When a Pillar of the Fourth Estate Rests on a Trump-Murdoch Axis

[Commentary] The ties that bind the most powerful media mogul in the world to the leader of the free world just keep getting stronger. Or, more precisely, we keep learning just how strong they are. The question is where that leaves the rest of the world when they’re done divvying it up.

The whole Murdoch’s highly influential news organizations were covering Trump’s campaign and transition, their executive chairman was entangled in a financial arrangement of the most personal sort — tied to his children’s financial (very) well being — along with the president’s daughter. Referring to her only as the president’s “daughter” fails to capture her true role. She is Trump’s most trusted confidante. And she is married to a key presidential adviser, Jared Kushner, who, as it happens, is so close with Murdoch that he even helped Murdoch set up his bachelor pad after his last divorce, The relationship between the president and Murdoch has implications well beyond The Wall Street Journal, given the global breadth of Murdoch’s media holdings, his history of putting them to use for political leaders who then help him with his own business needs, and Trump’s own reactivity to the news media.

How it all affects the rest of us depends on how powerfully Murdoch’s news media properties swing behind the new presidential agenda and how much criticism of President Trump they’ll abide from their journalists and commentators. And all of that could depend on what Murdoch wants from the administration, and how badly he wants it.