Blog

The Problem at Fox News Is Not Just Tucker Carlson — It’s the Murdochs Who Own the Network

The Intercept
July 10, 2019

Yes, let’s get furious once again at Tucker Carlson, who has broadcast another segment of racist bilge at Fox News. But let’s not stop there.

In a widely circulated clip that’s getting justifiably walloped by journalists who are not admirers of white nationalism, ...  (Read more)

How James Murdoch Uses Philanthropy to Distance Himself from the Taint of Fox News

The Intercept
June 29, 2019

The mission of Unite America is lofty. As its name implies, the little-known group wants to heal a political system that has become “more divided and dysfunctional with each election cycle.”

Its bipartisan mission is an implied critique of Fox News, which has been identified, ...  (Read more)

What the Concentration Camps of Bosnia Can Teach Us About the Abuse of Immigrants at the U.S. Border

The Intercept
June 27, 2019

How do you investigate human rights abuses at detention centers that are off-limits to outsiders?

I am not one of the on-the-ground reporters covering the Trump administration’s abusive treatment of immigrant children on the border with Mexico, but more than 25 years ago ...  (Read more)

What the Horror of “Chernobyl” Reveals About the Deceit of the Trump Era

The Intercept
June 5, 2019

IMAGINE THIS SCENE: A guilt-stricken official who worked for President Donald Trump sits down late at night to confess his agony. “What is the cost of lies?” the weary official says into a tape recorder, sitting in his dark kitchen. “It’s not that we’ll mistake them ...  (Read more)

Being Rupert Murdoch: How the Founder of Fox News Spreads His Brand of Destruction

The Intercept
April 25, 2019

RUPERT MURDOCH HOLDS a knife in his hand. He sits in a posh restaurant, praising the virtues of doing as he pleases.
“I like moving around, never in one place long enough,” he says, a napkin tucked into his collar to catch the drippings from a nearly raw steak he ...  (Read more)

How Lachlan Murdoch Went From Studying Philosophy to Exploiting White Nationalism at Fox News

The Intercept
March 30, 2019

In 1994, a philosophy student at Princeton University submitted a senior thesis that began with a famous passage from Lord Byron, the romantic poet. The passage reflected the student’s apparent uncertainty about who he was and what he would become after college.

Between ...  (Read more)

Fox News Is Poisoning America. Rupert Murdoch and His Heirs Should Be Shunned.

The Intercept
November 4, 2018

IN THE EARLY 1990s, some of the smartest people resisting Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic worked out of a chaotic office in the center of Belgrade. The office was filled with a haze of cigarette smoke, ringing phones answered with shouts, off-kilter desks scarred ...  (Read more)

Max Boot Is Very Sorry for Backing the GOP and the Iraq Invasion. Why Is He Being Praised for This?

The Intercept
October 13, 2018

THERE IS AN unforgettable passage in Graham Greene’s classic “The Quiet American” in which the title character, a CIA agent named Alden Pyle, admits that Vietnam is much more complicated than he’d imagined. “I had not realized how tribal politics was and how ...  (Read more)

Dear Senators: Opposition to Brett Kavanaugh Includes Churches, Professors — Even His Own Friends

The Intercept
October 5, 2018

THE OPPOSITION TO Brett Kavanaugh that has gotten the most attention is, naturally, the Senate Democrats who are voting against his Supreme Court nomination, and members of the #MeToo movement who believe Christine Blasey Ford and Deborah Ramirez when they say Kavanaugh ...  (Read more)

Why Brett Kavanaugh’s High School Friends Try to Protect His Reputation — and Theirs

The Intercept
October 4, 2018
(Co-written with Alice Speri)

THERE IS AN underappreciated reason that explains why, apart from Christine Blasey Ford’s remarkable testimony about her summer of 1982 and what a drunken 17-year-old Brett Kavanaugh did to her, almost nothing has been heard about his after-hours ...  (Read more)