Rupert Murdoch

Fox News: Terrorist Command Center

Posted by on August 21, 2010 at 10:31 am. NO Comments :

The increasingly surreal debate over the non-mosque that is not at ground zero took another turn with Jon Stewart’s insightful and hilarious analysis.

After establishing that right-wing mosque opponents have devolved into overt Islamaphobes who regard Islam as a faith of “women-stoning, suicide bombers” (Media Matters has more on this), Stewart documented the absurdity of their position which centered on there being a threat that the Park51 project must not be allowed because it would become a “Terrorist Command Center.” Stewart’s pithy response:

“Just for the record, I’m against establishing a terrorist command post at 9/11 and ground zero…or really anywhere in the city.”

The rightist argument against Park51 seems to be that a terrorist command center near ground zero is unacceptable, but somewhere in Chelsea or the Upper East Side would be fine.

Stewart went on to ridicule conservative pundits on Fox News like Eric Bolling who, through the use of high-tech 4×6 index cards, “proved” that Park51 was directly linked to Hamas and Iran. So Stewart used his own index card and highlighter pen to prove that Fox News is a clandestine terrorist cell with Rupert Murdoch as its leader. Stewart could have gone one step further to note that Murdoch donated $1 million dollars to the Republican Governor’s Association, which means that the GOP is funded by terrorists.

Funny stuff. Watch it here:

Update: Not only is the GOP funded by terrorists, but the terrorists are funded by agents of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. It has now been revealed that Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, News Corp’s largest shareholder outside of the Murdoch family, has donated over $300,000 to organizations run by Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, the principal planner of Park51. Amidst the outcry from the right about the Park51 project, one of the things they most feverishly demanded was to know who was financing it. Now we know it was an owner of Fox News. Where is the outrage?

Fox News Tells 9/11 Families To Fear Fox News

Posted by on August 19, 2010 at 11:47 am. 1 Comments :

This morning on Fox and Friends there was another ridiculous, fear mongering, discussion of the non-mosque that is not at ground zero. In this farcical parade of ignorant banter the hosts were aghast at the notion that some of the funds for the proposed Islamic community center at 51 Park Place might come from sources in Saudi Arabia.

Brian Kilmeade: He [Imam Rauf] is going to be looking for fundraising to Muslim nations around the world.

Alisyn Camerota: If the 9-11 families are worried now and are concerned and feel hurt about this mosque, imagine if Saudi Arabia were to give some of this $100 million. … Saudi Arabia, where the majority of the hijackers, the terrorists came from. You can only imagine how much the victims’ families would speak out in that case.

Exactly! You can only imagine how much the victims’ families would speak out if Fox News were to get millions of dollars from Saudi Arabia, where the majority of the hijackers, the terrorists came from.

Murdoch MoolahOh, wait a minute…..Fox News does get millions of dollars from Saudi Arabia. In fact, the biggest shareholder of News Corp stock outside of the Murdoch family is Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal of the Saud family.

One has to wonder why it would be such an abomination for what is, in effect, an Islamic YMCA in lower Manhattan to be partially funded by Saudis, but no outrage is in order for an international news organization whose top investors include members of the Saudi royal family.

Rupert Murdoch has already shown that he is susceptible to influence by financial considerations and relationships. He agreed to let the government of communist China censor his news reporting in order to gain access to their markets. He acquiesced to a demand that MySpace China display a link on every page for users to report “inappropriate information” to the authorities (I wonder how many Chinese dissidents disappeared as a result of that little feature). He also altered stories on protests in France at the request of the very same Prince who is his business partner:

Al-Waleed: I picked up the phone and called Murdoch…(and told him) these are not Muslim riots, these are riots out of poverty. Within 30 minutes, the title was changed from Muslim riots to civil riots.

It seems to me that there is much more to fear from a worldwide media conglomerate caving in to the demands of foreign powers, than from a single interfaith social club in an old Burlington Coat Factory building in New York. And if the morons on Fox and Friends want to spin scary tales about imaginary terrorists, they would find more material in their own building than in the one a few blocks from ground zero.

Olbermann Features News Corpse On Countdown

Posted by on August 18, 2010 at 9:44 pm. 9 Comments :

On yesterday’s broadcast of Countdown on MSNBC, host Keith Olbermann featured a story about News Corpse. I couldn’t be more proud.

Actually, it was a story on the $1 million donation from Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp to the Republican Governor’s Association. Although I did report on this unprecedented bankrolling of GOP candidates by a major pseudo-news organization, Countdown’s segment was an interview of Media Matters’ Eric Burns on the subject.

It was an informative and entertaining discussion that hit on most of the salient points. I would have liked it if they had also pointed out that some of the funds received by the RGA would likely be stuffed right back into Murdoch’s pocket via ads they purchase on Fox News and in the Wall Street Journal, but in the end I was just jazzed to see my web site name on the screen for several minutes.

Keith should be grateful that I am not as litigious as Murdoch, whose company is presently harassing the folks at Skype because they think the name is “confusingly similar” to their Sky satellite television service. I’m still waiting for Murdoch to come after me.

Fair And Balanced Fox News Funds GOP

Posted by on August 16, 2010 at 11:56 am. 6 Comments :

A report from Business Week reveals that Rupert Murdoch is keen on electing Republican governors. His News Corp donated a million dollars to the Republican Governors Association in June.

Fox News GOP TeaThis is a significant contribution to a partisan electoral committee. There are 37 governorships on the ballot this year. Democrats currently hold a majority of state houses, Republicans hope reverse that. And since this is census year, the control of state governments can have a huge impact on the make up of Congress for the next decade by managing the redistricting process.

It should come as no surprise to political observers that partisans on both sides are lining up to support the party they regard as most sympathetic to their views. Unions will back Democrats. Wall Street and Oil companies will back Republicans. But what makes this unique is that the media are supposed to be unaffiliated politically. How can they produce unbiased coverage of electoral issues while they are spending millions to benefit one side. Can we really expect them to be critical of the GOP when they are bankrolling their campaigns?

Not that Murdoch’s news enterprises have ever produced unbiased coverage in the first place. His Fox News, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, Fox Radio, etc., have made it their business to advocate on behalf of the GOP for years. Their anchors and reporters routinely bash Democrats and liberals. But the funds they are providing to the RGA will result in further Democrat bashing which Fox News will dutifully report on the air. And no doubt the RGA will allocate a considerable amount of their advertising budget to Fox News and other Murdoch entities. So Murdoch is effectively putting that money right back in his own pocket while advancing the goals of Republican candidates.

This is one of the most disturbing consequences of the modern media environment where giant corporations have been permitted to control so much of the press. They are devoted only to their own fiduciary interests as opposed to the public interest. Their international stature means that have no loyalty to any particular nation including the United States. Yet they can provide virtually unlimited funding to influence elections that impact the lives of millions of actual citizens who cannot hope to match that kind of political philanthropy. And with the recent ruling in the Citizens United case, these corporations can now expand their charitable largess to federal campaigns. Congressman Paul Hodes and Senator Chris Dodd have each introduced legislation in their respective chambers to reverse Citizens United, but there is still much work to be done.

What Can You Do?

  • Support Congressman Alan Grayson who has introduced a package of bills designed to “Defend Our Democracy.”
  • Sign on to the Pledge to Protect America’s Democracy sponsored by People For the American Way and Public Citizen.
  • Move to Amend the Constitution to establish that money is not speech, and that human beings, not corporations, are persons entitled to constitutional rights.
  • Support The DISCLOSE Act to combat the new, unregulated corporate influence over elections.
  • Join the Fair Elections Now campaign to end corporate funded elections.
  • And get aboard the Free Press movement to reform the media, save the Internet, and restore independence, diversity and local representation in the media.

If we don’t succeed in returning control of our elections and our media to the people, we will continue to see perversions of democracy like that which News Corp is engaging in. Media corporations can’t serve the public while simultaneously financing partisan politics and padding their bank accounts, all at the public’s expense.

Update: For reference, the RGA also received donations (pdf) from wingnut billionaire David Koch ($1,000,000), GE ($105,000), Comcast ($50,000), Time Warner ($25,000), and SEIU ($100,000) Does Glenn Back know about that last one?

The DGA received donations (pdf) from AFSCME ($1,000,000), GE ($105,000), Comcast ($100,000), Time Warner ($35,000), and SEIU ($325,000), but $0.00 from News Corp.

Note that many organizations, including unions and media companies, play both sides of the fence. But News Corp is the only media enterprise that contributed to just one party. Fair and balanced my ass.

Rupert Murdoch Doesn’t Own Me

Posted by on August 11, 2010 at 10:21 am. 8 Comments :

He thinks he owns the sky. Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp is embroiled in a trademark dispute over the name of its European TV division, BSkyB, which operates under the name Sky TV. It has recently been revealed that News Corp is challenging Skype and seeking to prevent them from using their name and logo. From The Telegraph (a Murdoch owned rag)…

Sky is involved in a long-running dispute with Skype in relation to several trade mark applications filed by Skype, including, but not limited to, television-related goods and services,” the spokesman said. “The key contention in the dispute is that the brands ‘Sky’ and ‘Skype’ will be considered confusingly similar by members of the public.

Really? Then you would think that Murdoch would have a problem with the name of this web site: News Corpse. If adding two letters to the end of the word “sky” is confusingly similar, then why not adding two letters to the end of News Corp?

Some other potential targets of Murdoch’s legal team may include actors Ione Skye and Michael J. Fox. Big Sky, Montana may be at risk as well. And don’t forget that Murdoch also owns the Wall Street Journal, so New York may have to change their street name. In fact, since Murdoch’s global enterprise uses the word “news,” every other company that does so might have to lawyer up, including NBC News and the Dallas News.

But none of these scofflaws are as brazen as I am. Apparently Murdoch is afraid of me as he sits trembling in his penthouse watching his fingernails grow. What other reason could there be for his cowardly silence in the face of what he must regard as obvious infringement?

Yo Rupert…I got your confusingly similar right here. So bring it on you crusty, old, lily-livered, wretch.

Fox News Stands By Glenn Beck’s Hate Speech 1000%

Posted by on August 4, 2010 at 2:32 am. 6 Comments :

This should tell you all you need to know about Fox News and their commitment to bigotry and division.

Earlier today Michael Calderone of The Upshot posted a story describing the most recent example of Glenn Beck’s intolerance and insensitivity. It all began when Beck broadcast a brazenly offensive attack against Simon Greer, chief executive of Jewish Funds for Justice. As you might imagine, the fact that Greer runs an agency that advocates justice of the social variety is enough by itself to set Beck off. But when Greer wrote about the benefits, both personal and spiritual, of pursuing the common good, Beck couldn’t restrain himself:

“This leads to death camps. A Jew, of all people, should know that. This is exactly the kind of talk that led to the death camps in Germany. Put humankind and the common good first.”

Not surprisingly, Greer took offense at being portrayed as an instigator of Holocausts. Especially when he was merely expressing what his faith teaches him as written in the Talmud:

If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am for myself alone, what am I?

Calderone’s article goes on to state that Greer had a meeting with Fox News CEO Roger Ailes and senior vice president Joel Cheatwood. In Greer’s account of the meeting the Fox executives agreed that Beck had “crossed the line” and they promised talk to him. A couple of days later Greer received a letter from Beck that was something less than an apology, but which Greer graciously regarded as “a peace offering.”

But the story doesn’t end there. After Calderone’s article was published, Cheatwood ran to the press to deny that there was ever any agreement with Greer and that both Cheatwood and Ailes stand “behind Glenn Beck 1000%.” That’s right. They felt it was imperative to quickly correct the record and make it known that they believe, along with Beck, that caring for your neighbors, and your community, and the community of mankind, will lead to fascist death camps. And, of course, those who do care are budding Hitlers. Thanks for clearing that up.

Veteran Beck observers will not be surprised by any of this. His racism, and his employer’s support for it, has been documented before. When Beck called President Obama a racist with “a deep seated hatred for white people or the white culture,” Rupert Murdoch declared that he was right.

To top off this story, it was just revealed that Beck had listed on his “favorites” on Twitter a Tweet from a white nationalist that said to “Embrace White Culture” and included the logo and acronym for “White Pride World Wide,” a known slogan of white supremacy groups. After it became public, Beck deleted all of his favorite Tweets. Unfortunately for him, the evidence was captured before he was able to destroy it.

And this is the guy who compares himself to Martin Luther King and still thinks he has a moral right to hold a self-glorifying rally on the anniversary of, and at the same location as, King’s “I Have a Dream” speech.

Fox News: Monopolize Globally, Proselytize Locally

Posted by on August 3, 2010 at 3:46 am. 2 Comments :

Tonight on Countdown Keith Olbermann awarded the coveted “Worst Person in the World” trophy to Rupert Murdoch (again) and the president of the Fox Stations Group, Dennis Swanson. The honor was attributed to a new initiative to extend the Fox propaganda down the line to their local affiliates:

“For a long time, the one saving grace of the Fixed News propaganda machine was that it did not extend to the local stations Murdoch owns, like Channel 5 in New York, Channel 11 in Los Angeles. Well, you can forget the one saving grace. Multiple industry sources say that within the last six weeks or so, local news directors at the local Fox O&Os have been receiving memoranda and e-mails from Swanson and other executives, and even from Murdoch himself. ‘Content directives,” they’re called, to make the local news on Fox broadcast stations around the country look and sound just as shaded, just as biased as that on Fox News Channel.”

Fox Television controls one of the largest station groups in the country with 27 stations, including nine of the top ten markets. The combined audience for local news programming nationwide is far greater than that of the cable Fox News Channel. Local viewers are often more engaged by content that impacts their daily lives and thus, more vulnerable to disinformation. The potential for propagandizing is enormous and apparently this has not escaped Murdoch’s attention.

This is precisely why media reform is so critical to our fragile democracy. With giant, multinational corporations forming media monopolies, the threat to independent and diverse opinion is growing. Fox not only owns stations that cover a third of the country, in some markets they own TV stations, radio stations, and the major daily newspapers. And that doesn’t even include their affiliate relationships with independent stations and station groups throughout the country. This is an obvious impediment to the free marketplace of ideas. It is the reason that it is so imperative to roll back the corporate consolidation that has taken place in the last couple of decades, and to restore reasonable media ownership regulations.

If we, the people, don’t stand up and take action to preserve a free and unfettered press, we are likely to see more of these “content directives” from Fox and others. Before long we will have mini-Beck’s and Hannity’s in every city, delivering the local news in their typically dishonest and self-serving style. And the last thing this country needs is more of the lies, divisiveness, and manufactured ignorance that Fox is so good at disseminating.

White House May Cancel Wall Street Journal

Posted by on July 30, 2010 at 6:13 pm. 1 Comments :

Rupert Murdoch has been constructing his pay walls as a means to squeeze more revenue from his newspapers. By most accounts it is failing as viewership declines on the web sites of his newspaper properties.

In response to this failure Murdoch has doubled-down on greed by jacking up the price for news clipping services, including the one used by the White House. Politico reports that the Wall Street Journal will raise its fees by half a million dollars. The White House responded by saying…

“Obviously, we’re not paying $500,000. This is taxpayer money,” the official said. “We have no idea how we’re going to handle this. We may have to drop [The Journal].”

Considering the fact that anyone in the White House could subscribe to the Journal for $140.00 a year, this seems like a remarkably shortsighted and stupid policy. What’s more, it could motivate the White House to favor other news outlets, for interviews and other media releases, whose bundled clippings they can receive at a reasonable rate. Why would they want to deal with the Journal if their access to the stories was more difficult to obtain and dissemination might be restricted?

There is a stench of desperation about this. Murdoch has not made a successful business decision in years. The Fox Business Network is floundering; MySpace is almost invisible; the pay wall has not been adopted by peers; even the Wall Street Journal purchase resulted in staggering losses. Without Avatar and Fox News, News Corp would be a basket case. And Fox News has been losing viewers as well.

Now that the Journal is writing off some major clients like the President, it may just be a matter of time before they fall of their own bloated weight. I wonder where people like Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity would go if there were no Fox News to coddle them?

Glenn Beck Uncovers Homer Simpson’s Clandestine Plot

Posted by on July 30, 2010 at 3:08 am. 7 Comments :

Comrade Homer SimpsonWith the myriad enemies that America is facing in this tumultuous age of terrorism, leave it to Glenn Beck to investigate and unveil one of the most dastardly schemes ever perpetrated on our unsuspecting nation. Only someone with the delusional paranoia of Beck could have discovered this lurking danger. Thank God for Beck’s dementia, for without it we would all be doomed.

Beck: Before the 1960s, these were the shows on television. This was Father Knows Best. Can you even imagine a show named that? This is My Three Sons. Ward Cleaver, Leave It To Beaver. The role of father was strong, but now — I mean, I hate to be my grandfather and say, “We didn’t even have Rice Krispies back then” — but look at the difference.

This was before these guys [the Weather Underground] showed up. Now look at our culture. [The Simpsons] is the funniest show ever written on television. I love this show. But dad’s a schlub.

That’s right! The Weather Underground conspired to turn dads into schlubs. Never mind the fact that on programs like Father Knows Best and Leave it to Beaver the dad, just as likely as not, was portrayed as dense or over-reacting to some family crisis. He was frequently bailed out by the mom or some innocent revelation of the child. And set aside Beck’s inability to come up with program names that reflect the strength (i.e. dominance) of the father figure, like maybe King of Queens or My Wife and Kids.

All of that is just a distraction from the hidden truth of the Weather Underground’s blueprint for destroying the family unit and demeaning fatherhood. For half a century this cabal has laid dormant, waiting for an opportunity to pounce. At the center of this sleeper cell is the craven visage of Homer Simpson, a villain thrust upon us by the execrable Rupert Murdoch and Fox. Thanks to Beck we can now see that this deceptively lovable goofball is actually a treacherously effective functionary of a secular-socialist revolution that aims to impose a brutal dictatorship and enslave us all.

However, Comrade Homer didn’t count on Beck exposing his plan. And now that the veil has been lifted, there is still time resist the looming tyranny. So rise up America. Rise up and cast off the shackles that Homer and his legion of Marxists would bind unto you. Reject tyranny. Reject Fox and Murdoch. Live free or eat my shorts!

Fox Alert! The Taliban Is Recruiting Monkey Mercenaries

Posted by on July 13, 2010 at 2:29 pm. 1 Comments :

Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp has been giving the World Weekly News some pretty stiff competition. With Fox News making up stories about ClimateGate and the New Black Panther Party, and Fox Nation trying to spark fears of Boob Bombs and armed IRS ObamaCare enforcers, the Murdoch empire is not much more than a right-wing fantasy factory.

Today they have upped the lunacy by passing along a ridiculous story about the Taliban training monkeys to do battle with American soldiers. The story, sourced to the People’s Daily in China, was published by at least two Murdoch properties, Fox Nation and the New York Post. And if you weren’t frightened by the prospect of terrorists sneaking into the country with explosive breast implants, then maybe the thought of radical Islamic macaques and baboons armed “with AK-47 rifles, machine guns and trench mortars in the Waziristan tribal region near the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan” will set you to squirming. And both the Post and the Fox Nationalists featured an obviously doctored “photo” of a menacing Monkey Mercenary, along with this foreboding video:

Ordinarily I would dismiss this sort of rightist horror story without much consideration. After all, even the video supplied doesn’t show a single rhesus recruit, just some suspicious still photos. But upon reflection, I couldn’t entirely cast off the theory after observing the quality of Murdoch’s “news” operations. I mean, if the monkeys working for Murdoch can be reporters and publishers, then why couldn’t they be soldiers?