Rupert Murdoch, who has for decades championed Israel’s cause and is now pushing his media empire into overdrive to defend the indefensible. If the pen is indeed mightier than the sword, then Murdoch is one of Israel’s most powerful weapons.

Inside the industry, Fox News is known for its particularly strict, top-down editorial procedure. One former contributor claimed that working under Murdoch was “almost as if we were being monitored by a Stalinist system … it is very much an environment of fear”. A second confided that “if you don’t go along with the mind-set of the hierarchy, if you challenge them on their attitudes about things, you are history”.

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