Showing all posts tagged Murdoch
How many corporate journalists really challenge power in society?
Very few. Because they know their bosses won’t allow it. Or they’ll be shunned by business or government interests. This is across the Murdoch empire and beyond. Truly independent reporting is a rare beast, indeed. Former Labour minister in Britain Peter Mandelson acknowledges his government never challenged the Murdoch empire. Why? “We simply chose to…
So Murdoch will close down his own rogue outlets, yes?
If consistency is his thing: Medical records disclosing that Gordon Brown’s infant son had cystic fibrosis were illegally obtained by The Sun newspaper as part of a News International campaign against him and his family, friends of the former prime minister claims. Mr Brown was a repeated target for investigators working for the tabloid and…
As if firing News of the World journalists is enough to save Murdoch’s credibility
In his nightmares: Rupert Murdoch’s takeover of BSkyB appeared to be dead in the water last night after proof emerged that executives at his British newspaper empire mounted a cover-up of the full scale of alleged criminal wrongdoing at the News of the World. In another extraordinary day in the phone-hacking scandal, Downing Street sources…
Robert Fisk on why he left Murdoch’s Times (blind Zionism is the crime)
The veteran reporter rightly couldn’t tolerate an owner who put his love for Israel above the truth (which is something we still see in Murdoch titles across the world): Oddly, he [Murdoch] never appeared the ogre of evil, darkness and poison that he’s been made out to be these past few days. Maybe it’s because…
Murdoch’s ethical bypass (and lieutenants who back it)
Bruce Guthrie is a former News Limited editor and author of Man Bites Murdoch. He writes today in Fairfax papers that the challenging of the Murdoch empire reveals a hollow moral core: In 1988, while attending a conference of News Corporation editors in Aspen, Colorado, I made the mistake of raising the thorny issue of…
How Rupert should think about Watergate and worry
One half of the Watergate investigators who hasn’t spent the last decades fawning before power, Carl Bernstein, writes in Newsweek that the current Murdoch controversy has historical reverberations: But now the empire is shaking, and there’s no telling when it will stop. My conversations with British journalists and politicians—all of them insistent on speaking anonymously…
Strong reasons Murdoch should be shunned from decent society
One: Throughout his years in power, Blair had regular secret meetings with Murdoch, many abroad, and was in regular telephone contact. Price has gone as far as to claim that Murdoch “seemed like the 24th member of the cabinet”. Blair insisted no record was ever kept of the meetings or calls, so they were totally…