Comments on: News Corp’s ethics cancer grows

By: JayCM

JayCM — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 13:34:52 +0000

I think it’s fairly obvious to those who want to see it that Murdoch’s news empire is corrupt, and those who don’t want to see it will manage, once again, not to.

By: mediahounddog

mediahounddog — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 05:08:47 +0000

I see the recent poster PatrickWolff just posted color on this News Corp division’s early 2010 payout of $500 million settlement. That number is not only true but understated as the settlement also required News Corp to enter into a 10 year business deal of an undislcosed value but presumed to be hundreds of millions of dollars more over the 10 year period to Valassis.

Ditto on a settlement earlier this year of another $125 million cash portion to a company Insignia, with another 10 year business deal with no disclosed value, but presumed to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars of additional value to this company.

So you can see the News Corp risk that Felix Salmon points out in his story of what may come out with payment of this magnitude to stop courtroom trials at the time, here is the link to the recent Bloomberg story from a few weeks ago for the deep dive into color, or you can query the head that starts with the words News Corp Marketer Used Mafia Lessons….

(for those in the biz, notice how Bloomberg had to walk back the original head and soften–see the difference in the URL head vs the revised head in the story)

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-09-27 /news-corp-marketer-used-mafia-lessons- to-instill-fear-respect.html

By: PatrickWolff

PatrickWolff — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 01:16:12 +0000

It is NOT true that “all the wrongdoing has been confined to the newspaper business.” News Corp had to pay a $500 million legal settlement to Valassis Corporation recently for anticompetitive behavior in its Free Standing Insert business. Nobody pays any attention to this business, but it is a big money maker for News Corp.

The “culture of corruption” appears to have infected many parts of News Corp for many years…

By: mediahounddog

mediahounddog — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 00:51:49 +0000

Felix-in regards to your last paragraph, you and readers should focus on what will be coming out at anytime in new media, and in due time from the government regulators investigating the Murdoch empire’s rogue News America division. NY Times, Bloomberg and recently NY Mag have all profiled color here for those not familiar with the relativley obscure segment of News Corp–it is bundled within the Newspaper Group operating earnings segment for abbut the past 18 months now.

The News Corp contagion will engulf this property and those in the know within this industry predict this will be the final takedown act for Murdoch and News Corp in the form we know it to exist today. There will be some big buzz at the Oct 21 News Corp shareholder meeting, for sure.

By: Danny_Black

Danny_Black — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 21:28:39 +0000

Some tut-tutting from someone working for a company that is paid by Kim Jeong Il to regurgitate propaganda for his genocidal, WMD proliferating, terror-sponsoring, drug trafficking regime. People in glass houses, huh…. Don’t you have some Hizbollah pictures to doctor or is that another division of your company?

By: RZ0

RZ0 — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 15:54:25 +0000

A couple years ago, the NY Daily News had a series about supposedly sold NY Post copies that never really got distributed.
I also recall lots of NY Posts being given away on the street back then.
Don’t know if that’s connected.

By: mrmcd

mrmcd — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 15:37:35 +0000

It’s not just inflating circulation numbers by selling in discount, it’s that eventually they ended up buying the papers themselves when one of their co-conspirators wanted to bail out, then using dirty accounting to hide that fact they were buying their own papers.

I heard a rumor that MySpace is (was) dirty too. Not sure of the exact details, but something involving using the unit to basically loot cash from News Corp by having it acquire or purchase assets from front businesses controlled by the Murdoch family.

By: Moopheus

Moopheus — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 13:41:41 +0000

Magazines and newspapers using bulk discount sales for free/cheap giveaway to boost circulation is an old trick. There should be some finger-wagging here at the Audit Bureau of Circulation, which has changed its reporting procedures to make it easier for periodicals to lump these sorts of sales in with regular paid sales.

By: FifthDecade

FifthDecade — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 13:27:29 +0000

I ceased to be shocked at what the Murdochs were capable of years ago: I now expect every mendacity and manipulation from the group. But the shareholders love him! Which is kind of an example of where our society needs some adjustment…

By: Kiraly

Kiraly — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 09:04:36 +0000

If anything gets uncovered at Fox or Sky or Harper Collins, it’s surely all over for Rupert? For instance trying to control elections to assume power in the US government for Oil corporations ambitions or running non-stop President bashing TV shows, trying to end unions, the EPA or maybe his most heinous crime is the climate change denial that airs on Fox News Channels allowing the quality of our air to become more polluted and ultimately reeking havoc on our own generations of children, in short he’s as Evil as they come.

By: mfw13

mfw13 — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 08:34:12 +0000

Don’t worry…thanks to FoxNews nobody outside the Tea Party trusts anything from a Rupert Murdoch owned media property anyway.