For the second day in a row, The Washington Post ran a front-page story on the expected departure of longtime Fox News boss Roger Ailes. The headline was “A big divide for Fox News chief, sons of Murdoch.”
Conservatives spewed coffee and/or laughed at the fourth paragraph, where business reporters Ana Swanson and Steven Mufson pretended that most networks – ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, CNN, PBS – huddled tightly around centrism:
At a time when most TV networks hewed close to the center of public opinion, Ailes made right-wing populist views a profitable and influential franchise, transforming the tone of American political culture and tapping into a demographic much like his own. “I think that my primary qualification for running a news channel is that I don’t have a degree in journalism,” he told C-SPAN in a 2004 interview.
By contrast, media reporter Paul Farhi was more circumspect in their front-pager on Wednesday:
“Under his guidance, Fox News grew into a pugnacious and popular news and opinion source, far surpassing the pioneering and more centrist CNN in ratings and profits.”
“More centrist” is media code for “Obama helpers.” Swanson and Mufson channel the usual liberal hope that Rupert’s sons will do with that media empire what many heirs of conservative billionaires do: tilt to the left, and abandon Daddy’s capitalist convictions.
James has long had an interest in global warming and measures needed to stop it. He sought to make BSkyB, one part of Murdoch’s European operations, carbon-neutral. And his wife, Kathryn, sits on the board of the Environmental Defense Fund; she is also president of the Quadrivium Foundation, which focuses on natural resources, “civic life, childhood health and equal opportunity.”
And while many longtime readers of National Geographic feared that Rupert Murdoch, who has dismissed climate-change concerns, would water down the magazine’s coverage of global warming, James has been supportive of the coverage and of the magazine’s independence.
