Rupert Murdoch is arguably one of the people most responsible for President Donald Trump’s ascension to the White House. And yet, at a time when major news outlets’ corporate parents are settling Trump’s bogus lawsuits and capitulating to regulatory threats by doling out multimillion-dollar payoffs, any freedom-loving American should be rooting for the Australian-born right-wing media mogul to stand up to the president’s all-out assault on free speech.
Trump is suing Murdoch, News Corp., Dow Jones & Co., The Wall Street Journal’s publisher and two reporters who wrote a bombshell article last week about a “bawdy” Trump-penned birthday note to the late billionaire sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Trump claims the letter is a “fake,” and his lawyers in the suit accuse the Journal of “glaring failures in journalistic ethics and standards of accurate reporting.” He wants the defendants to pay at least $20 billion.
Trump posted to Truth Social on Friday: “I look forward to getting Rupert Murdoch to testify in my lawsuit against him and his ‘pile of garbage’ newspaper, the WSJ. That will be an interesting experience!!!” The White House also booted the Journal from the press pool for an upcoming presidential visit to Scotland.
There are reasons for hope that the 94-year-old Murdoch could show more spine than his competitors.
It’s not hard to see why Trump thinks this could work. Disney and Paramount, rather than take Trump to court and win (as many legal experts said they would), paid off settlements of $15 million and $16 million, respectively, to end Trump’s legal attacks against ABC News and CBS News. Just as some white shoe law firms and universities sheepishly bent the knee when faced with the Trump administration’s punitive threats, Disney and Paramount helped solidify a model of corporate cowardice. These companies demonstrated they’d rather just pay off the shakedown artist in the White House than stand up for their news operations or the First Amendment.
A representative with Dow Jones, the Journal’s parent company, said in a statement: “We have full confidence in the rigor and accuracy of our reporting, and will vigorously defend against any lawsuit.”
To be sure, that’s what they all say at first. But there are reasons for hope that the 94-year-old Murdoch could show more spine than his competitors.
Murdoch’s Fox News and New York Post properties — for the most part — have been reliable MAGA cheerleaders in the decade since Trump’s 2015 escalator ride announcing he was running for the Republican presidential nomination. But there have been cracks in their Trump devotion. The day after the Jan. 6 Capitol riots, the Post’s editorial board put the blame on Trump. Murdoch, for his part, was so outraged at Trump’s conduct that he wrote in an email to a Fox News executive that he wanted the network to “make Trump a non person.”
Obviously, once the Republican base made it clear that there was literally nothing Trump could do that would make it vote for another contender, Fox News once again got in line behind Trump during the 2024 election. But Murdoch seems to understand that The Wall Street Journal is a much different property from a cable news network and a shouty local tabloid.
Murdoch never turned the Journal into a sensationalist, ideologically conservative outlet. Under his ownership, the Journal has maintained its well-deserved reputation for diligent, independent news reporting. And Murdoch knows there’s a distinct value to that.
Even the Journal’s typically Trump-adoring editorial board has repeatedly decried Trump’s shakedowns of media outlets’ parent companies. A WSJ editorial from June beseeched Paramount to resist the “threat of regulatory disapproval” and instead “win the legal case, vindicate its CBS journalists and the First Amendment, and trust that the FCC has enough integrity to operate as something more than the President’s personal protection racket.”
If only Paramount shared the right-wing editorial board’s ethical clarity on the matter. Oh, well.
Trump’s history of bogus, speech-chilling lawsuits is well-documented. He’s been filing them for decades, even once boasting that he knew he’d lose the cases but persisted with them because he knew they would make his perceived enemies’ lives “miserable.”
There are other reasons Murdoch should fight back against Trump’s legal thuggery.
Trump’s history of bogus, speech-chilling lawsuits is well-documented.
A judge last week threw out Trump’s nearly $50 million lawsuit against legendary journalist Bob Woodward, and as my colleague Steve Benen noted, “When Trump sued CNN and demanded $475 million, the case was thrown out; when he sued The Washington Post, the case was thrown out; and when he sued The New York Times, seeking $100 million, the case was thrown out.”
In a thread posted to X, attorney Andrew Fleischman noted some of the reasons Trump’s lawsuit against Murdoch and the Journal is a complete mess. These include the fact that Trump’s legal team filed the suit in Florida, which has an anti-SLAPP law to protect people menaced by such bogus suits. Fleischman also noted what he says is a procedural error by Trump’s legal team that could lead to a dismissal and Trump’s paying the Journal’s legal fees.
Fleischman’s conclusion: “This lawsuit is meant to punish a newspaper for fair reporting. Any lawyer who tells you it has merit is talking out his ass.”
Murdoch’s often factually challenged right-wing media empire has done incalculable damage to the American body politic — and continues to serve as a faithful echo chamber for MAGA rhetoric during Trump’s reign of flagrant authoritarianism.
But the nonagenarian billionaire has a chance to stand up to a bully whom he clearly has no great personal affection for, and he has the chance to at least do his part in blocking Trump’s rampage on the First Amendment.
This is a legacy-defining moment. If Murdoch stands up to Trump’s cancel culture and his defamation suit lawfare — and vigorously defends The Wall Street Journal and its journalists — Murdoch can boast that, at least once, he did the right thing for America.
