Reprimand won’t stop Murdoch’s contempt
The headlines screaming from London tell the story: Murdoch “unfit” to run News Corp. The Commons committee that summoned the 81-year-old media magnate to explain how his newspapers came to hack the phones of everyone from Prince William to Paul McCartney has given its damning verdict.
Rupert Murdoch “turned a blind eye and exhibited willful blindness to what was going on in his companies” and his instinct “was to cover up rather than seek out wrongdoing and discipline the perpetrators.” The bottom line? “Rupert Murdoch is not a fit person to exercise the stewardship of a major international company.” So much for Murdoch’s attempt to pose as an affable old codger with too much on his mind to notice the lawbreaking done in his name. So much for, “This is the most humble day of my life.”
The meticulous politeness of the legislators who called him to account belied their more serious intent, to express in vivid and purposeful language the horror and disgust the British now have for the Murdoch family. The old man’s hideous talent for serving up salacious scandal and bare breasts in abundance in his “family” newspapers disguised his more sinister aim. Under the guise of providing bread and circuses for the masses, Murdoch allowed journalists and, when they proved incapable of thievery, private eyes to dig the dirt on Britain’s good and great, the better to compromise them when he needed a business favor.
When Tom Watson, a member of the Commons committee, expressed surprise that James Murdoch was unaware of the lawbreaking going on under his nose – “You must be the first mafia boss in history who didn’t know he was running a criminal enterprise” – Murdoch Jr. gave a petulant sigh, “Oh, Mr. Watson!” like a matron whose bottom had been tweaked. But to Watson it was elementary. The Murdochs have been running a protection racket in Britain for the last 30 years, and those who have stood in the way of Rupert’s business ambitions, or failed to pay enough obeisance to him, or merely dared hold a different view from him, have been roundly trashed with his wholehearted consent.
Surely someone who has been caught blackmailing legislators, who had to put up or face a smearing, might be expected to change course, to admit wrongdoing, at least to promise to do better in the future. But as we saw from his defiant appearance before Lord Justice Leveson in a second British legal inquiry into press standards last week, Rupert Murdoch is unbowed. Once an Australian, then a Brit, now an American, he revels in his outsider status and his inability to fully join society.
He has contempt for those who have qualms about his brutal take on the news and his cynical approach to his readers – “Let them watch nonsense! Let them read filth!” He has no intention of tempering his behavior or calling off his dogs. Brought up to believe he can do no wrong and that he is cleverer than the rest of us – “Rupert has a very big brain,” his mother, Dame Elisabeth, proudly tells strangers – he blames his recent difficulties on his commercial rivals and his political enemies.
Besides, he and his immediate family own 40 percent of News Corp.’s voting stock. Mere investors can talk to the hand, because he is determined to carry on as before. That means ignoring what the toffee-nosed Brits say about his stewardship of his own company. What’s it to do with them? He will hold on to his British newspapers, even though his board would prefer he cut them loose to avoid the nagging embarrassment they cause. He will continue to browbeat his editors, suggest lines of argument, name those he thinks should be encouraged and those he wants destroyed.
Murdoch’s tweets can’t save his tottering empire
On the night Queen Elizabeth scampered back from her Scottish castle to address an angry crowd outside Buckingham Palace – the crowd protesting she hadn’t paid enough respect to the memory of Princess Diana, killed in a car crash the week before – Rupert Murdoch was in the newsroom of the London Times. “There’s your headline,” he told the editor in charge. “Queen Saves Neck!” It was a perfect tabloid headline for a perfect tabloid story.
That Diana, named after the goddess of hunting, should die hounded by a pack of snap-happy paparazzi added a vein of irony to the story of her tragic life. A similar irony informs the scandal engulfing Murdoch. The biter has been bit, a fact clearly on display when Rupert and his son James, arm in arm with their flame-maned employee Rebekah Brooks, were shoved and jostled in a London street by the newshounds of Fleet Street. Hauled before a House of Commons committee, the usually unrepentant mogul looked dented when he uttered the phrase that will litter his obituaries: “This is the most humble day of my life.”
His sense of humility didn’t last long. Nothing has gone right for Murdoch since that day of shame, yet he quickly regained his old pugilistic self using a medium that perfectly suits his headline-writer’s gift, the 140 characters of Twitter. Too cocky to hide behind an amanuensis, Murdoch is back on the attack, railing against “enemies many different agendas, but worst old toffs and right wingers” and vowing revenge. “Seems every competitor and enemy piling on with lies and libels,” he tweeted. “Easy to hit back hard, which preparing.”
While Rupert fiddles on his iPad, his empire burns. Scotland Yard – which, according to the police themselves, had become a News Corp. subsidiary, leading to the resignation of the police commissioner, the head of counterterrorism and the communications chief – is conducting three parallel investigations into bribery, corruption, phone hacking, computer hacking and witness intimidation by News Corp. employees. Senior policewoman Sue Akers has uncovered “a culture of illegal payments” to police and other public servants, meaning News Corp. may technically have broken the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act that deems bribing foreign officials a criminal act.
The company is paying out millions to the more than 800 victims its reporters and private detectives hacked, then humiliated, among them Tony Blair’s wife, Cherie, former interior minister David Blunkett, actor Jude Law and singer Charlotte Church. So far News Corp. has paid $15.6 million to settle 54 lawsuits of the 60 filed by last October.
The scandal has enveloped Prime Minister David Cameron, who used to ride and socialize with Brooks before she became too toxic and who hired as his press chief Andy Coulson, former boss of Murdoch’s News of the World who had resigned from the paper after turning a blind eye to hacking. Coulson was driven out of his government post.
Murdoch’s hope that his children would succeed him at News Corp. now seems forlorn. His daughter Elisabeth blames Brooks for destroying the company, his son Lachlan hurriedly decamped for Australia after an unexplained incident in New York, and James had to write a groveling letter to his parliamentary inquisitors for failing to do his job. “I acknowledge that wrongdoing should have been uncovered earlier,” he wrote. “I could have asked more questions, requested more documents and taken a more challenging and sceptical view of what I was told.”
Now would be an excellent time for the DOJ to initiate a well publicized Grand Jury process to determine the extent of Murdock’s US outlets’ illegal activities like, bribing US legislators, police, phone hacking, influence peddling etc, etc like their UK muckraker colleagues as well as the probability of News Corp. breaking the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act that deems bribing foreign officials a criminal act.
It’s time and past time to declare ‘Rupert’ an undesirable alien’ and send him back to Botany Bay.
from MediaFile:
Content everywhere? More like content nowhere
Will Big Media and Big Tech companies ever stop punishing their biggest fans?
Like many people, I woke up yesterday and reached for my iPad for my morning hit of news, entertainment and information, so I could start my day. (And like many, I’m embarrassed to admit it.) Padding to the front door to get a newspaper still sounds more respectable, but my iPad gives me a far more current, rich and satisfying media experience than a still-warm printed Times could ever produce.
Except, lately, it doesn’t. Yesterday morning, I saw the exciting news that Bill Simmons, ESPN’s most popular, profane and controversial writer, had secured an interview with President Obama. Simmons published his interview in podcast, text and video form on Grantland, a longform sports journalism website he founded last year under the ESPN umbrella. I clicked over to the story from my Twitter feed and saw three YouTube excerpts of Simmons with Obama. And that’s all I saw. When I hit play on the videos, I discovered ESPN had set them to be “unavailable” on mobile devices.
Moving on, I tried to read a New York Post headline that also found its way into my Twitter feed. But when I tapped in, the Post webpage that loaded was not the story I wanted to read. Instead it was a notice, which I took as an admonition, that to read New York Post content on an iPad, I would have to download the app, which retails for $1.99.
I want to make it clear that I’m not against paying for content. But what I’ve just described aren’t paywalls, where publications warn users that they won’t be able to consume content for free.
The situations I’m describing are blanket denials of content because of a choice I made about which device to use. With these tactics, media companies aren’t creating content paywalls, they’re creating content ghettos. Big Media, set my content free! Stop messing with the user experience to deny readers their content simply because you can detect what platform they’re on. And stop punishing users who are investing in the latest devices to consume your output. In other words, grant my hyper-advanced iOS device or my friend’s fancy new Android phone just as much access to the Web as my mother’s four-year-old Windows XP PC. Which one of us do you think wants to watch Simmons talk crossover dribbles with the Commander-in-Chief?
from Jack Shafer:
Murdoch’s latest scandal
Wall Street Journal Europe Publisher Andrew Langhoff resigned yesterday, but why?
A hard-to-comprehend story in today's Wall Street Journal alleges that Langhoff transgressed by pressuring Wall Street Journal Europe reporters into covering an advertiser, consulting firm ELP, and by contractually promising that WSJE reporters would cover ELP in "special report" sections. (The tainted stories in question now carry a disclaimer.)
There's a third dimension to the scandal, which the Wall Street Journal article soft-pedals. It turns out that bulk-sold, discounted copies of WSJE were sold to the same advertiser, ELP, to boost circulation. I defy any reader to cull the salient passages and find any evidence or hint of circulatory wrong-doing by the publication.
For that sort of coverage, see today's piece in the Guardian by Nick Davies, "Wall Street Journal circulation scam claims senior Murdoch executive." Davies exploits the circulation angle, alleging that the WSJE publisher "set up a complex scheme to channel money to ELP to pay for the papers it had agreed to buy—effectively buying the papers with the Journal's own cash." The Guardian also calls Langhoff's resignation a "damage limitation exercise" prompted by its inquiries into the scandal. The Wall Street Journal calls the resignation a result of an "internal probe" into the special-report articles and a circulation agreement with ELP.
Will the scandal go bigger or will it burn itself out in a couple of days? Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., which owns the Wall Street Journal Europe, has already copped to the journalistic sins of having a publisher promise an advertiser coverage and of leaning on reporters to produce it. This behavior is considered very, very, unclean in the world of publishing when conducted covertly. But when the advertiser-pleasing copy is produced overtly in special sections, the worst publishers are accused of is opportunism. Today, most quality newspapers assemble special sections themed to energy, transportation, education, philanthropy, investing, health, et al. These sections, which contain soft or backgrounderish copy, are propped up by lucrative ads from the major industries doing business in the theme area. So great is the publisher's appetite for special sections that if the New York Times could persuade Eukanuba, Purina, and Hartz Ultraguard Plus Rid Worm tablets to take out gigantic ads, it would gladly print a "Your Dog's Retirement" section. Twice a year.
The Financial Times, for example, hammers together special sections with laughable regularity. Yesterday's FT special section, "Canadian Energy," contains big-ass ads from Chevron, Shell, and the American Petroleum Institute. Are you dying to read "Oil shifts country's centre of gravity"? Does "Technology opens far-flung possibilities" float your boat? Then grab a copy before they all disappear.
The articles in most special sections aren't embarrassing or unethical as much as they're useless. You'll rarely find a critical article in a special section, so why bother reading? The intended audience for special sections isn't readers, it's advertisers. As a rule, special sections are two steps up from supplements titled "Advertising Supplement," which are written by outside writers, and two steps down from a newspaper's regular coverage. There are good special sections out there—I'm thinking of the ones that run in the Economist—but most of them suck.
Why do advertisers keep falling for the ludicrously inflated circulation stats that are the lifeblood of the paper and pulp industry, and how much will it cost to run a full-page ad of my new 401-K9 plan in the NYT’s next “Your Dog’s Retirement” section?
The lucrative business of Obama-bashing
– Bernd Debusmann is a Reuters columnist. The opinions expressed are his own. –
Four days before Barack Obama was sworn into office, a prominent radio talk show host, Rush Limbaugh, told his conservative listeners that a major American publication had asked him to write 400 words on his hopes for the Obama presidency.
“I…don’t need 400 words,” he said, “I need four: I hope he fails.”
The remark set the tone for a steady stream of unbridled and often bizarre criticism from Limbaugh and like-minded radio and TV commentators, several of them working for Fox News, the network owned by media mogul Rupert Murdoch. Obama responded four days after his inauguration, telling a group of Republican congressmen they needed to break away from a mindset of confrontation.
“You can’t just listen to Rush Limbaugh and get things done.”
What followed should have helped the new administration to reflect on the wisdom of singling out a media critic. But it didn’t. Limbaugh promptly portrayed himself as a man of such pivotal importance that the president of the world’s only superpower needed to pay personal attention to his tartly-worded opinion.
The controversy over his ill wishes for the president caused, as he put, his ratings to go “through the roof,” a reassuring development for a man who makes $38 million a year under an eight-year contract that runs through 2016. The score of that early skirmish: Limbaugh 1, Obama 0.
I’d say that all news networks in the US are pretty horrible. They all have their agendas, biases, and official lines of reporting. I do like Reuters as it seems more objective than the others. But just as the liberal media did with Bush bashing why would it be unfair for conservative media to bash Obama. The viewership for Fox is higher, because it’s normal that when the curent president is a liberal, the liberal media won’t report objectively on him. Same is true of conservative media and Bush… The sad part is that current administration is so vocal about their dissatisfaction with Fox. It makes them look petty. Especially during present times when people are eagerly expecting results, from a president who promissed so much.
Pay a small toll to read this news story
– Eric Auchard is a Reuters columnist. The opinions expressed are his own –
There is nothing like the threat of a hanging to concentrate the mind.
The newspaper industry is in a collective panic over its future. The debate centers on the thorny issue of how publishers might find some way, any way, to make online readers to pay for what they read.
The fear is that the newspaper business model has suffered a mortal wound from the collapse of advertising that once funded it, and which has only accelerated in the current economic environment. Or perhaps it’s the realization that younger generations reared on digital media will never settle down to buy print.
This crisis has forced leading publishers and pundits propose all manner of last-ditch business strategies or glitzy technical solutions to cut off the abundant supply of free Web news undercutting their business models.
Print newspapers are limited by space on the page and the boundaries of physical distribution. But the volume of online news seems almost infinite and most of it is free.
Online readers are like butterflies fluttering from place to place. Very few pay directly for anything they read.
Although Chuck needs a date with a spell checker, he makes some good points. In America, the First Amendment to the constitution went out the door long ago, when the era of political correctness became en vogue. Since then litigation and fear of have been the standard of what free speech entails. True journalism went out the door at that moment – the investigative journalist especially got his/her hands cut off by corporate types. The only journalists with any integrity went to news services like AP, and somehow AP does alright offering their wires (on delay) for free. (I would also mention Bloomberg’s exception news service except that they charge through the nose!)
If people believe in getting local news from local reporters and such, I think communitites themselves need to organize and take back what’s theirs – their first amendment right to free speech and free press and their desire for the truth of matters, not a dumbed-down, corporate friendly version that obscures truth and spin doctors have final say on what in ‘newsworthy’.
Rupert’s success is due to the oldest principle in marketing – give the Public what it wants. That’s the rule and Mr Wapshott knows it. Indeed this article demonstrates how well he knows it!!
Murdoch is not quite what old Wapshotters says. But he’s no warmonger.
For me, Dinners for sale at Downing Street, a PM who flogs arms in Myanmar in flagrant defiance of a Europesn Sanction is something nobody wants. The PM’s fetish for arms sales whatever the cost leaves Rupert looking like a crook who knows where to draw the line. Which Decameron does not. David has his endearing moments, losing his rag in the House and being sarcasic at the expense of Members twice his age show nothing more than a lack of the basics we expect.He didn’t learn that at Eton. Murdoch may be bad – but he’s not stupid!!