Rupert Murdoch damaged U.S., but his legacy isn’t all-powerful

To the editor: LZ Granderson asks a very existential question about whether the U.S. will survive the damage caused by retired Fox Corp. and News Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch. Freedom of the press is a double-edged sword, and Murdoch arguably carved out his empire from the nether side.

Regardless, entrepreneurial freedom and freedom of speech will inevitably beget profit-mongering propaganda outlets such as Fox News. The question is, if the majority of people can be led like sheep, doesn’t that argue for the need for shepherds?

America’s experiment in democracy could still fail. In the compendium of human existence, self-determination is a relatively new phenomenon.

There is hope for the American way, however. At its height Fox News couldn’t deny a competent president a second term in 2012, and in 2020 it failed at helping an incompetent president win one.

Robert Fox, Los Angeles

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To the editor: Granderson raises a most apt question. Which he answers pessimistically — and realistically: There probably is no undoing “all the damage caused by Murdoch’s greed and the monster it fed within the Republican Party.”

With its constant deluge of demagogic misinformation and catering to willful ignorance, Fox News gave voice to vacuous masses that had become ever more resentful of impartial media outlets.

Nothing in the proposed Press Act to protect journalists, which Granderson supports, nor any legislation will silence those emboldened voices anytime soon. That is Murdoch’s enduring legacy.

J.R. Groves, Pacific Palisades