There is much more to the story behind the widely-hyped coverage of the Murdoch/News of the World phone-hacking scandal.
The real story is all about who owns the gatekeepers to the world of information: the excessive concentration of ownership of the major media and entertainment outlets, even the supposedly “conservative” ones. It’s also about what YOU can do to make an end-run around those self-ordained gatekeepers to get your message across.
Short Little Rebel: Who Is Rupert Murdoch & Who Controls The News?
I began this article to address the growing scandal in England over media mogul Rupert Murdoch’s News of the World Newspaper. This English tabloid, its managers, reporters, private investigators & even the London Police have been embroiled in a phone tapping scandal that began in 2006 when police investigations discovered that Prince William’s private phone messages had been hacked by the newspaper. One editor & one private investigator were convicted in 2007 and jailed in the incident. But the allegations & investigation are far from over. Only days ago, new allegations against the paper claim that it also tapped into two murder victims’ home phone messages (deleting some) in 2002, the private home messages of victims of London’s 7/7 attacks and even the home messages of dead soldiers’ families’ home messages.
This is news in and of itself. However, as I investigated the matter further, I couldn’t help but come across Rupert Murdoch’s larger story – the story of a multi-billionaire who ‘owns’ one of the largest news organizations (including Fox & its affiliates) in the world:News Corp.Sources have it that Murdoch’s News Corp. reaches about 1/4 of the earth’s population. Allegations, some of which is confirmed by Murdoch himself, say that he uses his organizations to reflect his own personal political agendas.In some years, he has supported Hillary Clinton & Barak Obama in the United States and Tony Blair in England – all leftist politicians. Other years, he has supported conservative individuals such as Bush and David Cameron of England. The Sun, one of Murdoch’s English papers, crowed its success in swinging a critical election in England. Murdoch himself is on tape bragging about how he ‘tried’ to affect certain elections and failed.
I disagree with Short Little Rebel on this one matter: GWB (and, indeed, the entire Bush family) and David Cameron are not conservative, but center-left.
Many political figures of today represent themselves as conservatives, but any reporter from 1910 would have recognized them all as flat-out Bolsheviks, as do I. (If you have any doubts, please review the list of recommended policies in the Communist Manifesto.)
Astounded that one man could control so much information, I was led to wonder, “Who owns the rest of the news media?”There are six top news media outlets: GE who owns NBC, MSNBC & TeleMundo; News Corp which owns FOX, the Wall Street Journal & the N.Y. Post; Walt Disney (again, who knew?) which owns ABC; Viacom, whose only news venture appears to the an Indian media company, Global Broadcast; CBS; and finally, Time Warner which owns CNN. I researched the stock market to see who owned them. While each has individuals, like Rupert Murdoch, who own large stakes, it is the institutions which own the lion’s share. As I looked through these institutions, I saw an eerie pattern of ownership emerge. I have provided links for your information. Do you see the same pattern I saw?
Seeing the patterns, I decided to create a series of charts which would track what news outlets each of these institutions controlled.
[…]
The results left me speechless. ALL of the news media are PRIVATELY owned by six or so families and/or groups: the oldest & the richest of all people. Both the liberal & conservative press belongs to them. They share ownership equally. The scheme they have used to purchase ALL the news media outlets is disgusting, people of America. While it took me an entire day of intensive research through the stock exchanges, it wasn’t that difficult to re-engineer the information and backtrack the ownership to a tiny number of people. When I looked at my final charts, I wasn’t sure what disgusted me more – the fact that they don’t even bother to really hide the information or the information itself…
No, Fox News is not a conservative news network!
Fox News has never even claimed to be conservative. Of course, I can see why Fox News might seem conservative, compared to the hard-left “alphabet” networks, New York Times, Washington Post, and the supposedly “independent” wire services. But then, the vulgar propaganda/infotainment spewed by the mainstream networks belongs in the same category with the Soviet-era Pravda, or perhaps the English-language version of al-Jazeera. It doesn’t take much to seem “conservative” compared to that.
And Fox News certainly isn’t getting any better these days. While Glenn Beck was right about many things, he was completely mistaken about a few other things (which I won’t go into here). He certainly wasn’t perfect, though, on the whole, he did much more good than harm, and I certainly miss his presence on Fox News. He was spot on with regard to George Soros and with regard to the Caliphate.
At this point, conservatives looking for network news coverage do not yet have anywhere else to go besides Fox News. Arguably, it’s better than nothing, but not by much!
It would not be going too far to say that Fox News has lost whatever punch it once had, simply because it has become the target of outright blackmail:
PJM: The MSM’s ‘Media Matters’ Blackout
The MSM is enjoying a very quiet laugh at the expense of one of their competitors: the Fox News Channel. They’re not saying a word about the all-encompassing, possibly illegal abuse Fox News is experiencing at the hands of the George Soros-funded (to the tune of $1M) Media Matters for America.
Media Matters was co-founded by current Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, something which she proudly proclaims. Her fellow founder is David Brock, the fallen conservative journalist who thereafter drifted leftward. Media Matters is an alleged media “monitor,” describing itself on its website thusly:
Launched in May 2004, Media Matters for America put in place, for the first time, the means to systematically monitor a cross section of print, broadcast, cable, radio, and Internet media outlets for conservative misinformation (emphasis mine).
Around March of this year, Brock announced Media Matters was dramatically diminishing said “cross section” by openly declaring “war on Fox.” (The official announcement came just after Soros’ $1M check cleared.) The above link is to the only mainstream outlet I could find that mentions this story.
Brock says Media Matters will hound Fox News with “guerrilla warfare and sabotage.” For instance:
Media Matters, Brock said, is assembling opposition research files not only on Fox’s top executives but on a series of midlevel officials. It has hired an activist who has led a successful campaign to press advertisers to avoid Glenn Beck’s show. The group is assembling a legal team to help people who have clashed with Fox to file lawsuits for defamation, invasion of privacy, or other causes. And it has hired two experienced reporters, Joe Strupp and Alexander Zaitchik, to dig into Fox’s operation to help assemble a book on the network, due out in 2012 from Vintage/Anchor.
This isn’t “media analysis.” This is a multi-million dollar leftist PR hit squad. Brock is doing all of this because he claims Fox News has become the titular head of the Republican Party.
And herein lies a legal problem for Media Matters.
Media Matters is registered with the Internal Revenue Service as a 501(c)3 organization. Esteemed attorney C. Boyden Grey explains what that means…
The sad part is that Fox News has apparently capitulated to this pressure by swinging more and more to the left. Instead, they should be going after Media Matters, and everyone associated with it, with everything they’ve got. But considering their ownership, it is easy to see why they are capitulating.
Oh, and by the way, Fox Detroit seems to have capitulated to the leftist powers-that-be in much the same way: Big Journalism: Fox Detroit Apologizes for Exposing Big Labor.
What about the blogosphere and other “alternative media”?
Well, that depends. As with Fox News, the problem with many of the “bigger” non-liberal blogs, websites, and news forums is that after awhile, the people who run them tend to lose their moxie. They become afraid of losing advertisers; no longer being invited to meet prominent figures; antagonizing stockholders, owners, or financial backers (especially those with Islamic or other foreign ties); or being censored in other ways. Some people are also, by nature, afraid of confrontation, especially when it involves expressing disagreement with their friends and colleagues, or with associates whom they thought were friends.
So these high-profile bloggers and admins begin to pull their punches:
- They practice self-censorship about acceptable topics for news coverage, and how those topics should be addressed – especially when it comes to the counterjihad.
- In place of hard news and controversy, they draw traffic with eye candy and “fluff”.
- They may continue to copy and paste relevant material from, or publish links to, various news sources, but they refuse to draw the obvious conclusions from those news stories, or to allow their commenters to draw any conclusions that might make someone uncomfortable.
- They avoid everything that might draw unwanted attention from some governmental body, pressure group, or even other bloggers and commenters.
Self-censorship is boooooring…
If you really want to see the full range of topics for news coverage and debate, you’ll have to visit some of the “smaller” blogs too. Yes, you’ll have to use your own judgment about the quality of news and the validity of opinion on each blog, but then, you should be doing that with ALL sources of information!
Get involved!
“Alternative media” is INTERACTIVE media. You don’t have to just sit there and listen and be spoon-fed. It’s YOUR job to help report the facts as you see them, wherever you happen to be. You can start your own blog if you like, but you can also comment on existing websites or blogs, or you can join a team blog or forum. You can also use other social media, such as Twitter and Facebook, as well as face-to-face contacts, to promote worthwhile blog posts and news articles to everyone you know.
On 1389 Blog, the admins, team members, contributors, and commenters are all volunteers. We abide by certain rules (stated in the comment policy) so it isn’t a free-for-all, but we cover stories and views that the bigger blogs won’t talk about. Most of us blog and comment under our screen names – it isn’t about promoting ourselves, it’s all about the message. And at this point, we don’t sell ads, and we have no plans to do so in the future, so we don’t have to worry about losing a source of revenue. Comments are moderated, but we make a point of putting comments through in a timely manner.
Much the same is true of 2.0: The Blogmocracy, which is a team blog/forum. I’m one of the contributors there also. You’ll have to register to comment there, but registration is free, it is ALWAYS OPEN, and takes just a minute. Comments are posted immediately. Guest bloggers are welcome. There’s also a regular call-in radio show. Consider this an invitation!
There are many other good “smaller” and/or noncommercial blogs like these – which is why 1389 Blog posts so many links in the sidebar.
Also see:
- PJM: How Network News Helped Bring About the Crash
When we seek out the causes and culprits of our current economic crisis, there is one area in need of reform that should not be overlooked: the mainstream news media. It is not too much to say that the people in the NBC, ABC and CBS news operations were major contributing factors to the crash of 2008 and are helping to pave the way to future economic troubles now.
In the book Reckless Endangerment: How Outsized Ambition, Greed, and Corruption Led to Economic Armageddon, authors Gretchen Morgenson and Joshua Rosner tell how, in the early nineties, faulty or skewed studies by ACORN and other groups fed the idea that there was pervasive racial bias by mortgage lenders, with blacks and Hispanics being unfairly rejected for loans. “The findings lit up the media, confirming many people’s suspicions about banks’ lending practices,” the authors write of one such study. In fact, properly interpreted, the data suggested that banks were making their loans not on the basis of race but on the basis of credit-worthiness. But as the misinformation confirmed left-wing ideas, the media pressure was on for a government fix…
- PJM: Alternative Media is Today’s Free Press
On their own initiative, Americans are cutting through the trivia and the propaganda
[…]
Rather than acting as an agent of protection against an intrusive government, today’s mainstream media — or big media, as I call it — seeks at best merely to entertain us. At worst, it has become an unofficial agent of the state, acting almost exclusively on its behalf.Whether or not big media intends to promote the government is irrelevant, for the net effect exists regardless. The point is that it has defied the system as it was designed, begetting a serious problem.
Fortunately, even those who torment us cannot defy the natural order of things, so again we find the rules of cause and effect at work. As man, in his natural state, seeks to be free and resists the authoritarian nature of the state, inevitably alternative media was born…
- Blogmocracy: The Saudi Money at News Corp/Fox News Speaks Up
Just wondering out loud…It would be interesting to know if the Saudis have any control on what goes on in the US arm of News Corp/Fox News…
- Review of “Page One: Inside the New York Times”
(h/t: Blazing Cat Fur)In the weeks before the release of the documentary Page One, New York Times columnist David Carr, the film’s unofficial star, attracted a bit of publicity by appearing on Bill Maher’s HBO talk show, where he called the residents of America’s “middle places” – the “red” states, and Kansas and Missouri in particular – participants in what he called “the dance of the low sloping foreheads.” He was responding to Maher’s assertion that these are not America’s “smart states,” and allowed himself a bemused, self-satisfied smile as he basked in audience approval after his observation, doubling down on the gibe by coyly adding “Did I just say that aloud?”…
