Media mogul Rupert Murdoch took aim at “cancel culture” during a rare public address over the weekend.
While accepting a lifetime achievement award from the Australia Day Foundation via video, Murdoch slammed the “awful woke orthodoxy” that he argued is preventing the free exchange of ideas.
“For those of us in media, there is a real challenge to confront,” he said. “A wave of censorship that seeks to silence conversation, to stifle debate, and ultimately stop individuals and societies from realizing their potential.”
Murdoch, who founded what is now News Corp in 1980, also condemned cancel culture as a “straitjacket on sensibility.” Through News Corp’s sister company, Fox Corporation, he is Fox News’s executive chairman.
Murdoch joins others on the Right who are increasingly critical of the broad reach of social media, including Big Tech giants deplatforming former President Donald Trump. Republican elected leaders warn that the efforts to censor conservative views will only intensify.
“It will get worse,” said Sen. Josh Hawley. “The tech titans have already booted dozens of conservatives off social media, and if they have their way, half the House Republican conference will be expelled from Congress.”
In the wake of the Jan. 6 siege of Capitol Hill, there have been mounting calls to silence those who partook in the congressional objection to the certification of President Biden’s electoral victory. In addition to Hawley’s original book publisher, Simon & Schuster, dropping his planned release of an expose on the influence of social media companies, the Missouri Republican has also faced calls for his name to be placed on a no-fly list and demands that he resign from elected office.
Regnery, Hawley’s new publisher, called the senator “one of the highest-profile victims of the ‘cancel culture'” in the wake of the attack.
“Regnery is proud to stand in the breach with him,” it said in a press release. “And the warning in his book about censorship obviously couldn’t be more urgent.”
