Showing all posts tagged mainstream media
Bleating of the oppressed Murdoch multinational
Life is tough for an organisation that constantly speaks about high morals and noble wars and yet finds itself under the spotlight as a corporation that bullies opponents and conducts illegal acts in the name of “journalism”. Hilariously, Murdoch’s Australian today says the glorious empire remains glorious and dedicated to holding politicians to account. Apart…
Murdoch investigates himself and let’s guess the outcome?
As growing numbers of citizens across the world rise up and challenge the pro-war, race-baiting that the Murdoch press perpetuates, we learn that the empire still doesn’t understand how to respond appropriately: Just when we were beginning to wonder when The Wall Street Journal would actually start to cover the meltdown at its proprietor’s company…
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…
Clearly the MSM don’t think that massive military exercises between US and Australia is news
Apart from a few small stories (here and here), we have to rely on a Chinese government service to tell us what’s happening in our own country. Have media companies been asked not to report details about the exercise and agreed? Does the general public have a right to know what the US is planning…
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…
Al-Jazeera’s Listening Post on Syria media restrictions
The struggle for democracy in Syria has continued for most of this year. The media has been largely locked out of the country, so independent reporting has been very difficult (though local bloggers have remained essential). Al Jazeera’s Listening Post discusses the crackdown and I was asked to comment (my last appearance on the show…
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…