Lachlan Murdoch: "Biden has been a divisive president."
In a new interview with The Australian, the Fox CEO shares his thoughts on US politics, the global political situation right now and the need for American leaders to bring the country together.
Lachlan Murdoch blasts social media companies, labels American politics (and Joe Biden) as divisive, and discusses how global politics are in, “the most dangerous environment since the 1930s.”
The comments appear in the weekend section of his company’s The Australian. The paper is marking 60 years since it was launched by his father, Rupert Murdoch. (The interview was first published on Friday, July 12, before the assassination attempt on former President Trump over the weekend.)
The media scion, who oversees Fox News and the WSJ, shared that he hopes US leadership can bring Americans back together. “Both sides of American politics have been divisive. A lot of public commentary has been around Trump being a divisive figure. But I think the Democrats are being as divisive, and that Biden has been a divisive president. We need to find leadership that can bring the country back together.”
Lachlan Murdoch, who has made trips to both the Ukraine and Israel in the past year, explored global politics in the interview with the newspaper’s editor-at-large Paul Kelly, “This is the most dangerous environment since the 1930s. It’s Europe with the war in Ukraine and the aggression of Russia under Putin. It’s in the Middle East, what we’re seeing in one lens in Gaza but really driven by Iran. Obviously it’s in Asia with the growing confidence and aggressiveness of China.”
The 52-year old-chairman of News Corp. and CEO of Fox, also slammed toxic social media companies and the lack of regulations that govern how they operate. News Corp. has been at the forefront of making tech companies pay for media content, those deals are ending and advertising dollars have been shifting away from news media.
Australia passed a rule in 2021 forcing Facebook and Google to pay news companies to share their work. Facebook-owner Meta has in response been down ranking news and said its one-year-old social site Threads won’t prioritize news content.
“Social media platforms don’t value journalism. They can sell it. They can monetise it. But they don’t put anything back into journalism. This is a very dangerous situation for democracies,” said Murdoch, adding that regulators need to take a hard look at what’s going on. “If you take away the ability to invest in journalism because social media companies don’t value it, that affects our whole society and potentially in a very dangerous way.”
News Corp.’s Australian operations are being restructured as readers disappear to short form video platforms. The company laid off around 20 staff at smaller papers in the past few weeks while The WSJ under new editor-in-chief Emma Tucker has been rethinking its approach to the market resulting in some lay-offs.
Separately, Lachlan Murdoch talked about his love of Australia. He shifted company budget meetings in May to Sydney to give top executives a taste of his adopted homeland. (He was born in London but divides his time between the US and Australia.)
Of Australia’s political landscape he observes, “We are politically more centrist, less driven by extremes on the right or left. That’s a real benefit. It’s an Australian advantage but an advantage we have to protect, not something we can take for granted.”
You can read the full interview here at The Australian.
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