Sky News Should Blame Its Boss Rupert Murdoch For The Rise Of Trump Not Facebook

12th November 2016 / United States

Everyone in the establishment media is on the ‘blame-game’ bandwagon over Donald Trump’s election as the leader of the so-called ‘free world’.

Today, it’s Facebook’s fault. Tom Cheshire, Technology Correspondent at Sky News firmly points the finger at Mark Zuckerberg’s global advertising data rip off operation. He blames fake viral news stories and points out that 62% of Americans get their news from Facebook, (according to the Pew Research Centre) and were obviously so influenced by it that they voted in enough numbers to cause this terrible upset. Of course, Sky News has no interest in denigrating its biggest competitor in the news delivery and click baiting game.

Cheshire’s rant continues by stating that Facebook “have a massive responsibility. It’s one that most news organisations take seriously, because they realise how important a free and accurate press is to the proper functioning of democracy.” That’s rich coming from a Rupert Murdoch operation whose greatest legacy in the British psych is that of the phone-hacking scandal and whose business operation has been likened to that of the Mafia.

Presumably Sky News ‘free and accurate press’ doesn’t include its operation that pushes Chinese state run propaganda for profit purposes in Australia and does not use its 489, 298 Facebook LIKES there to further enhance the reach of its profit driven propaganda apparatus that enriches its owner Rupert Murdoch whose empire, including that of his son James, is riddled with scandals, corruption and bribery. Murdoch the elder is often described as one of the most corrupt oligarchs in the world.

In Britain, it should not be forgotten that since April 1979, when Thatcher’s new neoliberal ideology came to power, no British government has ever been elected without the support of Rupert Murdoch, such is the political clout that his corrupt empire brings to democracy. And also don’t forget that Murdoch himself actually supported Trump in his bid for the Whitehouse.

The real problem Mr Cheshire, is how Facebook was allowed to become so ginormous in the first place, with its unfettered, almost unregulated business model (in terms of journalism and taxes) that makes money from taking personal data and selling it to the highest bidder. It, Google and Twitter have unprecedented ability of swaying anything they deem to be in their interests and Trump would have pumped $millions into the Facebook coffers.

Glenn Greenwald at The Intercept makes his case for the causes of Trump’s rise to the Whitehouse. The real reason had nothing to do with Facebook. “That message (electing Trump) was heard loud and clear. The institutions and elite factions that have spent years mocking, maligning, and pillaging large portions of the population — all while compiling their own long record of failure and corruption and destruction — are now shocked that their dictates and decrees go unheeded.” Greenwald is of course referring to the likes of the Murdoch empire and Sky News.

As highly regarded British journalist Jonathan Cook similarly points out “And, of course, middle-class Americans are blaming everyone but themselves. Typifying this blinkered self-righteousness was a column yesterday, written before news of Trump’s success, from Guardian journalist Jonathan Freedland, Britain’s unofficial stenographer to power and Washington fanboy. He blamed everyone but Hillary Clinton for her difficult path to what he then assumed was the White House. Well, here is some news for Freedland and American liberals. The reason Trump is heading to the Oval Office is because the Democratic party rigged the primaries to ensure that a candidate who could have beaten Trump, Bernie Sanders, did not get on the ticket. You want to blame someone, blame Clinton and the rotten-to-the-core Democratic party leadership.

The truth is that Brexit in Britain, Trump in the USA and people who could easily be heading for power such as far-right leaders  Marine Le Penn in France and Norbert Hofer in Austria is simply proof of the abject failure of both globalisation and the establishment institutions in Western democracies, again, Sky News being one of them.

With relentless pursuit of power and profit, people like Murdoch and his kind have stomped all over the economic welfare of millions across Western democracies since the arrival of the neoliberal extremist Margaret Thatcher. After that, a banker/corporate led feeding fest on the resources of the world took place that has ended with a bloodbath in the Middle East, more refugees on the march than generated by the last world war, catastrophic climate change and poverty on levels almost never witnessed in human history. The indifference demonstrated by corrupt politicians, corporations and their messengers such as Murdoch’s news empire supports a system that is literally causing an alarming people’s retaliation.

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It has been said many times before but the super-patriotic tone of the war coverage largely on the media empire of billionaire Rupert Murdoch, whose News Corp. owns Fox News, the biggest US cable news network, as well as Britain’s Sky News and nearly 200 daily newspapers worldwide. While there is no doubt that Murdoch was the most strident of the voices for war, the BBC, CNN and the rest of the broadcast and print media followed suit.” This is the effects of unrestrained power of the oligarchs today.

Frankly, the people have had enough of non-stop corruption, theft, war and propaganda that the likes of Murdoch, Clinton, Blair, Obama, the EU Commission, Goldman Sachs and countless others cause and it should be of no surprise what the emerging reaction is. People did not vote for Brexit, they voted in retaliation against the boot on their throats, as they have just done in America.

Cheshire should look to his boss Rupert Murdoch for the reasons for the rise of the narcisistic demagogue Trump.

 

 

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