That other news organizations are willing to look into, and highlight, the banal crookedness of Rupert Murdoch's media house of horrors is good news. There should be more of it, and there's no reason not to make it relentless. No doubt Murdoch's Fox News hosts would mount the usual bug-eyed shrieking response to any outlet or reporter that tried to make a habit of it, but bug-eyed shrieking is often the price paid by news teams when they highlight corruption that very wealthy people would rather not have reported.
CNN's Brian Stelter compiled a list of just one week's gifts from the Murdoch empire to Donald Trump and team. It happened to work out to about one a day. But let's focus on the the ones that put the torch to any Fox News or other Murdoch empire claims of not being cesspools of shameless crookedness:
•Murdoch's New York Post yanked an already-published story about a prominent writer coming forward to assert that she was raped by Trump in the 1990s. The order to delete the story came from former Post editor-in-chief turned "adviser" Col Allan, a top Murdoch lieutenant and public Trump supporter. Fox News, in the meantime, did what has long been standard procedure at the network: It barely mentioned the story.
The Washington Post reported on an ever-rabid Jeanine Pirro's use of her Fox News-provided perch to attack then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions after Sessions blocked Pirro from being appointed to a post in Trump's Justice Department. Using your television show to seek revenge for a failed job interview is, apparently, just another day in the Fox News studios.
But those are small ball compared to the most bizarre news of the week: released federal court documents detailing Fox News host Sean Hannity's relationship with now-jailed Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort. As Manafort battled the charges against him, Hannity attacked prosecutors from his Fox News show—while giving Manafort private support and advice on dealing with the charges against him.
Those are just the most overt acts. It's increasingly impossible to tell whether there is any line at all between Trump administration "adviser" and Fox News "pundit"; there's not much difference between the National Enquirer burying stories on Trump and the Murdoch empire repeatedly doing the same.
Conservative shouters have settled on a movement-wide strategy (copying Trump's own narcissism-fueled belligerence) of simply declaring news they don't like to be "fake news." Endlessly coordinating and curating the news to boost allies, coordinate administration defenses, and pursue personal vendettas—now that's real news.