Lachlan Murdoch: Fox News Isn’t Divisive, We’re Just Getting ‘A Lot of Heat’ Because We’re Number One

 
Lachlan Murdoch

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Fox Corp. CEO Lachlan Murdoch defended Fox News from critics who insisted that the top-rated cable news channel was “too divisive” by saying it comes with the territory of being number one.

Murdoch recently sat with Axios Sara Fischer for a remarkably rare interview designed to discuss Fox moving into lifestyle content by launching new verticals.

While the conversation mainly focused on this new business strategy, Fischer did ask Murdoch to comment about “increased criticism that Fox News’ programming has become too divisive,” to which Murdoch noted:

“I think when you’re in the news business, and you’re number one … you get a lot of heat and it just comes with the territory,” he told Axios, referring to the company’s longtime cable news ratings lead.

Later in the interview, Fischer asked about recent criticism the network has received, in particular, prime time host Tucker Carlson, following a racially motivated mass shooting in Buffalo by an alleged assailant who left a diatribe filled with similar conspiratorial “Great Replacement Theory” rhetoric that has been espoused on Tucker Carlson Tonight. Murdoch dismissed the criticism as politicized “noise”:

“I think the world is more divided and on edge than it has been, you know, for a very long time,” Murdoch said in an interview last week. “I think on the noise around it, so much of it is politicized … And so, you’ve got to be tough about it.”

As CEO of Fox News parent company Fox Corp., Murdoch is about as elusive an interview “get” in the world of political media. Fischer deserves credit for landing the chat, which appears to have been conducted in a Fox Corp. private dining room at the New York City headquarters.

But reading between the lines of a remarkably tepid conversation about Fox’s new “lifestyle” verticals and barely any mention of a national discussion about the pernicious nature of cable news channels presenting opinions packaged as news. It’s rather disappointing that Fischer didn’t pursue questions harder, or more likely, there was some pre-determined arrangement to avoid a meaningful discussion about the controversies of the day.

 

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Colby Hall is the Founding Editor of Mediaite.com. He is also a Peabody Award-winning television producer of non-fiction narrative programming as well as a terrific dancer and preparer of grilled meats.