Murdoch's acquisition of National Geographic raises concerns

In an age when so many people, especially students, read the news on their phone screens rather than finding the time to flip through print pages, it is no surprise that magazines and businesses that were too slow to go digital have suffered immensely over the past few years. Thus, it wasn’t too surprising when it was announced last week that the non-profit society which runs National Geographic decided to sell 73% of the company’s media assets to a for-profit company after almost a decade of declining sales and subscriptions. What was shocking was who they decided to sell it to: Rupert Murdoch.

For those of you who can’t place the name, Rupert Murdoch is one of the most powerful behind-the-scenes players in the media world. He controls the massive conglomerates 21st Century Fox and News Corp, which are parent groups for everything from Fox News, to the Wall Street Journal to Harper Collins. The issue with his acquisition of National Geographic becomes evident when one looks into Murdoch’s non-aligning personal views on topics such as climate change. In July of last year, The Guardian published an article titled “Rupert Murdoch doesn’t understand climate change basics and that’s a problem,” which dissected various inaccurate quotes Murdoch has made on the issue. They also accused him of frequently spreading misinformation and inadequately covering climate change in both personal interviews and across his media empire. For example, Fox News employs reporters, such as Charles Krauthammer, who blatantly deny the existence of climate change, and as the Huffington Post reported last year, science journalist Michael Moyer was explicitly by Fox News told not to speak about the topic when on air. According to the Huffington Post, the company has also reported that climate change is a scam and a hoax that results from numbers fabricated by NASA.

It is apparent that these actions deeply clash with a major purpose of National Geographic: to spread awareness and appreciation about nature and the environment through deep and innovative journalism. The magazine has long been a cultural icon that has brought its readers to the most astounding places on the globe, and it is the curator of some of the world’s most revolutionary photographs. While it is still too early to tell how this change in ownership will alter the magazine’s content, it begs the question: when should a media outlet's service to the public be compromised in order to survive financially? There are fewer and fewer independently run news organizations that don’t operate under the overt political agenda of some individual or group, and this is something we as consumers and producers of journalism need to be constantly aware of.

People may say that if you are doing good work, it doesn’t matter where the money comes from. However, it seems quite unlikely that Rupert Murdoch would write off climate change with one hand and spread awareness of it with the other, especially as the conversation becomes increasingly mainstream. The news media -- otherwise known as the fourth estate -- can influence everything from our laws to our opinions, and it is imperative for us to acknowledge that jeopardizing their integrity can have long-lasting effects on our understanding of what is around us.