A sequel to the comedy "Borat" has been purchased by Amazon Prime and is expected to hit the streaming platform before November's US election, a source familiar with the deal told AFP Tuesday.
The movie will see British comedian and actor Sacha Baron Cohen reprise his cult favorite role as a bumbling and politically incorrect reporter from Kazakhstan, after nearly 15 years.
The 2006 original, "Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan," grossed more than $260 million, winning over critics and spawning endless catchphrases among devoted fans. It even earned an Oscar screenplay nomination.
According to Deadline, the follow-up movie was shot covertly with minimal crew as soon as coronavirus restrictions eased this summer in the US and overseas.
The original saw Cohen's fictional and homophobic journalist blundering across the US in search of cultural enlightenment -- with the joke at the expense of Americans, who nevertheless lapped it up at the box office.
The sequel will again see Cohen "going undercover to get people to reveal their true selves and their often unflattering biases, with only the slightest provocation," the Deadline report said.
The controversial satirist's anarchic, gonzo-style comedy has spawned multiple celebrated TV and movie characters such as wannabe rapper Ali G and gay Austrian TV presenter Bruno.
Cohen -- who also made the 2012 movie "The Dictator" starring himself as a Moamer Kadhafi-style despot -- was recently seen pranking public figures in the TV series "Who is America?"
In one memorable scene from the show, Cohen hoodwinked Republican politicians into endorsing a made-up plan to train preschoolers in how to fire a gun, although the show drew mixed reviews.
Sarah Palin, the former vice-presidential nominee and ex-Alaska governor, slammed the comedian's "evil, exploitive, sick 'humor.'"
Cohen plays a leading role in Aaron Sorkin's Oscar-tipped drama "The Trial of the Chicago 7," streaming on Netflix next month.
When MSNBC and CNN were reporting, earlier this year, that COVID-19 was shaping up to be the worst global health crisis since the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918/1919, many of the opinion hosts at Fox News were downplaying its severity and claiming that the media coverage of the novel coronavirus was overblown — and months later, according to Dr. Anthony Fauci, parts of the right-wing cable news outlet continue to be a source of dangerous misinformation.
Fauci, an expert immunologist and the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, appeared on CNN on Monday, September 28 and told Brian Stelter, "If you listen to Fox News — with all due respect to the fact that they do have some good reporters — some of the things that they report there are outlandish, to be honest with you."
The NIAID director, who is part of President Donald Trump's coronavirus task force, made it clear that he wasn't criticizing everyone at Fox News. But he was highly critical of those at Fox who are pushing misinformation about COVID-19 — which, according to Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, has now killed more than 1 million people worldwide and over 205,000 people in the United States.
Fauci told Stelter, "Some of the media I deal with really kind of — I wouldn't say distort things — but certainly give opposing perspectives on what seems to be a pretty obvious fact."
According to Fauci, "This is about public health. The bad guy is the virus. The bad guy is not the person on the other side of your opinion…. There is so much misinformation during this very divisive time that we're in, and the public really needs to know the facts."
Although Fauci has, for the most part, avoided directly criticizing Trump, he has been highly critical of one of the president's allies: Dr. Scott Atlas, who has been promoting "herd immunity" about COVID-19. Atlas has been claiming that if enough Americans are infected with COVID-19, the U.S. could neutralize the novel coronavirus by achieving "herd immunity." But according to Fauci, Dr. Robert Redfield (director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) and other medical experts, taking that approach would be deadly.
Nonetheless, Fauci tried to sound diplomatic when discussing Atlas with Stelter, telling the CNN host he is always happy to have a polite conversation with Atlas and see if they can "resolve" their "differences."
Fox particularly uses the term when explaining opposition to Donald Trump. His opponents are said to “hate” Trump, his values and his followers.
Our research, which ran from Jan. 1 to May 8, 2020, initially explored news of Trump’s impeachment. Then came the coronavirus. As we sifted through hundreds of cable news transcripts over five months, we noticed consistent differences between the vocabulary used on Fox News and that of MSNBC.
While their news agendas were largely similar, the words they used to describe these newsworthy events diverged greatly.
Fox and hate
For our study, we analyzed 1,088 program transcripts from the two ideologically branded channels – right-wing Fox and left-wing MSNBC – between 6 p.m. and 10:59 p.m.
Because polarized media diets contribute to partisan conflict, our quantitative analysis identified terms indicating antipathy or resentment, such as “dislike,” “despise,” “can’t stand” and “hate.”
We expected to find that both of the strongly ideological networks made use of such words, perhaps in different ways. Instead, we found that Fox used antipathy words five times more often than MSNBC. “Hate” really stood out: It appeared 647 times on Fox, compared to 118 on MSNBC.
Fox usually pairs certain words alongside “hate.” The most notable was “they” – as in, “they hate.” Fox used this phrase 101 times between January and May. MSNBC used it just five times.
To put these findings in historic context, we then used the GDELT Television database to search for occurrences of the phrase “they hate” on both networks going back to 2009. We included CNN for an additional comparison.
We found Fox’s usage of “they hate” has increased over time, with a clear spike around the polarizing 2016 Trump-Clinton election. But Fox’s use of “hate” really took off when Trump’s presidency began. Beginning in January 2017, the mean usage of “they hate” on the network doubled.
‘Us’ versus ‘them’
So who is doing all this hating – and why – according to Fox News?
Mainly, it’s Democrats, liberals, political elites and the media. Though these groups do not actually have the same interests, ideology or job description, our analysis finds Fox lumps them together as the “they” in “they hate.”
As for the object of all this hatred, Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson and other Fox hosts most often name Trump. Anchors also identify their audience – “you,” “Christians” and “us” – as the target of animosity. Only 13 instances of “they hate” also cited a reason. Examples included “they can’t accept the fact that he won” or “because we voted for [Trump].”
Citing liberal hate as a fact that needs no explanation serves to dismiss criticism of specific policies or events. It paints criticism or moral outrage directed at Trump as inherently irrational.
By repeatedly telling its viewers they are bound together as objects of the contempt of a powerful and hateful left-leaning “elite,” Fox has constructed two imagined communities. On the one side: Trump along with good folks under siege. On the other: nefarious Democrats, liberals, the left and mainstream media.
Research confirms that repeated exposure to polarized media messages can lead news consumers to form firm opinions and can foster what’s called an “in-group” identity. The us-versus-them mentality, in turn, deepens feelings of antipathy toward the perceived “out-group.”
This fraying of social ties helps explain America’s failures in managing the pandemic – and bodes badly for its handling of what seems likely to be a chaotic, divisive presidential election. In pitting its viewers against the rest of the country, Fox News works against potential solutions to the the very crises it covers.
Major news outlets failed the American people, critics say, when they chose to bury coverage of President Donald Trump's Wednesday comment that he would not commit to a peaceful transition of power—a statement watchdogs say demanded above-the-fold, front-page headlines that simply did not materialize.
"Newsroom leaders made a considered, intentional decision not to panic after Trump was elected," Dan Froomkin, editor of PressWatchers.org, wrote in a scathing rebuke of corporate media's apparent nonchalant attitude towards the president's rhetoric. "This was an epic, obvious mistake, and everything that has happened since was in some sense entirely predictable."
Froomkin continued, "They should have gone on a war footing—and by that I don't mean a partisan war against Trump, I mean a journalistic war against lies, ignorance, and intolerance."
Critics weighed in on the relative non-importance corporate news outlets assigned—in print and online—to Trump's latest suggestion that he may not cede the office of the presidency should he lose in November:
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Some observers balked when Peter Baker, chief White House correspondent for the New York Times, attempted to explain away the Times' decision to bury the news by citing print publication deadlines. One pointed to the late-evening news of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's death last week, which was an above-the-fold feature in the next day's Times print edition.
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Broadcast media also drew rebukes for its lack of emphasis on Trump's veiled threat at the democratic process.
"Wednesday's network evening newscasts on ABC, CBS, and NBC were no better," Eric Boehlert, founder and editor of PressRunwrote. "Not only did none of them lead with Trump's stunning proclamation, none of the broadcasts even reported on Trump's comments. This is how you normalize a madman. (CNN and MSNBC did a much better job covering the transfer-of-power story.)"
At PressWatchers.org, Froomkin explained how the dynamics in corporate newsrooms have led to complacency among journalists tasked with reporting on Trump's presidency:
One overarching problem is that our major newsrooms have simply gotten so corporate and even-keeled that our top editors value unflappability as a signal virtue. (OK, I admit I take this one a little personally, being a flappable person. A top Washington Post editor once called me "hysterical.") Flappable people don't rise through the ranks. Corporate people do.
Journalism to me is about crusading for the truth. But the notion that a serious, major news organization would pursue a crusade on behalf of its community is considered hippy shit by the people in charge these days. So is consistently standing up to a lawless con man. They've gotten used to printing lies. They barely squawk when Trump calls them the "enemy of the people." They have their algorithms, and they won't give them up no matter what. They just continue to "do the work."
So yeah, their news souls are dead. There, I said it.
Lawmakers and progressive advocates called out the dangerous threat to democracy uttered by the commander-in-chief—and the corporate media for treating it like any other day in Trump's scandal-laden presidency.
"Great (not) to watch journalists reporting Trump's latest direct attacks on the republic as if it's all just a regular press conference," longtime journalist Dan Gillmor tweeted Wednesday. "Historians will see Big Journalism's business as usual in this emergency as one of the proximate causes of the American republic's death."
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) gave a speech Thursday denouncing Trump's declared refusal to commit to a peaceful transition of power, saying: "This is not just an election between Donald Trump and Joe Biden. This is an election between Donald Trump and democracy—and democracy must win."
Sanders also outlined steps necessary to prepare the American public and lawmakers for chaos of election night and beyond, calling on the news media specifically to "prepare the American people to understand there is no longer a single election day and that it is very possible that we may not know the results on November 3."
Froomkin pointed out that corporate media's opinion pages are more accurately depicting the real danger of Trump's recent rhetoric than front-page headlines.
"But as usual, to capture the real drama of what's going on, you have to go to the opinion writers—and the editorial cartoonists," he wrote, sharing a link to an op-ed by Washington Post columnist Greg Sargent.
"What really matters here is that Trump is making an actual declaration of intent," Sargent wrote, "not just to refuse to respect the outcome, but rather to try to cancel and override it, if he is able to get away with it."
Trump isn't running for re-election in the sense he's hoping to accumulate more voter support than Biden. (His campaign keeps taking down ads in swing states.) Trump's running to maintain power. He's signaling that he'll refuse to give it up and will not accept his defeat as being legitimate. He's trying to steal an election. In reality, he doesn't care what the results are—he has no intention of abiding by the nation's will, and thinks he can count on the corrupt support of the GOP, the Department of Justice, and the United States Supreme Court to win his lawless battle in the days and weeks after the election.
"Our democracy is at stake," Boehlert concluded. "Trump is trying to steal an election, and the press should say so, every day until Election Day."
The first of three presidential debates is scheduled for this Tuesday, September 29 and will be moderated by Fox News’ Chris Wallace, who leans conservative but is by no means one of President Donald Trump’s mindless sycophants. Trump and his Democratic challenger, former Vice President Joe Biden, can both expect some hardball questions from the Fox News host.
Conservative columnist Jennifer Rubin laid out how there are many issues on which Trump is vulnerable, suggesting questions on everything from the U.S. Supreme Court to health care.
It remains to be seen who Trump will nominate for the U.S. Supreme Court following the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, but it’s obvious that Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell are determined to ram a far-right nominee through the U.S. Senate as quickly as possible. And Rubin’s suggested questions for the first debate include “Mr. President, have any of your Supreme Court nominees assured that they will vote in your favor? If so, on what issue?” and “Mr. President, are you certain the nominee is going to reverse Roe v. Wade? Or strike down the Affordable Care Act?”
Another question Rubin suggests for Wallace is, “Mr. President, do you want the next justice to vote to reverse same-sex marriage? Protection for gay and transgender rights under the Civil Rights Act?”
Rubin also recommends that Wallace ask Trump about what the Senate majority leader has described as the “McConnell Rule.” Following the death of Justice Antonin Scalia in 2016, President Barack Obama nominated Judge Merrick Garland for the Supreme Court — and McConnell refused to even consider Obama’s centrist nominee, insisting that under the “McConnell Rule,” it was unfair to vote on a Supreme Court nominee during a presidential election year. Trump agreed. But McConnell and Trump have flip-flopped on “the McConnell Rule” now that Trump is the one making a nomination ahead of a presidential election.
Despite her clear preference in the race, she doesn’t think Biden should be entirely let off easy. He must explain himself, too. She suggested asking: “Mr. Biden, how is your plan different than what Trump has done?” and “Mr. Biden, should you have ended rallies sooner? Do you think Trump is endangering his supporters?”
Those would be good questions, as Biden not only needs to attack Trump’s record — he also needs to spell out, in detail, what he would do differently if elected president in November.
Wallace, Rubin explains, “released the following debate topics, each of which will get about 15 minutes in a 90-minute debate: the Trump and Biden records, the Supreme Court, COVID-19, the economy, race and violence in our cities, and the integrity of the election. Trump, who reportedly has not practiced for the debate, may be in for a rude awakening next week.”
Trump campaign spokesperson Hogan Gidley suggested on Thursday that moderator Chris Wallace, a Fox News host, will tilt the upcoming presidential debate in favor of Democratic nominee Joe Biden.
During an interview on Fox News, host Sandra Smith argued that President Donald Trump and his campaign have "set the bar pretty low as far as what we'll see from Joe Biden."
"We haven't set the bar low at all," Gidley insisted. "Joe Biden's own comments and rhetoric sets the bar pretty low."
"But let's be clear, the mainstream media is going to do its level best to cover for Joe Biden no matter what he says or what he does," he continued.
"Is the president actively preparing for that debate?" Smith wondered.
"I'm not going to get into the specifics," Gidley said before lashing out at debate moderators. "Joe Biden doesn't get that kind of testing. He gets questions like, 'What's you favorite color? What kind of tree would you be?'"
Smith interrupted: "By doing that, aren't you setting the bar pretty low? Isn't that case in point, setting the bar low?"
Gidley asserted that Biden "is an expert at these debates."
"The point I was simply making about the media is regardless of what Joe Biden says or does on the debate stage, they will declare him the winner," he added. "Because if you can say one thing about the media, they protect their own. And Joe Biden has embraced all the radical policies that the media embraced for years. And they want him to win."
"So they're going to do whatever it takes to declare him victorious after that debate," Gidley said.
"Well, the person sitting in that chair asking the questions Tuesday night is Chris Wallace," Smith pointed out before defending her colleague.
"He is going to ask the smart questions," she remarked, "and the questions the American people want to know."
The creators of big Emmy winner "Watchmen," a timely blend of superheroes and political satire that confronts US racism, say they are proud to have spotlighted the nation's historic traumas and modern-day injustices -- as fans hope for a possible follow-up.
The HBO hit series, based on a seminal 1980s graphic novel, scooped up 11 Emmys at this year's television equivalent of the Oscars, making it Sunday's top honoree.
The show opens with the 1921 Tulsa race massacre, in which up to 300 people were killed when white mobs torched a black neighborhood, but which many Americans have never heard of.
The convulsion of violence nearly a century ago received renewed attention this summer when President Donald Trump held a controversial rally just down the road.
"When the show premiered back in October, that night the word 'Watchmen' was not trending on Twitter, but 'Black Wall Street' and 'Tulsa massacre' were," creator Damon Lindelof told journalists after his Emmy wins.
"And it just showed you that people actually have a real hunger to find these missing pieces of history. You just have to find ways that are a little bit off the beaten path to tell them."
The show is set in an alternate timeline created by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons in their "Watchmen" comics.
In this universe, superheroes are real, but many have turned out to be sociopathic far-right outlaws.
Featuring on Time magazine's list of the 100 best modern English-language novels, the original book is widely hailed for bringing mainstream popularity and artistic credibility to the graphic novel form.
Race plays a central role throughout, not just in the pilot episode's portrayal of the deadly destruction of "Black Wall Street" in Oklahoma.
One remarkable episode sees a young black New York cop struggle with blatant racism, surviving a near-lynching and confronting a secret Ku Klux Klan-style society operating within the metropolis's police ranks.
The noirish 1930s flashback episode shot in black-and-white won cinematography, writing, sound editing and sound mixing prizes at this year's Emmys.
- 'Holding a mirror up' -
"Watchmen" depicts white supremacists, police brutality and rows over mask-wearing -- all subjects of intensely polarized national debate as the United States gears up for November's presidential election.
In the show's present-day scenes, reparations paid to the families of Tulsa massacre victims have galvanized a white supremacist group, who are furious at the government's support for minorities and bent on triggering a race war.
For best actress winner Regina King, who wore a tee-shirt bearing the image of Breonna Taylor -- an African-American woman killed in a police shooting in her own home -- those struggles resonate with the reality of being black in 21st century America.
"The cops still haven't been held accountable," King told journalists after Sunday's ceremony.
"She represents just decades, hundreds of years of... violence against black bodies," she said.
"The things that the stories that we were exploring, that we were presenting, that we were holding a mirror up to in 'Watchmen'... it felt appropriate to represent with Breonna Taylor."
- Sequel talk -
The show's Emmys wins came in the increasingly prestigious limited series category, which is intended for standalone mini-series.
But a sequel of sorts has not been categorically ruled out.
Lindelof said Sunday that he "invited any other artist who wants to take the baton -- I'll teach them everything that I know."
The showrunner added that he personally found it "so much more special" to end after nine episodes, and that he was "so much more excited about seeing what someone else does with it."
Noting that "someone else created" the original "Watchmen," he added: "It would feel like a huge betrayal of winning limited series to come back and say, well, it was only limited series dot dot dot..."
Asked about her own possible involvement in a follow-up, King said there "have been no conversations" -- but that she would want to jump in if Lindelof returned.
"We're coming to a close of this chapter of the 'Watchmen' series, as it is now," she said.
"And it is bittersweet, it's emotional, and I'm just trying to remain in the moment."
Television's Emmys plummeted to yet another all-time ratings low, despite producers overcoming technical challenges to pull off an innovative and well-received "remote" ceremony, ABC confirmed Monday.
The 72nd Emmys, broadcast from an empty Los Angeles theater with dozens of nominees and winners beaming in via video call due to the coronavirus pandemic, was watched by an average 6.1 million viewers.
Continuing a trend seen across nearly all major award shows, that figure declined from last year's 6.9 million -- itself down from a previous record low, 10.2 million, the year before.
The ceremony was dominated by three shows -- limited series "Watchmen" ended with 11 awards, "Succession" claimed the top drama prize, and "Schitt's Creek" achieved a remarkable sweep of the comedy trophies.
Attempting to put a positive spin on the stats, ABC noted the Emmys were up against a packed sports schedule, with most major professional leagues now back in action after months of lockdown.
"Airing opposite both NBC's 'Sunday Night Football' and the NBA Playoffs on TNT for the first time ever," the Emmys drew the network's "largest audience to the 3-hour time period since April," ABC said in a statement to AFP.
Social media engagement with the show was up on last year, it added.
The ceremony -- anchored by in-venue host Jimmy Kimmel, and featuring awards handed to winners by presenters dressed in hazmat suits styled as tuxedos -- drew glowing reviews from the Hollywood press.
Variety praised the "surprising triumph of producing" and Deadline called it "an awards show for the ages."
Viewers watching the Emmys -- television's answer to the Oscars -- have halved since 2014, as fragmented audiences increasingly shun awards shows.
The ceremony rotates between the four major US networks.
Disney’s live-action adaptation of Mulan was released recently amid much controversy. Accusations of Disney bowing to the Chinese Communist Party emerged when the trailer was released.
Also concerning, but less visible, is how Disney’s Mulan is a more conservative telling of an ancient story – and the place of women – than some historical Chinese renditions. While Mulan might claim to be a tale of female empowerment, ultimately this film is about how women will only be rewarded if they know their place.
A 1,500-year-old tale
The original ballad Mulan shi (“The Ballad of Mulan”) dates back to the Northern Wei dynasty (386-534), a period of warfare and instability. Readers of this poem are exposed to the painful emotions that surround Mulan’s decision to go to war.The 2020 adaptation of Mulan follows the basic plot of the 1998 Disney animation. The dutiful heroine cross-dresses as a man to take her father’s place in the army. She returns victorious.
In early renditions, Mulan was a Northerner of unspecified ethnicity, and some retellings cast her as a resistor to the imperial court.
Scholars have likened Mulan to a blank canvas. The freedom to tell her story in different ways has contributed to its popularity. By the 20th century, the ethnicity of this female warrior was designated as Han, and her loyalty allied with the central government.
In these retellings, Mulan had fully transformed into a defender of the state.
‘Know your place’
Early in the new film, the village matchmaker tells 16-year-old Mulan (Liu Yifei) a good wife is “composed, graceful, polite” and “when a wife serves her husband, she must be silent, invisible.”
Mulan fails to embody these long-held virtues of an ideal Chinese girl, and her father exhorts Mulan to hide her special qi. This masculine power has no place in a girl’s life. The only way she can honour her family is through marriage.
However, Mulan ultimately brings honour to her family by demonstrating that she is “loyal, brave and true” – qualities engraved on her father’s sword. Mulan knows her crippled father will die in battle if he is conscripted into the army. Taking his place, she leaves home in the middle of the night with the sword.
As a reward for her courage and leadership in saving the Emperor, he bestows her an official position in the imperial guard, but Mulan rejects the offer in order to return home.
The Emperor sends his men to offer Mulan a new sword. In addition to the three qualities, the new sword is engraved with a fourth virtue, xiao (“filial piety,” translated in the film as “devotion to family”). The men urge her to reconsider the Emperor’s offer and join the guard.
The film ends with the phoenix, Mulan’s ancestral guardian, circling above her. This creature has been her guide and its reappearance signals her acceptance of the offer. Because her love interest, Honghui, is an imperial soldier, it is implied she will fulfil her romantic desires as well.
Mulan is rewarded for knowing her place and for her xiao: by working within the dominant patriarchal system, she is a woman who “can have it all.”
A 17th century band of sisters
Within the film, the villain Xianniang (Gong Li) provides a powerful contrast to Mulan.
Xianniang invites Mulan to join forces and rebel against the Emperor. She wants to build a kingdom where strong women like them are accepted for who they are, but Mulan responds, “I know my place” – emphasising her duty is to serve her Emperor.
Ultimately, Xianniang sacrifices herself to save Mulan. By refusing to work within the system, Xianniang’s death signifies the failure of her radical approach.
Rather than being a story of female empowerment, Mulan promotes the idea that women must put male authority figures before themselves to achieve recognition.
The story of Mulan hasn’t always sent this message. In a version by the 17th century author Chu Renhuo, set at the end of the Sui Dynasty (581-618), Xianniang is a warrior princess who becomes Mulan’s sworn sister. They lead a group of women soldiers and travel together. This friendship is absent from the Disney film.
Of all the words written about Rupert Murdoch, “boring” is not one of them. The media mogul has been the object of fascination for six decades, after he followed his father Sir Keith in to the newspaper business.
But Murdoch has exercised a particular fascination: the almost irresistible core of a family with the gloss of celebrity, the heavy aroma of money and the unmistakable aura of power.
No wonder directors, screenwriters and producers continue to find inspiration in the Murdoch family.
Family sagas
The dynastic shenanigans of the Royal Family have generated volumes of stories, films and television. And, let’s face it, The Godfather is really a family story, even if it’s about a family that lies, extorts and murders.
But what makes the Murdoch story such a compelling template for television drama is the place the media – and in particular the Murdoch media – holds in our society. The media occupies one of the most contested roles in our democracies, and Murdoch has become a lightning rod for fierce opinions.
Adding extra bite is the family jostling for their father’s benediction to inherit the company carrying their DNA. This becomes more urgent as the patriarch ages and the offspring start to give their ambition free rein.
It isn’t surprising screenwriters see the attraction of such grand themes.
Most recently on the small screen, we’ve seen the miniseries MotherFatherSon (2019) with Richard Gere as an American owner of a British newspaper with the full set of dysfunctional family relationships. Gere laments his son lacks ruthless drive, and tragedy follows when the son’s drug habit spirals out of control.
Then there’s Succession (2018–), which, by the potent assembling of family ambition around patriarch Logan Roy’s US media business, comes closest to mirroring what we think we know about the Murdoch family’s internal dynamics.
Roy is from Dundee in Scotland: the classic outsider, an inescapable parallel with Murdoch’s Australian roots. He has carved out a controversial place for himself in the US media but his real skill seems to be setting his deeply flawed children against each other for the right to run the company.
Dramas surrounding the Murdoch family follow the natural arc of so many compelling stories: how great wealth is built up over generations, how power steadily grows and demands to be recognised and rewarded.
The past two decades have seen some of Murdoch’s British newspapers implicated in a phone hacking scandal, a string of sexual harassment cases at his Fox US cable TV network (made in to their own screen drama in 2019’s Bombshell), and this year, the decision by son James to resign from the News Corp board because of “disagreements” on editorial content and strategic decisions.
The appeal of this family saga shouldn’t surprise us.
Business before family
The commercial decline of mainstream media, the fragmenting of audiences, the rise of social media, the erosion of trust in established news brands and the polarisation of debate are all bound up with the Murdoch business and the family story.
Murdoch has been a proponent, instigator and beneficiary of these seismic changes, while also being increasingly commercially diminished by those forces. As such, the Murdoch family story is a powerful testimony of our times.
There is one other irresistible ingredient in the mix: the search for a sense of family to normalise the rich and powerful.
In 1988, with circulation dropping and costs rising at afternoon broadsheet The Melbourne Herald, journalists became worried Murdoch would close the paper. The other staff and I naively reassured ourselves he wouldn’t do such a thing to the paper his father made great while his mother, Dame Elisabeth, was still alive.
We were wrong.
In 1990, The Herald was merged with the successful morning tabloid The Sun to become The Herald Sun. The old Herald’s identity slipped away — unlike Elisabeth, who remained robust and engaged with a range of notable philanthropic causes for another two decades.
This decision proved Murdoch is a pragmatist and a businessman who puts commercial interests first. There is no room for family sentiment.
“Rupert Murdoch has fuck all to do with it,” Brian Cox said after he accepted a Golden Globe for his portrayal of Roy. But whatever Cox might say, Murdoch’s call on The Herald sounds suspiciously like Logan Roy.
In fiction and in reality, villains are usually far more interesting than the virtuous. When it comes to modern villains, few have been demonised more than Murdoch.
For those who prefer their picture of a media mogul to be captured in reality, the latest telling is a documentary series, The Rise of the Murdoch Dynasty, now on the ABC.
But if you watched Succession, you’ll already know the plot.
Madonna has revealed that her next project will be the movie of her life -- and the final product should meet with her approval as she is bringing it to the screen herself.
The 62-year-old Material Girl, whose four-decade career as a singer, actress and cultural touchstone has taken in sex, religion and other traditional taboos, will direct the biopic, according to a statement from movie studio Universal.
Madonna will also co-write, with Diablo Cody who won an Oscar for the screenplay of coming-of-age dramedy "Juno" (2007).
"I want to convey the incredible journey that life has taken me on as an artist, a musician, a dancer -- a human being," Madonna said in a statement posted to her website.
"The focus of this film will always be music," she added. "Music has kept me going and art has kept me alive."
The entertainer enthused about "so many untold and inspiring stories" from her "roller coaster" life and asked, "who better to tell it than me?"
Universal's Donna Langley described the Michigan native -- real name Madonna Louise Ciccone -- as "the ultimate icon."
"With her singular gift of creating art that is as accessible as it is boundary-pushing, she has shaped our culture in a way very few others have," Langley said.
Madonna, responsible for hits such as "Like a Prayer," "Material Girl" and "Like a Virgin," is one of the most prolific artists of her time, having sold 335 million albums.
She made her film debut in 1985's "Desperately Seeking Susan" and won the Best Actress Golden Globe for 1996's "Evita" before directing and co-writing "W.E." in 2011.
Fox News legal analyst Andrew Napolitano, a former judge, this week sued a man who has accused him of sexual abuse.
In a lawsuit filed last week, Charles Corbishley of South Carolina claimed that Napolitano forced him to perform oral sex in the 1980s.
The incident was said to have occurred at a New Jersey home while Napolitano was presiding over Corbishley's criminal case.
“At this moment, Plaintiff was paralyzed with fear," the lawsuit for the plaintiff states, detailing the alleged abuse. "He wanted desperately to stop Defendant Napolitano’s sexual assault, but he was terrified about what Judge Napolitano would do to him if he resisted or fought back."
Corbishley's lawsuit, filed under the New Jersey Child Victims Act, is seeking $10 million.
On Tuesday, attorneys for Napolitano announced a countersuit. The new lawsuit accuses Corbishley of extortion.
Napolitano is represented by attorneys Cole Schotz and Clare Locke.
President Donald Trump went on an insane rant Monday morning. In a 47-minute telephone interview with "Fox & Friends," Trump attacked Bob Woodward, Carl Bernstein, the "fake news" media, the governor of Nevada, California's forest management, and blamed China for air pollution in the U.S.
Short on campaign cash Trump is looking for as much free media coverage as he can get. The "Fox & Friends" hosts were stunned and horrified when he said he'll be doing this every week.
"I haven't heard that," Steve Doocy, stunned, replied.
"We're going to see how that goes," Ainsley Earhardt told Trump.
“You may want to do it every week, but Fox is not committed to that. We’re going to take it on a case-by-case basis," Steve Doocy abruptly said to the president at the end of the interview. Both hosts mentioned Joe Biden is welcome to come on the show too.
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Here Steve Doocy tells Trump a lot of people are asking "why on earth" he talked to Bob Woodward 18 times.
"You have forests all over the world you don't have fires like you do in California, you know, in Europe they have forest cities you look at you look at countries, like, Austria, you look at so many countries they live in the forest they considered Forest Cities so many of them, and they don't have fires like this, and they have more explosive trees. They have trees that will catch easier, but they maintain their fire they've, they have an expression they thin the fuel the fuel is what's on the ground the leaves the trees that fall they're dry, they're like, they're like a matchstick you know after 18 months if they're underground longer than 18 months. They're very explosive and they have to get rid of that stuff."
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Trump insists Nevada Democratic Governor Steve Sisolak tried to stop his campaign rally. He also claims Sisolak is in charge of the ballots (that's false, the Secretary of State is) and baselessly accuses him of election tampering.
