NYT’s Jonathan Mahler & Jim Rutenberg on Rupert Murdoch

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: You know, unless somebody says, or lest his side says, “Hey, look, we supported Tony Blair, the reform-minded labor prime minister.” So, thread that needle, he also supported a labor government coming to power in the U.K. back in 1997.

JONATHAN MAHLER, STAFF WRITER, THE NEW YORK TIMES: Yes. I mean, there are — you know, there are certainly — well, I mean, that is the most notable exception. But, you know, he is sort of willing to sort of look at centrist politicians too. But, you know, if you look over the sweep of his career, you know, he’s always really pushing everything to the right, he’s always lining up on the right, whether it’s, you know, Reagan, whether it’s Bush, you know, whether it’s Theresa May, whether it’s Donald Trump, really it’s — the course of history has really been nudged to the right with the help of Rupert Murdoch.

JIM RUTENBERG, MEDIA COLUMNIST, THE NEW YORK TIMES: And if you look at where the Murdoch papers and Tony Blair came together kind of most symbiotically, it was to push the Iraq war and the campaign to get in the Iraq war. So, I think he would have gotten that as easily from a conservative politician as from labor.

AMANPOUR: That was several years into the Blair reign.

RUTENBERG: Sure.

AMANPOUR: But let me say what you wrote, because it is fascinating, this – – how his papers, his TV, have had such a massive influence on the key issues of our day, whether it’s race, whether it’s immigration, whether it’s, as you mentioned taxes, but also the Iraq war and other such things. You say, “His various news outlets have inexorably pushed the flow of history to the right across the Anglosphere, whether they were advocating for the U.S. and its allies to go war in Iraq in 2003, undermining global efforts to combat climate change or vilifying people of color at home or abroad as dangerous threats to a right — sorry, a White majority. Flesh that out in color. We know about the Iraq war for sure. And I remember during 2002, any journalist who questioned the administration’s rational for what turned out to be a lie, a falsehood, about weapons of mass destruction, were tainted as traitors, as terrorist lovers and the like. It was “Fox News” that heavily pushed the White House agenda there and obviously, the Blair support as well.

MAHLER: Yes. I mean, certainly the most recent manifestation of this, you know, what we’re suggesting with the last clause is what’s happening now on “Fox News”, which is this, you know, very strongly kind of nationalist, kind of ethnonationalist agenda which — you know, which you can also see at their outlet in Australia, Sky News Australia which where they have effectively re-created “Fox News” during prime time and are pushing the same anti-immigrant sentiments, you know, that we see here in the United States.

RUTENBERG: And it’s very — the Australian example is very interesting. We had a link in our article to a moment where one of his hosts is talking about this threat to culture that immigrants, especially, immigrants who are Muslim