One bit of good media news this week: Rupert Murdoch is not going to buy Time Warner and destroy what little media diversity we still have left. At least not yet.
A merger of Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox and Time Warner would have “created a colossus that loomed over the industry, combining the two biggest movie and television studios in Hollywood,” writes Sydney Ember of The New York Times.
But in a rare rejection for Murdoch, the media mogul was forced to withdraw his $80 billion bid for Time Warner. His failure might have been due less to Time Warner’s objection to the attempted hostile takeover than to his own non-voting shareholders, who, Ember says, “have been driving down the price of 21st Century Fox’s stock since news of the offer broke, fearing he would overpay to secure victory.”
Either way, the slap-down of the father of Fox News is good for creative and political freedom—for, say, Bill Maher and John Oliver, whose shows on Time Warner’s HBO might not have survived. It’s maybe not so good for Jon Stewart, who’s been running a fake Kickstarter campaign to buy CNN—to save it from both Rupert and its own mediocrity.
It’s good for media competition. “Diversity of ownership, diversity of opinion is so vitally important to this democracy,” Times columnist and CNBC contributor James Stewart said, noting that a Murdoch-owned Time Warner would have reduced “control of the major Hollywood studios to five owners, from six, and major television producers to four, from five.” (In 1983, he adds, “50 companies owned 90 percent of the media consumed by Americans. By 2012, just six companies—including Fox (then part of News Corporation) and Time Warner—controlled that 90 percent…”
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And rebuking Rupert is good for the earth. In an interesting bit of speculation, Chris Mooney finds that one reason English-speaking countries are among the biggest climate deniers out of twenty nations, according to a new study, is that they are home to Murdoch’s media empire.
Not only is the United States clearly the worst in its climate denial, but Great Britain and Australia are second and third worst, respectively. Canada, meanwhile, is the seventh worst….
Indeed, the English language media in three of these four countries are linked together by a single individual: Rupert Murdoch. An apparent climate skeptic or lukewarmer, Murdoch is the chair of News Corp and 21st Century Fox. (You can watch him express his climate views here.) Some of the media outlets subsumed by the two conglomerates that he heads are responsible for quite a lot of English language climate skepticism and denial.
In Australia, Murdoch’s native country, significant strides had been made in environmental regulations—and he attacked them with a vengeance. Eric Boehlert of Media Matters writes:
Australia’s carbon emissions repeal represents a dramatic U-turn for a country that just a few years ago was seen as a leader on the global issue under the guidance of previous Labor Party prime minsters, Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd….
Murdoch set his plan in motion to target the carbon tax four years ago. “After the 2010 election—which resulted in a minority Labor government—Murdoch summoned his Australian editors and senior journalists to his home in Carmel, California,” Australia’s The Conversation reported. “He made clear that he despised the Gillard government and wanted regime change.”
Only a few years earlier, Murdoch was gung-ho green. “Climate change,” he said in 2007, “poses clear, catastrophic threats.” He pledged to make News Corp. carbon neutral, and even said that he’d be “subtly introducing [the climate issue] into our content.” (Did you know that not only did Dow Jones go carbon neutral but, according to a recent company eco-update, it uses soy-based ink to print The Wall Street Journal?)
We’re not out of the Fox-ridden woods yet. Never one to take no for answer, Murdoch could come back for Time Warner or other media trophies at any time. Says Jeffrey Goldfarb at the Times:
Yet Mr. Murdoch can walk away looking like a disciplined buyer ready to repurchase more shares and with his stock back on the rise. [Time Warner Chairman and CEO Jeffrey] Bewkes, on the other hand, faces a bigger challenge. Though Time Warner shareholders may have become too greedy, they will now expect the company to deliver soon at least what was on offer from the takeover. If Mr. Bewkes can’t, Mr. Murdoch may yet turn out to be crazy like a fox.
