Following a damning Four Corners expose on Fox News’s coverage of Former President Donald Trump, News Corp has denied being a giant propaganda machine. The Murdoch-owned corporation made the denials in all of its major Australian-based news mastheads, and throughout its international outlets, as well as in a direct legal threat reportedly sent to ABC Chair Ita Buttrose by Fox News.
The News Corp outlets, which don’t pay tax in Australia, claimed that the Four Corners program was a waste of ‘our taxpayer money’.
Australian News Corp outlets have (at the time of writing this article) released at least 45 articles slamming Four Corners and the ABC over the piece, including multiple by a guy who loves to whistle for dogs Chris Kenny, who managed to even release an article attacking the ABC program before it was released.
(In fairness to Kenny, he has previously criticised Trump and anyone else who pushed the claim that the US election was ‘stolen’, referring to them as hurting the “strength of democracy”. Presumably by ‘anyone else’ Kenny was referring to Fox News and his colleagues at Sky After Dark.)
“We are not under the thumb of the Murdoch family,” said a representative for every outlet around the world simultaneously while chanting in a circle, “Any clips of our hosts or our producers bragging about us having that power to sway Trump do not prove anything as clearly our hosts and producers cannot be considered trustworthy sources.”
News Corps’ lawyers have slammed any assertions by the ABC that Fox News does not take it’s role as America’s most popular ‘news outlet’ seriously, claiming that their presenters were undertaking serious journalism. These are the same presenters that Fox News’ lawyers refer to as ‘satirists playing a character’ every time their reporting lands them in legal trouble in America, arguing ‘no reasonable person would consider their work factual journalism’.
