Dept. of Seeing the Truth on Roger Ebert's Journal

[kaffy_r]

Schadenfreude Sundae Edition

I love my career, no matter how much I often think I suck at it.

I also love my company, and that's saying a damned lot, since its various iterations and owners haven't always treated its employees with respect. The paper for which renowned writer, film reviewer, and remarkable human being Roger Ebert works is in my company's extended family; I share his feelings about it.

The actions of the owner about whom Ebert writes were followed and exacerbated by the owner who followed him. Those actions I can only describe as a slow motion murder. I've watched it going on since 1983, and I keep hoping someone will step in and keep it from being completed. So perhaps you can understand why I have watched the story of Rupert Murdoch's News of the World implosion with a great deal of bitter glee.

That German word up top? Sometimes you pronounce it justice.

Comments

[maruad.livejournal.com]

The relationship between media and politics has been unhealthy for many years now though it may be hitting lows that haven't been experienced I wouldn't mind seeing all of Murdoch's ventures fail though I have heard things recently that suggest the News of the World was going to be shutdown and and rolled into something else even before this scandal.

In Canada I watched broadcaster Mike Duffy parlay his almost devote support for Harper's Conservatives into a senate seat. Sun news here (not part of Murdoch's empire iirc) has been bending over backwards supporting the Tories in return for the opportunity to set up a Fox style news network here.

[kaffy_r]

I'm so sorry to hear that politicized "news" creation has gotten any kind of foothold in Canada.

And even without reading what you've rad about the News of the World, my immediate thought upon first hearing of the shutdown was that Murdoch must have been waiting for an excuse to do this, because you wouldn't do something this radical without a lot of reasons, not simply another scandal. I'd understood that it was one of his more profitable papers, but perhaps the profit was offset by other things.

[wendymr.livejournal.com]

The demise of the News of the World was certainly satisfying - but the repercussions go far, far beyond just that paper. Murdoch's Sun is also a disgraceful rag, and new allegations extend to it; also the Times, which used to be one of the most respected newspapers in the world, has seen its reputation decline under Murdoch's ownership. It too is now being implicated in accusations of invasions of privacy and breaches of confidentiality by Gordon Brown, the former prime minister.

Good.

Even better, too, if other consequences do in fact materialise: the full exposure and cessation of the unhealthy relationship between press and politicians, to the point where it was believed that a party could not get elected if its leader didn't kowtow to Murdoch and do exactly as he said; and the end of any prospect that Murdoch might get ownership of BSkyB. No Fox network equivalent in the UK, thank you very much!

[azalaisdep.livejournal.com]

Agreed to all the above. I was slightly stunned by the frequency with which, in last week's House of Commons emergency debate on the issue, the MPs of all parties who were standing up to denounce the Murdoch press kept congratulating each other on their "brave contributions".

We'd long suspected that much of the British political class was terrified of the Murdoch press, but it was enlightening to hear them admit it so openly.

And just as worrying, in many ways, as the unhealthy relationship between press and politicians are the clear indications that there is corruption at every level in the relationship between the Murdoch press (and probably the other tabloid papers too) and the Metropolitan Police, from the revelations of individual officers taking illegal payments from journalists for information, to the pertinent questions about quite why the Met didn't investigate this whole issue properly when it first began to rumble around several years ago.

Am watching teh schadenfreude with delight. If the ultimate effect of this is a loosening of Murdoch's stranglehold on most of the UK right-of-centre print news media, it is years overdue, frankly.

[kaffy_r]

Murdoch reminds me of a previous news overlord, Lord Beaverbrook, who hailed from Canada, rose to extreme prominence in England, and was often accused of being evil. However, Beaverbrook has at least some positive accomplishments on his CV.

[azalaisdep.livejournal.com]

Interestingly enough, Radio 4's World Tonight programme has just run a feature making exactly that comparison, including an interview with an elderly retired journalist who was a stripling on a Beaverbrook paper in the 60s, and recalls him dictating the leader columns verbatim...

[kaffy_r]

That's our boy.

[azalaisdep.livejournal.com]

I am now hugging myself with glee after the World Tonight pointed out that if Rupert or James Murdoch can be proved to have known about News International payments to UK police officers, then the U.S. justice system can nail 'em under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.

That more than makes up for the fact that our Parliament's Culture Media & Sport Select Committee, which has summoned them along with Rebekah Brooks to appear before it next Tuesday, can't actually compel the Murdochs to appear because, unlike Mrs Brooks, they're not UK citizens. (Though if at least one of them doesn't appear, their UK public reputation will if possible sink even lower, as they'll be seen as hanging her out to dry...)

The one dark lining to this silver cloud is the distinct possibility, since the (London) Times has been loss-making for years, that if the Murdochs decide/are forced to sell it, it might not find a buyer or would fold. Which would be a sad day for what was for centuries our newspaper of record.

[kaffy_r]

Agreed, agreed, agreed: and I say this as a reporter who hates - hates - when journalism is tainted by its own practitioners. What Murdoch has done to the reputation of newspapers and related journalism in Britain and elsewhere is unforgiveable.

a bigger picture

[apostle-of-eris.livejournal.com]

The Kennedy-Nixon debates in 1960 are said to have changed American politics by introducing the requirement that candidates be telegenic.
They also are reputed to have activated the more far-sighted plutocrats, resulting in Ronald Reagan &c.
It occurs to me that there was another turning point there. When campaign advertising moved to television, it became incomparably more expensive than it ever had been before. One reason campaign finance reform is so unlikely is that so much of those billions of campaign advertising dollars are spent on television, where so much of "the news" comes from.
A key factor in the emasculation of the Democratic Party into a pale shadow of the former Republican Party is the need of the professionals for the scale and reliability of contributions that only corporations can provide.

The "free market" can't provide as much news as a republic or democracy needs.

Re: a bigger picture

[kaffy_r]

Yup. Absolutely yup.

[bibliofile.livejournal.com]

This reminds me to ask: have you read Stieg Larsson's books about Lizbeth Salander? I just finished the third one, in which he talks about how to save a newspaper (no bonuses or raises for management; no dividends to shareholders, temporarily; hire MORE journalists). To me it feels plausible and yet fantasy; the likes of Murdoch would never do that.

[kaffy_r]

While I haven't read any Stieg Larsson, I have to agree with his recipe for (potential) success. The only reason it's fantasy is that even non-rotten managements, or managements that aren't quite as rotten as Murdoch's won't do that, because it's so far out of their realm of thought. And perhaps that's also simply being human; when threatened humans retreat, instead of advancing on the problem, which is what hiring more reporters and editors would be.