Hey, James Murdoch: You have no standing to denounce Trump's Charlottesville reaction
By Erik Wemple August 18 at 1:11 PM
James Murdoch is the chief executive of 21st Century Fox, the company that oversees Fox News. He is also the son of Rupert Murdoch, a founder of Fox News. He is also the writer of a much-covered email to his colleagues at 21st Century Fox, an email that comes in reaction to a grim week of headlines: Clashes in Charlottesville at a rally organized by neo-Nazis and KKK members, followed by a dismal effort by President Trump to blame both sides.
“It has not been my habit to widely offer running commentary on current affairs, nor to presume to weigh in on the events of a given day save those that might be of particular or specific concern to 21CF and my colleagues,” wrote Murdoch. “But what we watched this last week in Charlottesville and the reaction to it by the President of the United States concern all of us as Americans and free people.”
More sentiments along those lines from an executive who handles Fox News: “The presence of hate in our society was appallingly laid bare as we watched swastikas brandished on the streets of Charlottesville and acts of brutal terrorism and violence perpetrated by a racist mob. I can’t even believe I have to write this: standing up to Nazis is essential; there are no good Nazis. Or Klansmen, or terrorists. Democrats, Republicans, and others must all agree on this, and it compromises nothing for them to do so.”
The email takes a turn into the company’s content: “Certainly no company can be perfect. But I’m proud of the powerful art that can emerge, and I’m grateful to all of my colleagues who make this happen. From the potent and compelling narrative of ’12 Years a Slave’, to the streets of Pakistan and the bravery of an extraordinary young woman that we saw in ‘He Named Me Malala’, to name just a few, we’ve never been afraid to help storytellers and artists say important things – hard things, too.”
Seems Mr. Murdoch omitted a certain other category of content: Fox News, the crown jewel of the company’s U.S. holdings. It yields $1.5 billion in annual profits. And some indeterminate chunk of those profits stem from the Fox News Channel’s promotion of Trump and its blind eye to his racist campaign, which started in June 2015 by maligning Mexicans as “rapists”; went on to call for a ban on Muslims entering the United States; repeatedly failed to call out anti-Semitism; and otherwise gave every indication that, when the president would be confronted with an event such as Charlottesville, he would act precisely as he did.
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple/wp/2017/08/18/hey-james-murdoch-you-have-no-standing-to-denounce-trumps-charlottesville-reaction/?hpid=hp_no-name_opinion-card-e%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.912370bf6cf7
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