Murdoch’s muckraking machine. The part where he discusses his views on privacy is particularly striking to watch, but you really have to hope the growing number of official/unofficial public/private surveillance-state employees don’t agree too much:
“Privacy is evil”
This message brought to you by “Big Brother Against Paedos” and corporate sponsors.
More drip drip drip in the Snoopert Murderoch’s hacking scandal...the hacking wasn’t limited to phones and it wasn’t just used for spying:
“He turned a blind eye and exhibited willful blindness to what was going on in his companies. We conclude, therefore, that Rupert Murdoch is not a fit person to exercise the stewardship of a major international company”.
Well, it’s a step in the right direction but can we start applying this standard to more of the people currently exercising the stewardship of major international companies? I kind of like this “expecting the leaders of major international companies to be morally fit to lead them” idea.
News Corp just announced a split in to two companies. And for anyone that’s counting, there’s 120 newspapers in the new, slimmer News Corp, which is still going to be the largest publishing operation in the English-speaking world:
The split of News Corp is now completed.
http://www.theverge.com/2013/6/29/4476062/rupert-murdochs-news-corp-completes-split-from-21st-century-fox
http://www.satmagazine.com/story.php?number=158916071
If a hoard of sock puppets under Rupert Murdoch’s command sounds scary, imagine hacker sockpuppets. Hacker sockpuppets — like firms hackers offering sockpuppetry services — can be pretty scary too. Ok, the firms offering sockpuppetry services may not have been all that scary in practice but it’s still theoretically pretty scary (with or without government involvement)
For a guy that’s spent his life trying to kill journalism and the democratic system, this is sounds about right:
In other news:
Could the acquittal of Rebekah Brooks actually lead to more headaches for Rupert Murdoch? Perhaps, if seeming like an untouchable, corrupting force in the world somehow translates into a headache:
How will Rupert deal the pain of becoming known as an untouchable power monger? Well, after the big Hobby Lobby Supreme Court ruling, one form of therapy could involve buying out the rest of the non-Murdoch Family News Corp shareholders, thus turning the company into a “closely held” corporation that can be ruled to reflect Rupert’s religion. That might be fun and great was to show the world his deeply held morality.
Or he could just ignore the critics and soothe the pain with a big buyout binge. Just imagine how good it would feel to and finally scratch that itch that never goes away:
In case it wasn’t clear that the leaders of the multinational giants of the world truly think they should be running the world and have all the solutions necessary to solve our problems, here’s an article about the talk Rupert Murdoch just gave at the “B20”. The B20 is the group set up by multinational corporate giants in 2010 to lobby the G20, just in case those giants weren’t already influencing those governments enough:
“My blood pressure goes up when I think of the number of local, state and federal regulations we have in our lives today”. So it’s either an endless race to the bottom for everyone, or Rupert’s blood pressure goes up. Tough decision.
Meet the new media boss. Same as the old media boss. Except possibly with an even greater incentive to obscure local corruption which is why so many people are so concerned about new boss:
You don’t say...
Is Roger Ailes’s long tenure as the head of Fox News and leading figure in the undermining of American journalism finally coming to an end? If the following speculation about a desire within the Murdoch family to oust Ailes is correct, the end does indeed look near for Ailes thanks to Gretchen Carlson’s lawsuit alleging that Ailes is a serial sexual predator:
“Executives I spoke with over the past 24 hours said the hiring of an outside lawyer is also an indication that Murdoch’s sons may be capitalizing on the Carlson scandal to achieve a long-held goal: forcing Ailes out. “It’s a coup,” one person close to the company told me. If the investigation into Ailes’s management confirms Carlson’s account, or turns up additional episodes of harassment with other Fox women, it stands to reason the Murdoch children would have the leverage they need to push Ailes aside and install a less-right-wing chief. “This could be curtains for Ailes,” another person close to the company said. Indeed, several months after NBC hired an outside counsel in 1995 to investigate Ailes’s alleged anti-Semitic slur, he left NBC.”
Wait, so the Murdoch kids want to use this scandal to put a less-right-wing person in charge of Fox News?! Is a kinder, gentler Fox News the future for the network? Well, there have been rumblings about the Murdoch kids not being quite as conservative as their father so it’s not inconceivable, especially in Donald Trump trashes the conservative brand this year. But decades of right-wing disinformation fed millions of people night after night don’t just dissipate when a new CEO steps in. Far-right hysterics is what pays the bills so far so it’s hard to see how replacing Ailes with someone else frees the network from their Frankenstein’s Monster.
Fox News-lite! Now with only half the poison and bile. It’s a nice thought. And who knows, if Gretchen Carlson thoroughly exposes Ailes it’s very possible Fox News will be in need of an image makeover. Especially since, as we just saw, Fox News might be getting a new show this year: a Cosby Show-spinoff:
“The Bill Cosby of media”. That’s the potential scandal Fox News could be dealing with here: a very powerful serial predator who has been terrorizing women in media for decades. Those were the whispers about Ailes as Carlson’s case went public.
And as we’re learning now, those weren’t just whispers. Get ready for the New Cosby Show starring Roger Ailes:
“There are some striking parallels here to the Bill Cosby case: multiple allegations that span decades; accusers who are all female and all younger than the accused; meetings that were ostensibly about professional advancement that allegedly escalated into requests or demands for sexual favors. And the language used by Ailes’ attorney to dismiss these claims — a total denial, coloring the accusers as “desperate” and media-hungry, implying that the age of the allegations means they couldn’t possible be true — is very similar to the rhetoric deployed by Cosby’s various lawyers.”
Note that years that the above alleged harassment all took place ranged from the mid 60s to 1984. That leaves a three decade gap between the 1984 harassment and Gretchen Carlson’s recent harassment. So if these charges are true, there’s presumably a three decade period during which Ailes was ascending the heights of power in the news and media production world where he was either suddenly not a serial predator or we just haven’t heard from those victims yet. Assuming he didn’t suddenly stop this kind of abuse that means there’s potentially A LOT more stories of this nature yet to come out.
Yeah, there are indeed some striking parallels with the Cosby case. And that’s part of why it’s not inconceivable that we really could see a Fox News makeover in coming years. Having Roger Ailes be replaced would be a pretty big deal no matter what. He was that influential. But having him be replace because he was exposed as a serial predator boss who has been dehumanizing women in the media for decades is potentially a much bigger deal. Especially if Hillary Clinton because the next president and the network inevitably unleashes a torrent of barely veiled political misogyny that doesn’t end for the next four to eight years.
Also, don’t forget that Fox News’s audience has a median viewer age of 68. If that’s your network’s prime demographic, you probably don’t want to be pissing off women too much.
With the Republican National Convention fulling underway, the GOP’s rebranding as the Party of Trump is now an inevitability. Especially since the “Never Trump” contingent was just thwarted in its efforts to force a vote that would have “unbinded” delegates. All Aboard the Trump Train! *Toot* *Toot*
It’s a pretty historic day. It would be even more historic of the GOP wasn’t already a metaphorical dumpster fire long before Trump came along, but still pretty historic. And it’s a little extra historic because the start of the RNC’s official transformation into the Party of Trump happened on the very same same we’re getting press reports that Roger Ailes is out at Fox News:
“After reviewing the initial findings of the probe, James Murdoch is said to be arguing that Ailes should be presented with a choice this week to resign or face being fired. Lachlan is more aligned with their father, who thinks that no action should be taken until after the GOP convention this week. Another source confirms that all three are in agreement that Ailes needs to go.”
It sure sounds like the Murdochs are actively debating whether or not to dump Ailes during the GOP’s convention or after. And if it’s after the convention, it’s likely shortly after since it’s clear that they’ve recognized the potential poison Ailes’s serial harassment presents for the Fox News brand during a critical election year.
So one of the most influential and destructive media institutions in the US is potentially about to experience a brain transplant. Maybe this week, maybe a little later. But it’s apparently going to happen some time between now and the elections. It’s an interesting timing condundrum. Is it better to hold off with the high-profile firings and hope it doesn’t become a story during the GOP’s big week or try to get out ahead of a story that risks depicting Fox News as a sexual predator playground and announce Ailes’s departure now? It’s a pretty big question and the Murdochs need to answer it soon.
There’s also the question of what’s next for Roger Ailes. It would probably be a good excuse to creep back into the shadows and leave the future-destroying activities to the next generation. But who knows. The Donald seems like like Roger and didn’t hesitate to defend him when these charges came out so maybe Trump will help him find a new Fox News-ish project to work on.
Woah! Reports on Roger Ailes’s status as the head of Fox News are making it clear that he’s going to be riding the golden parachute sooner rather than later. But here’s the latest twist: If Ailes leaves, three of the four prime time hosts, Greta van Susteren, Bill O’Reilly, and Sean Hannity, are threatening to walk too. And that just leaves Megyn Kelly as the only remaining prime time host if the rest leave. Might she join them in their walkout threat? Probably not since Roger Ailes reportedly sexually harassed her too.
So as big a potential shakeup as Ailes leaving could be for Fox News, an institution he built from the ground up, his leaving could end up making a much bigger impact on the network thanks to a top talent Ailes solidarity movement:
“The departure of Mr Ailes could have an impact on the Republican party. Supremely well connected, he has helped shape the Republican agenda for more than a decade. His channel’s blend of news and blistering opinion from its roster of primetime hosts has made it a must-watch for conservative voters, and an important outlet for candidates hoping to reach the base of the party.”
Yeah, it’s hard to see how the retirement of the Wizard of Oz of right-wing propaganda over the past two decades isn’t going to impact the Republican Party. Especially since it’s been the right-wing ‘infotainment’ industry that has probably done more to radicalize US conservatives, and in turn radicalize GOP elected officials, than any other force on the planet. Donald Trump might be a master as poking and prodding the GOP base’s id but let’s not forget who the master has been at shaping that id. Roger Ailes will be missed. Fortunately he will be missed by all the wrong people.
Keep in mind that, if Trump loses and Ailes’s leaving results in a larger loss of core Fox talent, it would be a good opportunity for the Murdoch kids to reorient the network on a hopefully saner path. But that can only happen if the audience is willing to follow Fox down that path and it’s really not clear that’s the case when you consider the role the grass roots right-wing audience has played in fueling the rise of the Trump phenomena. At the same time, if there’s a loss of talent and Trump wins, that would be an opportune time to turn the network basically into Trump TV. More so.
Lots of twists and turns clearly await the Fox News family in the post-Ailes-era. Hopefully that era involves less systemic sexual harassment.
Trouble in Paradise? It looks like it, but given that it’s a troubling paradise of damaging disinformation, the trouble is less than troubling:
“Megyn Kelly and her co-hosts, including Bret Baier and Brit Hume, have not been speaking during commercial breaks, according to two people with direct knowledge of the anchors’ interactions, who described the on-set atmosphere at Fox News as icy. During ads, the hosts are often absorbed with their smartphones.”
Keep in mind that the New York Times recently reported that the sexual harassment at Fox News went way beyond Roger Ailes. So while there’s undoubtedly hurt feelings over the different responses to the charges and Ailes and his eventual firing, it’s very possible that there are A LOT of unresolved harassment issues involving others in management, or maybe the on-air talent. At this point we just know that there are allegations that it wasn’t just Ailes doing the harassing but only Ailes has left.
Whether or not there’s another round of harassment charges and if Fox News can avoid an internal talent implosion at that point is going to be one of the more interesting things to watch as post-Ailes Fox News takes shape. Either way, someone had better find a way to comfort Bill O’Reilly soon because he’s not taking the heat very well:
“I think the time has come now, where this whole network is going to have to band together, all of us, and we’re going to have to call out the people who are actively trying to destroy this network, by using lies and deception and propaganda. We’re going to have to start to call them out by name, because that’s how bad it’s become,” he said.
Yeah, Fox News has had better days, although with Ailes gone and no longer able to sexually extort his employees this is arguably the best days Fox News has ever had. Same old poison over the airways, but with less behind-the-scenes harassment. It’s definitely an improvement!
Still, considering that Bill O’Reilly is freaking out about a conspiracy to kill the network and blabbering about people wanting him dead too, it’s hard to ignore the possibility that Fox News really could be on the verge of a major exodus of their on-air talent as a consequence of a now-poisoned corporate atmosphere. In other words, Roger Ailes’s fan club at Fox News might need to go too if the network can really get past this scandal and un-poison the corporate atmosphere. And if that happens, Fox News could be a different network a few years from now because that could involve a lot of the networks most popular, long-standing talent. Ailes wasn’t the only one who “built Fox News”. Sure, it would most likely still be a reactionary far right force dedicated to emotionally manipulating its audience and promoting ignorance and confusion. But maybe, hopefully, the post-Ailes Fox News could be a little less dedicated to emotionally manipulating its audience and promoting ignorance and confusion.
So we’ll see what becomes of Fox News. But if it does moderate itself, even just a bit, that also raises the question of whether or not the network’s loyal audience would remain loyal. Because it’s not like Fox News is the only far right network out there for people to watch. So let’s assume the popular talking heads like O’Reilly retire and get replaced with people that don’t quite have his appeal to Fox’s audience. Where do all those viewers go? Glenn Beck’s BlazeTV would be one option. TrumpTV, if it becomes a real thing, could be another destination.
But as the article below makes clear, if conservative viewers lose faith in or sour on their right-wing TV outlet of choice, Fox News, there’s one growing media empire that should be exceptionally well positioned to pick up new conservative viewers in the age of Trump: Alex Jones’s media empire:
“Stone and several other speakers on Monday tipped their hats to Jones, sometimes effusively. But it was the offhand comment of a man from Veterans for Trump that stopped me. “Alex Jones,” he said, “is the voice of this whole thing.” ”
And that’s something we can’t forget when speculating on the future direction of not just Fox News but the conservative movement in the US in general: while the Trump political strategy clearly borrows a lot from strongman figures like Benito Mussolini, it’s also a variant of the Alex Jones shtick. It’s a hybrid act. So if Trump wins, it’s sort of like Alex Jones became president. But if Trump loses, and if we assume that Trump will remain an influential force in the conservative media, it also makes sense that Alex Jones’s shows and others like it would have even great appeal during a Hillary Clinton presidency.
So don’t be super surprise if Fox News suddenly has a talent exodus and the conservative media gets a big shakeup soon. But also don’t be surprised if Alex Jones is one of the main beneficiaries of that shakeup. Uh oh.
Here’s the latest, and most detailed personal testimony from a victim of Roger Ailes’s predatory behavior. Part of what makes this particular story so disturbing is that it starts off with Ailes grooming the victim, Lauri Luhn, as his sexual plaything (in exchange for cash and jobs), but eventually Ailes promotes Luhn to a role at Fox News where her job was to find other young attractive women for Ailes to victimize.
And similar to some of the previous accounts of Ailes’s m.o., Ailes filmed Luhn in compromising situations, making it clear that the video would go into a safe-deposit box, “just so we understand each other.” He then informed her that she had to do everything he requested of her using some sort of weird hypnosis-like technique. Who knows if he actually kept the video or that was just something he would tell his victims as part of some psychological domination methodology he’s honed over the decades. Either way, it’s becoming increasingly clear that the man who created Fox News, a network almost designed to induce Stockholm Syndrome in its audience, appears to have a shocking amount of personal experience at inducing Stockholm Syndrome in his employees:
“By 2006, Luhn said, Ailes was regularly demanding phone sex in the office, but the hotel visits had stopped. Instead, said Luhn, Ailes instructed her to recruit young women for him. “You’re going to find me ‘Roger’s Angels.’ You’re going to find me whores,” Luhn recalled Ailes saying on numerous occasions, urging her to send young Fox staffers his way. He had promoted Luhn to director of bookings, which gave her the authority to hire employees. She said she chose women Ailes would be attracted to. “You’re not expected to hire unattractive people,” she said.”
We’ll see how far the investigation into Ailes’s alleged predatory behavior goes but it sure doesn’t sound like Laurie Luhn’s personal testimony is going to be the last one of this nature to come out.
And in other news...
With Roger Ailes and Fox News facing a seemingly endless wave of sexual harassment accusations back decades, one of the obvious questions raised by the scandal is how such an influential and notable person like Ailes could get away with this kind of predatory behavior for so long. And while corporate culture no doubt played a role, the ‘black-room’ of staff dedicated to investigating and smearing Ailes’s enemies probably had something to do with his predatory success:
“But with Ailes gone, Fox executives are now looking closely at how Ailes spent Fox money. And what they are discovering is that, beyond the sexual-harassment claims, Ailes was also able to use portions of the Fox budget to hire consultants, political operatives, and private detectives who reported only to him, according to a senior Fox source. Last week, according to the source, Fox News dismissed five consultants whom Ailes had hired to do work that was more about advancing his own agenda than Fox’s. One of the consultants, Bert Solivan, ran negative PR campaigns against Ailes’s personal and political enemies out of Fox News headquarters, a source said. A Fox News spokesperson confirmed, “Solivan was recently informed that his services were no longer needed.” Solivan, who had previously worked for Fox News as a general manager of the channel’s website, did not respond to requests for comment.”
Yeah, Ailes’s personal army of detectives and consultants capable of running PR campaigns against his enemies probably didn’t do much reduce his propensity to harass his employees. Let’s hope the yet-to-be-announced new head of Fox News has that particular executive privilege left out of their compensation package.
Also note that when you read:
Andrea Tantaros doesn’t just reportedly have experience acting as Ailes’s spy as part of one of his personal PR campaigns against a former employee he had a falling out with. Tantaros was also a victim of Ailes ‘let me harass you or you’ll be punished’-style of corporate management:
“Burstein says Tantaros, who is still employed by Fox, knows she is taking a risk in violating her contract’s confidentiality clause. She’s telling her story now, he says, because “she doesn’t have the same fear of being attacked by the Fox PR machine, and the Murdochs have made it clear they want to clean up the place.””
Well, good luck to Murdochs at cleaning up the place. It sounds like Ailes’s harassment was a full-time job so there’s probably going to be a lot more cleaning to do. Fortunately, thanks to the $1 billion in revenue Fox News makes each year warping the American psyche there should be plenty of money to pay for all the legal settlements that undoubtedly coming up. So at least the harassed women of Fox News will get some sort of compensation without the company declaring bankruptcy first. And there we have it, the one positive thing to come out of the decades of the Fox News phenomena: its horrible success should provide plenty funds to pay for all the corporate harassment victims. Yay.
Here’s one more reason to hope that the victims of Roger Ailes’s serial harassment get ALL the money they can from Fox News’s parent corporation 21 Century Fox: 21st Century Fox is reportedly asking Ailes to fund part of any settlement with Gretchen Carlson and that settlement could reach 8 figures in part because of existence of audio tapes recorded by multiple women in conversation with Ailes. Let’s hope the 8 figure settlements aren’t limited to Carlson. And in related news, we’re getting a better idea of how Ailes may have kept a leash on his staff: they apparently long assumed he was wiretapping their phones.
So secret recordings might help take down a powerful executive who allegedly used employee wiretapping as a means of keep his scandals under wraps. That’s sort of poetic justice if that’s how it plays out, although note that if Carlson’s case does go to trial, as opposed to the private arbitration Ailes is trying to arrange in place of trial, the world could get direct audio exposure to Roger working his verbal sleaze magic. There’s probably going not going to be too much poetry there:
“The sources presented no proof that Ailes was actually spying on them, but even if their fears were unfounded, it may explain how Ailes kept a lid on the harassment allegations for so long.”
Yes, Roger Ailes’s employees thought so little of him that they just assumed he was wiretapping their phones. You have to wonder where they got that idea.
One of the big questions facing Fox News following Roger Ailes’s departure (putting aside the big existential questions associated with running a malicious propaganda outlet) is who can possibly replace him without either pissing off the remaining Ailes’s allies or the growing number of Roger’s victims still at the network. Well, Fox’s parent company appears to have found the right person for the job. Or rather, the right two people since Fox News is getting two co-presidents: Fox Television Stations CEO Jack Abernethy, someone who doesn’t appear to have played any role in the enabling and coverup of Ailes’s behavior. At least his name hasn’t come up in reports. And then there’s Bill Shine, Roger Ailes’s second in command who repeatedly come up in the reporting as someone who was well aware of Ailes’s serial predations. It’s one hell of a compromise:
“New York magazine writer Gabriel Sherman — the leading source on the Ailes scandal — reported that Shine “played an integral role in the cover up of these sexual harassment claims.” He explained on CNN that Shine “pushed women into confidential mediation, signing nondisclosure agreements in exchange for their contracts to be paid.” Sherman also reported he was told that Shine “played a role in rallying the women to speak out against Roger Ailes’ accusers and lead this counter narrative to try to say don’t believe Gretchen Carlson, the allegations. If that is indeed the case, that again is — the Murdochs will have to say this is a guy, these are managers who helped enable and try to protect Roger Ailes, who presided over this culture.””
Yes, Bill Shine first helped cover up the truth and later arranged smear campaigns against those who were trying to do so. And now he’s Fox News’s co-president. Will this decision impact Fox News’s ratings as viewers learn that Rupert Murdoch promoted Ailes’s enabler? Probably not but we’ll see.
Check out Roger Ailes’s new gig. It sounds like it mostly focuses on poisoning the minds of large swathes of American society and basically trying to convince them to commit national suicide, so Roger should be prefect for the job:
“What is more, some of Mr. Trump’s worst moments in the primary debates involved Ms. Kelly and Carly Fiorina, the only woman in the Republican nomination contest. Mr. Trump, who has repeatedly swatted away accusations of sexism during the campaign, will probably require coaching on how to handle the potential first female president in a debate.”
Yep, Trump clearly needs someone to help him prepare to debate the first female presidential candidate. And Roger Ailes is that person. Roger’s work is clearly not done. And if he does a really good job, his work might not be done for another four to eight years. Sorry ladies!
So if Roger starts harassing and blackmailing the Trump campaign’s female campaign staff, will the Trump campaign be liable? Because it’s not like that scenario would be a surprise at this point, which should only add to the potential liabilities, but Ailes apparently isn’t being paid or considered an employee and is just considered The Donald’s really good friend. His really good friend who might start hanging out with the campaign a lot more now that he has so much time on his hands. That might not be a cheap lawsuit if Trump’s campaign is liable, but at least the campaign should have the money to cover it.
If you’ve ever wondered what something like the Playboy Mansion would cost to purchase, we just learned that last week: $100 million for everything including all statues, gargoyles and arcade games at the mansion. Nine figures. That’s not cheap, but then again, it’s the fully stocked Playboy Mansion.
And in unfortunately related news, if you’ve ever wondered what it would cost a major corporation in lawsuits when its discovered its been operating like a non-consenting Playboy Mansion-like corporate sexual harassment cult, we’re getting a better idea of the final price tag and it’s probably going to be a lot of figures:
“According to the Times, Tantaros’ lawyer, Judd Burstein, said that Fox News offered to buy Tantaros out for a sum “in the seven figures” if she renounced her claims against Ailes, O’Reilly and other Fox employees.”
Bill O’Reilly too? Does this mark the return of the infamous loofah? Let’s hope not. But if O’Reilly was an active, and protected, member of Fox New’s Playboy Mansion-like cult, that could (and should) add quite a bit to the final settlement. And with Andrea Tantaros allegedly being offered a seven figure hush money settlement, you have to wonder how many other seven figure settlements of that nature have already quietly been offered. A sex-fueled, Playboy Mansion-like cult, steeped in intimidation, indecency and misogyny presumably has quite a few large hush money offers that it has to make once its Playboy Mansion-like cult status is no longer a secret.
And after all those Ailes’ victims learn that the audio tape of Roger Ailes harassing Gretchen Carlson could lead to an eight figure settlement, how many are even going to want to quietly settle? How much easier will it be to get a large settlement for everyone else if documented evidence of Ailes’s harassing behavior succeeds in getting Carlson eight figures? Seven figures here, eight figures there, and before you know it Fox News could be looking at a whopping Playboy Mansion-league nine figures in all. Who knows if it will get that high but with over 20 women already accusing Ailes it’s not inconceivable. Especially since Ailes’s inner circle of executives were allegedly in on it too:
Don’t forget that Bill Shine is the new co-CEO.
It’s all a horrible reminder if that if you’re going to run your business like a Playboy Mansion-like cult, it’s really only likely work out in the long run if your name is Hugh Hefner and your job is to live in the Playboy Mansion. Otherwise, you probably don’t want to run your business like a Playboy Mansion sexual harassment cult.
There was a big update on the nightmare sexual harassment culture at Fox News: Fox News settled with Gretchen Carlson for $20 million and a public apology. So that was quite a development and admission about Roger Ailes’s serial behavior considering that Gretchen is just one of over 20 women who have come forward to investigators or journalists to reveal Ailes’s predations.
In related news, Roger Ailes appears to be lawyering up for a big lawsuit against Gabriel Sherman and New York Magazine, the journalist and magazine that helped make this story so big by investigating and finding over 20 other women who have been Ailes’s victims over the decades. What exactly Ailes is going to sue for should be interesting to find out given that Fox News just issued a massive settlement that would appear to be a validation of the reporting. But we’ll find out eventually since, as the article below puts it, Act II of the Ailes saga may have just begun. Let’s hope there’s a lot less sexual harassment in this act:
“Though Carlson’s case is against Ailes personally, Fox is essentially his insurer for any settlement, according to two people familiar with the arrangement, and discussions between Ailes’s legal team and 21st Century Fox’s legal team became very tense regarding how much Ailes might pay in a settlement. (At press time, it was unclear how much Ailes was personally on the hook for.) As part of the language at the end of the settlement, numerous people with knowledge of the deal told me, Carlson has agreed not to bring any further legal action against other executives at Fox News, or against the company itself.”
Considering the size of the settlement and the fact that it precludes lawsuits against other executives at Fox News, you have to wonder just how many executives might end up leaving once the legal dust settles on this. Will we see one of Ailes’s co-replacements leaving too? It’s hard to rule out.
You also have to wonder how much of Fox’s on-air talent stays with the network. And how much more is it going to cost to hire talent to work for a news network now known for being touchy-feely in all the wrong ways. It’s an especially interesting question after it was reported that Greta Van Susteren was just fired from the network after trying to use the turmoil of Ailes’s departure to get such a big raise that the network let her go immediately instead:
“Murdoch, the patriarch of Fox’s parent company 21st Century Fox, disliked her recent attempt to renegotiate her contract, and the unusual courier visit was a result of that, said one of the sources interviewed for this story.”
That’s right: in response to one of Fox News’s highest rated females anchors, someone who always defended Ailes as this scandal unfolded, asking for a raise in light of the massive embarrassment Fox News’s management has brought upon the network, Rupert Murdoch apparently decides to summarily fire her before she could even say goodbye to her audience. What a subtle message to the rest of the Fox News staff.
Given the signal Rupert Murdoch just sent by casually ditching one of their more loyal anchors, we probably shouldn’t be super shocked to learn about more Fox News departures over the next few months. And if Donald Trump loses the election and goes on to start an Ailes-run “Trump TV”, as so many are speculating could happen, who knows many many Fox News employees could become former Fox News employees over the next year or so. We really could be looking at a major shakeup in the US political media landscape.
And as tempting as it is to fantasize about Fox News suffering a major ratings dive after a string of high-profile departures, it’s worth keeping in mind that if Trump starts Trump TV and we really do see a big shakeup at Fox News, there’s one very terrifying and destructive aspect to that whole phenomena that could make the destruction of Fox News even more damaging the network itself: Given the reality that Fox News simply has a much, much large audience than any of its cable news competitors, if Fox News starts hemorrhaging viewers that’s a massive potential prize for all the other networks but a prize they’ll only win by behaving more like Fox News. *shudder*
Hopefully that won’t happen, and maybe a Fox decline will primarily be sopped up by its existing far-right competitors like Glenn Beck’s BlazeTV without triggering some sort of horrific “Fox Friendly” copy-cat phase by the rest of the networks. But just imagine this transition at Fox News doesn’t go over very smoothly, there’s more big name talent lost, AND the big flashy “Trump TV” doesn’t get up and running fast enough to grabbing all those now wavering Fox News viewers. All those poor Fox News viewers with no media “home”, no one to scare them and reinforce the lies. Those people would have to go somewhere and there’s a lot of them. Isn’t that a giant recipe to dumb down the US media landscape even more?
Could the death of Fox News actually be the most damaging phase of the network’s existence? Hopefully that’s just a worst case scenario but it’s a possibility we can’t rule out. It’s all a reminder that if you encounter across a dangerous alien that latches onto people’s heads and implants horribly destructive parasites in them that threaten to destroy the world, you should indeed try to free people from the alien’s head-grip but beware when it bleeds.
Well, another woman has come forward charging Roger Ailes with sexually harassing her during a job interview and sabotaging her job when she refused his advances. And in what is either a coincidence of timing or an informal corporate response to this latest allegation, 21st Century Fox finally hired an outsider to lead its human resources department the next day:
“Kevin Lord, formerly of the TV station group Tegna and NBC News, will be the new executive vice president of human resources and will report directly to Fox News co-Presidents Jack Abernethy and Bill Shine.”
So Fox News’s replaces Denise Collins, who has been with Fox News since 2000, with a new outsider to head up the HR department in what is intended to signal a change in the company’s Playboy Mansion-like cult style of corporate leadership. And who is this new outsider going to be directly reporting to? Oh, that’s right, Bill Shine, Ailes’s former deputy and now co-President who has also been identified as someone who played an integral role in facilitating Ailes’s predations and helped cover it up by arranging for smear campaigns against Ailes’s accusers.
What a powerful signal. Fox News has clearly learned its lesson.
With the firing of Bill O’Reilly from Fox News following the latest string of sexual harassment allegations leading to another shakeup of Fox New’s lineup, here’s a reminder that if you were hoping Fox News was going to take this as an opportunity to reshape and moderate its hard right politics and no longer be a source of maelevalent misinformation designed to radicalize its viewership, the Alt-Right has high hopes for Fox News too and their hopes are actually becoming reality:
“Jazzhands McFeels, the pseudonymous co-host of the popular “alt-right” podcast Fash the Nation for the anti-Semitic website The Right Stuff, similarly claimed that Fox had the “opportunity for an all-star lineup” led by Carlson.”
Yes, it’s quite an opportunity at Fox News. An opportunity for neo-Nazis.
Will Carlson live up to those ‘Alt-Right’ hopes? Well, as anyone who has read Tucker Carlson’s The Daily Caller should recognize, yes, he will live up to their hopes because that’s what he’s been doing for years.
And in horribly related news, the ‘Alt-Right’ neo-Nazis have another reason to show some Fox News love: 13 employees are suing the network for racial discrimination:
““When it comes to racial discrimination, 21st Century Fox has been operating as if it should be called 18th Century Fox,” the statement read.”
18th Century Fox. It has an appropriate ring to it. Although given the successes of the global far-right in their long quest to kill social progress, it’s hard to say that “21st Century Fox” isn’t apt too. Sadly.
So we’ll see who they end up replacing Kelly Wright with in his anchor slot, but note which program he alleges he was sidelined from and why: Bill O’Reilly’s show...because Wright might show Blacks in ‘too positive’ a light:
And that’s a good summary of the kind of changes we’re seeing at Fox: They fired a misogynist who refused to show Blacks in too positive a light and replaced him with an Alt-Right dream host. What a big change.
And in other horribly related news...
Remember when CBS’s CEO notoriously said of Donald Trump’s campaign, “it may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS”. If true, just imagine how good a Trump presidency would be a liberal-branded cable news network like MSNBC. Well, it turns out that Trump’s presidency is actually creating a rather significant problem for MSNBC. Or, rather, a problem for Andy Lack, the NBC News executive who oversees MSNBC. It’s a pretty big problem: BIG ratings. Too big, in fact. Way too big.
How can a TV station get ratings that are too big? Well, if the guy running it wants an excuse to turn the station into a right-wing Fox News clone, those record high anti-Trump ratings could become a problem:
““Hayes, Maddow, O’Donnell — the entire primetime lineup is doing record numbers and Lack can’t stand it. It makes him furious,” said one senior MSNBC source, echoing the sentiment of many other insiders who spoke to HuffPost only on the condition of anonymity. (An NBC spokesman said Lack is happy with the high ratings.)”
Yes, the stars aligned for a liberal-leaning news network like MSNBC and the networks right-wing CEO is furious. Furious that had doesn’t have an excuse to do what he’s doing anyway:
Lack isn’t lacking a vision. He’s just lacking a excuse to do now that all his liberal hosts are experiencing record high ratings. And he’s pissed. And note how his vision appears to be the same vision he had for the channel when launch it back in 1996: a blah network without an identity:
That was his bold vision back then and undoing all the liberal branding that took place after he left in 2003 and returning to that identity-lacking vision is clearly his mission today. And the only thing standing his way right now is record high ratings. Record high ratings for just the liberals. And given that the Trump era is just getting underway there’s simply no legitimate business excuse for proceeding ahead with the de-liberalizing of the network. At least no business excuse for MSNBC’s owner, Comcast/NBC Universal. This bumper crop of ratings could go on for years.
But, of course, there’s a massive indirect incentive for the oligarchs that own Comcast/NBC Universal to ditch the liberal-brand regardless of high ratings. Silencing left-wing voices and keeping Americans in the thrall of pro-corporate far-right ideas and memes pays for itself. Through a really, really misinformed, gullible electorate. And once Comcast, which is run by people closely connected to the Republican party, bought out NBC Universal it was pretty clear that it was just a matter of time before that media giant decided to ‘invest’ in creating an extra misinformed, gullible American electorate by slowly eliminating MSNBC’s liberal leaning. Don’t forget that Comcast made one of senior executives, Steve Burke, CEO of NBC Universal when it took over. And Burke was one of George W. Bush’s major fundraisers, he’s the son of Daniel Burke (who ran Bill Casey’s Capital Cities), and it was Burke who brought back Lack to run MSNBC in 2015 in the wake of the Brian Williams scandal.
Again, it’s been pretty clear for a while that Comcast wants to Fox-ify MSNBC. But now the ratings for the liberals spiked which means they can do this transition plausibly. And that makes the prospect of some sort of MSNBC liberal boycott a lot more likely if they proceed with Andy Lack’s vision. Not that a formal boycott will be necessary since people will just stop watching the network due to the crappy right-wing hosts. But it’s still possible there’s going to be some sort of boycott to protest this. So don’t forget, if there is eventually an MSNBC boycott movement over this that won’t really make much sense since Comcast is clearly views an MSNBC nobody watches more preferable than a liberal MSNBC lots of people watch so an MSNBC boycott won’t really matter. It should actually be a Comcast boycott.
Check out the likely next White House communications director: former Fox News co-president Bill Shine!
Recall how Shine was belated forced out of Fox News last year after all of the revelations about him enabling Roger Ailes’s predatory sexual harassment and protecting a corporate culture at Fox News that was described as a Playboy Mansion-like cult. It was a belated departure because Fox News actually promoted Shine to co-President in late 2016 following Ailes’s departure despite the revelations of the role Shine played on those abuses. But Shine was eventually forced out of Fox News. And look where he is now (soon):
“Mr. Shine, who was forced out as co-president at Fox last May for his handling of sexual harassment scandals at the network, has met with President Trump in recent weeks about taking the West Wing communications job, which has been vacant since Hope Hicks left the job in March.”
It sure sounds like Shine is going to get the job. So is the White House worried about hiring some as scandalous as Shine? Well, yes, they are concerned. But also confident that they don’t need to be too concerned because they can weather the inevitable blowback:
So that’s the person who will likely be crafting the White House’s messaging: the guy who was Roger Ailes’s sexual harassment enforcer. It’s quite a meta-message to the world.
Fox News is knowingly poisoning the minds of America and has new big plans to expand that poisoning to whole new levels of toxicity. That was the take away message from a pair of recent stories that, taken together, point towards an even darker turn for the Fox News disinformation empire in coming decades:
First, there was a piece published by a Preston Padden, president of network distribution at the Fox Broadcasting Company for seven years, that amounts to a public cry for help. Help convincing Rupert Murdoch to recognize the damage his network is doing to the world. That was the gist of Padden’s piece, where he explains that he spent the last nine months trying to convince Rupert Murdoch of the damage being inflicted on America by Fox News’s non-stop stream of lies about a stolen election. Padden also pointed to the continual suggestion that armies of Antifa and BLM soldiers are burning and looting cities nightly in America (which really is the message conveyed by Fox New’s prime time nightly line-up, basically every night). Padden ends the piece with what amounts to anguished capitulation. “Over the past nine months I have tried, with increasing bluntness, to get Rupert to understand the real damage that Fox News is doing to America. I failed, and it was arrogant and naïve to ever have thought that I could succeed. I am at a loss to understand why he will not change course. I can only guess that the destructive editorial policy of Fox News is driven by a deep-seated vein of anti-establishment/contrarian thinking in Rupert that, at age 90, is not going to change.” Padden tried to get Rupert to see the light and found only darkness. A darkness that remains firmly in control of the Murdoch news empire:
“The greatest irony is that I don’t believe that most of the falsehoods on Fox News reflect Rupert Murdoch’s own views. I believe that he thought that it was important to protect his own health by wearing a mask during the pandemic and he encouraged me to do the same. I believe that he thought that it was important to protect his own health by getting vaccinated at the earliest opportunity and he encouraged me to do the same. And I believe that he thinks that former President Trump is an egomaniac who lost the election by turning off voters, especially suburban women, with his behavior.”
It’s pretty obvious but still has to be said: Rupert Murdoch is fully aware his network is willing the audience’s heads with lies. Murdoch doesn’t believe the lies himself. He can identify the lies. But he still demands the network broadcast them. Why? That remains the mystery. We know Rupert Murdoch doesn’t really believe the garbage pumped out by his network, but even today we still don’t really know what drives Rupert Murdoch. Why did he build this global far right lie machine? Was it just for the money and power? Is it driven by an ideological agenda in concert with broader forces? Or is Rupert Murdoch just an insane nihilist who wants to watch the world burn? It’s been a question the world has failed to answer for decades and we’ll probably never truly get an answer. He’ll likely go to his grave never sharing why he decided to become a kind of global supervillain. But we at least might get some more insight into Rupert’s interest in watching the world burn now that we’re learning that Fox is staring a new Fox Weather Channel. Yes, the ‘news’ empire that has specialized in denying climate change is now set to capitalize on the growing number of extreme weather events that are sure to make weather an ever growing topic of interest:
“Amid a waning appetite for political news in the post-Trump era, media executives are realizing that demand for weather updates is ubiquitous — and for an increasing swath of the country, a matter of urgent concern. In the past week alone, temperatures in the Pacific Northwest broke records, wildfires burned in Colorado and Tropical Storm Elsa strengthened into a hurricane over the Atlantic Ocean.”
It’s hard to argue with the business logic: as the climate changes, more and more regions of the world are going to become increasing fixated on their broken weather. It’s going to be a matter of life and death and that means great life-and-death ratings. No wonder Rupert views the sector as ripe for disruption. It’s posed to explode:
And note how, despite all of the efforts of Fox News, even a majority of Republicans are concerned about humanity’s contribution to climate change. It points towards what we should expect to be a core agenda item for this new station, at least during its debut: sowing doubts about climate change as a source for all the extreme weather events its going to be covering:
You can see the contours of a rather diabolical business model develop: get ratings from all the extreme climate-change-related weather events and then get additional ratings from all the controversy created by coverage denying the role climate change played in the event. The lies, and subsequent uproar over the lies, sell themselves. And these aren’t just any lies. They are existential lies. It’s like lying about a giant meteor heading towards the earth. Hugely impactful lies that will be shaping the course of events for centuries to come. It’s entirely possible the lies about climate change could end up being the most important lies ever told. The lies that doomed the species.
And as Preston Padden was reminding us with his public cry for some hint of humanity from Rupert, telling really big, impactful lies with devastating consequences is precisely the Fox News business model: tell really big important lies, get all the ratings associated with telling those really big important lies, and then get all of the ratings that come from all of the consequences and controversy that erupts from the telling of all of those lies. It’s all part of the mystery of what’s driving Rupert: the guy clearly wants to see the world burn. A burning world generates more ratings, after all. That’s hot news! But we still don’t know if he wants to watch the world burn because he wants to watch it burn, or if he just wants to watch it burn because it’s more profitable for him when it burns. We know he wanted to watch the world burn and gleefully fueled the flames, but we still don’t know why and probably never will. And yet the world is still going to burn whether or not we ever get an answer to why he chose to live a life of supervillainy. The consequences of Rupert’s life will be felt even if he goes to his grave never explaining why he chose to inflict so much damage and destruction. Preston Padden and the rest of us can wonder about the motives all we want. The catastrophic consequences of Rupert’s life will still be felt.
It points to one of the ironies in a life like Rupert’s: the damage caused by his life is going to be so severe, the most enduring aspect of his legacy is likely to be the unanswered question of why he chose to live such a remorselessly destructive life in the first place.