All Hail The Tea Party
For me this is the clearest sign yet that Rupert Murdoch has turned the Wall Street Journal into just another political mouthpiece, little different in its Republican boosterism from his tabloid New York Post. The Journal’s lead story today, titled “Birth of a Movement” is a fawning assessment of the Tea Party with the message that it’s here to stay and that’s a wonderful thing:
Less than two years ago, Amy Kremer and Jenny Beth Martin were 30-something suburbanites in metro Atlanta, frustrated by recession, dismayed by the election of Barack Obama and waiting for the next chapter of their lives.
Ms. Kremer, a former Delta Air Lines flight attendant, had quit her career to raise her daughter. The child had grown up and just moved out, and now Ms. Kremer was filling her time with two blogs—one on gardening, one on politics.
“I had this empty space in my life,” Ms. Kremer recalls.
Ms.…
Why Glenn Beck Will Win
Photo: Erna-Louisa (CC)
No, not the 2012 presidency! At least I hope not, but Brandweek’s Todd Wasserman says he will beat the attempted advertiser boycott urged by progressive groups:
It seemed like a good idea: To get a program canceled, go after the advertisers. But such logic doesn’t seem to apply in Murdochland.
A yearlong attempt to have advertisers boycott Fox News’ Glenn Beck Program—by organizations including StopBeck, People for the American Way and MediaMatters.org—has actually resulted in more than 100 advertisers fleeing the highly rated program. But try telling that to News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch. Fielding questions during a News Corp. shareholder meeting this month, Murdoch flatly denied that the advertisers had pulled out of the controversial show even though many have been quoted on the record. “That’s not true,” said Murdoch. “Maybe four or five have been moved over to [Bill] O’Reilly’s program. [But] no one has taken any money…
The Fox News Party’s Lineup For The Primaries
How much longer will Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes pretend that their Fox News Channel is anything other than the Republican Party’s TV megaphone? This Politico story demonstrates that the conjugal relationship between GOP and FNC is clear for all to see, and yet they continue to deny sharing the same bed:
With Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum and Mike Huckabee all making moves indicating they may run for president, their common employer is facing a question that hasn’t been asked before: How does a news organization cover White House hopefuls when so many are on the payroll?
The answer is a complicated one for Fox News.
As Fox’s popularity grows among conservatives, the presence of four potentially serious Republican candidates as paid contributors is beginning to frustrate competitors of the network, figures within its own news division and rivals of what some GOP insiders have begun calling “the Fox candidates.”
With the exception…
Oliver Stone’s New ‘Wall Street’ Is Heavy On Atmosphere, Light On Anger
The lead headline in the New York Times is “EXTENSIVE FRAUD APPEARS TO MAR AFGHAN ELECTION.” The line below, “A BLOW TO CREDIBILITY,” as if anyone who follows Afghanistan, a country known for blatant and notorious corruption was at all surprised by this latest “blow.”
Today’s “blow” followed an earlier “blow” a few weeks back with the disclosure of the crash of the Kabul Bank with $300 billion still unaccounted for.
In America, another fraud: CNN reported the next morning that the pathetic blonde beauty-celebrity Lindsay Lohan put up $300,000 to get out of jail. That’s the kind of story American media considers worthy of constant “Breaking News” attention.
When will we see the headlines like “EXTENSIVE FRAUD APPEARS TO MAR ECONOMIC RECOVERY” or “EXTENSIVE FRAUD LED TO FINANCIAL COLLAPSE?’
I ask this question, sort of knowing the answer, after two recent back-to-back film experiences.
On Thursday night, I spoke at a packed screening of my…
Body Parts of 9/11 Victims Map Used To Oppose ‘Ground Zero Mosque’
Photo from NY Post
Fox News often takes things a step too far, but to use a map of the distance where human remains were found as an argument against a mosque, is just uncalled for. Via RawStory:
Rupert Murdoch’s media empire has set what may be a new standard of shamelessness by marking the anniversary of the World Trade Center attacks with the publication of a map of human remains originally developed by the New York Fire Department in 2002.
“Here’s the chilling proof that Ground Zero stretches well beyond the boundaries of the World Trade Center site,” Murdoch’s New York Post boasted. “The map was obtained by The Post from sources after the Fire Department did not respond to requests to review it. It shows that remains were found just 348 feet to the south of the mosque site at 45 Park Place.”
An even more ominous version of the same map, with…
How Rupert Murdoch’s Sleazy Journalists Hacked British Royals’ Mobile Phones
The New York Times declares open season on a favorite liberal media pastime: bashing Rupert Murdoch and his “news” empire with this lengthy Magazine article on how the News of the World, an unabashedly lowbrow UK tabloid, hacked the mobile phones of Princes William and Harry and many other celebrities, possibly with some covert assistance from the police:
In November 2005, three senior aides to Britain’s royal family noticed odd things happening on their mobile phones. Messages they had never listened to were somehow appearing in their mailboxes as if heard and saved. Equally peculiar were stories that began appearing about Prince William in one of the country’s biggest tabloids, News of the World.
The stories were banal enough (Prince William pulled a tendon in his knee, one revealed). But the royal aides were puzzled as to how News of the World had gotten the information, which was known among only a small, discreet…
Fox News, Rupert Murdoch and the ‘Terror Mosque’
Thanks to Andrew Lander for sending this little bit of Fox News hypocrisy our way, from Yahoo News:
The opponents of the proposed Cordoba Initiative Islamic center planned for Lower Manhattan are fond of suggesting, by way of lengthy and often confusing chains of causation and association, that its principal planner, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, is connected to terrorism. “The imam has been tied to some shady characters,” Fox Business Channel’s Eric Bolling recently said, “so should we worry that terror dollars could be funding the project?” Blogger Pamela Geller, who has become a regular talking head on cable-news channels to denounce the mosque, has noted Rauf’s involvement with a Malaysian peace group that funded the group that organized the Gaza flotilla under the headline, “Ground Zero Imam Rauf’s ‘Charity’ Funded Genocide Mission.”
On last night’s “Daily Show,” Jon Stewart skewered these antics as a “dangerous game of guilt by association you can play with almost anybody,” and proceeded to tie Fox News to al-Qaida…
Don’t Pick Your Nose On The Subway: Rupert Murdoch Might Be Looking
AnimalNY via Jason Shelowitz
It’s no secret that Rupert Murdoch wants his Wall Street Journal to usurp rival newspaper the New York Times as the top read for the elites in New York City. Whether or not stories like this one will do the trick is doubtful, but I guess it might give Gothamist a run for its money, were the latter ever to start a print edition…
Last week, Jason Shelowitz, 30, a Chelsea-based painter and freelance graphic designer, started hanging very realistic facsimiles of MTA service advisories in subway cars and train stations around the city. The goal: to call New Yorkers out for their inappropriate or disgusting behavior, and to make them laugh i the process. “Keep your hands to yourself, perv,” one sign says. Another: “Keep your finger out of your nose. Please.” The posters bear the stamp of the MEA: Metropolitan Etiquette Authority.
Shelowitz created more than 300 posters, which he will finish…
Murdoch Says NY Times Publishes ‘Anything Obama Wants’
Is this a case of the pot calling the kettle black? I mean come on, Rupert, it’s not as if your newspapers and TV networks (Fox News Channel fuhchrissakes) don’t have a very obvious bias. From TheWrap.com:
News Corp. Chairman-CEO Rupert Murdoch described himself as “maybe a radical” Tuesday night and accused the New York Times of being too close to the Obama administration.
“I have great respect for the Times, except it does have very clearly an agenda,” Murdoch said in an interview at the National Press Club in Washington with Marvin Kalb. “You can see it very clearly in the way they choose their stories, what they put on Page 1 — anything that Mr. Obama wants.”
Murdoch, whose Wall Street Journal soon will start to more directly compete with the Times by publishing a sections that covers New York also denied he has a personal tiff with Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr.,…
Glenn Beck On Conspiracy Theories, His Critics On The Right And Left, And How He Resembles Howard Beale Of ‘Network’
James Taranto, a member of The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board, writes a fawning profile of the increasingly loonie Glenn Beck. Does this mean that we can expect the Journal to become a semi-respectable print version of another of Rupert Murdoch’s “news” outlets, Fox News Channel (which of course is home to Mr. Beck’s TV show)?
Glenn Beck didn’t always believe in what he was doing. “When I was young, I used to hear people say, ‘He’s a golden boy. Look at that guy. Can you imagine what he’s going to be like when he grows up?’ Well, I unfortunately bought into that. And I hadn’t even found myself. Quite honestly, I was running from myself. But I knew how to work Top 40 radio.”
“Golden boy” was no exaggeration. “I was in Washington, D.C., on the morning show, by the time I was 18, programming a station by 19, No. 1 in the…
News Corp. Wants To Bring Fox News To The UK
Note to U.K. regulators: this is a terrible idea. Make sure you watch Robert Greenwald’s classic documentary Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch’s War On Journalism and weep. Variety reports on the head of Murdoch’s U.K. based Sky News calling for the end of impartiality rules there:
The head of Sky News, the U.K. news web that is controlled by News Corp., has defended Fox News — and called for the scrapping of impartiality rules that prevent a U.K. version of Fox News being licensed in Britain.
John Ryley, speaking to the Cambridge Union Society Tuesday, said that he admired Fox News, which was recently under attack from Rupert Murdoch’s son-in-law Matthew Freud for undermining journalistic standards.
The Sky News topper said: “At Sky News, we provide impartial and independent news.
“That’s not because Ofcom (the U.K. media regulator) tells us to but because it’s what our audience expects of us. In simple terms, it’s good business for us…
Secret Swine Flu Egg Farms in Amish Country (Video)
You have to hand it to Rupert Murdoch, he’s certainly spiced up the headlines in his newest conservative propaganda outlet, the Wall Street Journal:
The farms that supply eggs for the H1N1 vaccine are top secret — so secret that even the communities in which they are located don’t know about them. WSJ’s Jeanne Whalen reports from Pennsylvania Dutch Country.
Rupert Murdoch and the Art of War
As the distributors of the classic Robert Greenwald documentary Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch’s War On Journalism, we’re always happy to see the liberal media giving Mr. Murdoch yet another battering, but I have to say that I’m starting to wonder if they won’t be lining up for jobs with him soon, as the last newspaper tycoon standing. The latest assault, in New York Magazine:
This month, with the announcement that The Wall Street Journal would be expanding the scope of its coverage out of New York, Rupert Murdoch opens his most direct assault yet against his longstanding foe, the New York Times. But the Times launched a preemptive strike when its media critic, David Carr, casted [sic] aspersions on the Journal’s journalistic integrity a year into its ownership by Murdoch’s News Corporation. Carr reported on how its news pages have tilted rightward, much as one might expect from the owner of Fox News and the New…
Rupert Murdoch: ‘There’s No Such Thing As A Free News Story’
Mercedes Bunz (is that name for real?) writes in the Guardian:
Rupert Murdoch has today reiterated his belief that internet users will pay for content, saying they would be happy to shell out for “information they need to rise in society”.
Murdoch, the chairman and chief executive of News Corporation, gave a wide-ranging address to US media regulators that attacked internet news aggregation as “theft” and claimed that advertising-only business models were dead.
“From the beginning on, newspapers have prospered for one reason: giving readers the news that they want,” he said.
He said newspapers should not blame technology if they failed. “If we fail, we fail like a restaurant that makes meals that no one wants to eat.”
His company’s customers were “smart enough” to know they had to pay for news, Murdoch told a US Federal Trade Commission workshop on the future of journalism in the internet age.
Referring to his much-criticised plans to…
Murdoch’s Attack Dog Snarls at the ‘Parasites’ Threatening His Master
Where does Rupert find these guys? The man who declared war on journalism (as shown in the classic documentary Outfoxed) has surrounded himself with Jack Russells to bite the ankles of anyone who dares challenge his views on what the media should be (as reported in nemesis newspaper The Guardian):
If you go by the numbers, a slim Australian with a sharp tongue and a penchant for ultra-skinny ties has become the most powerful newspaper editor in America. The Wall Street Journal has claimed top spot in circulation rankings and its boss seems intent on marshalling a print industry war against online “thievery”.
A loyal lieutenant and friend of Rupert Murdoch, the WSJ’s Robert Thomson rarely minces his words. A former editor of the Times, he dismissed the Guardian as a paper catering for a north London ghetto, and on arrival at the WSJ he upset veteran writers by saying that certain elaborately researched stories seemed…
