Day: 11/9/2009

Rupert Murdoch: Glenn Beck Is Right. Obama Is A Racist

Posted by on November 9, 2009 at 2:18 pm. 7 Comments :

News Corp. Chairman and CEO Rupert Murdoch gave a wide-ranging interview to his own Sky News Australia. He is apparently not in a very good mood.

The interview touched on the so-called “war” between Fox News and the White House. Murdoch was asked a question about assertions that Fox is “an arm of the Republican Party.” Murdoch responded saying, “Everyone knows that’s nonsense” and charging that White House press secretary, Robert Gibbs, is “a very young, inexperienced guy.” Of course, it was White House communications director, Anita Dunn, who made the comment, not Gibbs. Murdoch continued his defense of the fairness of Fox by bashing President Obama. When asked how the President was doing, Murdoch glibly replied with one word: “Badly.” He then claimed that only a couple of commentators on the network were presenting opinions. However, we know that isn’t true. Nevertheless, he falsely asserted that…

“We have on Republicans and we have on Democrats and we have them debate. The other networks only have Democrats, or something to the left of them.”

The truth, however, is that Fox does not have now, nor ever has had, a program hosted solely by a Democrat/liberal. CNN has Lou Dobbs, Nancy Grace, and until a few months ago, Glenn Beck. MSNBC currently has a three hour morning show hosted by conservative former Republican congressman Joe Scarborough. They have also employed Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham, and Michael Savage. Despite the evident dishonesty by Murdoch, he still defends his network’s balance. When the interviewer inquired as to characterizations of the President as Stalinist, Murdoch firmly objected saying,

“No no, not Stalin I don’t think. I don’t know who that is. Not one of our people.”

Oh really?

This screenshot is from the Glenn Beck show wherein Beck displayed pictures of Hitler, Stalin, and Lenin, and asked, “Is this where we’re headed?” But perhaps the most shocking moment in the interview was when Murdoch was asked about Beck calling the President a racist. Despite the widespread condemnation of Beck, the loss of eighty advertisers, and even Murdoch’s qualification that the comment may not have been proper, Murdoch openly and unequivocally declared that he agrees with Beck.

“He [Obama] did make a very racist comment about blacks and whites and so on. Which he said in his campaign he would be completely above. And it was something that, perhaps, shouldn’t have been said about the President, but if you actually assess what he [Beck] was talking about, he was right.”

So now we have an unadulterated admission from Murdoch that he believes the President is a racist. If there was ever a time to make Murdoch pay for the blatant bias and hostility for which he and his enterprise are responsible, it is now. If Beck can lose eighty advertisers for calling Obama a racist, what penalty should Murdoch pay?

Two organizations have already embarked on protest activities aimed at Fox News. Color of Change is the group that successfully persuaded advertisers to shun Beck. MoveOn has a petition requesting that Democratic representatives avoid fox News. Both of the groups should now escalate the actions to include all Fox programs and all Democratic and progressive politicians, advisors, consultants, etc.

Fox News, and the rest of the Murdoch empire, has absolutely no credibility or integrity. They do not deserve to be regarded as a news enterprise. They have demonstrated their overt prejudice and their intent on being rightist advocates, not journalists. Murdoch says that he wants to be remembered as…

“…someone who has contributed to the world and has tried to make the world more interesting and better. And used the media to good effect.”

Well he certainly has made a contribution. He has contributed Glenn Beck and Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity and more division and hatred than any media organization before him. And he has used the media to good effect. Well…it’s good if you like people shouting down free speech at town hall meetings and carrying posters of the President with Hitler mustaches. So it is our duty to treat them the same way we would treat partisans like the National Review, the Weekly Standard, WorldNetDaily, the Drudge Report, or any other avowed opponent. It is time to make a stand.

Stay the HELL off of Fox News: Starve The Beast!

Update: Media Matters has started an online petition calling on Murdoch to apologize. I don’t think that he will do so, but I do think it helps to send a message to him and the rest of the media that his remarks are objectionable and inappropriate. So go sign the petition.

Update II: Gary Ginsberg, a spokesman for Murdoch told Politico that Murdoch “does not at all, for a minute, think the president is a racist.” Sort of makes you wonder what he meant when he said that Glenn Beck was right when he called Obama a racist. But Ginsberg refused any further comment.

New York Post: Next Stop FAIL

Posted by on November 9, 2009 at 1:25 pm. NO Comments :

The New York Times is reporting some bad news for Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post:

“Three years ago Col Allan, the editor of The New York Post, pumped his fist and waded into a cheering crowd at a Midtown restaurant, celebrating The Post’s overtaking its rival, The Daily News, in weekday circulation. The Post trumpeted the news on a Times Square billboard and in its pages.” […] “Mr. Allan, who called it ‘a joyous occasion’ when The Post took the lead, now takes a more subdued view of the competition, saying in an e-mail exchange that ‘whether we are a little in front or a little behind has no impact on our forward business plan.'”

This turnaround in attitude is the result of a 30% drop in circulation for the Post in the past two and a half years. That is a bigger and faster decline than most of his competitors in a time of difficulty for the entire industry. This loss of readers comes on top of the paper losing approximately $50 million a year for the past ten years. Sources for the Times put the figure this year at $70 million. One must wonder how long Murdoch will tolerate such losses. He has shown in the past great patience for money-losing operations. He deficit financed Fox News for five years. He has been losing money on both MySpace and the Fox Business Network for two years. He doesn’t seemed to be the least bit phased by Glenn Beck’s loss of some 80 advertisers.

What this demonstrates is that Murdoch is not just the greedy media baron some think. He obviously is committed to his ideologies and the “news” enterprises that disseminate them. And if it costs him a few tens of millions of dollars, so be it.

Rupert Murdoch Sneers At Google – Google Shrugs

Posted by on November 9, 2009 at 1:01 pm. 3 Comments :

Rupert Murdoch has been whining for months about Google and other Internet search sites “stealing” his content. His complaint is that web users seeking information will search on sites like Google and then be directed to News Corp pages like Fox News and the Wall Street Journal. This is apparently something to which he objects.

It is hard to find any logic in his complaints. If traffic is directed to his web sites it increases his page views, which permits him to charge more for advertising. It also presents an opportunity to convert those readers into loyal customers from whom he can solicit subscription fees. It is difficult to grasp what he is so upset about. Particularly since he can put an end to it all by simply placing a line or two of code in a file (robots.txt) that will restrict Google and others from indexing his sites and sending them more traffic.

Murdoch’s lament has evolved into a threat to remove his sites from Google. Of course, Google has long made known that he could do that at any time. What really makes this impotent threat even more perplexing is that he is now saying that he will carry it out in conjunction with his intent to make his sites accessible only to paying customers. Perhaps he doesn’t realize that once he constructs his pay wall, the content would not be available to Google’s users anyway. In effect he is saying that he will withhold his content from people who already can’t access it. That’ll show ’em.

During the interview Murdoch demonstrated his ignorance of the Internet and his own businesses. He asserted that the Wall Street Journal already did bar non-subscribers. That isn’t entirely true. If you search for an article on the WSJ site, you will only be able to view a paragraph without signing up. But you can search for the same article on Google and read the whole thing. Once again, that’s under Murdoch’s control, not Google’s.

Murdoch also demonstrated his hypocrisy. While he is slamming Google and other content aggregators for linking to his properties, he is doing the very same thing with his Fox Nation web site. Fox Nation is nothing more than a hub for news items from other sources. So Murdoch, by his own definition is “stealing” their content.

The Sky interview also covered Murdoch’s views about the BBC, which he called a “scandal.” Clearly he is disturbed by a publicly supported news enterprise that is committed to providing news and information for free, while he is anxiously plotting to close off his content to anyone unwilling to feather his nest. He has even threatened to sue other news providers for copyright infringement. Someone might want to inform him that, unless you overtly plagiarize an article, the news does not belong to anyone. If Fox reports on a shooting in Texas, they cannot prevent me from reporting the same thing, so long as I don’t cut and paste their story verbatim.

I can’t wait until Murdoch comes through on his threats to cut off Google and to bar access to his web sites. Reducing the amount of garbage that Murdoch showers on the world will be a big contribution to journalism and the advancement of knowledge.