“The anger-tainment ecosystem that Fox News, above all, has created in the U.S. has left America angrier and more divided than it’s been at any time since the Civil War," said Malcolm Turnbull.
September 22, 2023

Malcolm Turnbull has never got on with Rupert Murdoch since he accused Murdoch of helping to oust him from power as the prime minister representing the Liberal Party. In Australia, though called Liberal, that party is center right, and was led by John Howard, Tony Abbott, Malcolm Turnbull (2015-2018), and Scott Morrison (2018-2022) before they finally relinquished power.

Source: The Guardian

Rupert Murdoch has been accused of doing “enormous damage to the democratic world” by a former Australian prime minister, as senior political figures in his country of birth greet news of the mogul stepping down as chair of his media empire with scepticism.

Malcolm Turnbull, a former Liberal prime minister and advocate for a royal commission into the Murdoch media empire, said the media mogul had created an “anger-tainment ecosystem” that had left the US “angrier and more divided than it’s been at any time since the civil war”.
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Turnbull, who served as prime minister from 2015 to 2018, is a longstanding critic of Murdoch and blames News Corp’s promotion of climate denialism in part for his party’s decision to remove him as leader.

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.”

And his full quote:

MALCOLM TURNBULL: “The anger-tainment ecosystem that Fox News, above all, has created in the U.S. has left America angrier and more divided than it’s been at any time since the Civil War. In order to keep its ratings up it has sought to enrage Americans, divide Americans… and it has knowingly—and Murdoch had a personal hand in this, as we know—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 that made the January 6 insurrection possible… Trump would never have been president without the platform that Fox News created.”

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