Murdoch: FEAR THE KILLER BEES

🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝

While researching my new novel, I realized my childhood fear of killer bees could be traced back to Rupert Murdoch.

(And Irwin Allen.)

In 1973, Murdoch bought the morning paper the San Antonio Express and the afternoon paper the San Antonio News and over-hyped the threat of South American “killer bees”—as he perfected his formula of selling news based on his belief that news consumer behavior is built on either fear or rage.

When TIME profiled Murdoch in 1977, as he gained a toehold in NYC with the New York Post, its reporter noted “After turning the News front page into a graphic jungle of black boxes and red arrows, Murdoch provided a daily diet of rape and mayhem, tortured tots and killer bees.”

I talked to Charlie Sykes about this on the Bulwark podcast, which you can listen to below or by clicking HERE.

Two FYIs on this: per the New York Times in 1982,“The ‘killer bee,’ or Africanized bee, a descendant of African queen bees that were accidentally set free in Brazil in 1957 and started mixing with local bee populations, has long been the subject of much speculation, myth and fear. Its venom is no more toxic than that of other honeybees and less so than that of some wasps, such as the yellow jackets and other hornets.”

ALSO: Murdoch did this because it worked. The NYT in 1982 also noted how the San Antonio newspapers were thriving, while they “gloried in South American ‘killer’ bees, the shrine of the sacred tortilla and reports of the sexual activities of a local telephone company officer.”

The push-pull of sensationalism versus informing, flash versus substance, wanting to provide information while also wanting readers, is one of the subtexts in ALL THE DEMONS ARE HERE.

You can order a copy of ALL THE DEMONS ARE HERE via Amazon here….or Via your local independent book store here. Or you can get autographed copies from Politics & Prose here or East City Bookshop here.

Got some other podcast visits about to drop, plus if you’re in the New York City/Pleasantville NY area, I will be at the Jacob Burns Film Center next Wednesday, August 16 at 8 p.m., you can get tickets HERE.

-jake