Fox Is Dead: Hardcore Liberal James Murdoch to Turn Fox News into a ‘Global Brand’ Promoting ‘Progressive Values’

Image of Lachlan, Rupert and James Murdoch

With the ouster of Roger Ailes and now Bill O’Reilly, Rupert Murdoch’s son has overthrown his own network as he moves to reinvent the family company’s profit machine at great risk.

EDITOR’S NOTE: I am not defending Bill O’Reilly’s alleged interactions with his co-workers, but ask yourself this question. Why on earth would Fox News dump O’Reilly, a man who had the most popular cable news show for the past 16 years and made Fox untold hundreds of millions each year? The answer, as we are now finding out, is a simple one. James Murdoch, son of Fox News founder Rupert Murdoch, is a hardcore Liberal whose mission in life is to remove all traces of conservatism from the network. His wife, Kathryn, worked for the Clinton Foundation. Fox News will now become CNN 2.0. Any questions?

After The New York Times wrote about the sexual harassment claims leveled at Fox News anchor Bill O’Reilly and the settlements made by the company and O’Reilly himself, James Murdoch, according to 21st Century Fox sources, kept repeating with horror to his friends and executives: “This is on the front page of The New York Times!”

These sources say James Murdoch’s long-time annoyance if not disgust with Fox News became cold fury after the Times‘ April 1 story — even though several of the O’Reilly settlements had happened when James was CEO of the parent company. This was a similar reaction to what had followed the harassment suit by former anchor Gretchen Carlson against Fox News chief Roger Ailes in July. Every time Fox controversies spilled over into the wider world, James took it personally. “It was somehow against him,” says one person close to the Murdochs.

Fox News is a business he should not be in, he had told people before, despite its major contribution to 21st Century Fox’s bottom line —20 percent of its profits came from Fox News last year, the biggest-earning division in the company. Presumably, he meant the in-your-face world of conservative cable news with its mega personalities. Indeed, James regarded many of the people at Fox News as thuggish Neanderthals and said he was embarrassed to be in the same company with them.

Murdoch Brothers Assure Investors of Fox News’ Future:

Last summer, the Murdoch brothers “assured shareholders” that they were not going to radically change the phenomenally successful business model known as Fox News that their father created, but guess what? They lied. A lot. 

But, likewise, it would be hard to imagine how James could have been regarded with more contempt by many of the people at Fox News. James was rather exhibit No. 1 of the liberal elite entitlement that Fox had so profitably programmed against. “Fox [News] is an important brand, but it needs to develop, and, to some extent, be reformed,” James said when I interviewed him ten years ago in his office as the chief executive of the Murdoch-controlled Sky TV in Britain, whose significantly less-partisan news operation he extolled as a ratings and journalistic model.

He seized his first opportunity for reform in July when, over his father Rupert’s protests and his brother and co-executive Lachlan’s ambivalence, he pushed for the ouster of Ailes, the network’s founder and almost all-powerful executive. When the O’Reilly story hit the Times, he overrode his father and brother again — and, by the same method he had used with Ailes, hiring a Democratic-associated law firm, Paul Weiss, to perform a rubber-stamp investigation. (In neither the Ailes nor O’Reilly investigations were the targets of the investigation interviewed.)

It was, he proudly told friends, a right decision rather than a business decision. The billionaire scion was aligning himself, profits be damned, with a new generation of corporate responsibility. That put him quite directly at odds with his father. It would be quite inconceivable to imagine Rupert sacrificing sure profits for greater good or a better image; indeed, his company had always been a pirate company.

But that really is the larger point — in which Bill O’Reilly and Roger Ailes were in the end just collateral damage — it isn’t his father’s company anymore.

If the expulsion of Ailes, and, even more dramatically, O’Reilly, mean anything, it means most of all that James is in charge. And, most immediately, this means that Fox News, that constant irritant in James’ view of himself as a progressive and visionary television executive, will begin to change. Virtually overnight.

Kathryn Murdoch Speaks at the first annual EAT Stockholm Food Forum:

James Murdoch’s wife Kathryn is a Far-Left liberal who worked for the Clinton Foundation’s Climate Change program. 

But, likewise, it would be hard to imagine how James could have been regarded with more contempt by many of the people at Fox News.

James was rather exhibit No. 1 of the liberal elite entitlement that Fox had so profitably programmed against.

“Fox News is an important brand, but it needs to develop, and, to some extent, be reformed,” James said when I interviewed him ten years ago in his office as the chief executive of the Murdoch-controlled Sky TV in Britain, whose significantly less-partisan news operation he extolled as a ratings and journalistic model.

He seized his first opportunity for reform in July when, over his father Rupert’s protests and his brother and co-executive Lachlan’s ambivalence, he pushed for the ouster of Ailes, the network’s founder and almost all-powerful executive. When the O’Reilly story hit the Times, he overrode his father and brother again — and, by the same method he had used with Ailes, hiring a Democratic-associated law firm, Paul Weiss, to perform a rubber-stamp investigation. (In neither the Ailes nor O’Reilly investigations were the targets of the investigation interviewed.)

It was, he proudly told friends, a right decision rather than a business decision. The billionaire scion was aligning himself, profits be damned, with a new generation of corporate responsibility. That put him quite directly at odds with his father. It would be quite inconceivable to imagine Rupert sacrificing sure profits for greater good or a better image; indeed, his company had always been a pirate company.

But that really is the larger point — in which Bill O’Reilly and Roger Ailes were in the end just collateral damage — it isn’t his father’s company anymore.

If the expulsion of Ailes, and, even more dramatically, O’Reilly, mean anything, it means most of all that James is in charge.
And, most immediately, this means that Fox News, that constant irritant in James’ view of himself as a progressive and visionary television executive, will begin to change. Virtually overnight. source

The post FOX IS DEAD: Hardcore Liberal James Murdoch To Turn Fox News Into A ‘Global Brand’ Promoting ‘Progressive Values’ appeared first on Now The End Begins.