Free Republic

If Fox News wants to restore its cable news ratings dominance, changes will have to be visible far lower in its organization than what is being reported. Though I was angry over its election night coverage and have been dismayed at the behavior of a number of its on-air personalities, I take no joy in the ratings crisis that seems to be engulfing Fox News. For all its faults, its reach, resources, and stable of outstanding talent like Tucker Carlson make it an essential voice in a nation with a media scene that is getting scarier by the day. There...

For some inexplicable reason, conservatives rush towards fratricide with the same kind of urgency that drives lemmings over the cliff. It’s what they do, even when it’s counterproductive and costly. Conservatism wasn’t made better off by the four-year campaign waged against Speaker Newt Gingrich by some House conservatives who considered him ideologically unreliable. It wasn’t helped by John Boehner’s premature departure from Congress, brought about by political headaches caused by House Republicans on his right flank. A small group of so-called purists on the right even crossed swords with President Ronald Reagan, without whom modern conservatism would have emerged stillborn...

When Fox News came online in October 1997, it was an instant success. In short order it quickly overtook CNN, and later all the other cable news outlets that vied for a share of the cable news audience. Under the leadership of Roger Ailes, it crafted a slick team of reporters who reported the news that the others did not. It took several years of continued conservative news for its audience to be assured that they would not be betrayed by this news source. As they had been by all the others. Then the betrayal came. On election night conservatives...

The Fox News Channel crashed in ratings on Saturday, coming in a distant third place to leader CNN and second place MSNBC. In the week before TuesdayÂ’s election Fox News averaged more than double the viewership of CNN and MSNBC. The FOX News Channel hit rock bottom when they defended and ignored the massive fraud in this yearÂ’s 2020 election. Two days ago Bret Baier deleted the tweet that exposed the exploding on-going backlash against Fox. Many of their hosts were openly hostile to their conservative audience. And several FOX News hosts absolutely HATE President Trump and his supporters. The...

There may be no media figure more important in preparing Republicans and President Trump himself for a post-Trump period than magnate Rupert Murdoch. Among his properties, the top-rated Fox News Channel stands out, its role in shaping conservative thought and Republican Party politics unrivaled, at least within media. Murdoch allied himself with Trump despite holding the former reality show host in low esteem. And Fox has been one of Trump's strongest sources of support. So how the channel presented Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden's rising election fortunes matters. Deeply. On Tuesday night, Fox News became the first major news outlet...

Lachlan Murdoch, CEO of Fox Corp., said Fox News would welcome the arrival of a rival news and opinion brand led by Donald Trump if he is no longer president. “We love competition,” Murdoch said in response to a direct question from an analyst about Trump’s future during the company’s quarterly earnings call.

Kathryn Murdoch lets public know where she stands politically. In the immediate aftermath of the Fox News Channel's declaration that Joe Biden was the next president of the United States, Kathryn Murdoch – the wife of James Murdoch, whose family owns the network – proclaimed on Twitter: "We did it!!!!" ... Her husband, James Murdoch, whose father is media giant Rupert Murdoch, was a member of the board of directors at News Corp, the parent company of Fox News, since 2013 until he resigned in July. At the time he stepped down, James indicated: "My resignation is due to disagreements...

Multiple Rupert Murdoch-owned conservative media outlets in the United States have shifted their messaging in a seeming effort to warn readers and viewers that Donald Trump may well have lost the presidential election.

President Trump repeated his unfounded claim that political foes were trying to steal the election from him during a briefing on Thursday evening as he trailed his opponent and remaining swing states were leaning toward a Joe Biden presidency. “This is a case where they’re trying to steal an election, they’re trying to rig an election, and we can’t let that happen,” the commander in chief said from the White House Briefing Room, offering no evidence to back up the claims and vowing to take the matter to the Supreme Court. The president railed against what he called “illegal votes,”...

Media magnate Rupert Murdoch has predicted privately that Democratic nominee Joe Biden will defeat President Donald Trump in the presidential election in a landslide victory, the Daily Beast reported Thursday. -snip- Murdoch has appeared to enjoy unhindered access to the White House, but has not spoken with Trump lately — at least for several weeks, sources confided to the Daily Beast — after Murdoch grew tired of Trump’s unending grievances about negative coverage from Fox News. Murdoch has griped about Trump in the past, suggesting in a tweet ahead of the 2016 presidential election that then-candidate Donald Trump had been...

The mostly behind-the-scenes attempt between Election Day and Inauguration Day to prevent Donald Trump from taking office the first time will go public in 2020. As I reported last week, a cabal of Democrats and NeverTrump Republicans are plotting a post-election civil war of sorts to make sure Joe Biden assumes the presidency even if Donald Trump legitimately wins. “It’s insurrection,” President Trump said on Fox News last week when asked about the widely-circulated plan. “We’ll put them down very quickly if they do that.” SNIP But this is more than the far-fetched hallucinations of political outcasts. The mayhem they’ve...

Just saw Fox News coverage of White House presser and was amazed to see they cut away from it because Kayliegh was showing a video of rioting anarchist destroying American cities and trying to kill police officers. Fox said the video was "too disturbing.' So now they will decide what we can see. Murdochs hate America

Rupert Murdoch’s son James Murdoch reportedly donated $615,000 to the Biden Victory Fund last month. According to New York Times reporter Kenneth P. Vogel, who cited the Federal Election Commission (FEC) receipts, James Murdoch and his wife Kathryn Murdoch donated $615,000 each to the fund supporting former Vice President Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential election campaign.

Obama, Hu toast 'strategic mutual trust' at state dinnerBy Christina Wilkie - 01/19/11 10:30 PM ET President Obama and Chinese President Hu Jintao toasted U.S. and Chinese collaboration and mutual interests on Wednesday night at a festive state dinner for 225 guests at the White House. Their toasts marked the high point of an evening notable for its strict adherence to the protocol and symbolism valued in Chinese culture, but which, at the same time, managed to fulfill the Chinese delegation's request for a thoroughly American dinner party. Guests dined on a meal of pear salad, lobster, ribeye steak and...

On a late January afternoon, as press secretary Sean Spicer walked into the White House media briefing room, a tall, thin, bespectacled man poked his head in the doorway for a moment before turning around and heading back into the West Wing. Later that week, at another briefing, the man stayed longer, standing in the corner behind the podium, out of view of the array of television cameras. The reporters peppering Spicer with questions were unlikely to know it, but the wallflower watching over the proceedings happened to be the leading conservative intellectual to argue for the election of Donald...

Topline: James Murdoch, a son of press baron Rupert, has publicly criticized the family’s news outlets for their “ongoing denial” of the links between climate change and raging bushfires in Australia, where the Murdoch empire originated. Former media executive James and his wife, Kathryn, who works for the Clinton Foundation’s climate initiative, have previously been outspoken about climate change. A spokesperson for the couple told the IAC-owned Daily Beast: “Kathryn and James’ views on climate are well established and their frustration with some of the News Corp and Fox coverage of the topic is also well known.” “They are particularly...

James Murdoch has opened up about his professional break from the family business and his new charity in a revealing interview with the New Yorker. The younger of Rupert Murdoch's two sons found himself out of work when Fox merged with Disney earlier this year, but also $2 billion richer thanks to his shares in the company. This seems to have caused some friction between father and son however, and when asked if he had recently spoken to his former boss, Murdoch said: 'There are periods of time when we do not.' He was similarly laconic when asked if he...

James Murdoch, the scion of billionaire and Fox News founder Rupert Murdoch, gave the maximum possible donation to 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg’s campaign. Murdoch donated $2,800 to Buttigieg, the largest amount possible to a primary candidate, according to recently filed Federal Election Commission reports. Murdoch joins other high-profile figures — including Susan Rice, formerly the National Security Adviser under President Barack Obama, and actor Ryan Reynolds — in supporting the 37-year-old Harvard graduate’s White House bid. Buttigieg has enjoyed a recent bounce in the polls thanks to a torrent of wall-to-wall media coverage.

To have fought your way into the dream machine, only to find that after years of quality work there is no job for you -- that is a harsh blow and a sign of our era How do you take the measure of 4,000 jobs lost in an industry with the size and scope of Hollywood? That's the number of pink slips being handed by Disney to Fox employees now that the merged mega-studio won't need them anymore. Four. Thousand. Jobs. It's undoubtedly the largest layoff from a single entertainment company in a generation -- maybe ever -- a fact...

Gabriel Sherman reports in Vanity Fair that internal divisions are arising in Fox News’ coverage of U.S. President Donald Trump Gabriel Sherman reported in Vanity Fair Tuesday that internal divisions are arising in Fox News’ coverage of U.S. President Donald Trump. Sherman’s report came the day before 21st Century Fox sold off large assets to Disney and began trading under a new name — Fox Corp. "Donald Trump's alliance with Fox News has been one of the few constants throughout his shambolic presidency," Sherman wrote. "But in recent days, that bond has shown signs of fraying. "Reporters are telling management...