Rupert Murdoch vs Fox News

In an interview given to Rolling Stone for its October edition, President Obama is asked what he thinks of Rupert Murdoch’s television channel Fox News. “Look,” says Obama  (and you can almost hear him sucking in his breath), “I swore to uphold the Constitution, and part of that Constitution is a free press.” But, Obama goes on, Fox is not like other media outlets. It follows in the media tradition of William Randolph Hearst—godfather of yellow journalism and the inspiration for Citizen Kane—who used his media outlet to promote their viewpoints with little respect for objectivity.

This is a common charge against Murdoch, and his critics will be nodding vigorously at Obama’s implication. That is, until this afternoon when the Australian media mogul heads up to Capitol Hill to appear before the House Subcommittee on Immigration,  Citizenship, Refugees, Border Security, and International Law Membership. There he will be talking about illegal workers in the country. There's nothing surprising in that. Fox News regularly offers a platform to those who, shall we say, are wary of "outsiders," whilst in Britain the Sun finds it difficult to resist the charms of an anti-immigration story. But now comes the double-take.  Murdoch will be speaking up for immigrants.

Together with New York mayor Michael Bloomberg, and representing business from Boeing, Disney, and Hewlett-Packard, Murdoch is part of an immigration reform campaign that aims to grant citizenship to the country’s 10-20 million illegal immigrants and to create an easier path to citizenship for outsiders.

Immigration has been a hot issue of late, especially with the introduction of Arizona’s controversial anti-immigration SB1070 law this summer. However, in an interview with Fox News (who else?) this June, Rupe said that he understood people’s anxieties about Hispanic immigration but “it’s been going on this country for hundreds of years—we just have to adjust.” He also stated that while he believed in securing the border, the US also had to “recognize (the) millions of bright intelligent people around the world—whether in China or Hungary or Germany—who want to come to America and live the American dream.”

Murdoch, who became a US citizen in 1987 to satisfy media ownership rules, can expect flak from all sides. On the one hand his pro-immigration stance proves, contra Obama, that he is no William Randolph Hearst. At least on this issue his newspapers and TV stations follow the agenda of their audience, not that of their proprietor. Populism outstrips politics. As Obama also noted in the interview with Rolling Stone “I suspect that if you ask Mr Murdoch what his number-one concern is, it's that Fox is very successful.”

On the other hand, Murdoch will be called a hypocrite for not directing his outlets, Fox News and the Sun, in defence of his cause. Indeed one might argue that immigration is in the interests of the global rich, like Murdoch, because it keeps wages down. And if one were very cynical, one might even stretch that point further by arguing that the tensions immigration causes help sell his newspapers and stir the sentiments of Fox viewers and keep the workers divided.

Or perhaps Rupert has a heart after all.

To find out what else Murdoch is right about, click here