Since the rise of Fox News, the industry has failed to earn the public’s confidence. We see now where that can lead.
It’s easy to forget that while the first Watergate article appeared in the summer of 1972, Richard Nixon did not resign until 1974.
Over the course of those two years, Nixon won reelection in a historic landslide, mocked journalism and threatened the repeatedly. It wasn’t until the Supreme Court ordered the release of tape recordings related to the scandal that Nixon acknowledged the reporting was true and resigned in shame.
Something else happened during these two years as well: The Australian media mogul Rupert Murdoch bought his first U.S. newspaper — the San Antonio Express-News — and he moved to New York.
Fascinating timeline, isn’t it? As the true power of journalism was emerging in the country, Murdoch came to America to pervert the field, just as he had done in other countries with a free press.
Before Watergate, Nixon had often fantasized with his top aide Roger Ailes about running his own conservative television network. Murdoch was already known in his country and Europe for using his newspapers to push a conservative agenda using misinformation. Murdoch’s impulses and Nixon’s seemed almost destined to unite eventually, and indeed, decades later when the mogul made the former president’s dream come true by creating the conservative network Fox News, Ailes was hired to run it.
A couple other pieces had to fall into place first though. President Reagan obliged. In the ’80s, Reagan expedited Murdoch’s immigration status, so that as a U.S. citizen, he could buy more of America’s media companies. As he took power, Murdoch leaned on editors and producers to reflect his political views and not the truth that journalists found through reporting.
