Angertainment is a handy word for it
"Former Australian PM Malcolm Turnbull says Rupert Murdoch’s ‘anger-tainment’ damaged the democratic world""On Friday Turnbull said that Murdoch left a “hell of a legacy”, arguing that without Fox and News Corp, Britain probably would not have exited the European Union and Donald Trump would not have been president.“He’s built a vast global media empire, and no doubt the business pages will give him credit for that,” Turnbull told ABC News Breakfast.But Turnbull argued the media empire “sought to enrage Americans, divide Americans, and divide them against each other, and it has knowingly – and Murdoch had a personal hand in this … it has knowingly spread lies, most consequentially the one … where Donald Trump claimed to have won the 2020 election.“And, of course, that created the environment which made the January 6 insurrection possible.”In April, Fox and the voting equipment company Dominion reached a US$787.5m settlement in a defamation lawsuit, ending a dispute over whether the network and its parent company knowingly broadcast false and outlandish allegations that Dominion was involved in a plot to steal the 2020 election.Turnbull said Murdoch’s companies “will continue in much the same vein” without him as chair. “They have become more propaganda than news.”Sky News, like Fox, has been commercially successful because it “kept people engaged – in other words, watching their platform, their channel – by riling them up, by creating division and anger and resentment, and, you know, stoking that”, he said.“But the problem there is, while it might be good for Fox’s ratings or Sky News’ ratings, is it leaves you with a society that is incredibly divided, that’s increasingly polarised, that struggles to work together to meet common challenges, and so is therefore weaker.”"https://www.theguardian.com/media/2023/sep/22/former-australian-pm-malcolm-turnbull-comments-rupert-murdoch"Pouring oil on troubled fires" seems to produce profit, at least in the short term.
David Ainsworth ● 69d0 Comments ● 69d