Rupert Murdoch is being deposed today and tomorrow in the Dominion suit, so here are some thoughts about how the conservative media landscape could be quite different in a couple of years.
The thing you need to understand is that conservative media operates like a cartel because of Fox and Facebook. Both have been having serious legal trouble.
Fox is vulnerable in a way it hasn't been in a long time. Rupert Murdoch took out a $100 million loan from the Bank of China in April, and he was married to a woman the U.S. government considers a likely Chinese spy. I’ve covered NBC’s relationships with the Chinese government too, so I’m not a partisan about this.
Fox Corporation probably doesn’t have the $1.5 billion the Dominion lawsuit is asking for under the couch cushions, let alone that plus the $2.7 billion Smartmatic is asking for. This raises the possibility of Fox going under.
There is also the rather interesting Crikey lawsuit, in which we are going to find out if Australians are allowed to call the Murdochs unindicted co-conspirators in January 6.
These lawsuits, even if Fox beats them, will cause the company to behave differently. These depositions are providing a look into how things work, and certain “security issues” of ongoing relevance may reveal themselves. No need to name names here, we already know. You can sort of tell by looking at the way certain hosts cover certain things. Sean Hannity should probably be a FARA registrant.
Hunter Biden should compound this situation by suing News Corp for invasion of privacy, along the lines of the Bollea v. Gawker suit. Lachlan Murdoch is trying to do the Peter Thiel thing to Crikey, and turnabout is fair play.
The whole question of whether this is possible hinges on whether you believe the story about Hunter Biden dropping off his laptop at the computer repair store in Delaware. I saw the hard drive, reported on it, and I don’t. Nobody has produced video evidence of it, at any rate. I did not touch the prurient matter, and would prefer not to have seen it.
The FBI told Twitter they believed Hunter Biden would be subjected to a “hack-and-leak” operation sometime around the election. I have plenty of criticisms of the FBI, but various contacts made in the course of reporting out the hard drive lead me to believe that is probably correct.
The materials I was given were clearly arranged for consumption by reporters. Certain files were flagged, and they were divided into categories related to his admittedly unusual business endeavors.
There are a lot of strange claims flying around about the hard drive at the moment, and various people are now saying some of the files were fabricated. This is squid ink.
Many conservatives in Washington have the expectation that an oversight investigation of the Hunter Biden matter—how Twitter censored it with the assistance of government entities—will restore their fortunes. They are mistaking their interests for the interests of Fox, which happens a lot. This might not end the way they think it will.
The chaos in the House a few weeks ago threw the possibility of such an investigation into question in the first place. It seems likely this is one reason why Fox’s hosts were so insistent on getting conservatives to unite behind Kevin McCarthy. Their fates may be linked.
Such an investigation can be managed in a way that is advantageous to Republicans and to Fox: they will get to appear vindicated. But a lawsuit could also get to the bottom of the Hunter Biden matter, in a more neutral manner.
It might be good for the courts to send a strong message disincentivizing the publication of hacked materials of a prurient nature, as I suspect these are, and it surprises me that conservatives do not agree.
To make this point, I am afraid, is to burn your bridges with the conservative movement. There is not just Fox’s famously nasty PR department, but the galaxy of right-of-center professionals in Washington who trade on their Fox contacts. If you’re a conservative and you cross them, you’ll get a call from some oversexed New York girlboss, who’ll tell you to get in line, retract your piece, whatever. That’s why all conservative newsrooms have the Fox rule: don’t ever criticize them in print. This is well-known, but nobody talks about it.
Certain people benefit from this arrangement, but I submit it hasn’t really been good for conservatives. It’d be good for America for these people to be washed out, frankly.
I certainly have no interest in living in a country where the hard drives of family members of a presidential candidate, as a matter of course, are routinely exposed by shady actors in an attempt to influence elections.
The Hunter Biden files are strike two for the Murdochs when it comes to hacked materials with high blackmail potential, after the News of the World scandal in the UK. They may not get a third. Dum spiro spero.