Irish Examiner View: Facebook's power unprecedented as social media a new kind of kingmaker

Facebook and other publishers too have shown indifference to truth.

It's almost 30 years since Rupert Murdoch's red-top, The Sun beat its chest after John Major's Conservatives won an unexpected 1992 election victory. "It's The Sun Wot Won It" harrumphed the tabloid, celebrating its own power at least as much as the Tory victory. 

Murdoch, who will be 90 in March, still holds extraordinary influence. That influence, as his dismissal of climate change shows, can be toxic. So toxic, so antediluvian that last month his son James, once touted as his successor, resigned from the News Corporation citing "disagreements over editorial content".