Salon.com > Rupert Murdoch

Ann Coulter’s astounding gun control diatribe

Fri, 04 Jan 2013 16:40:00 +0000

In this video Ann Coulter discusses the Journal News gun map controversy. Also of note is the graphic Fox News chooses. Three weeks after the Newtown rampage, it's the gun owners they're worried about. What does Rupert Murdoch think about that?

Watch:

h/t HuffPo

8 shocking takeaways from the UK media ethics inquiry

Wed, 26 Dec 2012 21:00:00 +0000

  LONDON, UK — A staid courtroom may seem a world away from the glamour of Tinseltown, but in many ways Britain's Leveson inquiry into media ethics was not unlike a Hollywood blockbuster.

Commissioned by Prime Minister David Cameron in the wake of the phone-hacking scandal at the Rupert Murdoch-owned News of the World tabloid, the independent judicial probe by Lord Justice Sir Brian Leveson had a multi-million dollar budget and an all-star cast with performances from the likes of Hugh Grant and Sienna Miller.

The investigation delivered its findings on Nov. 29. As with most modern movies, it was too long, featuring 378 separate testimonies. But it had a riveting plot with startling revelations about the pervasive influence of Britain's press, and witness performances that ranged from tear-jerking to hilarious.

Ultimately, just like the latest movie releases, it failed to deliver what it promised. Its inconclusive ending left audiences feeling dissatisfied and opened up the depressing possibility of a sequel.

Report: Fox News producers told to avoid gun policy talk last weekend

Mon, 17 Dec 2012 23:26:00 +0000

In the wake of the Newtown school shootings on Friday, Fox News producers were reportedly told to stay away from talk of gun control policy during their weekend coverage.

Gabriel Sherman of New York Magazine reports that David Clark, an executive producer in charge of the weekend coverage, instructed producers to stay away from the topic -- much to their chagrin. Sherman writes:

"This network is not going there,” Clark wrote one producer on Saturday night, according to a source with knowledge of the exchange. The directive created a rift inside the network. According to a source, one political panelist e-mailed Clark that Bloomberg was booked on Meet the Press to talk about gun control. Clark responded, “We haven't buried the children yet, we're not discussing it.” During the weekend, one frustrated producer went around Clark to lobby Michael Clemente, Fox’s executive vice-president for news editorial, but Clemente upheld the mandate. “We were expressly forbidden from discussing gun control,” the source said. Clark's edict wasn't universal: On Fox News Sunday, host Chris Wallace talked with Democratic Senators Joe Lieberman and Dick Durbin about gun control, and later in the program, panelists Bill Kristol and Fortune editor Nina Easton weighed in on the issue.

Rupert Murdoch, on the other hand, made no secret of his views on gun control policy, tweeting several times about the tragedy in the last few days:

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Even Rupert Murdoch wants tighter gun control

Sat, 15 Dec 2012 02:01:00 +0000

Twitter user @InsoOutso sums things up nicely: "Who are you and what have you done with Rupert?"

Here's Murdoch's original tweet:

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Rupert Murdoch’s The Daily sings goodbye

Fri, 14 Dec 2012 17:25:00 +0000

The Daily, the iPad newspaper that began as Rupert Murdoch's darling, is ending its nearly two-year run tomorrow. To the staff's credit they're going out smiling. And for journalists, they're pretty good dancers.

Grisly tabloid photo captures our inhumanity

Fri, 07 Dec 2012 10:47:00 +0000

To publish or not to publish? That was the debate in media circles this week after the New York Post printed a horrifying photo of a man named Ki Suk Han who had been pushed onto the subway tracks and was trying to avoid getting hit by a train. In its typical bombastic fashion, Rupert Murdoch's tabloid offered up the image as cheap, decontextualized news pornography for infotainment junkies. "Doomed" blared the headline in giant type, with the macabre subhead telling readers "this man is about to die."

The Post's singular goal, of course, was to attract eyeballs. To do that, the paper's editors opted to tap into the same impulse that prompts drivers to gawk at grisly highway accidents. In response, critics, like my Salon colleague Mary Elizabeth Williams, excoriated the paper for engaging in a "shamelessly tasteless stunt" that was all about exploitation.

"This wasn’t like the historic front page stories of the My Lai massacre, or of crowds lynching men in the South, or of Kent State: photographs of dead bodies that arrived with a demand for action and justice," Williams wrote, summing up the pervasive criticism. "They were pictures that told a bigger story about a major news event ... What does the Post have to say, aside from the fact that an apparently disturbed man pushed a commuter toward his death?"

An FCC Christmas gift for Rupert Murdoch?

Wed, 05 Dec 2012 21:46:00 +0000

Until now, this hasn’t been the best year for media mogul Rupert Murdoch. For one, none of the Republicans who had been on the payroll of his Fox News Channel – not Newt Gingrich or Rick Santorum or Mike Huckabee or Sarah Palin – became this year’s GOP nominee for president.

Oh sure, when Mitt Romney got the nod instead, Murdoch’s TV and newspaper empire backed him big time, but on election night, Fox pundits like Dick Morris and Karl Rove – the top GOP strategist and fundraiser -- had to eat crow as Barack Obama won a second term in the White House, despite their predictions of a Republican landslide. (When the network called Ohio and the election for Obama, a desperate Rove tried to keep Fox statisticians from doing their job until the facts couldn’t be ignored or denied. New York magazine reports that Fox News programming chief Bill Shine now “has sent out orders mandating that producers must get permission before booking Rove or Morris.”)

Rupert Murdoch’s mother dies at 103

Wed, 05 Dec 2012 16:07:00 +0000

Dame Elisabeth Murdoch, a prominent Australian philanthropist and mother of media mogul Rupert Murdoch, has died at age 103.

News Ltd., the Australian media company headed by her son, confirmed her death late Wednesday.

She died peacefully surrounded by family members in her garden estate outside Melbourne.

She had been hospitalized in September after a bad fall in which she broke her leg.

Rupert Murdoch said in a statement issued on behalf of the family that "We have lost the most wonderful mother but we are all grateful to have had her love and wisdom for so many years."

She has 77 direct descendants, including 50 great-grandchildren and six great-great-grandchildren.

Murdoch shutters The Daily

Mon, 03 Dec 2012 13:43:00 +0000

Rumors that Rupert Murdoch would close News Corp's iPad only paper, The Daily, have come to fruition. According to a press release Monday, the paper will close in mid-December and be folded in to other News Corp publications:

As part of a digital restructuring initiative, the company will cease standalone publication of The Daily iPad app on December 15, 2012, though the brand will live on in other channels. Technology and other assets from The Daily, including some staff, will be folded into The Post.

Mr. Murdoch said: “From its launch, The Daily was a bold experiment in digital publishing and an amazing vehicle for innovation. Unfortunately, our experience was that we could not find a large enough audience quickly enough to convince us the business model was sustainable in the long-term. Therefore we will take the very best of what we have learned at The Daily and apply it to all our properties. Under the editorial leadership of Editor-in-Chief Col Allan and the business and digital leadership of Jesse, I know The New York Post will continue to grow and become stronger on the web, on mobile, and not least, the paper itself. I want to thank all of the journalists, digital and business professionals for the hard work they put into The Daily.”

Chris Christie listened to Rupert Murdoch’s warning, re-backed Romney

Tue, 20 Nov 2012 13:25:00 +0000

Rupert Murdoch's warning tweet -- telling Chris Christie in the midst of Hurricane Sandy cleanup that the New Jersey governor needed to re-endorse Mitt Romney or be blamed for Obama's re-election -- got the governor's attention.

The New York Times reports this morning that soon after the Fox News chief's tweet, Christie called Murdoch to tell him New Jersey needed the federal government's help. Murdoch, however, did not back down. The Times says he told Christie he "risked looking like a spoiler" unless he publicly backed Romney again.

The message got through -- after several days of embracing and praising Obama, Christie made a point of saying the next day that he was still backing Mitt.

Rupert Murdoch apologizes for “Jewish owned” media tweet

Sun, 18 Nov 2012 17:39:00 +0000

UPDATED below.

Late Saturday, Rupert Murdoch took to Twitter to complain about the U.S. media's treatment of the ongoing Gaza crisis. Displaying his typically staunch pro-Israel stance, Murdoch also managed to play on an anti-Semitic trope with this tweet:

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As the HuffPo noted, reaction on Twitter was swift, shocked and angry.

Mother Jones' Adam Serwer tweeted:

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While the New Yorker political reporter Ryan Lizza opted for:

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UPDATE: Murdoch issued a Twitter non-apology Sunday for his "Jewish owned" comment. He clarifies that he was not talking about Jewish reporters -- as if this had been the main problem with his original tweet:

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Murdoch threatens Christie: Re-endorse Romney or else!

Sat, 03 Nov 2012 18:44:00 +0000

Fox News titan Rupert Murdoch tweeted a warning shot at New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie -- get back onboard with Mitt Romney, or Obama's re-election will be on him.

Murdoch, after watching Christie and President Obama put politics aside and work together in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, tweeted that Christie "must re- declare for Romney, or take blame for next four dire years."

Christie gave the keynote at the Republican National Convention and had been among Romney's most outspoken surrogates before the hurricane devastated New Jersey this week, and the federal government's quick response earned his appreciation.

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Source says Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. has placed bid for Penguin

Sun, 28 Oct 2012 20:19:00 +0000

An insider has told the New York Times that News Corp., Rupert Murdoch's media conglomerate, is in negotiations to bid on Pearson PLC’s Penguin book publishing division. The Times reports:

News Corporation’s interest comes just days after Pearson confirmed that German media giant Bertelsmann, the parent company of Random House, had approached the British company about acquiring its Penguin division.

News Corporation owns HarperCollins, one of the units of the media conglomerate that will soon be spun off into a separate publicly traded company consisting of other print assets like The Wall Street Journal and The New York Post.

According to the source, News Corp. made a cash offer of $1.6 billion, which the Times points out "could blunt a potential merger with Random House."

Murdoch's business has a vested interest in the potential Random House-Penguin merger; if it goes through, the company would would control "roughly 25 percent of all books published in the United States," creating serious competition for HarperCollins.

Murdoch’s BSkyB is “fit and proper”

Thu, 20 Sep 2012 14:22:00 +0000

LONDON — British Sky Broadcasting is a “fit and proper” company to hold an operating license, U.K. regulators said Thursday in response to the phone hacking scandal that engulfed the parent company. But it criticized the former CEO and chairman, James Murdoch, for poor management.

The company’s license was called into question because of the scandal at a newspaper owned by News Corp., which effectively controls BSkyB through a 39 percent shareholding.

If the company had not be found “fit and proper” it could have been stripped of the license that yielded a net profit of $1.4 billion in the year ending June 30.

The Office of Communications, known as Ofcom, concluded that James Murdoch was not complicit in a cover up at the tabloid News of the World, but his failure to initiate appropriate action on a number of occasions was “difficult to comprehend and ill-judged.”

The report also found no evidence that Rupert Murdoch, James’ father and CEO of News Corp., “acted in a way that was inappropriate in relation to phone hacking, concealment or corruption by employees” of his British newspapers.

Conservatives killed the liberal arts

Fri, 14 Sep 2012 23:08:00 +0000

This week in The Weekly Standard the essayist Joseph Epstein asks what has become a sadly common question: “Who killed the liberal arts?” As a perennially overeager student, I can’t help but be delighted when I know the answer to a question, even if it is posed rhetorically. From my days as my high school's valedictorian through the completion of a Ph.D. thesis on contemporary productions of Greek tragedy in Latin America, I’ve always gotten a thrill from knowing the right answer. So here it is: The conservative movement killed the liberal arts -- Ronald Reagan, Rupert Murdoch, William F. Buckley and their latter-day heirs.

They have done so through a combination of decreasing access to education and demonizing academic culture and academics. Make no mistake about it: The death of the humanities is an ideologically motivated murder, more like a massacre. The decline of student enrollment in university and college liberal arts programs is a well-documented phenomenon. These declining student numbers, along with the receding place of the humanities in the general secondary and post-secondary curriculum, does seem to spell doom for the liberal arts.

Murdoch protégés charged

Tue, 24 Jul 2012 12:30:00 +0000

NewsCorp scandal's biggest victims yet: After Rupert Murdoch resigned control of his British newspapers this weekend, the phone hacking scandal engulfing his company is poised to take down its two biggest targets yet -- Prime Minister David Cameron's ex-media chief and Murdoch’s former U.K. newspaper boss. Andy Coulson, a former NewsCorp editor whom Cameron apparently hired in order to win favor with Murdoch, and Rebekah Brooks, who oversaw Murdoch’s British print empire, will each be charged with conspiring to intercept communications. The alleged offenses occurred between 2000 and 2006 when both served as editor of the News of the World, the now-shuttered newspaper at the center of the hacking scandal.

Murdoch’s murky future

Fri, 04 May 2012 13:07:00 +0000

LONDON — How do you solve a problem like Rupert Murdoch?

That’s the issue now facing sections of his media empire after a damning British parliamentary report labeled the powerful press tycoon unfit to run a major international company.

A committee of British legislators who have spent months investigating the phone hacking scandal involving one of Murdoch’s leading UK newspaper titles concluded this week with a majority verdict that the 81-year-old was “not a fit person” to be at the helm of News Corp.

Their findings grabbed attention not just in the UK but across the Atlantic, where headlines in the New York Times, Washington Post and Murdoch’s own Wall Street Journal must have made uncomfortable reading for News Corp. staff and shareholders.

The committee’s judgment carries no threat of sanction, but with lawsuits pending in the US over hacking and the threat of possible prosecution under the powerful Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, it will offer little in the way of reassurance.

Murdoch’s empire strikes back

Thu, 26 Apr 2012 14:50:00 +0000

LONDON — Last year, Rupert Murdoch struck a contrite note to U.K. lawmakers over the phone-hacking scandal involving his newspapers. He told them it was his “most humble” day.

The scandal cost him one of his most lucrative titles — the tabloid News of the World — and resulted in possible criminal charges for his trusted lieutenant Rebekah Brooks and the arrest of a dozen reporters on his beloved Sun newspaper.

Now, Murdoch appears to be fighting back.

He and his son James were in the U.K. this week to face the Leveson inquiry, a judicial investigation into press standards, begun last year in the wake of revelations that journalists at Murdoch’s U.K. titles illegally hacked the voice mails of prominent public figures.

This time, he and his family appear to have turned on the British establishment, pressuring Prime Minister David Cameron and putting a key minister in the spotlight over a controversial business deal.

David Cameron’s fun American vacation marred by more phone-hacking arrests

Wed, 14 Mar 2012 15:55:00 +0000

Insecure countries are known to lock up unsavory elements when international guests are expected, so it should not have been a terrible shock to see that the U.K.'s Metropolitan Police had arrested former News Corp. executive Rebekah Brooks and her horse-training husband, Charlie, yesterday, a few short months before the opening ceremonies of the London Olympic Games. The Brookses are now, apparently, back on the streets, having made bail.

The Brookses were arrested, along with four others, "on suspicion of conspiracy to pervert the course of justice." This was the second time Rebekah Brooks, the former editor of the Sun and the now-shuttered News of the World, had been arrested -- the last time it was for conspiring to intercept communications, or "phone hacking" -- and this arrest suggests that News International's extensive efforts to cover up their unethical practices may end up damaging the company just as much as the unethical practices did.

Rupert Murdoch faces angry investors

Fri, 21 Oct 2011 20:00:00 +0000

Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. is holding its annual shareholder meeting in Los Angeles. And a vocal group of News Corp. shareholders are a bit peeved at the media conglomerate's performance recently. The performance that has upset them the most: all the phone hacking and police bribery followed by a lengthy coverup that has been rapidly unraveling this year.

The rebellious shareholders include British MP Tom Watson, who was personally lied to by James Murdoch at a Parliamentary hearing, and various pension funds. Also present: The secretary of the ethical investment advisory group of the Church of England. The Church would like Murdoch removed as director of the company.