New York’s Democratic Mayor Bill de Blasio on Tuesday blamed media mogul Rupert Murdoch and his right-leaning Fox News channel for the intense divisions in politics today, and for the election of President Trump.
Without Fox News, De Blasio said in an interview Tuesday with the British Guardian newspaper, “we would be a more unified country. We would not be suffering a lot of the negativity and divisiveness we’re going through right now.”
De Blasio’s comments parallel Trump’s own discontent with the broader national media, like CNN and the New York Times.
De Blasio, however, said there is a vast difference between his issues with Fox News and Trump’s broadsides against what he calls “fake news.”
“There is no comparison between a progressive critique of the media — and overwhelmingly corporate media, by the way — and a president who does not believe in free speech and is trying to undermine the norms of democracy,” he said.
“If you see a steady decline in democracy, we’re going to have to vividly defend a lot of media we don’t agree with,” de Blasio added. “But I don’t want to give them a free pass on what they have done to all of us.”
