Big Media

The Wall Street Journal And Network Neutrality

Posted by on December 16, 2008 at 2:18 am. NO Comments :

An article in the Wall Street Journal is reporting that prominent advocates of Network Neutrality are reversing or softening their positions on the concept of treating all Internet traffic equally. The authors go into some depth in support of their contention that the movement is losing steam. And they name names.

“Google Inc. has approached major cable and phone companies that carry Internet traffic with a proposal to create a fast lane for its own content…”

“Microsoft Corp. and Yahoo Inc. have withdrawn quietly from a coalition formed two years ago to protect network neutrality.”

“In addition, prominent Internet scholars, some of whom have advised President-elect Barack Obama on technology issues, have softened their views on the subject.”

“Lawrence Lessig, an Internet law professor at Stanford University and an influential proponent of network neutrality, recently shifted gears by saying at a conference that content providers should be able to pay for faster service.”

Unfortunately for the WSJ, almost everyone they cite denies the conclusions the article draws and affirms their commitment to Network Neutrality.

Google: Despite the hyperbolic tone and confused claims in Monday’s Journal story, I want to be perfectly clear about one thing: Google remains strongly committed to the principle of net neutrality, and we will continue to work with policymakers in the years ahead to keep the Internet free and open.

Barack Obama: The Obama transition team is reaffirming his complete commitment to net neutrality and is disputing a much-discussed report today claiming that the President-elect is softening his support for it or shifting his position on it.

Lawrence Lessig: I don’t know what Google is doing, though if they are trying to negotiate exclusive deals for privileged access, that shows exactly why we need network neutrality regulation […] I’ve not seen anything during the Obama campaign or from the transition to indicate it has shifted its view about network neutrality at all.

Perhaps the only position correctly reported in the WSJ story is that Yahoo and Microsoft have strayed from the pro-Network Neutrality crowd. However, that separation occurred two years ago when they tightened their relationships with Telecom companies and was therefore, not a new development as the Journal implied.

So why would the Journal so badly mangle this story? They obviously didn’t bother to seek comments from the people or companies they quoted. Reporting the accurate positions of these parties would not have been difficult to do. Instead, the misquoted parties had to find other forums to set the record straight after the Journal had already hit the streets.

It would be easy to blame this shoddy work on the new Wall Street Journal as envisioned by its new owner, tabloid merchant Rupert Murdoch. But it goes deeper than that. The main companies that oppose Network Neutrality are the big Telecom and Cable businesses. Murdoch’s News Corp is heavily dependent on them for distribution of his television networks. He launched his Fox Business Network one year ago and it is still struggling for carriage. It presently passes less than half the homes of its primary competitor, CNBC. Do you think that Murdoch might be interested in getting AT & T, Comcast, Time Warner, etc., to put FBN on all of their systems? Do you think that he might like to get favored treatment and channel space for Fox News, FX, Fox Sports, National Geographic, and the rest of his cable properties?

And the big question: Do you think that Murdoch would use his Wall Street Journal to lobby for the interests of his other business assets? Of course he would – he’s Rupert Murdoch.

The Wall Street Journal After A Year With Murdoch

Posted by on December 13, 2008 at 2:30 pm. NO Comments :

It was one year ago today that the Dow Jones Company, parent of the Wall Street Journal, agreed to be acquired by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. That transaction marked another step in the shrinking universe of media ownership. Specifically, it was the consumption of a revered publishing institution by a voracious international megalopoly. So what did the Bancroft family and other shareholders get for their greedy acquiescence to the power-mad mogul?

One year ago, the $60.00 per share offer from News Corp was about a 67% premium over Dow Jones’ then current price. Anyone who immediately liquidated their holdings following the transaction (which no one did) would have made a nice profit. Everyone else just watched as their fortunes shriveled up. The parent of Fox News has declined 60% in the past year. That means that the $5 billion dollars spent on Dow Jones has a current value of $2 billion. That’s not a particularly impressive performance.

As for Murdoch’s financial fate, rather than adding a $5 billion asset to his empire, his company’s market cap declined $32 billion – that’s more than six times what he spent on Dow Jones.

Now it would be easy to blame this all on the economic collapse, and certainly that plays a significant part. The only problem is that News Corp fell further than any of its competitors.

Company % Decline
News Corp 60
New York Times 55
Washington Post 50
Time Warner 44
Dow Jones Index 35
Disney 29

From a financial perspective, it doesn’t appear that the folks at Dow Jones made a particularly sound decision. While it’s impossible to say where these investments would be had News Corp not come along, it seems that they would have done no worse than the rest of the field. The difference is that they would still have their independence. They would not have had their publisher replaced by a Murdoch loyalist from England. And they would not have been ordered to shorten their stories and shift their focus from business to general news so that Murdoch could taunt his enemies at the New York Times (which he is also now rumored to fancy).

Murdoch’s business prowess is widely exaggerated. His New York Post has lost money for the past decade – the whole time he has owned it. And his celebrated purchase of MySpace when it was the unchallenged leader in social networking, hasn’t really worked out so well. MySpace is now second to a surging Facebook. Fox News itself is consistently the slowest growing news network on cable TV.

The biggest advantage for a Dow Jones tie in with News Corp was the potential for a television platform. The Wall Street Journal badly missed out by allowing CNBC and Bloomberg to run away with that market. Murdoch of course has his new Fox Business Network, but due to contractual commitments with CNBC, he is not permitted to use the DJ assets. And by the time those contracts expire, the dismally low-rated FBN may be history.

So…all in all, Dow Jones probably would have been better off if they had left well enough alone. They lost some prominent and experienced talent when Murdoch took over. And although he is moving slowly, so as not to spook his staff and subscribers, we can still expect him to put his personal stamp on the enterprise by dumbing down the content to reach a broader market. That’s been his M.O. throughout his entire career and there are no signs that he is abandoning his affection for tabloid sensationalism and rightist propaganda.

Government Bailouts: The Media Is In It For Themselves

Posted by on November 29, 2008 at 3:46 pm. 6 Comments :

In the past few weeks there has been a flurry of activity on Capitol Hill to dump truckloads of cash on ailing industries. Insurance companies, banks and financial services, mortgage lenders, and auto makers are all heading for Washington with their hands out.

But who is the real beneficiary? Keep this in mind when you see news reports in the media discussing the benefits of multi-billion dollar taxpayer funded disbursements to the nation’s biggest corporations:

2007 Advertising Expenditures By Bailout Targets
Company Amount (000’s)
General Motors 3,010
Ford 2,525
Toyota 1,758
Chrysler 1,739
Bank of America 1,491
Nissan Motor 1,407
Honda 1,326
Citigroup 1,135
JPMorgan Chase 1,074
American Express 1,050
Capital One 757
Hyundai 651
Visa 581
Allstate 537
Fidelity 499
MasterCard 489
Progressive 460
Washington Mutual 445
State Farm Mutual 431
Wells Fargo 356
Total: 21,751

That’s right. That’s almost $22 Billion in advertising that would be at risk if these companies were to fail. And this is only from the list of the top 100 advertisers. All told, the total would come to more than $36 billion. That does not include ancillary businesses like home furnishings, hardware, gas and oil, auto parts, accounting services, etc., all of whom are significant advertisers.

Do you think that the media might be somewhat concerned about losing these sources of revenue? Do you think that they might adjust their coverage to make the bailouts more palatable to the public to insure their passage? Do you think the businesses might pressure the media to put on a positive spin under the threat of cutting back on ad budgets?

When you consider how much of the money doled out to the banks, automakers, etc., would eventually end up in the pockets of Big Media, you would think that someone would question whether or not they can fairly present coverage of these issues. At the very least, they ought to disclose their interest so that news consumers can factor that into their conclusions.

The media also has its tentacles around the legislators in Congress who are debating and deciding these matters. So our representatives in Washington are susceptible to pressure from the media if they want to continue to receive favorable coverage. No congressman wants the press battering them every day about how they are responsible for this economic debacle.

Because of the ascendancy of multi-national media monopolies, whose only allegiance is to their bottom line, it is almost impossible to separate the interests of media companies from the corporate culture they promote and the public discourse they control. And they can hardly be depended on to represent the interests of their readers and viewers. Certainly not at the expense of their own interests. So when an issue of public concern is raised, the public has to very careful about who to trust.

Once again, the irrepressible anthem of conspiracy theorists everywhere is the key to assessing these mysteries. Cui Bono – Who Benefits. In this case, clearly the media will enjoy a windfall if American taxpayers bailout our failing industries. That doesn’t mean that the bailouts are bad policy. It just means that if we get our information about this from Big Media, we may not have all the facts with which to make the right call. And if we ever hope to have confidence in what we learn from the press, these media conglomerates will have to be broken up and regulated to insure independence and diversity.

Does Rupert Murdoch Despise Bill O’Reilly?

Posted by on November 28, 2008 at 1:00 pm. 6 Comments :

The question of Rupert Murdoch’s relationship with his top-rated TV blowhard, Bill O’Reilly, has come up before. Now, courtesy of Michael Calderone at Politico, an excerpt from Michael Wolff’s upcoming biography of Murdoch is asserting that:

“It is not just Murdoch (and everybody else at News Corp.’s highest levels) who absolutely despises Bill O’Reilly, the bullying, mean-spirited, and hugely successful evening commentator, but Roger Ailes himself who loathes him. Success, however, has cemented everyone to each other.”

If Murdoch and Ailes “absolutely despise” O’Reilly, I can only hope they come to despise me as much. The apparent reward for such hatred is endless fawning, copious perks, and a brand new multimillion dollar contract renewal. But I wouldn’t get too excited. Wolff provides very little support for his conclusion, and what he does provide is weak and contradicted by past comments and behavior.

Wolff suggests that Murdoch’s purchase of Dow Jones, publisher of the Wall Street Journal, was in part to distance himself from the tenor of Fox News. Though why he thinks that the famously conservative newspaper is a departure from the obvious partiality of Fox is a mystery. Wolff seems to think that Murdoch finds the more sedate bias of the Journal preferable to the loudmouth variety at Fox. However, he doesn’t consider the more likely scenario that Murdoch will turn up the volume at the Journal. He has already said publicly that wants the Journal to publish shorter, punchier stories, with less business and more general news. And Wolff, at least in this excerpt, doesn’t consider that a major factor in purchasing the Journal was to beef up resources for Murdoch’s recently launched Fox Business Network.

Politico’s Calderone curiously opines that Murdoch’s political views are “difficult to pin down.” In support of this he cites Murdoch’s backing for Thatcher, Reagan, Blair, Koch, and McCain. That seems pretty easy to pin down to me. They are all notable conservatives with the exception of Tony Blair, who started out as a progressive Labour Party leader, but ended up as a Bush lapdog. And rumors have it that Murdoch and Blair made a pact early on that if Blair did not interfere with Murdoch’s business aspirations, Murdoch would see to it that News Corp. enterprises (including the London Times, the Sun, and the Sky News satellite network) would stand behind Blair.

As further evidence of Murdoch’s squishy liberalism, the article cites the New York Post’s endorsement of Obama over Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primary. But the endorsement from the Post reads like an outright condemnation. Here are some highlights from the Post’s column endorsing Obama:

  • “…an untried candidate, to be sure…”
  • “Obama is not without flaws.”
  • “For all his charisma and his eloquence, the rookie senator sorely lacks seasoning…”
  • “Regarding national security, his worldview is beyond naive…”
  • “His all-things-to-all-people approach to complicated domestic issues also arouses scant confidence”
  • “…he is not Team Clinton…That counts for a very great deal.”
  • “…we don’t agree much with Obama on substantive issues.”

With friends like that, who needs enemas? The Post eventually endorsed McCain in the general election. And unlike the Obama endorsement, it was enthusiastic and complimentary.

I don’t for minute believe that Murdoch has become disenchanted with O’Reilly or Fox News. His views are as consistent as ever. In September he lashed out at Obama saying that he is a naive, 60’s style Socialist, and that his administration would worsen inflation, ruin America’s relationships with other nations, and drive companies to leave the country. All achievements for which George W. Bush can already claim credit.

Shallow analysis like that of Wolff and Politico has been asserted before. In the end, Murdoch is who he has always been: an irredeemably conservative corporatist, consumed with lust for money and power. As long as O’Reilly contributes to those goals, Murdoch’s love for him will endure.

Hilarious Update: Kara Swisher at All Things Digital has dredged up a laughably appropriate example of Michael Wolff’s deficiency of insight. In 1998 Wolff said:

“I think the myth of the Internet is that it is going to come into everybody’s home.”

Good call, Mikey.

The Powerful Powerlessness Of The Liberal Media

Posted by on November 23, 2008 at 12:28 pm. NO Comments :

Mark Halperin is a political analyst for Time Magazine and runs “The Page,” a political website, for Time.com. Prior to that he was the political director for ABC News for ten years. It’s important to know this about him when considering what he said at a conference on the recently concluded election this past week at USC. He was expressing his opinion on the performance of the media during the campaign:

“It’s the most disgusting failure of people in our business since the Iraq war. It was extreme bias, extreme pro-Obama coverage.”

You can’t get more mainstream than Mark Halperin. Yet this exemplar of institutional media is taking his colleagues to task for failing to adhere to standards of objectivity that presumably he employs. So you have to wonder why Halperin didn’t bother to sound the bias alarm until two and a half weeks after election day. If he noticed what he now calls a “disgusting failure” in campaign coverage, why didn’t he bring it up when something could have been done about it? For that matter, why didn’t he bring up the failures with regard to Iraq before this? Seeing as he had a prominent platform in both publishing and broadcasting, but was absent with regard to these issues, what does it say about his credibility?

You also have to wonder how Halperin ranks failures with respect to their disgustingness. Does he really think that a candidate bias is equivalent to the utter professional neglect that the media exhibited while cheerleading for the war in Iraq? Even if there were a slanting of political preference, does that compare to inventing mortal enemies and printing lies about their imminent threat? Does he rate the consequences equally now that 4,000 plus Americans have been killed and perhaps more than a million Iraqis; now that we know the truth about WMDs and our leaders dishonesty; and now that our nation is approaching bankruptcy having spent $2 billion a month in Iraq for five years?

It strains the imagination to explain how he could place those two events in the same sentence. But what makes it even worse is that he doesn’t bother to offer proof of his contention that the media was pro-Obama. He seems to be jumping on the right-wing, Republican bandwagon that is flailing around to manufacture excuses for why they lost. It certainly couldn’t be because the people preferred the Democrat. Much of the noise about an alleged bias for Obama actually amounts to a realistic appraisal of events. Every report of McCain’s more frequent use of negative ads, a fact documented by independent studies, is regarded by conservatives as anti-McCain. Likewise, every report of Obama leading in the polls, which was the case for most of the last six weeks of the campaign, is regarded by the same right-wingers as pro-Obama. Under these circumstances, the only way to be considered neutral would be to distort the truth.

There is a rather duplicitous argument circulating that there is no way voters would have been stupid enough to have chosen Barack Obama were they not mislead by the media. However, that argument still implies that voters were stupid for having been mislead. So no matter how you look at it, the right believes that the voters are stupid.

The stupidity is compounded by the assertion that the people have fallen under the sway of an omnipotent press that is dominated by liberals. Everyone from Rush Limbaugh to William Krystal complain that Obama was given a free ride. They must think that there was never any negative coverage of him. They must have never heard of Rev. Jeremiah Wright, or the “fact” that Obama was a Muslim, or how he “refused” to wear an American flag lapel pin, or that he was a Socialist, or an elitist, or that he palled around with terrorists. There must not have been any reports of how women would not support him, or Latinos, or Jews, or hard-working whites, or people who cling to guns and religion. The press must have buried news that Obama was the most liberal senator with a long record of far-left extremism, but was also inexperienced with no record of public service.

What it really comes down to, from the rightists perspective, is that the so-called liberal media has manipulated the people, who are so subjugated to its authority. This view requires acceptance as fact that the media has an unfettered ability to control the thoughts of its audience. Actually, I believe there is some degree of truth to that. The problem is that, in a feat of championship self-contradiction, the people making the complaint don’t believe it. In fact, they argue that the media has lost its influence due to its lack of balance. There is some degree of truth to that as well, but not what is proposed by conservatives. A study by the Center for Public Leadership at the Harvard Kennedy School shows that 62% of those surveyed are distrustful of campaign media coverage. That will certainly have an impact on the media’s influence and business status. Conservatives say that the presence of liberal bias is the principle reason that business is slumping and that people have stopped watching and reading. Rupert Murdoch calls it “a culture of ‘complacency and condescension.'”

“The complacency stems from having enjoyed a monopoly–and now finding they have to compete for an audience they once took for granted. The condescension that many show their readers is an even bigger problem. It takes no special genius to point out that if you are contemptuous of your customers, you are going to have a hard time getting them to buy your product.”

In other words, give the people what they want, not what represents reality. And in Murdoch’s world, the people want non-stop bashing of liberals and promotion of free-market, evangelical conservatism (along with Page 3 soft-porn and Page 6 gossip). Unfortunately for him, his theory falls apart when you note that his company, a condescending monopoly if there ever was one, has lost 67% of it value in the past year. It would be difficult to blame that on the liberal bias of Fox News and the New York Post.

Bottom line: According to conservatives, the all-powerful liberal media is directing the votes of a pliable electorate. And they are doing this despite the fact that voters don’t trust the media and are tuning them out. So somehow the media is able to sway public opinion even when the public has stopped listening to the media. That’s a neat trick. It’s also a failure of logic on the part of rightists who are desperately searching for an explanation for their loss that doesn’t include the phrase, “We suck!”

No Success Like Failure

Posted by on November 18, 2008 at 7:08 pm. NO Comments :

In Bob Dylan’s classic “Love Minus Zero/No Limit” he makes the counter-intuitive observation that “There’s no success like failure.” Well, much of the establishment of America’s politics and press have taken that to heart.

The latest example is that of the Senate Democrats who have opted to let Sen. Joe Lieberman get away with political treason. Lieberman, who was ejected from the Democratic Party by his constituents in Connecticut, spent much of the last year campaigning against Barack Obama. In the course of the campaign he declared that Obama was too inexperienced to be president, was unsupportive of the troops, may have been a Marxist, and many more insults to his character and ability.

Today Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced that there would be no repercussions for Lieberman’s betrayal. Lieberman would be allowed to keep his chairmanship of the powerful Homeland Security Committee. What Reid has done is to compound Lieberman’s betrayal with one of his own. And the rest of the Democratic Caucus who went along with it are equally to blame. Reid told reporters that he didn’t want to pursue a course of vengeance. But selecting Party leadership based on loyalty and shared goals isn’t revenge, it’s common sense. And besides, Dylan also realized that, “Even the pawn must hold a grudge.”

The problem is not as simple as Lieberman being an untrustworthy weasel who ought to pay a price for his deceit. The problem is that Lieberman was an ineffective chairman even before the campaign. He has long been an advocate of George W. Bush’s policy in Iraq and he refused to hold hearings that would have provided necessary oversight because they might also have reflected poorly on the President he adored. The same is true for other matters under the Committee’s jurisdiction like Katrina, torture, and warrantless wiretapping. Lieberman should have been ousted as chair if for no other reason than that he would not represent the new administration’s priorities.

Senate Democrats have an obligation to manage their institution in accordance with the political aspirations of their constituents. They failed to meet that obligation today. But Dylan foresaw the consequences of failure, and the Lieberman affair is only one instance in recent history that proves Dylan’s wisdom.

    Successful Failures:

  • John McCain failed in the election a couple of weeks ago, yet he is now regarded as an elder statesman who has already met with the President-elect.
  • Joe Lieberman rode on McCain’s failed coattails but gets to retain his committee chair.
  • Hillary Clinton failed in the Democratic primary where she said that all Obama would bring to the presidency was a speech in 2002. She belittled his view that foreign leaders should be engaged with diplomacy. But now she may become the focal point of his foreign policy as Secretary of State.
  • Sarah Palin also failed in the election, yet she is now regarded as a front-runner for 2012 (I hope).
  • Mike Huckabee failed to win the Republican nomination, but was rewarded with a program on Fox News.
  • Corporations like AIG and Lehman Brothers failed to the tune of billions of dollars, and they get handed billions more courtesy of American taxpayers.
  • Now the automobile industry is joining the failures in financial services in line for bailout fortunes.
  • Last, but not least, are the multitude of pundits like Dick Morris, Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly, William Krystal, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, etc., who failed repeatedly to make a correct assessment of anything that happened in the last year, yet they keep their media megaphones, and in some cases get promotions and raises.

At some point, reasonable folks will have to wonder why losers are so often rewarded, when more deserving players are snubbed. The benefits of membership in exclusive clubs like the U.S. Senate and the Mainstream Media are clearly lucrative for the lucky few. But the rest of us are saddled with less representative government, more debt, and bigger headaches brought on by louder and stupider commentators.

Those in politics and the press who exercise such disrespect for the people, are going to regret their self-centeredness some day. They are going to learn that we will eventually find alternatives to their protectionist institutions. They can’t fail upward forever because, in the end, “Failure is no success at all.”

Fox News Cancels New York Times

Posted by on October 20, 2008 at 4:22 pm. 4 Comments :

This past weekend, the New York Times published a profile of John McCain’s wife, Cindy. Included in the article were facts relating to Sen. McCain’s adulterous relationship with his future second wife, as well as Ms. McCain’s troubles with drugs. These are simply factual episodes that any responsible biographical piece would have to address.

Predictably, the McCain campaign was outraged and immediately began shouting about media bias and tabloid journalism. Whereupon the masters of tabloidism, Fox News, came to McCain’s aid by parroting his complaints and even helping to punish the Times by providing viewers with a telephone number they could call to cancel their subscriptions. This all occurred during a “news” broadcast, not the O’Reilly Factor.

The hubris of Fox News never seems to find it’s peak. It would be one thing for them to report on the controversial article and McCain’s response. They might even follow that up with their own views as to the presence of bias in the article. At this point everyone knows that Fox shamelessly inserts their opinions into their reporting, and since McCain has already declared war against the Times, it’s only natural that Fox, the network of the Republican National Committee, would follow suit. However, by participating in a effort to encourage the cancellation of subscribers to the paper, Fox is crossing a new line that is much further out in the sand than was previously drawn.

Aside from the obvious advocacy on the part of Fox News for the McCain candidacy, and their staking out a position on the paper’s coverage, Fox News has a vested financial interest in harming the Times. Fox News is owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. which also owns Times competitors the New York Post and the Wall Street Journal. So this partisan interference in political affairs is also a brazen attempt to damage a competitor in the marketplace.

The many tentacles of the Murdoch empire continue to raise questions about monopolies and anti-trust. Is it proper for one News Corp. property to openly advocate that customers abandon a competitor of another property? If so, could NBC, which is owned by General Electric, broadcast appeals to their viewers to stop purchasing light bulbs or refrigerators made by their competitors? Could ABC, which is owned by Disney, run stories that advise people not to attend Six Flags Amusement Parks in an effort to boost attendance at Disneyland?

These are some of the easily anticipated problems with the sort of unregulated consolidation that has been rampant in the recent past, particularly in Republican administrations. If anti-trust laws aren’t taken seriously and vigorously enforced, the corporate chieftains end up controlling and manipulating markets to the detriment of competition and consumers. Barack Obama is on record in opposition to the Bush policy of ignoring, or advancing, corporate collusion, consolidation, and other anti-competitive activity:

“We’re going to have an antitrust division in the Justice Department that actually believes in antitrust law. We haven’t had that for the last seven, eight years.”

If Obama follows through on that pledge, we might begin to see some progress toward a truly open, diverse, and fair marketplace in the media and elsewhere. Regulations will need to be refined and some conglomerates will need to be broken up. Real reform in this area will be difficult to achieve, but it is essential if we want a system that provides a level playing field for everyone.

The Myth Of The Liberal Media: Tax Cuts

Posted by on October 4, 2008 at 1:15 pm. NO Comments :

For more evidence that the Rightist claims of a liberal-dominated media is nonsense, take a look at this report (pdf) from the Center For American Progress. Their analysis shows how the top media companies in the United States would benefit from John McCain’s tax cuts for the wealthy:

Does anyone really think that these multinational corporations would work to defeat a candidate that is promising them $1.44 Billion in tax relief? Especially considering that the other candidate, Barack Obama, is promising to raise taxes for the wealthy and for corporations.

Anyone who persists in the notion that the media is biased against a deregulating, corporate tax-cutting, friend of monopolies like McCain, is just being being willfully ignorant.

Obama “Lit Into” Ailes At Secret Meeting With Murdoch

Posted by on September 2, 2008 at 3:27 pm. 1 Comments :

Michael Wolff, contributing editor at Vanity Fair, is preparing to release an authorized biography of News Corp. chairman Rupert Murdoch. The book, appropriately titled “The Man Who Owns The News,” will be out some time between December and February, depending on what source you believe, and the author was given significant access to his subject. In advance of publication Wolff has written an article describing his encounters with the Media Mephistopheles that includes an account of a secret meeting with a reluctant Barack Obama.

“Obama…was snubbing Murdoch. Every time he reached out (Murdoch executives tried to get the Kennedys to help smooth the way to an introduction), nothing. The Fox stain was on Murdoch.”

“It wasn’t until early in the summer that Obama relented and a secret courtesy meeting was arranged. The meeting began with Murdoch sitting down, knee to knee with Obama, at the Waldorf-Astoria.”

This version of events is somewhat curious in that Obama had begun appearing on Fox News as early as January of 2008, six months prior to this meeting. I was highly critical at the time of Obama’s guest shot on “Fox & Friends,” probably the second worst booking he could have made after “The O’Reilly Factor” (on which he has still, so far, declined to appear [Update below]). After an inconsequential chat with Murdoch, Roger Ailes took his place before Obama, and that’s when the fireworks began:

“Obama lit into Ailes. He said that he didn’t want to waste his time talking to Ailes if Fox was just going to continue to abuse him and his wife, that Fox had relentlessly portrayed him as suspicious, foreign, fearsome – just short of a terrorist.”

Ailes, unruffled, said it might not have been this way if Obama had more willingly come on the air instead of so often giving Fox the back of his hand.

A tentative truce, which may or may not have vast historical significance, was at that moment agreed upon.

From the exchange as related here, Obama forthrightly expressed the precise reasons that he was disinclined to show Fox News any respect. But as I noted above, he was not uniformly able to maintain his will power to say “no” to Fox.

However, it is Ailes’ response that is striking in its arrogance. By suggesting that Obama’s standoffish position with regard to Fox resulted in the rancidly slanderous coverage, Ailes is in effect blaming Obama for the dirty work for which Ailes himself is responsible. He is also admitting that the coverage was as predominately negative as Obama contended. That, of course, validates Obama’s decision to stay away from the network in the first place. And perhaps worse than any of that, Ailes is implying that he orchestrated the bad press as revenge for Obama not accepting Fox’s invitations to be abused on their air. Ailes has thus confessed that he believes that it is appropriate for a journalist to bash public figures who don’t obey a demand to appear. This is a position that Bill O’Reilly himself articulated when he threatened Democrats that, “If you dodge us, it is at your peril.” Fox is to journalism what Capone was to the beverage industry.

Elsewhere in the article, Wolff offers some insight into what he believes is an evolving Murdoch who may not be as enamored with either Ailes or O’Reilly as he once was.

“Fox has been his alter ego. For a long time he was in love with the Fox chief, Roger Ailes, because he was even more Murdoch than Murdoch. And yet now the embarrassment can’t be missed-he mumbles even more than usual when called on to justify it; he barely pretends to hide the way he feels about Bill O’Reilly.”

This allegedly stormy forecast for these media titans echoes a report last June in Gawker that queried whether Murdoch was about to fire Ailes. I struck down that theory at the time, and I stand by my position. But perhaps things are not so rosy as I thought. Perhaps Murdoch is evolving in ways I cannot imagine. When Wolff asked Murdoch for advice on who to vote for in November, he elicited this response from Murdoch:

“He paused, considered, nodded his head slowly: ‘Obama – he’ll sell more papers.'”

I guess Murdoch is getting both softer and greedier with age.

Update: Just a few hours after this posting, O’Reilly announced that Obama will appear on his show this coming Thursday. Here is my analysis of this development.

John McCain’s Fear Of The Internets

Posted by on August 13, 2008 at 4:03 pm. NO Comments :

Cable MonstersLast month John McCain said that Americans are tired of the Internet. It’s highly unlikely that he was actually speaking for all Americans, or even anything more than a small brood of Luddites. It is more likely that he himself is tired of the Internet, or perhaps just tired, period. He has never been particularly fond of it, even as he chaired the Senate committee responsible for regulating it.

Amanda Terkel has authored a pretty comprehensive review of McCain’s tech resume. Her article reveals a man who is both uncomfortable with technological progress and beholden to the big corporate interests who seek to dominate the industry. McCain’s pronouncements on the subject, like the one last month, are laughable. He has confessed that he is “an illiterate who has to rely on my wife for all of the assistance that I can get,” and that he “never felt the particular need to e-mail.”

Terkel points out that the United States has fallen behind most of the world with regard to broadband policy. Our failure to be competitive in this arena will cost us the loss of millions of potential new jobs. It will hamstring our children. And it will insure that we run with the back of the pack in opportunities for business growth.

McCain has led the way to the rear by opposing legislation that would keep the Internet open (Network Neutrality). Plus he has promoted the sort of deregulation that has permitted media companies to consolidate so extensively that there are now only a handful of giant players left. McCain advanced this anti-competitive agenda while claiming to be free of conflicts or personal motive. Unfortunately, Terkel proves that that isn’t the truth:

“In 1998 and 1999, McCain wrote at least 15 letters to the FCC, urging members to take action on issues that had potentially major consequences for his campaign donors. For example, McCain wrote two letters in April and May 1999, asking the commission to make a decision on a $62 billion pending merger between telephone companies Ameritech and SBC Communications. The merger went through later that year. A few weeks before the April letter, Richard Notebaert, the head of Ameritech, co-hosted a fundraiser for McCain. He took in approximately $50,000. Just before the May letter, SBC and Ameritech officials contributed or solicited about $120,000 in donations for McCain’s campaign.”

“The current campaign cycle is also shaping up to be lucrative. U.S. Telecom Association president and CEO Walter B. McCormick Jr., Sprint CEO Daniel R. Hesse, and Verizon chairman and CEO Ivan G. Seidenberg have each raised between $50,000 and $100,000 for McCain’s campaign. AT&T executive vice president for federal relations Timothy McKone has raised at least $500,000.”

Maverick McCainMcCain’s association with lobbyists is well documented, if not well reported by the media. He was embroiled in his own scandal some years ago surrounding the corrupt banker Charles Keating. Next week he is attending a fundraiser hosted by Ralph Reed, a prolific lobbyist and an associate of convicted scammer Jack Abramoff. And in this week of tabloid revelations about John Edwards and his mistress, it should be noted that McCain also had speculation swirling about his relationship with telecom lobbyist Vicki Iseman. Unlike the bulldogging National Enquirer, the New York Times dropped the Iseman story after getting yapped at by angry Republicans. But the more salacious elements of the Iseman affair are not really that important. What is most relevant is that she is another lobbyist for closing off the Internet to everyone but her wealthy multinational clients, and that she was indisputably chummy with McCain. Curiously, she has since vanished from the face of earth. She has been so well hidden that even milk cartons don’t have a picture of her. Has the McCain camp shuttled her off to Dick Cheney’s fabled “Undisclosed Location?”

Terkel’s article, along with the other evidence cited here, should cause anyone who values the Internet to be suspicious of McCain’s plans. He is not merely ignorant, he is aggressively antagonistic toward an open, accessible, World Wide Web. He must not be given an authority over it.