Big Media

News Corp’s Editorial Board: A Rogues Gallery

Posted by on July 20, 2007 at 2:46 am. 5 Comments :

Defenders of journalistic integrity are nervously gnawing at their fingertips now that the Dow Jones board has recommended accepting Rupert Murdoch’s offer to purchase their souls. All that remains now is for the Bancrofts to meet and then reveal their decision. They can still block the sale.

Observers say that it is too close to call. There are a few noble members of the controlling shareholders group that are standing firm against Murdoch. There are also those who are salivating at the thought of the new riches the sale will bring them. For the rest, they would do well to consider the prospects News Corp is floating for the editorial board that is intended to keep a distance between Murdoch and the Journal.

The Rogues Gallery:

Theodore B. Olson: Olsen was Assistant Attorney General under Ronald Reagan, whom he also defended in the Iran/Contra scandal. He went on to become Solicitor General in the administration of Bush, the Elder. Later he represented Bush, the Lesser in the Supreme Court case versus Al Gore.

Jack Fuller: Fuller was president of Tribune Publishing Company, and former editor of the Chicago Tribune. The Tribune Company is an unabashedly conservative enterprise and the Chicago Tribune is newsprint version of Fox News.

Thomas Bray: Bray is the former editorial-page editor of the Detroit News. He has a pre-existing relationship with the Wall Street Journal as a writer for OpinionJournal.com, which the Journal owns. At OJ he shared bylines with ultra-right wingers like Paul Gigot, John Fund, and Peggy Noonan.

Susan Hockfield: Hockfield is president of Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Prior to her post at MIT, she was a provost at Yale where she was at the center of a bitter controversy surrounding the Graduate Employees and Students Organization and its unionization efforts. She was staunchly anti-union.

With this preview of what Murdoch is proposing for the entity that is supposed to prevent him from influencing newsroom operations, we can see clearly that he is not the least bit interested in keeping his word or adhering to the terms of the agreement negotiated to preserve editorial independence. I certainly hope that the wavering Bancrofts and other shareholders are paying attention.

Update (8/1/07): The latest roster for the board now includes Lou Boccardi, former head of the Associated Press, Jennifer Dunn, former Republican House member, and Nicholas Negroponte, founder of MIT’s Media Lab.

If this means that Olsen and Hockfield are gone, I’d call this an improvement. But Dunn, Fuller, and Bray, could still cause trouble.

Where There’s Smoke, There’s Murdoch

Posted by on July 12, 2007 at 12:42 pm. NO Comments :

There’s a lot of activity in the News Corp. boardroom these days. Fox News just announced that their Fox Business Network will launch October 15, 2007. The Dow Jones acquisition, while not a certainty, is still proceeding apace. So it is always good to review what sort of service we can expect from News Corp. properties. PR Watch gives us another good example for why we have a right to worry about the expanding influence of Rupert Murdoch and Co.

[Philip Morris] cultivated a close relationship with Murdoch, and it has served PM’s interests admirably. An internal PM issue presentation titled The Perspective of PM International of Smoking and Health Issues, states PM’s intent to exploit its relationship with Murdoch:

A number of media proprietors … are sympathetic to our position – Rupert Murdoch and Malcolm Forbes are two good examples. The media like the money they make from our advertisements and they are an ally that we can and should exploit.

The PM document goes on to brag about how, “Murdoch’s papers rarely publish anti-smoking articles these days.” This was hardly a happy coincidence of editorial policy given that Murdoch was serving on the board of Philip Morris, and PM CEO Geoffrey C. Bible later joined the board of News Corp.

Murdoch has already promised that the Fox Business Network would be more “business friendly.” These revelations demonstrate just how intimate that friendship can be. How could anyone take such a network seriously? And how will anyone ever be able to take the Wall Street Journal seriously again, if Murdoch’s bid succeeds?

Murdoch On Murdoch

Posted by on June 30, 2007 at 3:41 am. NO Comments :

Time Magazine joins the rush to profile the 21st century’s Minister of Propaganda, Rupert Murdoch. In case you missed it, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, Slate, Keith Olbermann, and others have taken turns trying to analyze the man and/or the deal to consume Dow Jones and it’s pearl, the Wall Street Journal.

Time’s piece covers a lot of the same territory as the others, but delivers some choice quotations from the dark horse’s mouth:

“Why would I spend $5 billion for something in order to wreck it?”
Gee, I don’t know. Why did you do it to the New York Post and your London papers?

“When you’re a catalyst for change, you make enemies – and I’m proud of the ones I’ve got.”
Like the employees of Dow Jones who staged a “sick out” to protest your attempt to buy the company? Being proud of your enemies is not exactly a display of journalistic neutrality.

“…if you look at our general news, do we put on things which favor the right rather than the left? I don’t know. We don’t think we do. We’ve always insisted we don’t. I don’t think we do. Aw, it’s subjective. Neither side admits it.”
That’s some pretty fancy footwork. Plus, it sounds like you’re admitting what you say neither side admits.

“My worry about the New York Times is that it’s got the only position as a national elitist general-interest paper. So the network news picks up its cues from the Times. And local papers do too. It has a huge influence. And we’d love to challenge it.”
Asserting that you want to challenge the influence of the “national elitist” New York Times is further proof that you intend to shape the content of the Journal despite your denials.

It couldn’t be more clear, to anyone with a discernible pulse, that Murdoch is determined to burn his brand onto the Dow Jones properties regardless of what promises he mumbles to seal the deal. If the Bancrofts consent to Murdoch’s overtures they cannot later claim that they had no idea what damage he would do. They cannot pretend that they thought the paper’s integrity had been protected. They will be forever culpable for their naivete and their greed. No excuses – just a legacy of shame.

Trouble For Murdoch

Posted by on June 20, 2007 at 11:26 am. NO Comments :

While I still prefer my own proposal for Dow Jones, there are some new developments that we should keep our eyes on.

General Electric (parent of CNBC) is talking with Pearson (parent of Financial Times) about joining to bid for Dow Jones. The deal would allow the Bancrofts to keep a share of the company.

Billionaire Ron Burkle is reportedly interested in bidding for Dow Jones and has been working with the company’s union to put a deal together. One scenario has Yahoo, on whose board Burkle sits, becoming a partner in the transaction.

The Yahoo connection to Burkle’s bid takes on a new and ominous wrinkle with reports that Murdoch is interested in trading MySpace for a 25% share of Yahoo. What an evil genius. If Burkle/Yahoo buy Dow Jones and then Murdoch executes the MySpace swap, Murdoch would still end up with significant chunk of DJ. If Murdoch pulls off the MySpace swap first, he would be in a position to steer Yahoo away from Burkle, thus eliminating, or at least slowing down, his competition for DJ. In any case, it’s a terrible deal for Yahoo which would be paying the equivalent of $10 billion dollars for a property Murdoch bought a year ago for $580 million. Yahoo could have the faster-growing Facebook for only $2 billion.

But the juiciest revelation to date is this teaser about a major investigation of the Murdoch empire being conducted by the New York Times. I don’t know if this just a human interest story or if they have some dirt on Rupert, but I sure hope it’s the latter.

Stay Tuned.

An Alternative To Murdoch For Dow Jones

Posted by on June 4, 2007 at 4:43 pm. 2 Comments :

The Bancroft Family met today with Satan…er…Rupert Murdoch to discuss selling their soul…er…interest in Dow Jones. The meeting was a capitulation to an untrustworthy media baron whose word is about as reliable as a New York Post Page 6 columnist. At the meeting, Murdoch likely insisted that he has no intentions of interfering with editorial decisions at the Wall Street Journal, and he probably claimed that he has never done so with his other media properties. Of course, that would be a lie.

Representatives of the Bancrofts are wasting their time if they think that Murdoch will propose credible options for maintaining editorial independence. Even if he were to make a plausibly acceptable offer, he could hardly be counted on to uphold the agreement once the ink on the contract is dry.

The Independent Association of Publishers’ Employees, the union representing Dow Jones, is joining with the Newspaper Guild and the Communications Workers of America to seek out alternative buyers for the company. They have obtained the services of Ownership Associates, the same firm that tried to help steer the sale of Knight Ridder to a group headed by Ron Burkle. Wouldn’t it be ironic if Burkle emerged as the buyer for Dow Jones, stealing the property out from under the Murdoch banner whose New York Post slandered him and led to the Page 6 extortion scandal?

If the Bancrofts and/or the unions are listening, I have a suggestion for them. Why not create a non-profit consortium to purchase the company? Such an owner would provide the media assets of Dow Jones an unprecedented measure of independence and free them from the short-term concerns of shareholders. This idea is not new and has been advocated in many circles as a superior model for media ownership for quite some time. There is even an example of success in this regard in the Poynter Institute, a Florida journalism school, which is also the owner of the St. Petersburg Times of Florida and the Congressional Quarterly.

There could not be a better candidate for advancing this concept than the parent of the Wall Street Journal. The Journal is more than a daily newspaper. For better or worse, it is the clarion for business news and information worldwide. CEOs, investment managers, pensioners, and other citizens use it shape the financial status of their enterprises and families. Removing it from the constraints of for-profit management could promote a dedication to journalistic integrity and impartiality.

There is already a non-profit cooperative in the media realm that might be worth a look as a potential suitor for Dow Jones. The Associated Press is owned by the 1,500 daily newspapers that comprise its membership. It already functions as a syndicator of news content, as does Dow Jones (which also owns the DowJones Newswires). Pair it with an academic institution like Annenberg, and perhaps a mogul like Burkle, and you may have the basis for a White Knight that could rescue the Bancrofts from the Murdochs and serve as a new model for the future of an industry that is presently in decline.

Ordinarily, I’m not an advocate of more consolidation in media, which is already rampant. Just last month, Dow Jones competitor, Reuters, was acquired by Thomson Corp., a Canadian legal and business information publisher. This may be part of the reason that the Bancrofts feel the need to scale up. The AP, which also competes with Reuters, would benefit from the addition of Dow Jones as well. But while I prefer a more diverse media marketplace, the prospect of a Murdoch-controlled Wall Street Journal, and his likely merging of that with his upcoming cable business channel, is far more troubling than the sort of partnership I’ve outlined above. If Dow Jones investors are determined to sell the company, then every practical measure must be considered to keep it out of Murdoch’s hands. And the potential benefits of a non-profit/academic partnership may even be preferable to staying with the Bancrofts.

Update: The union now says they have approached Ron Burkle (and Warren Buffet) to discuss the potential of an alternative bid. There is no indication that this would be a not-for-profit proposition, but it would still be better than Murdoch.

The Murdoch Family Resemblance

Posted by on May 29, 2007 at 11:53 pm. 2 Comments :

New York Post Kerry GephardtThis is just too much fun. Stroll with me down the serene avenues of yesteryear when the New York Post scooped out the still beating hearts of their media rivals by reporting that the newly minted Democratic nominee for president, John Kerry, had chosen Dick Gephardt to be his running mate. The headline bellowed the triumph of their proud accomplishment. Only one thing could mar this sweet moment of success – It wasn’t true. Kerry, of course, had selected John Edwards to share the ticket with him.

Now we learn that the bad tip may have come from the DNC and was swallowed whole by Rupert’s scion, Lachlan Murdoch, then publisher of the Post. According to former Post staffer, Ian Spiegelman, Lachlan bought the story wholesale and ordered his editorial team to run it. Says Spiegelman…

“Everyone at The Post, including [Editor in chief] Col Allan and his top deputies, knew the story had been planted with Lachlan by the Democratic National Committee to make him, and The Post, appear foolish on a national level.”

Everyone but Lachlan Murdoch. But that didn’t stop him from demanding that his more experienced underlings obey his tyrannical and ignorant decrees. Like father like son.

Murdoch’s Definition Of Independent

Posted by on May 22, 2007 at 12:31 am. NO Comments :

Ever since Rupert Murdoch announced his bid to acquire Dow Jones and its star property, the Wall Street Journal, people have been speculating as to how the new management would deal with the journalistic direction of the renowned newspaper. In an effort to quell a firestorm of anxiety, Murdoch quickly stepped up to assure all concerned that he had no intention of interfering with the paper’s editorial independence. Said Murdoch…

“Apart from breaching the public’s trust, it would simply be bad business.”

It would be hard to elicit a more comforting endorsement of independence than that. It suggests an awareness of both public service and the inherent value of a free press. There’s just one problem: It’s Rupert Murdoch talking.

Thanks to a legal dispute currently playing out between Murdoch’s New York Post and former gossip columnist Jared Paul Stern, we have access to testimony that reveals precisely what Murdoch means when he refers to independence. Ian Spiegelman, a former Post staffer called as a witness for Stern, discloses the reality of life in a Murdoch-run newsroom:

“Spiegelman claims that Murdoch ordered his editors at The Post to kill any negative stories about President Clinton and his wife Hillary.” And if that’s not enough…“He also said that Murdoch ordered a story about a Chinese diplomat and his visits to a New York strip club to be killed because it might have angered the Communist regime and endangered News Corp’s broadcasting privileges in China.”

Ordering editors to kill stories does not fit any definition of independence that I have been able to uncover. This should put into perspective Murdoch’s professed interest in the public trust. And if you take seriously his quote above, then by his own standard he is engaging in bad business practices.

Contrary to his assurances, any news organization with Murdoch at the helm is very likely to be compromised in the same manner as the New York Post, the Fox News Channel, or any other News Corp. enterprise. These revelations should weigh heavily on the minds of the shareholders of Dow Jones and the staff at the Wall Street Journal.

Big Media: We Are The Sioux Nation – Google Is Custer

Posted by on May 9, 2007 at 12:44 pm. 4 Comments :

As the giant multi-national media conglomerates continue to grow, they are becoming even more brazen in their ambition and arrogance. Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., in the midst of a proposed acquisition of Dow Jones, doesn’t intend to slow down. The president of Fox Entertainment, Peter Chernin, spoke at the National Cable & Telecommunications Association conference yesterday and declared that…

This is a market that Murdoch and his ilk do not intend abandon to the unwashed hordes of a free blogiverse.

“You’ll see more acquisitions. This is a world where the big get bigger. You’ll see increased consolidation.”

That statement should not be construed as an executive assessment of future corporate activity. It is a threat. It is a loaded missile launcher aimed at free thinking, independence minded citizens of America and the world. These words must be taken as seriously as the man who uttered them.

Even as Chernin spoke, his boss News Corp. was in the process of gobbling up Photobucket, an image storage and sharing web site. While this may not be as consequential as the Dow Jones deal, it does give Fox’s Interactive Media group another 41 million users and advances the imperial interests of its MySpace division. The impact of this should not be underestimated. In this morning’s, release of its quarterly earnings, Cisco’s CEO, John Chambers predicted that…

“…consumer Internet traffic will surpass corporate traffic for the first time this year ‘because of next-generation services such as blogs and wikis.’“

This is a market that Murdoch and his ilk do not intend abandon to the unwashed hordes of a free blogiverse. Time Warner CEO, Dick Parsons spoke at the same NCTA conference where he boastfully vowed that he and his corporatist troops will not surrender ground to upstarts and insurgents:

“The Googles of the world, they are the Custer of the modern world. We are the Sioux nation. They will lose this war if they go to war. The notion that the new kids on the block have taken over is a false notion.”

It is somewhat beyond ironic that Parsons would align himself analogously with the oppressed and overwhelmed nation of Native Americans when he has so much more in common with a clueless general fighting for an aggressive and imperialistic state. His words reek with hostility toward a new media world he seems incapable of comprehending. This is not the first eruption of Parsons’ cluelessness. He was quoted in Siva Vaidhyanathan’s book, The Anarchist in the Library, defending corporate dominion over creative and intellectual property and making the absurd and repulsive assertion that such authority is a requirement for the advancement of culture:

“This isn’t just about a bunch of kids stealing music. It’s an assault on everything that constitutes cultural expression of our society. If we fail to protect and preserve our intellectual property system, the culture will atrophy. And the corporations won’t be the only ones hurt. Artists will have no incentive to create. Worst-case scenario: the country will end up in a sort of Cultural Dark Age.”

If Parsons thinks that the reasons artists create is for material compensation, he has no business running a company that represents artists. His astonishingly ignorant point of view deserves an extended essay all its own. For now I’ll just link to this well articulated response from The Future of the Book.

Unfortunately, the Cultural Dark Age to which Parsons alludes is a very real possibility, though not for the reasons he suggests. It is corporations like the one he heads that will lead us over that cliff. Big Media still has more in common with Custer’s army than with the Sioux. The difference is that in today’s theater of war Custer’s reinforcements would be a phone call away and the Sioux nation would be reduced to rubble. That’s kind of the way it turned out anyway, it would just happen faster today.

The commoditization of culture is much more harmful to open societies than is its free distribution. The American Idolization of America presents a truly nightmarish scenario that trivializes creativity and expression. And as the media behemoths expand beyond all proportion, there is a risk of the bubble bursting like a car bomb in the marketplace of ideas.

Murdoch Burned By Dow Jones Spurn

Posted by on May 8, 2007 at 2:09 am. NO Comments :

While Rupert is Wall Street Jonesin to expand his empire, the Dow J contingent just aint feelin it. Aside from the fact that the DJ’s controlling family, the Bancrofts, have already expressed their opposition to the takeover; and the paper’s union is firmly against Murdoch’s proposal; and journalism experts have denounced the plan; a couple of new wrenches have been thrown into the gears of Murdoch’s machine.

Ottaways Deplore Bid by Murdoch
This New York Times report discloses the not-so-subtle view of the Ottaway family, another major Dow Jones shareholder group. James H. Ottaway Jr. is adamant that, “Dow Jones is not for sale, at any price, to Rupert Murdoch.” His son goes into a little more detail:

“As an investor, I would be very concerned to live in an era of making investment decisions based on the Murdoch-filtered business information. As a citizen, I would be afraid to live in a world where news is solely entertainment, and there is an agenda behind every story I read, watch or hear.”

Authorities investigate trading in Dow Jones options
This story speculates that somebody knew about Murdoch’s intentions before they were publicly disclosed:

“More than 10,000 call options on Dow Jones stock were traded in late April, compared with about 7,000 during all of the January-March quarter.”

Both Dow Jones and News Corp acknowledge receiving subpoenas from the New York attorney general’s office and inquiries from the SEC.

This could get interesting – fun even. And I could get a chance to practice my New York Post-style headlines like the one above.

More Fallout From the Fox Street Journal

Posted by on May 2, 2007 at 10:19 am. NO Comments :

Dow Jones’s Bancroft Family Rejects Murdoch’s Offer:
Dow Jones & Co. said Bancroft family members who control more than 50 percent of the company’s voting shares will reject a $5 billion takeover bid by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp.

This still doesn’t mean it’s over. Murdoch could sweeten the offer and there may be offers from other media companies like the New York Times or the Washington Post Co. Even Google has been mentioned in speculation. This could drag on for a while.

IAPE/Communications Workers of America Oppose News Corp. Bid:
Mr. Murdoch has shown a willingness to crush quality and independence, and there is no reason to think he would handle Dow Jones or The Journal any differently.

Ben H. Bagdikian, author and former journalism dean, UC Berkeley:
If Murdoch gets control of the Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones and if he follows the pattern of his past acquisitions, he will use the Wall Street Journal to serve his own purposes, financial and political.