Rupert Murdoch

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Australian-American media oligarch & billionaire; presides over the world's largest climate denial media empire.

News Corp

Owner of News Corp.

The Australian

The Daily Telegraph (Sydney)

<https://twitter.com/KetanJ0/status/1180755270877749249>

Fox News

Founded Fox News in 1996, choosing Republican PR executive Roger Ailes as the company's first CEO and Chairman.

Rupert Murdoch has been the executive chairman of Fox News since 2016.

Fox News is notorious as the leading source of climate denial in US TV News, and greatly implicated in the extent of US climate denial relative to other countries.

Election Denial

In February 2023, Rupert Murdoch acknowledged that Fox News hosts knowingly endorsed false stolen election claims[1][2]

Court filings in the ongoing lawsuit claim that Murdoch gave Jared Kushner “confidential information about Biden’s ads, along with debate strategy…providing Kushner a preview of Biden’s ads before they were public.”[3]

Fox Sports

Superbowl 57

Elon Musk

Both right-wing greenwashing media oligarchs were pictured sitting together at the Superbowl in February 2023. Their media platforms (Twitter & Fox Sports) used the event to host a coordinated greenwashing & advertising campaign. Elon Musk also owns a leading electric car company, Tesla.

Electric Cars

Automobiles (electric or not) kill an estimated 1 million animals on high-speed U.S. roadways every day. Jeep's "Grand Cherokee" ad greenwashed their electric automobile as wildlife-friendly with a broad menagerie of 'dancing' animated CGI animals.

Ram Trucks teased prospective buyers over their supposed fear of "premature electrification."

In the rush to power U.S. electric cars, there is an Anti-Indigenous Lithium rush underway:

  • Thacker Pass [4]
  • About the Coup in Bolivia where 50-70% of the world's Lithium is, Elon Tweeted: “We will coup whoever we want! Deal with it" - referring to the nation's Indigenous, democratically elected leadership and government.

Fox Nation

Yellowstone

Political Influence

Murdochracy

Coined by decorated journalist John Pilger, used to describe "rule by Murdoch" given the extent of his media empire's political influence and control.[5]

Used by Al Jazeera in 2020, among other instances.[6]

United Kingdom

<https://www.aljazeera.com/program/the-listening-post/2015/12/26/the-murdoch-empire-strikes-back>

<https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2011/7/11/murdochs-dirty-tricks-against-palestinians>

Greenwashing

Media Strategy

Although best known for his decades of outright climate denial through Fox News and other outlets, Rupert Murdoch's media empire has increasingly pivoted towards adopting greenwashing tactics in addition to outright climate denial:

"It is dawning on News Corp: the best way to protect the fossil fuel industry today is not to deny the science, but to pretend to accept it. This is not the end of climate denial. It’s evolution from a common ancestor.

For instance, Murdoch's The Sun (UK) (formerly the #1 circulating newspaper in the UK), launched a "Green Team" campaign in 2020 that focused on "individual responsibility" in the lead-up to COP26 (held in Glasgow that year). Once the moment passed, the paper went right back to celebrating in early 2021 its success in forestalling policies to curb fossil fuel pollution by freezing fossil fuel taxes.[7][8]

What might reasonably seem like a surprising change of heart in News Corp’s stance on climate is actually a long-term tactical shift that has been occurring for at least a few years. Whatever policies they failed to destroy through their earlier campaigns, they will try and reframe through racist, nationalistic, technocratic and pro-business frames.[9]

Cattle Ranches

Cavan Station

Beaverhead Ranch

Billionaire media honcho Rupert Murdoch and his wife Jerry have quietly picked up a roughly 345,000-acre working cattle ranch in southwest Montana from the Koch family, as first reported by The Wall Street Journal. Situated south of the city of Dillon, near Yellowstone National Park, the off-market transaction netted the Koch Industries subsidiary Matador Cattle Co. a jaw-dropping $200 million in what is reportedly the priciest and largest land deal in the state’s history. [10]

Brokerage firm Hall & Hall said following its sale to Rupert Murdoch and his wife Jerry: ‘In assuming ownership, Mr Murdoch finds himself as the steward of not only an iconic property, he becomes a voice in the future of agriculture in the U.S.’[11]

Sources