I thought I was being funny when I made this:
But, as usual, reality trumps comedy: From ashes to ashes, at Disneyland
On Friday, workers at the Anaheim theme park spotted a guest on the ride sprinkling an unidentified substance into the water, prompting them to close the attraction and alert police […] the episode was a case of the surreptitious scattering of human ashes.
With a cast of characters that includes Rudy Giuliani, Rupert Murdoch, and Judith Regan, a tale is being woven that starts off better than any novel by Melville, Hemingway or Steinbeck – put together!
“This action arises from a deliberate smear campaign orchestrated by one of the largest media conglomerates for the sole purpose of destroying one woman’s credibility and reputation. This smear campaign was necessary to advance News Corp.’s political agenda, which has long centered on Giuliani’s presidential ambitions.”
This is the Introduction to a lawsuit filed (pdf) by Judith Regan against publisher HarperCollins and its parent, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation. The lawsuit was filed by Regan in response to her having been fired in the wake of the aborted publication of O. J. Simpson’s imagined confessional “If I Did It.” The ripples from this wave are certain to roil the waters around both News Corp and the presidential ambitions of Giuliani.
Enter Bernie Kerik, Giuliani’s Police Commissioner whom Giuliani recommended to President Bush to be the first Director of Homeland Security. That appointment was scuttled due to Kerik being waist high in the sort of corruption that just got him indicted for multiple felonies. It seems that Regan and Kerik were sparking a little heat of their own. That revelation has made some folks nervous.
“Defendants were well aware that Regan had a personal relationship with Kerik. In fact, a senior executive in the News Corp. organization told Regan that he believed that she had information about Kerik that, if disclosed, would harm Giuliani’s presidential campaign. This executive advised Regan to lie to, and to withhold information from, investigators concerning Kerik”
This story has blockbuster written all over it. There is drama, intrigue, betrayal, corruption, money and sex. If Fox were not so inextricably intertwined in it, this would be a perfect subject for them. The News Corp executive (whom Regan does not name) that directed Regan to lie to Secret Service agents gathering data on a prospective cabinet member is potentially guilty of unlawful intimidation and deception. If true, what’s left of Fox News’ credibility is irredeemably lost (admittedly not a big loss for them).
It remains to seen how this will impact Giuliani who has been all but anointed by Fox as the Republican nominee. The New York Times reported earlier this year on the close relationship between Giuliani, Fox News and News Corp honcho, Roger Ailes. Giuliani has been a frequent guest on Fox, particularly the Hannity and Colmes program. His appearances far outstrip his Republican rivals:
“Mr. Giuliani’s on-air time on Fox [115 minutes] was 25 percent greater than that of his Republican competitor Mitt Romney, and nearly double that of Senator John McCain of Arizona. Fred D. Thompson, who has yet to formally announce his candidacy, came in second to Mr. Giuliani with 101 minutes of Fox interviews.”
Besides the valuable airtime Hannity contributes, he also headlined a $250.00 a plate fund raiser for Giuliani. Then there is Rudy’s personal relationship with Ailes, the Chairman of Fox News:
“Mr. Ailes was the media consultant to Mr. Giuliani’s first mayoral campaign in 1989. Mr. Giuliani, as mayor, officiated at Mr. Ailes’s wedding and intervened on his behalf when Mr. Ailes’s company, Fox News Channel, was blocked from securing a cable station in the city.”
It will be interesting to see how all of this unfolds. Kerik is already facing serious charges for his unscrupulous misadventures. Giuliani’s house of cards is only just beginning to wobble. But the real cliffhanger is News Corp and Fox News. How will they fare after being accused of threatening Regan to secure her silence regarding Kerik and Giuliani? Will regulators take any of this under consideration with regards to the Dow Jones acquisition? How will the media report the details of this lurid scandal that marries elements of the media (Fox News) and the government (Giuliani, Kerik) with the tabloid exploits of the “Golden Vagina” as Regan was known to her critics at News Corp.
The good news is that Fox’s reputation for honest and impartial journalism is not in jeopardy because, of course, they have no such reputation. Thus, it may not surprise many that they have suborned perjury, intimidated witnesses and clandestinely supported a presidential candidate who was a friend and benefactor. I just wonder when the conservative population in this country, who have prided themselves on the virtues of law and order, will finally surrender to the fact that Murdoch and Co. are a criminal syndicate that simply cannot be trusted.
Update: Giuliani’s non-denial denial: “I don’t respond to the story at all. I don’t know anything about it, and it sounds to me like kind of a gossip column story more than a real story.”
Plus, Regan reportedly has “juicy” tapes that bolster her account of the events detailed in her lawsuit.
The FCC’s proposed new rules aimed at advancing the interests of Big Media conglomerates, and permitting them to get even bigger and more powerful, now face a legislative hurdle courtesy of Senators Byron Dorgan and Trent Lott. The bill will force the FCC to move forward with localism and diversity initiatives and to give the public at least 90 days to review the new rules that FCC Chairman Kevin Martin wants to adopt.
The legislation is being introduced to keep Martin from rushing through regulations favorable to his corporate benefactors. Dorgan and Lott deserve credit for serving the interests of the public. A new poll illustrates precisely where the public stands on the matter of media consolidation.
“The survey found 57 percent of respondents favored laws against a company owning a paper and TV station in the same market. That level of support was roughly the same among the political liberals, moderates and conservatives surveyed […] The survey also showed 70 percent of respondents described media consolidation as a problem.”
This fight is a replay of one that the people thought they had won in 2003, when 3 million citizens forced the Congress to rollback regs rammed through by then FCC Chair Michael Powell. They were backed up by the courts who ordered the regs to be withdrawn and revised. Now we have to assert our will again as the same powerful interests attempt to write their own ticket.
And once again FreePress.net is leading the fight for media reform, independence and diversity. Visit their site to add your voice to those already speaking out against this power grab by Martin and the Corporate Media. Your message will be forwarded to the FCC and your representatives in Congress. And you can send your friends and family links to this vital information so that they can do the same.
The contact page is at Stop Big Media.
Don’t put it off. Martin and his masters are trying to push there agenda through before Christmas.
Republican pollster and message crafter, Frank Luntz, is seeking participants for a series of focus groups that will be held around the country. The purpose appears to be to study public opinions on presidential politics. Fox News will likely be the client for these studies as Luntz promoted the project yesterday on Hannity and Colmes.
Here’s the fun part. You can be a member of the focus group. Luntz is soliciting participants on his web site with an application form. Fill it out and, in a few days, you will know if you have been accepted. The pitch for subjects says that they “want to know what you think,” and that you could “potentially see your comments aired on national television.”
So let’s tell them what we think. Sign up and see if you can secure a place for yourself on a panel near you. The application form asks a range of questions that include political viewpoints. I don’t know if they are looking for righty sycophants or if they are going for a “fair and balanced” sample. You might try different approaches to see if one is more likely to get approved than another. I would also suggest that you not access the application through this link as they may check the referrer sites and reject those that come from a blog such as this. Instead, simply cut and paste this URL…
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=_2bQOeRHWezhssEBctA6YCIA_3d_3d
…into your browser from Google.com or Foxnews.com or something else non-controversial.
The site encourages you to “FORWARD THIS EMAIL to friends, family or colleagues who you think may be interested,” so they should not mind if we do so. I think it would be good for Fox News to start getting opinion data that more accurately reflects the nation’s view of politics, government and the world. Here’s our chance to help them see the light.
Last Friday Tucker closed his show by saying:
“That does it for us. Thank you for watching as always, we mean that sincerely to all eight of you.”
That sounds ominously like a farewell. This will come as no surprise to News Corpse readers who are well aware of the train wreck that Tucker’s show is on MSNBC’s schedule. I published my analysis of his subterranean ratings last August, and followed up with a prediction of his demise in September.
Now Jacques Steinberg at the New York Times is citing a source at MSNBC as saying that Liar Tuck “…is in real danger of being canceled.” Thanks for the news flash, Jack. What gave it away? (The remainder of the article is a pile of nonsense that posits a leftist tilt at the network, supplying as evidence the liberal contributions of Chris Matthews, Joe Scarborough and Dan Abrams. They’re about as liberal as Limburger is fragrant).
FTVLive has an explanation for why Tucker has lasted this long. He allegedly agreed to cut his salary in half in order to save his worthless program and persist in dragging the rest of the schedule down with him. Why MSNBC would think that that is a good deal is beyond me. FTVLive also elicited a response from Tucker himself, saying that reports of his show being quietly canceled are, “complete and utter bullshit.” This is reminiscent of his response a year ago to the same speculation when he said that…
“It’s bullshit. It’s total bullshit. I talked to Abrams last night. I’ve got another year on my contract. That’s my comment: Bullshit.”
Well that was a year ago and now the chickenhawks may be coming home to roost.
In another classic example of the wanker’s prose, Jonah Goldberg has penned a column for the Los Angeles Times that proves he can’t tell reality from satire.
The column begins with a quotation from Saturday Night Live’s news spoof about the the recent news conference held by FEMA wherein they planted agency stooges who pretended to be reporters asking real questions. Any ethical journalist would be appalled at such a fraudulent tactic designed exclusively to deceive. But Goldberg, of course, is not an ethical journalist. He actually dismisses the deceit by saying that…
“There’s no such thing as fake questions, after all, only fake answers.”
What the HELL does that mean? If there are no fake questions then there are no fake answers either. There may be false answers or lies, misrepresentations, obfuscations, or diversions. But all of those are as real as 90% of the answers that come out of the present White House.
If anything, Goldberg has it bass ackwards. There are indeed fake questions. They come from people who are fake reporters or reporters who have surrendered their independence to powerful figures in government. For examples of fake questions see Armstrong Williams or Jeff Gannon.
Goldberg goes on to excuse FEMA’s deception by asserting that all of the media is guilty of the sort “foolishness” FEMA was caught committing. I can’t really argue with the notion that the media is rampantly foolish, but Goldberg supports his claim, not by citing instances of media failures, but by citing comedy shows that mock the media. He points to Stephen Colbert, and Jon Stewart as evidence that the media is fake. Somehow it has escaped him that Colbert and Stewart are comedians and not journalists. The fact that they are more informative, relevant, and honest than most news enterprises is just a coincidence that delivers a sad commentary on the state of the news media.
Ultimately, in a fit of classic dementia, Goldberg declares that Murphy Brown is to blame for the problem of parsing fact from fiction. That’s right, the same sitcom character that vexed Dan Quayle. Goldberg says the show is…
“…about a fictional TV newswoman who talked about real newsmakers as if they were characters on her sitcom. When Brown had a baby out of wedlock, Vice President Dan Quayle criticized the writers of the show. Liberals then reacted as though Quayle had insulted a real person.”
Not exactly, Jonah. It was Quayle who insulted a fictional character as if it was real. Liberals just laughed at him for doing so. (By the way, he was also insulting every real, unmarried woman who chose to carry a baby to term). And now we laugh at you for ascribing all the flaws of modern journalism to the same figment of a TV scripter’s imagination.
It is Goldberg, however, who is the joke. His attempt to compare the inexcusable dishonesty of the FEMA event with the antics of comedy programs would be hilarious if it weren’t so depressing. Whatever his opinion of political satirists, he ought to be able to tell the difference between them and government agencies whose mission is to protect real people from real disasters.
Look out media overlords – News Corpse is back. I took a vacation to recharge although I’m not sure it had that effect. My two week visit to Europe may have been more exhausting than my routine existence here at home. Plus, I still have to recover from jet lag.
My trip began in Barcelona where I was greeted by this warm tribute to tourism. This message was strategically placed on a rooftop that is visible to the many visitors to the Gaudi-designed Park Guell.
We hopped on a train north to Figueres, the site of the Salvador Dali Museum. The taxi driver that took us up to the museum neglected to inform us that the museum was closed on Mondays until after he had dropped us off and collected his fare. As it turned out, it was a pleasant scam. We decided to spend a night in Figueres so that we could see the museum the next day and it turned out to be one of the best stops on the trip.
From there we went by car to Avignon and Nice in the south France. Avignon was exactly the charming and historical town we had expected. We also drove through Arles with its Roman-style Colosseum and Van Gogh landmarks. Nice was somewhat more of a commercialized tourist trap than we had expected. But all of it was fun and enriching.
The final stop was Florence. I’ve always considered Florence the Mecca for artists (if you are an artist you have to visit at least once in your lifetime or you won’t go to Heaven). It was astonishingly beautiful with art literally around every corner. As an extra added bonus, I badly sprained my ankle at the Uffizi Museum. If you’re going to injure yourself, you might as well do it at one of the world’s great repositories of art.
I apologize for not posting more while I was on the road. I intended to but there just wasn’t time. I noticed that during my absence, Glenn Beck’s hordes discovered a post I wrote last August that featured a rather repulsive Photoshop satire of Helen Thomas. Beck’s childish minions descended on News Corpse demonstrating that they couldn’t get a point if it was on the top of their little heads. But it was nice of them to boost my traffic for a few otherwise non-eventful days.
Now it’s back to the work of bringing down the corrupt and compromised Corporate Media. The fight continues…
While I have been preoccupied with unspecified clandestine activites, not much has occurred in the world of media – unless you consider FEMA staging a fake press conference with FEMA staff posing as reporter “something.”
And it is certainly nothing groundbreaking when Fox News analysts spend their air time promoting a U.S. attack on Iran.
For the next couple of weeks I will be engaged in activities that will preclude me from delivering my usual stream of enlightening essays and insights. Is it the intrusion of work? Vacation? Or a top secret mission to infiltrate Rupert Murdoch’s international disinformation cartel? I’m not saying.
I should be resuming my regular schedule of posting on or about November 5. In the meantime, I will be linking to other fine blogs and news sources that are working hard to reform our media.
Like this one from ThinkProgress:
Fox News: Al Qaeda is causing the CA wildires
This morning on Fox News, hosts of the show Fox and Friends blamed the wildfires in California on a new culprit: al Qaeda. They pointed to a 2003 FBI memo, which raised the possibility that al Qaeda may try to set wildfires around the western United States. They also noted that men in a “hovering helicopter” saw “a guy starting one of these fires.”
Conspiracy theorists will want to know if the hovering helicopter was black. The rest of us can’t stop laughing.
Since announcing his intention to seek the nomination of both parties for President of the United States, Stephen Colbert has demonstrated a deft media strategy (appearing on Meet the Press, Larry King, etc) and popular appeal. In the first poll to be released since his announcement he shows both strength and promise. Here are the results:
| Candidate: | Percent: |
| Clinton | 40 |
| Obama | 19 |
| Edwards | 12 |
| Biden | 2.7 |
| Colbert | 2.3 |
| Richardson | 2.1 |
| Kucinich | 2.1 |
| Gravel | <1.0 |
| Colbert has surged ahead of New Mexico governor Bill Richardson and is threatening Sen. Joe Biden in the Democratic primary. On the Republican side he is lagging in Tancredo territory.
What this suggests is that Colbert may be the conservative candidate best able to make inroads into Democratic and Independent ranks. These early poll results should tell the rest of the field that voters are anxious for new ideas and are looking for candidates who espouse Truthiness as opposed to the same old so-called “facts” that are scattered by pundits and spinners. Congratulations Stephen, and good luck. |