Rupert Murdoch didn’t come to America to participate in our democracy. He came to own it.
Since his birth in Australia, this oligarch has used the First Amendment as a tool to destroy American freedoms which he has maintained for almost thirty years while constructing a propaganda network that surpasses Joseph Goebbels’ mimeograph-based operations.
The news network Fox News established itself as the dominant political power in conservative America through radicalization of its viewers rather than providing factual information, within a ten-year period. The network moved to the right, but it did not stop there. The platform created a fictional world which presented climate change as a false claim, Obama as Muslim and immigrants as invaders while blaming liberal elites for all Republican policy breakdowns.
Murdoch achieved his greatest accomplishments through his work as a journalist. Fox became mainlined rage for millions of Americans who couldn’t tell they were being systematically lied to because the lies felt so satisfying. But the real damage went deeper than any single lie. Murdoch weaponized the First Amendment itself, turning press freedom into a shield for deliberate disinformation. The actual harm extended past the point of any individual deception. Murdoch protected his disinformation campaign through First Amendment rights which he used to defend his press freedom. The lawyers of Murdoch used constitutional protections which were intended to defend real journalism after Fox broadcast false information.
When critics called Fox propaganda, Murdoch wrapped himself in free speech principles while actively undermining the informed public discourse those principles were meant to enable. The billionaire used constitutional jiu-jitsu to outmaneuver American freedoms which he understood better than many citizens while using this knowledge to build wealth and gain control.
The 2020 election exposed all existing levels of corruption in its entirety. Trump lost. Biden won. Every court case which sought to prove fraud was thrown out. The results went through multiple counting procedures for verification. Murdoch knew this. The evidence exists in his own email communications. He called Trump’s stolen election claims “bulls— and damaging” in private communications. He acknowledged that Rudy Giuliani was peddling “crazy stuff.” Fox hosts privately mocked Sidney Powell’s conspiracy theories as deranged fantasies. All of them understood the truth. And then they went on air and lied anyway.
Fox News spent months amplifying baseless claims that Dominion Voting Systems had rigged the election. Their prime-time hosts gave platform after platform to conspiracy theorists claiming Venezuela, China, and George Soros had somehow manipulated voting machines to steal the presidency from Trump. It was complete fiction. Murdoch admitted under oath that he could have stopped it. He could have told CEO Suzanne Scott to pull Giuliani off the air. He could have ordered his anchors to tell the truth. “I could have,” Murdoch testified in his deposition. “But I didn’t.” Why? Because Fox was hemorrhaging viewers to even more extreme right-wing outlets like Newsmax and OAN. The base of Trump supporters watched Fox News which resulted in the network losing its audience whenever it presented information that disagreed with Trump.
Murdoch selected financial gain above factual reporting because he discovered that maintaining viewers in a state of misinformation and hostility generated more profits than doing actual journalism. The price Murdoch paid for his cowardly actions was beyond measurement. Through his network of false information, he contributed to the January 6th Capitol insurrection. The United States currently deals with dangerous conspiracy theories that continue to spread across the entire nation. They created an alternate information ecosystem where millions of Americans now genuinely believe demonstrable falsehoods because Fox News told them what they wanted to hear instead of what they needed to know.
Dominion Voting Systems sued Fox for $1.6 billion in defamation damages. The evidence proved so strong against Fox that they chose to pay $787.5 million instead of facing a jury which would have exposed their intentional deception in its entirety. It was one of the largest defamation settlements in American history. Murdoch paid nearly a billion dollars rather than admit in court what he’d already admitted under oath: that Fox News knowingly broadcast false information to millions of Americans for profit.
The story takes a dark turn at this point. Murdoch took actions that caused more harm to American democracy than the damage he created through his poisoning of the system. The creature he had made escaped from his control. The MAGA movement which Fox News established has grown beyond what Murdoch can manage. Trump, whom Murdoch privately despises and called a “non-person” after January 6th, now dominates Republican politics so completely that even Murdoch can’t stop him.
Tucker Carlson attended the 2024 Republican National Convention as a VIP guest in Trump’s box despite his Fox News termination for extreme views while Murdoch observed from another area like an uninvited guest at his own gathering. Donald Trump Jr. now openly mocks Murdoch’s influence, declaring “there was a time where if you wanted to survive in the Republican Party you had to bend the knee to him… I don’t think that’s the case anymore.” The apprentice has surpassed the sorcerer, and Murdoch’s attempts to rein in Trump have failed spectacularly. Fox wanted Ron DeSantis for 2024. Trump crushed him. The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page has criticized Trump’s tariffs and pardons for January 6th rioters. Trump doesn’t care. Trump threatens to sue Murdoch for $10 billion because of a Jeffrey Epstein story which has humiliated the man who enabled his presidency throughout decades.
The situation would be poetic justice, but it would come at a terrible cost for America. Murdoch built an empire on lies, and now Trump is using that empire’s playbook against him while simultaneously using Murdoch’s techniques to execute an authoritarian takeover of American democracy. Through Fox News Trump discovered that loyalty surpasses truth value because he could disregard judicial authority by dominating media discourse and disregard constitutional rules that apply to powerless individuals. Watch how Trump wields federal funding like a weapon against Democratic states. He has blocked billions of dollars in congressional funding which he directed at states that did not support him through the same partisan revenge tactics that Fox News promoted for thirty years. He blocked $18 billion for New York infrastructure. Canceled $8 billion in climate funding for 16 blue states. Withheld over $410 billion in federal funds that Congress approved and he signed into law. This is illegal. The courts have determined that this practice breaks constitutional law. Trump doesn’t care because he learned from Murdoch that if you control the message to your base, legality is irrelevant. Through Fox News Trump learned that reality exists only in what he can make his supporters accept as true and he fully adopted this understanding. He’s using federal agencies as partisan weapons, just like Fox used journalism as a partisan weapon.
The same aggressive methods which Fox News popularized on television now target universities, immigrants and political opponents. Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation blueprint for authoritarian governance, reads like Fox News programming turned into federal policy. Consolidate executive power. Weaponize agencies. Eliminate independence. Transform government into a patronage system. Murdoch uses his business approach to control democracy through narrative manipulation, punishment of opposition and reward of supporters while maintaining a story that ignores factual evidence.
The bitterest irony is that Murdoch now finds himself unable to stop what he started. The Wall Street Journal editorial section now criticizes Trump because his tariff policy changes create economic disasters, and his Harvard University attacks prove unproductive. But Fox News the real power center of Murdoch’s empire remains a pure MAGA propaganda organ. Fox won’t turn on Trump because Murdoch knows what would happen. Trump would tell his supporters to abandon Fox, and they would. The audience Fox radicalized over 30 years now belongs to Trump, not Murdoch. The propagandist has become the prisoner of his own propaganda.
Murdoch created an apparatus which produced right-wing anger while controlling Republican voter behaviour. The machine operated with such effectiveness that it produced an authoritarian movement which Murdoch cannot manage because it follows a leader who presents as more extreme than Murdoch. Trump doesn’t want to influence American politics. He plans to acquire full ownership through the same methods Murdoch used to achieve his goals including spreading false information, using fear tactics, presenting only chosen facts and creating artificial realities. This is Murdoch’s legacy. Not journalism. Not even profitable media.
The United States now faces a situation where a would-be authoritarian leader can disregard constitutional laws while proclaiming protection of the Constitution because an Australian media mogul has successfully poisoned the national dialogue. The United States now faces a crisis because one Australian billionaire chose his financial performance over American freedom which has led to democratic values disappearing.
Murdoch entered America by holding up the First Amendment as protection but employed it to attack others. Through his control of press freedoms, he established a propaganda network which worked against the purpose of free press to maintain an educated public. He deliberately spread false information to distort public conversations before he used his constitutional rights to protect himself from legal consequences. Through his actions he converted political disagreements into an absolute conflict which eliminated all possibility of agreement and made factual accuracy subject to personal interpretation.
And now, as Trump uses Murdoch’s own playbook to potentially destroy American democracy completely, the 94-year-old billionaire who started this fire finds himself unable to extinguish it. Fox News will keep lying because truth would lose viewers. The Wall Street Journal maintains its negative stance toward Trump because its business-focused audience requires dependable news coverage. The three decades of Fox News exposure have taught Trump that his base will support him no matter what because they do not value facts or legal boundaries or constitutional principles as long as he wins.
Rupert Murdoch should never have been allowed to own American media. A foreign national shouldn’t have been permitted to accumulate this much influence over American democracy. But he did, and we let him, and now we’re living with the consequences: a country where tens of millions of citizens inhabit different factual realities, where truth has become partisan, where authoritarianism masquerades as patriotism, and where the constitutional freedoms Murdoch exploited might not survive the monster he created. The Australian came to America claiming he loved our freedoms. He just loved them most when he could weaponize them for profit while watching American democracy eat itself alive. Mission accomplished, Rupert. Sleep well in your $21 billion bed knowing you might have killed the greatest democratic experiment in human history. At least the quarterly earnings were outstanding.
-James O’Connor, Media Correspondent, FUSA News