By Henry McRandall
WRISEUP.COM
The phone-hacking of heroes, villains and victims alike by the now-defunct News Of The World may be damning enough, but they are far from the worst sins of global media baron Rupert Murdoch.
His entire international empire deserves to die a withering death not so much for the “venial” sins that have been half-acknowledged but for the “mortal” sins that remain largely obscured.
Throughout the fevered accumulation of his $7.6-billion personal fortune, Murdoch has actively promoted corruption and criminality on the part of his minions.
The Aussie transplant started out by inheriting a virtually bankrupt newspaper in Aberdeen, Australia – reportedly after his ruined father committed suicide – and immediately began pioneering his own toxic brew of what passed for “journalism.”
The editorial content was built on a lurid and gaudy display of blood, boobs, scandals, sports and malevolent right-wing propaganda.
Right from the start, “sleaze” was the key ingredient of Rupert Murdoch’s formula for satisfying his own unmitigated greed and lust for political power.
Murdoch aimed for the genitals of his readers, – and later his viewers, – his rivals, his enemies, his advertisers and even his investors.
As a former senior editorial employee of Murdoch’s at the New York Post and, later, as an editorial consultant to the Boston Herald and as a direct promoter of publishing ideas to him in-between I can attest that his lieutenants knew exactly what was expected from them and they were prepared to deliver.
And they were all interchangeable. There has long been a revolving door of administrative and editorial executives amongst his various print and broadcast holdings in various countries. What he not only tolerated but also subtly and tacitly demanded equated to “Murdoch profit and power at all costs.”
That profit has totalled more than $7.6 billion and counting. But the power he has amassed and wielded through his influential mass-media enterprises has been far greater – and used to promote far greater evil.
The political agenda Murdoch has foisted upon venal political lackeys in the U.S., the U.K., Australia and New Zealand over the past three decades has been extremely harmful to the masses – the poor, the working class and the middle class – and extremely beneficial to the top one percent who already own almost everything worth owning.
He has brainwashed the working class into voting and acting against their own best interests.
He has subtly and tacitly – and sometimes not-so-subtly and not-so-tacitly –promoted misogyny, racism, homophobia and other forms of bigotry in order to keep the anger and the frustrations of the masses focused on each other so that they not unite and rise up against the common enemy – those who already have far, far more than their fair share of wealth and power but will never concede that they have enough.
He has waged class warfare on his own employees and his own readers.
Rupert Murdoch deserves to go to prison – right before or right after his ill-gotten empire is dissolved.
