The American Debate: Murdoch's media empire has also been doing damage in the U.S.

Don't assume that the scandals engulfing Rupert Murdoch are solely the province of the British. In truth, his media empire has been doing damage on these shores for a long time.

His minions may not have been bribing and intimidating American police officials, or invading Americans' privacy by hacking with alacrity into thousands of voice mails and cellphones (as far as we know), but it has long been obvious that Murdoch has coarsened and politicized civic dialogue and protected his realm by doing financial favors for the powerful. That behavior isn't illegal, just amoral.

I was reminded of this last weekend when Ohio's Republican governor, John Kasich, was asked on Meet the Press to comment on whether the hacking and bribery scandal would adversely affect Murdoch's Fox News. His verbatim reply: "Well, you know, they, they have not been touched by this, they have told me, and I believe them. . . . You know, Murdoch's fired people, he's, you know, he's, he's quoted as, as being told that - his hands in his, his - in his, his head in his hands, crying with the family that was impacted."

Clearly Kasich didn't want to touch the issue, but the governor did manage to spin for Murdoch by saying that the mogul had "fired people" involved in the scandal (a falsehood; he hasn't fired anybody) and that Murdoch is a compassionate soul who cried with the family of the murdered British girl whose voice mails had been hacked.

But was this defense of Murdoch purely spontaneous? Nope. Unbeknownst to the viewers, Gov. Kasich owed the guy, big time. Murdoch had Kasich on the Fox News payroll for nine years, earning as much as $250,000 annually for a weekly show, and in 2010 Murdoch's News Corp. cut a check for $1 million, payable to the Republican Governors Association.

Moves like that have helped Murdoch skew the public dialogue. Perhaps Rudy Giuliani was merely speaking from the heart the other day when he defended Murdoch as "a very honorable, honest man," but let us also note that in 2005 News Corp. showered Giuliani's law firm with $100,000 in lobbying fees and that in 2007 presidential candidate Giuliani logged more time than any of his rivals on friendly Fox News shows.