Murdoch properties don’t always speak with one voice about the nation’s affairs, a wrinkle that emerged in the high-profile lawsuit of Dominion Voting Systems against Fox Corp. Voting-technology company Dominion, which in 2020 had contracts in 28 states, charged that anchors on Fox platforms had defamed it by alleging its complicity in an effort to steal the 2020 presidential election from Trump. The company’s complaint notes that just days after that election, the New York Post’s editorial board scolded Trump for his stolen-election rhetoric…
Newspaper editorials and cable television shows are dramatically different platforms, as the Murdochs have learned. Under the ineffable laws of media distribution, the New York Post and the Wall Street Journal can write editorials zinging Trump without causing much, if any, harm to their respective business models. The same doesn’t hold true for the opinion hours on Fox News, where unleashing the sort of logic deployed in Friday’s editorials would likely spark viewer revolts and a scramble for competing channels willing to indulge Trump’s fantasies.
So yeah, when Hannity starts blasting away at Trump, we’ll know something’s up.
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