Hillary Clinton

John Edwards Not Playing Rupert Murdoch’s Monopoly

Posted by on December 27, 2007 at 1:20 pm. NO Comments :

John Edwards isn’t shy about letting Rupert Murdoch know how he feels. When asked a question about media consolidation at a recent campaign stop, Edwards said:

“I am not particularly interested in seeing Rupert Murdoch own every newspaper in America.”

Nicely done, John. This answer responds directly to the heart of the question and points an incriminating finger at the industry’s worst offender.

Edwards continues to solidify his position as the candidate most committed to media reform and supportive of efforts to rollback consolidation. He has spoken out on many occasions on the need for independence and diversity in the press and he has been a leading voice of opposition to the FCC’s policy of weakening regulations on ownership caps. He was also the first candidate to refuse to participate in Fox News-sponsored primary debates.

But every time Edwards takes a principled stand, the pundidiots can’t help but crack-wise at Edwards expense. In the item linked above, James Pindell of the Boston Globe follows the Edwards quote with this bit of irrelevancy:

“It should be noted that Edwards received nearly $800,000 in a book contract from one of Murdoch’s companies, HarperCollins.”

Why, pray tell, should that be noted? It is not a political contribution or evidence of electoral support. It is a payment for publishing rights to an author from a book publisher. It is the free market at work. And if anything is notable about it, it is that Edwards will act on his principles even if it is contrary to the interests of corporations who lay out big bucks to do business with him. In other words, they can’t buy him.

This isn’t the first time this canard has been raised. Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post felt it necessary to note the same book deal after Edwards called on his opponents to refuse donations from Murdoch. Never mind that he was not admonishing them to refrain from doing business with News Corp., just from accepting the sort political funding that can be seen as buying influence. And lest anyone think that the book advance in itself has purchased any slice of Edwards’ soul, just look to these statements for proof that his independence and integrity is in tact:

“High levels of media consolidation threaten free speech, they tilt the public dialogue towards corporate priorities and away from local concerns, and they make it increasingly difficult for women and people of color to own meaningful stakes in our nation’s media.”

“It’s time for all Democrats, including those running for president, to stand up and speak out against this [News Corp./Dow Jones] merger and other forms of media consolidation.”

“The basis of a strong democracy begins and ends with a strong, unbiased and fair media – all qualities which are pretty hard to subscribe to Fox News and News Corp.”

Contrast that with Hillary Clinton’s qualifying remarks following a rather commendable statement against media consolidation:

“I’m not saying anything against any company in particular. I just want to see more competition, especially in the same markets.”

While Clinton takes pains to soften the blow against her Foxic benefactor, Edwards comes right out and says what he thinks. For this he is often tagged in the press as a phony. That is the same characterization they make of him when he advocates for the poor – something the media apparently believes rich folks should never do. And for his trouble he is ganged up on by sanctimonious pundits that would rather point a finger at targets of their imagined hypocrisy than left a finger to help those less fortunate.

If you’re paying attention it’s easy to see who the phonies really are.

TVNewser Completes Its Descent Into Tabloid Drudgery

Posted by on December 20, 2007 at 3:02 am. 2 Comments :

Last night on the CBS Evening News, Katie Couric presented another in her series of Primary Questions to the candidates for president of both parties. The question for this installment dealt with marital fidelity and whether it should be a determinative factor when deciding for whom to vote.

This question, while not as elevating to the debate as questions about Iraq, global warming, the economy, or health care might have been, could still have produced some observable squirming from a number of the candidates. But in reporting on Couric’s broadcast, the rapidly deteriorating TVNewser was more interested in propagating rumors than in objective journalism. In an item by Steve Krakauer, who joined TVNewser last month and previously worked for Fox News, two candidates were singled out as having answers that would “be of interest.”

The first was Hillary Clinton, for whom a case could be made for a potentially interesting exchange. Although it should be noted that it was not Hillary, but her husband, who was guilty of infidelity. Since the context of the question was whether someone who was not true to their spouse could be trusted to be true to the country, it really did not apply directly to any behavior on her part. And despite their troubles, a decade has past since the affair and they have managed to keep their marriage and family together.

The second candidate Krakauer cited was John Edwards. And this is where Krakauer demonstrates either a woeful inability to mask his prejudice, or a professional immaturity that borders on incompetence. This is how he presents his next point:

“Also, with reports of a Sen. John Edwards extra-marital affair and subsequent pregnancy, his answer will be looked at more carefully as well.”

By referring to “reports” of Edwards’ “affair” Krakauer implies that there are credible allegations from responsible journalists and sources. The truth is that there is only a single allegation by an anonymous source as reported to the “National Enquirer” (to which I refuse to link) which is nobody’s idea of a responsible journal. And not a single reputable news organization has yet to follow the Enquirer’s smarmy lead, although Matt Drudge headlined it (good company).

The Enquirer’s story is fraught with ambiguity and error. Both Edwards and Rielle Hunter (the alleged other woman) describe the charges as untrue and ridiculous. Hunter, who is pregnant, has identified the father as Andrew Young, with whom she worked on Edwards’ campaign. Young confirmed his paternity, but that didn’t stop the Enquirer from asserting, with no evidence whatsoever, that everybody was just trying to cover up for Edwards. The Enquirer even faulted Edwards for not nipping the scandal in the bud early on by revealing the relationship between Hunter and Young. Of course Edwards could not have done that because he didn’t know anything about the relationship, as Young told the Enquirer.

This is the level of unsubstantiated innuendo that Krakauer pretends is newsworthy. In fact he is engaging in the most vile sort of rumor-mongering. He doesn’t even bother to explicitly inform his readers that his source is the Enquirer (he hides it in a link). And if all of this isn’t bad enough, in an article about the relevance of the breaking of marriage vows, Krakauer smears two candidates for whom there is no evidence of such behavior, but fails to mention others with known multiple marriages (McCain and Thompson) and notorious philandering (Giuliani).

So Krakauer thinks rumors spread by tabloid rags are interesting, but Mayors who keep their mistresses in the Mayor’s residence and use city funds to pay for trysts in the Hamptons are not even worth mentioning. What’s truly interesting and sad is how low TVNewser has sunk and how useless it has become. It is no better now than its new partner the Enquirer or, as I lamented in an earlier article, the Drudge Report. What an embarrassment for everyone involved.

Feel free to let TVNewser know what a pack of ethically-deprived journalistic lowlifes they are:

TVNewser
Chris Ariens, Editor, Exec. Producer
Laurel Touby, Founder, CEO

Hillary Hostage Affair Addendum

Posted by on December 1, 2007 at 1:18 am. 1 Comments :

With the conclusion of the harrowing incident in New Hampshire, where hostages where taken at a Hillary Clinton campaign office, this may be a good time for a round up of how the media performed.

Guess what?

Fox News managed to commit some amateurish, and possibly dangerous, mistakes. First off, they identified the suspect as Troy Stanley whom they described as a paranoid schizophrenic. It’s bad enough to broadcast such inflammatory characterizations while the crisis is still in progress and an unstable perpetrator may be watching on a TV inside the crime scene, but it’s even worse if you finger the wrong guy. The actual perp is a New Hampshire resident known to local police as Leeland Eisenberg.

John Ehrenfeld at Brave New Films notes that Fox reported an end to the event at 4:15PM EST, announcing that all of the hostages had been released. There would be nothing wrong with that except that another hostage was released over an hour later at 5:37, and then another at 6:13. Once again, Fox’s mistakes had the potential to put lives at risk.

Finally, when the incident actually did conclude, Hillary Clinton gave a statement and held a brief press conference that was carried live on CNN and MSNBC. Fox News chose not to air Clinton’s remarks live, instead continuing with their “All Star Panel” discussion on topics unrelated to the breaking news.

However, Wanker of the Day Award goes to MSNBC’s Tucker Carlson. In a discussion with FBI profiler Clint Van Zandt, Tucker responded to an assertion that Eisenberg was driven to the hostage taking because he felt there was no other way to make himself heard, by saying:

“He should do what a lot of other mentally ill people do in this country and start a blog.”

Very funny, Tuck. In one fell swoop you’ve trivialized the horror that the hostages just endured, discounted the gravity of mental illness, and disparaged everyone who exercises their right to free expression on the Internet. The Doofus Trifecta.

Poor Rupert: Nobody Listens To Him

Posted by on November 26, 2007 at 5:22 pm. 2 Comments :

As if any further evidence was required, we now have it straight from Rupert Murdoch’s own pursed lips that the fingers of his bony hand are pulling the strings at his media properties and setting editorial policy. Murdoch was interviewed by the British House of Lords’ Communications Committee as part of its inquiry into media ownership. The committee released these comments from the interview:

“For The Sun and News of the World, he explained that he is a ‘traditional proprietor.’ He exercises editorial control on major issues – like which party to back in a general election or policy on Europe.”

“He distinguishes between The Times and The Sunday Times and The Sun and the News of the World (and makes the same distinction between the New York Post and The Wall Street Journal).”

The way that Murdoch distinguishes between his various properties is that those for which he has legal or contractual barriers to direct manipulation he doesn’t tell them what to do, he merely asks them what they are doing. Is there any employee that would not know what his boss means to convey under such an arrangement? It also goes without saying that Murdoch doesn’t have to give much guidance to managers he selected precisely because of their fealty to his interests. In fact, he has already tapped his long-time editor at the London Times to be the new publisher at the Wall Street Journal.

Murdoch also expressed his opinion that his Sky News “could be more popular if it emulated his Fox News Channel.” He said that the reason it isn’t already doing that is because “nobody at Sky listens to me.” That’s especially funny when you consider that Sky News is run by James Murdoch, Rupert’s son.

Here in the U.S., Murdoch took a glancing blow from his beneficiary, Hillary Clinton. At a campaign stop in Iowa, Clinton was asked about media consolidation and the risk of having one man like Murdoch with so much control. Clinton responded that…

“There have been a lot of media consolidations in the last several years, and it is quite troubling. The fact is, most people still get their news from television, from radio, even from newspapers. If they’re all owned by a very small group of people – and particularly if they all have a very similar point of view – it really stifles free speech.”

That’s a good answer and Clinton is commendably a co-sponsor of the Media Ownership Act of 2007. Too bad she had to dilute the impact of her response by letting Murdoch off the hook:

“I’m not saying anything against any company in particular. I just want to see more competition, especially in the same markets.”

Murdoch, his son James, and several other executives at News Corp have contributed to Clinton’s senatorial and presidential campaigns. I would sure hate to think that those contributions might affect her decision making with regard to Big Media.