Rupert murdoch

Rupert Murdoch to marry his fifth wife

King Rupert has met his Catherine Howard. That's right: at the tender age of ninety-two, media mogul Rupert Murdoch is set to marry for the fifth time.  The announcement came in the Murdoch-owned New York Post, where Rupert claimed that he “was very nervous. I dreaded falling in love, but I knew this would be my last. I am happy.”  On Saint Patrick’s Day, and less than one year after his divorce to Jerry Hall, he proposed to his sixty-six-year-old partner Ann Lesley Smith, an American journalist who is getting married for the third time. “We both look forward to spending the second half of our lives together,” Murdoch said. Cockburn loves the optimism. Smith said, “It’s a gift from God for both of us. We met last September.

rupert murdoch

Tucker Carlson bulldozes the January 6 ‘insurrection’ narrative

“A hurt dog barks.” That’s what Tucker Carlson said as he aired various bits of the 41,000 hours of surveillance video captured at the Capitol on January 6, 2021. If you want to know what the hurt dog sounds like, just listen to Senator Chuck Schumer on March 7: “Rupert Murdoch has a special obligation to stop Tucker Carlson from going on tonight [and] from letting him go on again and again and again [because] our democracy depends on it.” Really, Chuck? Does “our democracy” depend on preventing the American people from seeing what really happened at the Capitol on January 6, 2021?

Why Murdoch dumped Trump

“He’s done.” That was the general consensus when I asked around about Donald Trump’s future in politics this week. And in the search for signs that Trump is in trouble, Rupert Murdoch’s newspapers are a good place to start. In the days since the disappointing midterm results, the New York Post, has already labeled the former president “Trumpty Dumpty” and praised his Republican rival Ron DeSantis as “DeFuture.” Trump's 2024 bid was relegated to page 26 on Tuesday, teased on the cover as "Florida man makes announcement." Things aren’t much better for the former president over at the Wall Street Journal. It has been crammed with anti-Trump op-eds since last Tuesday. One headline summed things up neatly: “Trump is the Republican Party’s Biggest Loser.

Rupert Murdoch

Rupert Murdoch goes west

Each year I return to my native Montana, my English husband and our two small children in tow. We try to explore new parts of the state; this summer we decided to check out Beaverhead County. This happens to be where Rupert Murdoch recently bought a 340,000-acre ranch in the biggest land sale in Montana’s history. On our way south to Beaverhead County we inadvertently took the same route as William Clark on his return journey from the Pacific in 1806. It’s hard not to: there are few options for crossing the Bitterroot Mountains. Lost Trail Pass reaches a height of over 7,000 feet and we stop here to eat our ham sandwiches and Cheez-Its.

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Welcome to post-truth America

From our UK edition

A couple more weeks in the Bagel and then on to dear old London. I’ve had a very good time partying with young friends here, but the place reeks, literally as well as metaphorically. The rate of violence is creeping up, with gangs shooting at each other even on 59th Street and Fifth Avenue, right where the poor little Greek boy grew up. Where a commemorative plaque marking young Taki’s residence should have been put up long ago for services to American women, there was a corpse. The next day, it was forgotten, as an 11-year-old was gunned down in the Bronx. What used to be extreme radicalism is now the reigning ideology of every major American city. Speech patterns have changed, and the meanings of words are perceived not in the way they were intended.

Succession gets the rich and powerful all wrong

From our UK edition

They have stepped into the pop-culture spotlight via the HBO hit Succession, a hatchet job on the very rich and powerful produced by the very rich and much more powerful Adam McKay (The Big Short). McKay started off by doing a lot of cheesy comedies, made a large fortune, and then went after Wall Street types. Nothing wrong with that; films are supposed to go after the rich and powerful, and always have. It’s the media’s coverage of a TV series about a fictional family that is slanted and totally false. The media hint that the mogul and patriarch Logan Roy is based on Rupert Murdoch, and that Roy’s dysfunctional family represents Rupert’s. In reality, the Roy bunch are freaks and drug addicts who are incapable of getting anything right.

Keeping yourself angry, the Hare way: We Travelled, by David Hare, reviewed

From our UK edition

A character in David Hare’s Skylight claims she has at last found contentment by no longer opening newspapers or watching television. ‘Well,’ says her astounded interlocutor, ‘you’re missing what’s happening. You’re missing reality.’ Hare himself can never be accused of missing (or missing out on) the reality of what is happening. He has already even mounted his response to ‘what it was like to experience Covid-19’ in Beat the Devil, starring Ralph Fiennes. His instinct has always been to tackle current affairs, sometimes with surreal consequences.

The New York Times has caused more vaccine hesitancy than Fox News

During the Trump years, Fox News was notorious for carrying advertisements with a target audience of one. Dueling ads would denigrate or praise the nation of Qatar. Julián Castro bought time in Bedminster, New Jersey during a presidential visit to blame the president for a mass shooting in El Paso. The Lincoln Project spent millions airing its ads on Fox mostly in the hope that the president would be enraged when he saw them. Now, the New York Times is borrowing the tactic. This time, however, the one-man target is the aged-yet-apparently-immortal head of the Fox Corporation, Rupert Murdoch. For half a decade, multiple NGOs and dozens of journalists have made the destruction of Fox News, or at least the cancellation of its most high-profile jobs, a virtual full-time profession.

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The Sun goes down

From our UK edition

A couple of weeks ago Ally Ross, the longtime TV critic at the Sun, was summoned to the managing editor’s office. Such confrontations normally involve expenses. At the Daily Express in the 1950s one Middle East correspondent submitted his — one camel: £125. The narrow-eyed managing editor pointed out that if the camel was bought, it must have been sold, and they would be grateful if the claim was adjusted. Another form turned up 30 minutes later — burying a dead camel: £200. This conversation with Ally was not about money. It was much more serious. It was solemnly explained to him that he had used the word ‘woke’ in his column — and it had been decreed on high that ‘woke’ was synonymous with racial injustice.

The real Rupert Murdoch, by Kelvin MacKenzie

From our UK edition

For more than four decades I have been around Rupert Murdoch. In that time he employed me in both London and New York, invested in my business ideas and ultimately fired me. It was always rock ’n’ roll around Rupert and that’s the way I liked it. So you would have thought that when the BBC made its current three-part documentary on him, it might have come to me for my views. Oh no. I presume it didn’t want to take the risk I might say something warm and supportive. It did, however, film Trevor Kavanagh, the Sun’s political columnist, for hours on end. He was warm and supportive. But all that was left on the cutting room floor. The BBC only wanted the bile. Instead, it concentrated its filming on the usual suspects.