Rupert Murdoch
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Keith Rupert Murdoch, AC[1] (b. 11 March 1931) is the Australian-born CEO of News Corporation (aka, "News Corp"). He is responsible for the "we report gossip, lies and innuendo, you decide based on your deep-seated fears and prejudices" blatherers known as Fox News. He is also the publisher of many American newspapers, most notably the New York Post. And he publishes TV Guide, which once published hard-hitting multi-issue investigative journalism about the TV industry. Since News Corp bought it, TV Guide has become little more than a gossip magazine. It doesn't even include local listings any more, which was its original selling point.
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[edit] In the US
By United States law, no foreign citizen may own any controlling interest in a company that in turn owns local radio or television stations or networks. Murdoch got around this by becoming a naturalized US citizen in 1985. After that, News Corp (then called "News Limited") bought MetroMedia's TV stations. Murdoch then merged them with 20th Century Fox -- which News Corp bought in 1984 -- and launched the Fox Broadcasting Company in 1986. At first, Fox Broadcasting lost money hand over fist because most of its affiliates were low-power UHF stations. The only strong shows Fox had during this period were The Simpsons[2] and Married...With Children.
Then, in 1993, Murdoch dumped a truckload of money into the National Football League's boardroom, cementing a deal that wrested National Football Conference games away from CBS. Longtime CBS affiliates -- many of them high-power VHF stations in large markets like Detroit, Dallas-Fort Worth, Atlanta, Milwaukee and Tampa.[3][4][5][6][7] -- jumped ship and signed with Fox. Soon, the former also-ran network had solidified its position to the point that Murdoch was able to make his next move. In 1996, Fox News debuted.[8] Ever since, Murdoch and his empire have generally helped to slant American media in a "right-wing" direction.
[edit] In the UK
Murdoch made his first entry into the British market in 1968 when he bought the News of the World, and under a year later the Sun, once a proper newspaper but later turned into an irrelevant tabloid, partly due to his approval of splashing tits all over Page 3. By 1986, he also owned the Times and Sunday Times, giving him a scope across the high-brow and low-brow press. Television was conquered in the 1990s with the creation of Sky Television and its partial monopoly over Football Broadcasting in Britain, and the Sky News Channel (which alongside BBC News is one of only two British 24-hour news channels to survive - the ITV News Channel having died in the 2000s and BSB's Now only lasting for a few months in 1990 before BSB's merger with Sky) [9]. All of his publications are right wing and supported the Conservative Party throughout the Thatcher and Major leaderships. In the late 1990s, Murdoch invited Tony Blair to Australia leading to an order to tone down attacks on the left-wing Labour party and the Sun in particular endorsed Blair in the 1997 election. However all newspapers swung back to the right for the 2010 election, and Murdoch's papers are generally seen as rather right-wing.
Murdoch attempted to make a bid to control the whole of BSkyB, which fell under attack by MPs across all parties due to having so much power already [10]. Eventually, he dropped the bid because it turned out he hadn't been entirely legal in the way he'd got stories for some of his papers.
He, and the whole of News Corp., fell out of favour with everyone when it turned out he'd been having phones hacked here, there and everywhere, including those of celebrities and the families of recently-dead kids. He thought that by dropping his BSkyB takeover bid and stopping the publication of News of the World, people would forgive him. They didn't. The hacking prompted the Leveson Inquiry, which has the purpose of nailing Murdoch's coffin down good and tight.
[edit] Worse yet
And now & the Dow! He also owns the Wall Street Journal.
Definitely qualifies as a "right wing bastard". And a heartless one at that. Even by right wing bastard standards.
Conspiracy theorists (some even of the right) will often argue that Murdoch is a frontman for the Illuminati, using the media to indoctrinate us and act as a distraction from important issues. Credit where it's due: They're quite correct on the second part.[11]
Murdoch identifies as a tits-on-parade lover born again Christian, and the popular Rick Warren is his pastor. Warren criticised the lovely lowly Murdoch over his hypocrisy in denouncing pornography yet profiting from having pornography shown on his television stations.[12]
On January 9, 2015, in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo massacre in Paris, Murdoch took to his Twitter account to share his words of wisdom. He took the opportunity to share his Islamophobia, saying, "Maybe most Moslems[sic] peaceful, but until they recognize and destroy their growing jihadist cancer they must be held responsible."[13] Rupert is apparently unaware that literally every time a jihadist attack occurs, Muslims are among the first to disavow it, the Paris shooting being no exception.[14][15] Needless to say, the response was less-than amicable. One particularly virulent attack on Murdoch's generalizations came in the form of Aziz Ansari. He started a trend on Twitter of "#RupertsFault", detailing all the horrible things Christian extremists have done from which Murdoch has failed to properly distance himself.[16]
[edit] See also
- The Leveson Inquiry -RW's own article on the inquiry.
[edit] Footnotes
- ↑ Companion of the Order of Australia
- ↑ The Simpsons character Montgomery Burns is allegedly based on Murdoch. See the Wikipedia article on Montgomery Burns.
- ↑ In 1997, WTVT in Tampa -- which had by then been acquired by News Corp -- was the respondent in a civil suit that gave news organizations the right not just to lie, but to order their reporters to lie for them. WTVT reporters Jane Akre and Steve Wilson were ready to report on the dangers of recombinant bovine growth hormone (rBGH) in milk and beef. Monsanto, the manufacturer of rBGH, got wind of this and appealed to News Corp. Soon, Akre and Wilson were ordered to make several cuts to the story. Akre and Wilson were then ordered to toss out all their information and report that there was no problem with rBGH. When they refused, they were fired. After a jury found in favor of Akre and Wilson, Fox appealed. In 2004, Fox won when the court ruled that the FCC policy against falsification was just that -- a policy. Not a "law, rule or regulation" but a policy. Fox then counter-sued Akre and Wilson for US $1.7 million. So, when your friends and family say that Fox News can't report lies and distortions as news because it's against the law, you tell them that not only can they report lies and distortions as news, they went to court to secure the right to report lies and distortions as news.
- ↑ See the Wikipedia article on WTVT.
- ↑ See the Wikipedia article on Jane Akre.
- ↑ See the Wikipedia article on Steve Wilson (reporter).
- ↑ See the Wikipedia article on Bovine somatotropin. (rGBH, et al.)
- ↑ And you probably thought that sports had little significant influence on history.
- ↑ BBC News — Profile: Rupert Murdoch
- ↑ The Guardian - Rupert Murdoch facing BSkyB defeat as parties unite in call to drop takeover
- ↑ This doesn't, in any way, mean they're correct about the first part.
- ↑ http://www.wnd.com/2007/05/41520/
- ↑ https://twitter.com/rupertmurdoch/status/553734788881076225,
- ↑ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/01/07/muslims-respond-charlie-hebdo_n_6429710.html
- ↑ http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/fraser-nelson/2015/01/not-in-our-name-muslims-respond-in-revulsion-to-charlie-hebdo-shooting/
- ↑ https://twitter.com/azizansari