#news corp

[contemplatingoutlander]

A Letter to Rupert Murdoch Upon His Retirement

[Note. Read past the first line--which is meant as sarcasm.]

Dear Mr. Murdoch: I wanted to write to you to thank you for the impact you and yours have had on my life. I once lived peacefully in a neighborhood of people from varied backgrounds. Back then, I never knew nor cared what people’s political affiliations were. In fact, even when dating, asking someone to label themselves D or R would have seemed nonsensical. Thanks to you, half of that neighborhood no longer speaks to the other half. Prior to 2016, I used to attend a family reunion picnic in Pennsylvania, never caring if some of the people were particularly religious. Well, I would like to thank you for your hand in radicalizing and reinforcing perplexing beliefs in about half of the reunion participants. Now the reunions are barely attended and the family has divided into a feud. I want to thank you for the cousins and friends who defriended me, online and in person, when they fell victim to the dark rhetoric you peddle. Convinced now that their lives are under threats from trans criminals and vicious migrants, they are completely unaware of how they’re economic interested are being robbed by a different source. Thank you so much for your enduring spirit of divisiveness. I hope the money you enjoyed while alive was worth all you stole from society. Mostly, may the hatred, division, suspicious, distrust, judgement and malignancy you leashed on us be returned to you a thousand fold….and may your nursing care be delivered with the same love for humanity you left behind. --GWE, NY, commenting on a NY Times article: Rupert Murdoch to Retire From Fox and News Corporation Boards

[edited]

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Lauren Aratani at The Observer:

An elderly billionaire goes to war with his adult children over the future of his media empire. His only ally is his eldest son, crowned leader of his father’s enterprise after years of jostling with his siblings. In choosing a successor, the patriarch spurns three of his other children, who remain threats: when he dies, they will each have just as much power as the eldest son to shape his companies, potentially against the rightwing ideologies that have guided them for decades.

Away from the public eye, he makes a dramatic move. To deliver control to his eldest son, the mogul quietly launches an extraordinary bid to alter the trust set to hand the other three influence upon his death. But they stand ready to fight. This may sound akin to HBO’s Succession, but it’s life imitating art – which was, in turn, imitating life. Rupert Murdoch, 93, the billionaire owner of News Corp and Fox Corporation who helped inspire the show, is trying to give his eldest son, Lachlan, full control of his media outlets upon his death. While his other adult children – James, Elisabeth and Prudence – will still receive equal shares of company profits, this would leave them with no say over the companies upon his death.

This battle is in fact bigger than anything featured on Succession, according to Robert Thompson, a media scholar based at Syracuse University. “This is arguably the single most influential media outlet in all of the English-speaking world,” he said of News Corp and Fox. “How this turns out has a real, significant impact on real people living on planet Earth.” News Corp owns more than a hundred major and local newspapers, including the Wall Street Journal and the New York Post in the US, as well as the Times and the Sun in the UK. Meanwhile, Fox is the parent of Fox News, the leading conservative cable network in the US, with millions of viewers.

The Murdochs’ legal fight played out in secret for months – until Wednesday, when it burst into the open. The New York Times reported on a decision from a Nevada probate commissioner, which is under seal, that Murdoch can rewrite his family’s irrevocable trust if he can prove the change is being made in good faith and benefits his heirs. The ruling sets the stage for a high-profile trial over the future of his vast array of media interests, with Murdoch and his three children slated to duke it out in court in September.

Both sides, according to the Times, have bulked up on high-profile lawyers. William Barr, the former US attorney general, is helping Murdoch rewrite the trust, and he has also hired Adam Streisand, a trial lawyer who previously worked on estate cases involving Michael Jackson and Britney Spears. The feuding appears to have taken its toll on the family. When Rupert married his fifth wife in California last month, Lachlan was said to have been the only one of his four eldest children in attendance. The other two also reportedly steered clear.

With Lachlan as his father’s successor, Fox News and News Corp will continue to be a conservative force. But under the trust’s current structure, the three other siblings, who are deemed more politically moderate, can push back. Murdoch is seemingly keen to avoid this prospect. Conservatism has been the backbone of his empire since its inception. It has proved to be remarkably profitable.

Though Murdoch had successfully formed relationships with powerful conservative figures in Australia and the UK, it was not until Donald Trump’s ascendancy that he had close ties to the White House. Though Fox was initially dismissive of Trump, the network soon turned into his most powerful megaphone. In turn, Murdoch had direct access to a commander-in-chief. Not all of Murdoch’s children were happy about this. During Trump’s presidency, Elisabeth, Prudence and James started to drift away from their father’s politics.

When Roger Ailes, the longtime Fox CEO, left the company in 2016 off the back of multiple sexual harassment allegations, James reportedly believed he could push the network in a new direction, bringing in an experienced executive who was less of an ideologue. Instead, the elder Murdoch took over as chair himself.

In the summer of 2020, James – once a senior executive at News Corp – announced he was resigning from the board over “disagreements over certain editorial content”. He and his wife, Kathryn, were particularly vocal about the climate crisis and seemed to resent Fox News and News Corp’s climate denialism. “We’ve been arguing about politics since I was a teenager,” James told the Times in 2020, about his father. In 2020, James and his wife donated more than $600,000 to Biden’s campaign. Murdoch eventually crowned Lachlan as his successor. While Lachlan does not speak publicly about his personal political views, reports have said they usually lean more conservative than his father’s. And while Lachlan appears less interested than his father in political influence, he cares about profit. And Trump has been profitable.

The Observer (the Sunday version of The Guardian) has an illuminating piece on the Murdoch media empire, and how Rupert Murdoch is going to war over who gets to succeed him upon his death by rewriting the trust to benefit stridently right-wing Lachlan at the expense of the other three (and less right-wing) children.

[madeupfromglue]

raytheon ad

[jisreal64]

quick question: why DNI nimona fans? /genq

It’s because of the behind the scenes controversy and the Disney Hatedom (which is a group I’ve been bullied and psychologically abused by ever since I was a young child that is overwhelmingly beloved and supported by both liberals and conservatives). I don’t give two shits about it’s message or representation, if I were the parent of a gay or trans kid, I would rather have them read the Harry Potter novels instead of that stupid webcomic (same applies for their film adaptations).

[nando161mando]

🚨FLOOD ELECTION DAY FOR PALESTINE

🇵🇸NO VOTES FOR GENOCIDE

🗓️TUESDAY NOV. 5TH

⏱️7:00 PM

📍NEWS CORP: 1211 6TH AVE NEW YORK, NY

Within Our Lifetime

Twitter/X: @wolpalestine

Telegram: t.me/wolprotest

[pansy-placebo]

I have an idea- a news organization which only reports the most pressing matters a person actually Wants and Needs to know.

You say you're interested in like, Your Country's General News and LGBTQ Affairs and you get like, updates which actually mean something. You choose how many articles you get a day and they're ranked by importance, and if there's literally no news: there's no news. If a day passes without a subject you actually need to know happening globally, or your country updating it's queer laws, then you don't have to know.

Also, it would report on positive things, too. I know there are like mailing lists and such which include "good things which happened today" but like. Again. A lot of them aren't relevant, and often bring to light issues I can't do fuck all to help. The heartwarming stories are sometimes great, like "X country is sticking to promised green incentive to Y" but sometimes they're like, "Child Survives a disaster that killed literally everyone but them" like WHAT

It wouldn't be a publicly traded company so it wouldn't need continuous profit, it would only need to stay afloat for those who're currently signed on. That would erase the need for catchy headlines and keep the subscription as low as the site's maintenance and the worker's wages.

The point would be to lower day to day stress while keeping on top of things. People already get their news from fucking everywhere, but by using the app they wouldn't feel as much pressure to doomscroll or whatever. They'd know they're doing what they can because they've been told what's important. So like. If there's some disaster across the globe that they can't actually provide financial or direct assistance to and/or they're not signed up for global news, then they won't know unless someone else deems it important enough to inform them throughout other means.

That means you'll be informed about an upcoming vote in your area, and not be informed that someone across the globe has been trapped in a cave.

Think Wikipedia's featured articles, not a news website covered in 800 disasters, many of them actually the same disaster posted about at different points or shit made to sound worse than it is, or YouTube's news algorithm which tells you about the 1 sponsored topic of the day.

It could be called "Actually Matters" or "Need to Know" or something.

Only problem is. I would find it hard to trust any news website if it claimed to be this- most websites have a center-to-right bias, which is proven to be less factual.

Additionally, I certainly don't want to be the one to start this because the reason I think it would be a good idea is because I've had to take an all-or-nothing approach to social media for my mental health. So I sure as shit can't start it, my mental health would be down the drain the first day of looking for what's important enough to cover, let alone writing up the relevant info, and then doing this all day every day.

We'd need a very specific type of person/people to write for a site like this. A regular journo-type who can write about anything without their mental health going down the drain, but also someone who's not likely to sensationalise the fuck out of things AND someone without a right-wing bias.

Anyway:

Uh. Do ya like jazz?

[mysharona1987]

[acerebral]

this is the front page of my local newspaper today. the "terrorists" in question are the literal fucking UN. all because israel claimed 12 of the 13,000 UNRWA members were working with hamas. so now we've cut off humanitarian aid to Gaza where children are starving and having limbs amputated without anaesthesia. this shit is so fucking bleak.

[corin-tuckers-left-one]

PLEASE GOD 🙏

DAMN IT I was hoping he died

[eaglesnick]

I’m Alright Jack!

Do you remember the Leveson inquiry into press standards, which cost the UK taxpayer almost £4 million? The inquiry was divided into two parts and the final report of Part One, which investigated whether the existing Press Complaints Commission was fit for purpose, decided a new, independent, statutory complaints procedure should  be set up to replace it.

Tory PM David Cameron, who had set up the inquiry, refused to implement the recommendations and the British press continues to be both judge and jury of its own behaviour.

The second part of the Leveson inquiry was to investigate “"the extent of unlawful or improper conduct within News International, other media organisations, and whether the police received corrupt payments or were otherwise complicit in misconduct."

David Cameron cancelled the second part of the inquiry and News International was never investigated.

The Murdock family owns news International, now known as News Corporation. The Murdock family also own Fox Corporation in the USA and were recently in the headlines when they made a $787.5m payout to Dominion for deliberately and knowingly spreading false information about the company after the 2020 US election. 

Dominion, by paying an out of court settlement, allowed the Murdock’s to avoid an in-depth scrutiny of their libellous actions.

The Guardian (19/04/23) had this to say: 

“…while Fox doled out an unprecedented sum, they were able to avoid something priceless: the public humiliation of a trial and an apology.”

Today we learn that something very similar has happened here in England. Prince William has apparently settled a phone-hacking claim against the Murdock group, for a "very large sum" of money.

If this is true it tells us as much about Prince William as it does the about the unsavoury behaviour of the Murdock news empire. I would have hoped that Prince William, our future king, would have had the moral backbone to take Murdock’s News Group Newspapers to court so that if they had been behaving illegally their actions could be publicly exposed. Alas, it seems Prince William lacked the moral courage necessary and preferred instead to take the money and run. A future king should have the well being of his subjects uppermost in his mind but in this instance monetary self-interest seems to have won out over moral responsibility.

As one newspaper said about the Dominion settlement, the multimillion-dollar pay-out for the Murdock’s was just the price for doing business. Much in the same way British water companies illegally dump sewage into our rivers and seas because it is cheaper to do this than pay for modernising treatment plants, so unscrupulous newspapers and media outlets will continue to engage in illegal practices and peddle half-truths and lies until they are brought to public account in the British courts.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Matt Gertz at MMFA:

If Donald Trump returns to the White House, the fate of the U.S. press may rest on whether corporate executives who control mammoth multimedia conglomerates are willing to prioritize the journalistic credibility of the news outlets they oversee over their own business interests. 

Trump will put wealthy media magnates to the test, forcing them to decide whether they are willing to suffer painful consequences for keeping their outlets free of influence, or whether they will either compel their journalists to knuckle under or sell their outlets to someone who will. Trump spent his presidency demanding that his administration target his perceived political enemies with federal pressure — from regulatory action to criminal investigations — and says he would be even less restrained in enacting “retribution” in a second term. 

In recent months, prominent commentators have warned that the press could become such a target of Trump, whose own former top aides describe him as a fascist. New York Times Publisher A.G. Sulzberger, in an extraordinary warning in the pages of The Washington Post, wrote last month that Trump takes as his model Hungary’s autocrat Viktor Orbán, who has “effectively dismantled the news media in his country” as “a central pillar of Orbán’s broader project to remake his country as an ‘illiberal democracy.’”  These fears that Trump would use a second term to crack down on the press are rational. The former president demands sycophantic coverage and describes those who do not provide it as the “enemy of the people.” Trump’s rhetoric and record show that he is keenly aware of the vulnerabilities some news outlets have and is eager to exploit them if he returns to the White House.

[...]

Corporate media owners are vulnerable to Trump’s pressure — and some are already bending

Trump’s presidency revealed the dark playbook he and his allies use against perceived enemies such as individual journalists. Its potential tactics include publicly denouncing reporters, stripping them of access, inciting supporters to target them with violence, threatening them with investigation, and sending federal agencies like the Justice Department after them. These heinous maneuvers could and likely would be used against journalists in a second Trump term.

But perhaps the greater threat to the free press as an institution comes from Trump’s ability to target for retaliation the corporate barons who control the newspapers, broadcast and cable networks, and other outlets that employ those journalists. While some publications like the Times are functionally standalone journalism businesses, many others are either small divisions within massive multimedia companies whose executives are ultimately responsible to stockholders or privately held entities that represent a tiny fraction of their owner’s assets. 

CNN is part of Warner Bros. Discovery, a publicly traded company that also owns film and TV studios, streaming services, and a host of other businesses.  Comcast provides cable and internet services to consumers and owns and operates broadcast and cable TV channels and a movie studio, in addition to overseeing NBC News and MSNBC.  CBS News is owned by Paramount Global. ABC News is part of the Walt Disney Co. 

Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post (where my wife works as letters and community editor) but his billions come from founding Amazon, which is the nation’s second-largest private employer with subsidiaries in industries from online retail to web services, artificial intelligence to groceries. Patrick Soon-Shiong used a fraction of the wealth he earned in biotech to purchase the Los Angeles Times. Trump understands that those broader corporate structures create a host of potential vulnerabilities an authoritarian president with no interest in preserving the rule of law could utilize against the owners of news outlets that displease him. Individuals and corporations that own major news outlets have other business interests that may rely on government contracts or federal patents or regulators who oversee their mergers and acquisitions and other practices.

The former president knows that even if journalists want to stand up to him, he can force their outlets to change course by threatening corporate executives and owners who have different priorities.  Trump does not just lash out at the Post — he targets the “Amazon Washington Post.” When he goes after NBC and MSNBC, he calls out Comcast’s CEO by name. He shares attacks on Disney’s Bob Iger as part of his war on ABC News.  He is telegraphing the future trouble he may bring down on the corporate owners if they do not bring their news outlets to heel — and forcing those owners to determine how much pain they are willing to endure over a division that likely provides a small fraction of the overall corporation's revenues.

Corporate executives also know that there are rewards for knuckling under and following the paths of avowed pro-Trump figures like Rupert Murdoch, whose multimedia empire includes right-wing fixtures Fox News and the New York Post, and David Smith, whose Sinclair Broadcasting Group is a telecommunications giant that owns and programs scores of TV stations. Both received favorable regulatory treatment during Trump’s presidency.

Matt Gertz wrote in MMFA today that Donald Trump and his cronies seek to silence adversarial “truth to power” journalism just like what Orbán, Chávez, and Erdoğan did to the press opposed to them.

[tomorrowusa]

The same old white nationalism will still be at Fox despite Tucker Carlson’s departure. Murdoch will put perfume and makeup on it for the sake of public relations.

[jisreal64]

Here’s another meme I made to vent my frustrations about the Disney Hatedom and the movie Nimona:

[z34l0t]

[transpondster]

Andy Kessler writing in today’s Wall Street Journal:  Silicon Valley Bank failed because there weren’t enough white men on the bank’s Board of Directors.

[esckeyes]

I am cool and know how to meme like the kids.

The Union wants the same starting salary that Simon and Schuster already gets.