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Keith Rupert Murdoch, AC, KSG ( born 11 March 1931) is an Australian-American media mogul and the Chairman, and CEO of News Corporation.Murdoch's first permanent foray into TV was in the USA, where he created Fox Broadcasting Company in 1986. In the 2000s, he became a leading investor in satellite television, the film industry and the Internet, and purchased a leading American newspaper, The Wall Street Journal. Rupert Murdoch was listed three times in the Time 100 as one among the most influential people in the world. He is ranked 13th most powerful person in the world in the 2010 Forbes' The World's Most Powerful People list. With a net worth of US$6.3 billion, he is ranked 117th wealthiest person in the world. |
The resizing of the Murdoch media empire has just started. I think it's been payback time for a while, at least since Obama won the presidential election. While the circus took place on stage, with Obama and the other characters following their scripts, life was dandy. As the Conservatives switched places with the Progressives (recall those 8 too many years under Bush the lesser), the former needed some pacifying device; Murdoch obliged, everything looked under control while the stage and scripts were outside (Golem-like) surprise.
However, I think that some powerful figures must have gotten a bit nervous by media fueled chaotic phenomenon known as the Tea Party movement. I mean, they calmed Ron Paul down, someone who had built a credible image about fighting financial elites, and couldn't get some junior Congresspeople to toe the line? Ha, nobody should forget the Alexander Hamilton financial chapter in the history of the nation! That is, no mortal of the realm questions the financial logic.
So, I wonder where things went amiss and what Murdoch's contribution might have been. I suspect you cannot have good Americans think they may get Congress to listen to them on such arcane matters as kicking the financial can down the road. Could it be that Murdoch either switched masters or thought dangerously for one as if in defiance of old age?
Be that as it may, but what do you do when you've had a finger on all digital pulse? You start by turning Murdoch in to the British, let it go down with his base here, and finally administer justice.
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| Are we to witness a crepuscular Murdoch or a falling media empire? Are they going total war here? If it's the end of the person, we shall conclude that some people don't know how to age. Otherwise, I leave it to you, my reader(s) to figure the details of the next rise from the ashes of this media Phoenix... |
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4 comments:
What are you saying? You can and should get away with anything? You had the nerve to condescend to Julian Assange, who sold a lot of papers for you, BTW. Whereas Murdoch was running what amounts to a blackmail and protection scheme. You can find fault with Government investigations that target racketeering by the establishment press, but Assange is, somehow, a shady character deserving of it? What hypocrisy.
Look, I'll tell you I am more approving of the Times existence than I am sorry about it. It is one of the few news outlets I can say that about, but just barely. And it is an island in vast swamp. In general, the modern news and information complex has become a bigger threat to freedom and democracy than it is a friend. Knowledge and ideas and public discourse are tortured and left to die there.
There is no good solution that I can see, because the press won't fix itself as long as the media is organized as it is. We cannot continue with things as they are and remain a functioning democracy. And if we confront the press with regulation, that too will be a threat to democracy, but at this point, it is a fifty-fifty proposition. News Corp., CNN, and MSNBC are not little-old Ben Franklins with quill pens. In this laissez faire arrangement they are unelected multinational corporations, closely aligned in their interests, beholden to an entrenched establishment, and with more power than the elected officials they report on and pontificate and harangue us about. It is undeniable. The right wing knows it, the left wing knows it, and the center is coming around.
Maybe your time would be better spent proposing alternatives to the current arrangement that would guarantee a truly independent press, rather than defending this fiction of a free press that you are so invested in.
The press is not 'free'. It's the propaganda arm of corporate America and the world. The fall of Murdoch would not begin to shake apart this evil alliance, but it's a pretty good place to start. Murdoch represents the most blatant marriage of corporate greed and media myth making for the benefit of world elites, and I'm happy to see his demise. Can this be the beginning of a good thing? We can hope.
http://multumnonmulta.blogspot.com/2011/07/media-self-control-cenk-uygur.html
Bec
MS
There was an interesting Bill Moyer's show a couple of years ago called "buying the War". In it he and several news people talked about the role the press played in the lead up to the war and how Patriotism and advertising dollars may have influenced the coverage. It's worth looking at or looking at again if you've already seen it. http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/btw/transcript1.html
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