News/Commentary

Fact-check: Did Rupert Murdoch actually say ‘it’s not red or blue – it is green’?

March 4, 2023 | | Print Article

Some in the media are distorting the truth again …

Last month, Fox News Corporation chair Rupert Murdoch was deposed as per Dominion Voting Systems’ $1.6 lawsuit against Fox News.

According to some media outlets, during the deposition, Murdoch said in his own words that he’s allowed 2020 presidential election “denier” Mike Lindell to continue running ads for MyPillow on Fox News solely for the money.

“At one point, Murdoch explained the decision to let Lindell run ads for his company, MyPillow, as a strictly financial—rather than political—move, saying: ‘It is not red or blue—it is green,'” Forbes reported after Murdoch’s deposition was released Monday via a legal filing by Dominion.

Similar reports have been filed elsewhere:

But this is a false narrative, as anyone who simply reads the legal filing themselves can attest to.

“Rupert confirmed that he could tell [FNC] to stop running Lindell’s advertisements, ‘But I’m not about to,'” the filing reads.

“And when asked why Fox continues to give a platform to Lindell—who continues to this day to spout lies about Dominion — Murdoch agreed that ‘It is not red or blue, it is green.’ … Lindell brought—and brings—Fox a lot of green. He also predictably brought the same lies about Dominion to Fox’s viewers that had been peddled on Fox’s ‘alternate reality machine’ or months,” it continues.

Note how the filing saying that Murdoch “agreed that ‘It is not red or blue, it is green.'” In other words, it was Dominion’s lawyers who uttered the actual words. And it was Murdoch who then evidently nodded his head in agreement.

Thus, it’s clear that “Murdoch did not say, as much reporting has suggested, that Fox News continued to invite Lindell on air for the financial benefit of promoting his election lies,” according to Mediaite.

“Instead, Murdoch agreed with the sentiment expressed by Dominion’s lawyers that the network makes its advertising decisions on the basis of what companies are willing to pay for ad space – not whether those companies are right-wing or left-wing,” the left-of-center news site reported Friday.

It’s not a big boo boo, but it does showcase how the media sometimes incorrectly frames otherwise valid information to paint a certain narrative. In fact, it’s a habit ubiquitous to the entire left.

For example, in related news, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries sent a letter to Fox News Corporation chair Rupert Murdoch this week demanding that he silence network hosts.

Of course, that’s not how they framed their letter. They claimed they wanted Fox News to simply stop “spreading false election narratives.” But they made very little effort to identify these “false election narratives.”

Perhaps they were referring to the narrative that former President Donald Trump was the rightful winner of the 2020 presidential election, but this narrative hasn’t appeared on Fox News since the final days of 2020, when then-President Trump was busy trying to litigate the 2020 presidential election in court, including the Supreme Court.

In fairness, they began their letter by specifically addressing this narrative.

Citing a recent deposition, they wrote, “Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, and other Fox News personalities knowingly, repeatedly, and dangerously endorsed and promoted the Big Lie that Donald Trump won the 2020 presidential election.”

Fair enough. However, Schumer and Jeffries then began to seemingly lie.

“Though you have acknowledged your regret in allowing this grave propaganda to take place, your network hosts continue to promote, spew, and perpetuate election conspiracy theories to this day,” they alleged without citing any evidence.

Keep in mind — and this is extremely important — that to the left, just talking about voter fraud, which is a real phenomenon, makes you an election conspiracy theorist.

Vivek Saxena
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