The Foxification of America

He already owns the Fox Network, the Fox News Channel, the New York Post, the Weekly Standard, Sky News, and 20th Century Fox movie studios. And he’s starting a new Fox Business Channel. But that’s not enough. Now he wants to buy the Wall Street Journal.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the United States of Murdoch! Yes, right-wing media mogul Rupert Murdoch has made a $5 billion offer to buy Dow Jones, parent company of the Journal.

Make no mistake about it, the FCC should not allow this deal to go through. Because it’s bad news for America.

Letting Murdoch buy the Wall Street Journal will just intensify the wave of media consolidation we’ve already seen in this country: McClatchy swallows up Knight-Ridder; the Tribune gobbles up the L.A. Times; and Gannett takes over most local newspapers in the country. Whatever they don’t own, Rupert Murdoch does — or soon will.

And that’s not healthy — for our democracy or our economy. Democracy, after all, depends on a multiplicity of voices. And the economy depends on a multiplicity of owners. I’m a free-market capitalist, but there’s no free market when one man owns it all.

There’s one other reason this is bad news for America. Given his track record, there’s no doubt that Murdoch would take a great newspaper (except for its editorial page) and turn it into another right-wing propaganda machine, like the New York Post. Time to stop the Foxification of the media.