Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation is finally exposing how corporate greed scouts for storms troops of gossipers and fear mongers instead of truth troops for the 4th Estate, but Murdoch is not to blame. He exempts himself and his executive staff from the crime of disseminating lies, deceptions, distortions, the illusions of grandeur…

There is Rupert Murdoch arriving at the U.S. shore in a 20th Century merchant ship reminiscent of those 17th century European ships with their human cargo and masts featuring Africans in chains.

It may be hard to remember enslaved Blacks were not all willing subjects in 1619 nor were they willing subjects when the U.S. government declared Blacks free and instructed the FBI’s COINTELPRO program to create confusion and chaos and to institute the practice of surveillance, wiretapping, and imprisonment. The Civil Rights and Black Power Movements attest to Black Americans willingness to fight and die to end legalized segregation. But Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. agreed with young Black advocates that the goal of their resistance was not solely to integrate lunch counters or public transportation but to have the right to be free - not given freedom!

The media of King’s day, advancing an agenda in which U.S. interests took precedence over domestic, civil rights interests, promoted for widespread adoption, fear and suspicion of “angry,” “rioting” Blacks, conspiring against “hard-working” white citizens. King confronted these contrived images of discord: Where, he asked, is economic equality, economic opportunity? Poverty keeps the would-be working class rider walking to a low-paying job, the would-be home owner paying high rents for a rat-infested tenement if not homelessness, and the would-be lawyer, doctor, or teacher without equal opportunity. Where is freedom, democracy?

Black demands tried the patience of the State. Offer gold and status within the Democratic Party in exchange for the soul of resistance, and for the rest, COINTELPRO and repression.

Now, here we are in the 21st Century. Thanks to the Guardian U.K. and the steadfast journalism of Nick Davies (writing on the Murdoch Machine since 2000) and others, the Murdoch Media Empire seems to be in trouble. The mother of all dirt-generating machines, The News of the World, has come to a grinding halt! Murdoch, accompanied by son, Deputy Chief Operating Officer, James Murdoch, hauled before Parliament to answer questions about his reporters’ use of investigators to engage in phone-hacking and payments to the police, said that Tuesday, July 19, 2011 was the most “humble day” of his life. An interesting choice of words coming from a man whom veteran investigative reporter, Carl Bernstein, describes as the man who has had the greatest “impact on American political and media culture in the past half century” (“Murdoch Media Empire).

From all accounts, the citizens and politicians (some of whom were themselves humbled everyday before the powerful dirt-machine) and celebrities in England have finally had enough of the Murdoch Empire, of “gossip” for news, of lies and distortions. Here in the U.S., Fox News thinks that Murdoch is - no news at all! We have come to expect the political and cultural clout of the Roger Ailes gang to dismiss allegations of wrongdoing while Fox News continues its “fair and balanced” reporting on Muslim terrorists, Mexican immigrants, Mexican American job stealers, and Black criminals.

How timely was the Murdoch Machine’s arrival to the U.S.?

But then to read that of all agencies in the Homeland Security cabal, the FBI has been assigned to lead investigations into possible phone hacking by the Murdoch Machine in the U.S. The FBI is the same agency today employing high-tech surveillance tactics, wiretapping, and email-data gathering; the same agency paying informants to infiltrate activist organizations, mosques, and conducting raids at workplaces and at the homes of immigrant workers and family members.

Only Charlie Chaplin could film the absurdity of the criminal investigating the criminal. But, as Chaplin discovered, this is the Wild, Wild West, and this absurdity is the meaning of freedom in the United States!

Congress, too, wants the famous but now humble father and son Murdoch team to testify in Washington D.C. Congress - this is the same group of wealthy corporate-supported elite that cannot put an end to surveillance and wiretapping here and in fact, under Obama, has expanded the Patriotic Acts and subsequently, Homeland Security’s reach into the lives of U.S. citizens - this Congress calls for an investigation into allegations of Murdoch’s News Corp’s phone hacking practices against 9-11 families.

A letter from Homeland Security Committee Chair Peter King (yes, this is the same Republican, N.Y., Muslim baiting, race baiting, Fox News celebrity politician Peter King) to FBI Director Robert Mueller (veteran of the COINTELPRO era, re-appointed by Obama) urges a recognition of egregious behavior on the part of the Murdoch Empire to the long-suffering 9/11 families as “they remain vulnerable against such unjustifiable parasitic strains. We can spare no effort or expense in continuing our support for them” (Telegraph, UK, July 15, 2011).

According to some estimates, the Murdoch phone-hacking scandal involves some 4,000 victims. Think the authorities now in control of the U.S. investigation into the damage Murdoch’s News Corp, particularly its Fox News and cinema industry (Fox News, Fox Channels, 20th Century Fox) inflicted on U.S. citizens will consider the humbled collective to have freed Black Americans? Our humbled elite Black leadership is so quiet now. I wonder why?

One need not destroy one's enemy. One need only destroy his [or her] willingness to engage (Sun Tzu).

Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation has enjoyed the power to define for the world and specifically for Black Americans the meaning of freedom, irrevocably altering the spirit of resistance in the U.S.

It is amazing what a “2-minutes hate” session, every hour for 24 hours will do to whip down a population of people while whipping up others here and aboard with mug-shot images of a “Black” rapists on the loose and headlines announcing a “manhunt” for a “Black” male killer. Everyone hates violence and in a world where Blackness is engrained as always suspect, everyone hates Blackness! Blackness is Violence! Fear rules everyone and blinds all until Bush the Second illegally invades Iraq, or white activists in Chicago and Minnesota are raided by the FBI or 100, 000 mostly white Wisconsinites protests pension cuts and the end of collective bargaining.

Or now when the Murdoch Machine hacks the cell phone of kidnapped little girls and maybe, too, the families of 9/11 victims. Otherwise, few American citizens seemed to notice that the either fired or “retired” investigative journalists disappeared overnight, replaced by attractive, “sexy” anchors selling “shock and awe” and American “enemies” in between celebrity gossip and scandal. Corporate advertisers fill in the “news” gaps with images of America - a multicultural and a diverse America where citizens of all races, suddenly, just get along!

Only freed Blackness with visible traces of the operation of purification are worthy of a human interest story.

The Nazi propaganda machine won the “hearts and souls” of Germans, Europeans, Americans, and even the Jewish elite, so its trains from Eastern Europe and its gas chambers could operate day and night.

The Murdoch News Corporation did not arrive in the U.S. with a new breed of Edward R. Murrows or I.F. Stones. The Murdoch Machine gave the world hackers - phone hackers, yes, but worse, it gave the world mind hackers! And it more than tweaked with the Black psyche! It manipulates Black opinion and behavior to benefit corporate interests.

If the Murdoch Machine is raptured off the face of the Earth, it will make little difference. The Murdoch News Corporation is the standard bearer for what counts as “news” and the way in which news is presented in the English-speaking world. It is quite possible that Edward R. Murrow would be too depressing with or without Wolf Blitzer’s clicker and not as pretentious as Keith Olbermann or as handsome and adventurous as Anderson Cooper or as cutting edge and vibrant as Rachel Maddow. Corporate affectations matter to the average U.S. citizen today. Even the “weather” (not the effects of Climate Change) that is killing Americans is delivered with sublime efficiency. Temperature, for a third day in a row, 108. Stay home! Drink plenty of water!

So what does it matter that Black Americans tune out the Fox when, as New York Times' Brian Stelter reports that CNN and MSNBC have “far more black viewers, both in absolute terms and as a proportion of their overall audiences.”

In the 2009/2010 season, Fox News averaged “just 29,000 black viewers for its primetime 9/09-7/10 season, 1.38%” (Huffington Post, July 26, 2010). According to the Nielsen Media Research report, only 3% of U.S. citizens receive their news from these online magazines. Are alternative online news sites such as BlackCommentator.com, the Nation, Truthout, CommonDreams, Open Ed or AlterNet an alternative source of news for Black Americans?

Free choice appears as free as the U.S. election of a socialist president! Everyone knows who he is, except Americans!

Fifty-seven percent of U.S. citizens watch television news while only 40% read the newspapers. Twenty-three percent receive their news from Google or Yahoo online news services (Huffington Post).

You can witness the Murdoch Machine in action on any given evening, on any given cable news program! What is the difference? Murdoch and Ailes’ “political agenda” is not only, as Karl Grossman argues, “an unbridled propaganda organ for the GOP” (“Murdoch Media Empire”). That is underestimating the political agenda of the man from Australia who has more in common with American citizens than American citizens are willing to believe.

When Fox News talking heads rants about the election of a socialist president (that would be Barrack Obama!), they make sure to leave out of the “discussion” any analysis of U.S. policies before or after Obama. The pundits woke up on November 5, 2008 to find U.S. foreign policies in danger of becoming humble, particularly toward the citizens, including women and children, in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, and now Libya. Not imperialist enough, but these talking heads and pundits never use that word! Instead, the Fox News collective attacks Obama - the “Black” man! Obama - the not-really-but-almost-maybe-monkey! Obama - Wall Street’s darling and the corporate world’s prodigy receives as much airplay on Fox News as Murdoch the scoundrel!

Black Americans identify with the overt victim of Fox News (and often Tea Party elites’) attacks, racist attacks. Then, there is Obama, the wounded warrior, the one man struggling against the forces of evil at Fox News! Here is Obama, appearing before Black Americans (whenever he is not too busy meeting with corporate friends and GOP members) as that victim of racism. A victim Black Americans can believe in! Confusion and chaos that men like the Murdochs of the world love!

In the U.S., Rupert Murdoch has been on to something so American! Who needs Nazi propaganda!

BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board member, Lenore Jean Daniels, PhD, has a Doctorate in Modern American Literature/Cultural Theory. Click here to contact Dr. Daniels.