Showing posts with label Rupert Murdoch. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Rupert Murdoch. Show all posts

Thursday, July 02, 2009

News Ltd CEO's Idiotic Claim "Bloggers Don't Go To Jail" Becomes International News



By Darryl Mason

Raw Story has picked up on the absurd, misinformed claims about bloggers aired yesterday by News Limited CEO, John Hartigan :
The difference, he says, between professionals and amateurs is that bloggers don’t go to jail for their work – they simply aren’t held accountable like real reporters.
This is now running as a major headline story on Raw Story, which pulls more online readers than many Murdoch news sites. So this must be particularly irritating.



Raw Story corrects the News Limited CEO for his ignorance:

Even in America, bloggers have been jailed for various reasons.

It is amusing to see that John Hartigan, who seemed so angry that bloggers and independent news sites were using Murdoch journalists' work as "free content" has now provided so much more "free content" for those independent news sites and bloggers.

This story, and all the other "free content" stories to be found in Hartigan's speech about Why Bloggers Are Shit, will now start taking flight through that despised blogosphere, and provide a feast of "free content" for independent online media.

UPDATE : Hartigan's attack on bloggers and stunning disinformation that bloggers don't go to jail, and are not held accountable, has been cut from the column-stuffing reprints of his speech, here and here, running in today's copies of The Australian.

Thursday, May 28, 2009

"An Enormous Disservice To Science"

This is the kind of review you get when you base a book around Andrew Bolt-approved conspiracy theories about global warming :

The writings are always earnest, often involve conspiracy theories and are scientifically worthless.

Plimer sets out to refute the scientific consensus that human emissions of CO2 have changed the climate. He states in his acknowledgments that the book evolved from a dinner in London with three young lawyers who believed the consensus. As Plimer writes: "Although these three had more than adequate intellectual material to destroy the popular paradigm, they had neither the scientific knowledge nor the scientific training to pull it apart stitch by stitch. This was done at dinner."

This is a remarkable claim. If Plimer is right and he is able to show that the work of literally thousands of oceanographers, solar physicists, biologists, atmospheric scientists, geologists, and snow and ice researchers during the past 100 years is fundamentally flawed, then it would rank as one of the greatest discoveries of the century and would almost certainly earn him a Nobel prize. This is the scale of Plimer's claim.

If Plimer can do what he claims, and can prove that human emissions of CO2 have no effect on the climate, then he owes it to the scientific community and, in fact, humanity, to publish his arguments in a refereed journal.

The arguments that Plimer advances in the 503 pages and 2311 footnotes in Heaven and Earth are nonsense. The book is largely a collection of contrarian ideas and conspiracy theories that are rife in the blogosphere. The writing is rambling and repetitive; the arguments flawed and illogical.

Plimer believes "global warming" occurring on Mars, Triton, Jupiter and Pluto proves human emissions of CO2 don't affect Earth's climate.

He believes global warming does not lead to biological stress. He believes volcanoes emit significant quantities of chlorofluorocarbons. He believes the sun formed on the collapsed core of a supernova. All these ideas are so wrong as to be laughable: they do not offer an "alternative scientific perspective".

Plimer has done an enormous disservice to science, and the dedicated scientists who are trying to understand climate and the influence of humans, by publishing this book. It is not "merely" atmospheric scientists that would have to be wrong for Plimer to be right. It would require a rewriting of biology, geology, physics, oceanography, astronomy and statistics.

Now that would be a book of reality-shattering consequence.

Sales of Ian Pilmer's 'Heaven & Earth' appear to have peaked at just under 4000 copies, including sales to libraries and universities. Andrew Bolt claimed the book had shifted 25.000 copies.

Bolt promoted the shit out of 'Heaven & Earth' on his '1 million hits a month!' blog and it received at least a dozen big raves by columnists for The Australian, Daily Telegraph and Herald Sun. The message from them all was clear and hysterical, there's a Great Greeny Global Warming Conspiracy underway and this book exposes it! You Must Read This Book!

But even with all that free promotion and praise, 'Heaven & Earth' sold only moderately well. As a loose comparison, my first novel, Max & Murray, sold about the same number of copies, in the same time period, but without appearances all over the ABC and the dozens of pages of hype in The Australian.

Pilmer's book sales clearly show the supposedly vast unrepresented masses who don't think global warming poses a threat to Australian industry, tourism or general livelihood is not anywhere near as great as Bolt likes to lead his readers to believe. This is why the Liberal Party doesn't want to fight an election on Global Warming Reality, they know the actual levels of dissent amongst the Australian public doesn't match the reality claimed by the likes of Andrew Bolt, Tim Blair and Piers Akerman. All three are Murdoch employees who repeatedly fail to acknowledge that their own boss, Rupert Murdoch, is the most influential promoter of the 'Global Warming Myths' they claim will lead this country to greater economic ruin than we are currently experiencing.


Thursday, May 14, 2009

Rupert Murdoch Pays Me To Never Mention He Belongs To A Pagan Cult Who Want To Destroy The World And Wipe Out Humanity

By Darryl Mason

This ad from the corporate green HQ of Rupert Murdoch's The Herald Sun....



...sits right above this headline from Herald's Sun associate editor, The Professional Idiot - 'Star Hypocrites Of The Warming Faith' :



The story includes this declaration :
Truly, global warming is the first major religion to be led entirely by shameless sinners, attended by assorted hypocrites and carpetbaggers.
Al Gore gets a mention, Richard Branson gets a mention, Oprah Winfrey gets a mention in the League Of Extraordinary Global Warming Hypocrites, but somehow, yet again, to my utter shock, The Professional Idiot forgets to include his boss Rupert Murdoch, the world's biggest, most influential promoter of global warming hysteria and Corporate Greenism, in his list of hypocrites and carpetbaggers.

Does Rupert Murdoch row a boat to Australia when he visits?

Doesn't the same multi-billionaire who uses The Simpsons to scare children about drowning cities use a corporate jet to travel the world?

Every time The Professional Idiot goes comment mining on global warming or carbon trading, the massive ad appears from the boss reminding him of just what a spectacle fucking hypocrite he is. And every time it appears it reminds readers how pathetically afraid The Professional Idiot is to criticise or even mention his boss's chief role in the worldwide promotion of global warming hysteria, while he religiously ignores his own newspaper's efforts in ramping up The Fear and following Rupert Murdoch's masssive plan to cash-in on the coming carbon trading market and carbon tax.



Then again, when you've already admitted there is no ideology so evil or inhuman that you would not take a job or a pile of cash from its believers, screaming Stop The Global Warming Hysteria! while working for a newspaper that regularly fills its pages with exactly that kind of hysteria, does make some kind of sense.

At least enough to not choke on your own hypocrisy every payday.

Maybe we should remember the Alan Jones excuse : It's not news, it's not even journalism, it's Entertainment.

It sure is entertaining.

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Everybody's Trying to Cash In On Global Warming, Even My Boss

By Darryl Mason

Under the headline, No Backers For Rudd's Reckless Plan, The Professional Idiot promotes the claim that climate change minister, Penny Wong, has no backing at all for the emissions trading system :
Here’s the real growing consensus among the public - that global warming theory is wildly exaggerated.
The Professional Idiot has somehow managed to forget that there is one very obvious backer of the Rudd government's emissions trading scheme, and its inevitable bigger family of global taxes, and credits, based on carbon usage, and that would be his own Earth Hour loving boss, Rupert Murdoch.

Rupert "Climage Change Poses Clear, Catastrophic Threats" Murdoch has put almost his entire worldwide news empire (including The Professional Idiot's Herald Sun) on a hardcore carbon diet, in the hope that when the carbon trading becomes reality, he'll be able to cash in. Just like the Rothchilds.

Hilariously, that big banner ad promoting the fact that News Limited, and the Herald Sun, are true believers in global warming, and reducing carbon emissions, appears yet again across the top of The Professional Idiot's story about how the Rudd government has little support for its emmissions trading plan.



(click to enlarge)

And in a bizarre admission for a journalist, hitting his sixth decade, The Professional Idiot reveals he has never seen the movie Network, hands down one of the most important films on the business of journalism ever made.

Quoting this fantastic speech by playwright Paddy Chayefsky, from a climactic scene in Network, was very popular with allegedly crazed, president hating, America despising Lefties during the Bush II regime. Now, of course, the "I'm Mad As Hell And I'm Not Going To Take It Anymore!" mantra is rapidly being adopted by conservatives for the Age of Obama, only eleven weeks into the new presidency. Same words, same message, same reality, different presidents :
I don't have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It's a depression. Everybody's out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel's worth; banks are going bust; shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter; punks are running wild in the street, and there's nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there's no end to it.

We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat. And we sit watching our TVs while some local newscaster tells us that today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes, as if that's the way it's supposed to be!

We all know things are bad -- worse than bad -- they're crazy. It's like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don't go out any more. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we're living in is getting smaller, and all we say is, "Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials, and I won't say anything. Just leave us alone."

Well, I'm not going to leave you alone. I want you to get mad! I don't want you to protest. I don't want you to riot. I don't want you to write to your Congressman, because I wouldn't know what to tell you to write. I don't know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the street.

All I know is that first, you've got to get mad. You've gotta say, "I'm a human being, goddammit! My life has value!" So, I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window, open it, and stick your head out and yell, "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!!"

The Daily Telegraph's Tim Blair also suddenly notices something that has been going on in the United States for years, that he somehow managed to not notice at all during his beloved Bush II
reign :
"The police state continues to grow..."
The big banner Corporate Green ads from the boss, proclaiming that global warming is so real News Limited is frantically trying to reduce its carbon emissions, keeps showing up on Blair's blog, too, mostly when he's running stories proclaiming that global warming is a farce, a con, a delusion, bogus and that carbon trading will spell doom for all.

And still nothing from Blair on how disgusted he is that global warming propaganda is being jammed into News Corporation TV shows aimed at children.

When Tim Flannery and Bob Brown scare children with global warming hysteria, it's something evil, but when Tim Blair's boss does it, hey, it's just business.

Thursday, April 16, 2009

More Syndication, Less Investigation

The Australian newspaper announces that boss Rupert Murdoch is preparing to cull hundreds of journalists across his media empire.

Well, they didn't announce that, but they did announce this, which is pretty much the same thing :
News Corporation has created a new unit to share content and resources across the vast media empire.

"Our focus moving forward is twofold: to enable our digital businesses to flourish as individual entities and to bolster the digital strategies of our core media properties by treating them as central to, and not separate from, the enterprise," Murdoch said.

"The creation of a new unit designed to share valuable news content and harness the power of News Corporation's vast editorial resources is vital to our success as a global media entity."
This is not a news story. This is a Murdoch mission control press release. Less journalists will be generating more content which will be shared more widely across Murdoch media entities worldwide. More Australian Murdoch journalists will be marched away from their desks by security guards in the next few months. But you probably won't read about that in The Australian.

Thursday, April 09, 2009

Rupert Murdoch Wants Earth Hour To Become Earth Month

By Darryl Mason

The Daily Telegraph's Tim Blair and the Herald Sun's Andrew Bolt have had much fun in the past two years mocking any and all who voluntarily participated in Earth Hour.

Tim Blair :
Supporters of Earth Hour like to talk about the important symbolism of the event in terms of climate change and suchlike. The deeper symbolism is of a rejection of progress - of the centuries of research and innovation that culminates in us being able to bring light by flicking a few grams of plastic.
Andrew Bolt :
....Earth Hour proves that what threatens us is not so much global warming, but lousy journalism.

Asking us to turn off lights between 8pm and 9pm is a crusade by The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald.

....as always a danger when newspapers take up campaigns. Suddenly they get tempted to report only stuff that pushes their agenda, and to ignore facts that don't...
Somehow, bizarrely, yet again, Bolt and Blair managed to completely forget to tell their readers that their own boss is the biggest backer of Earth Hour and Green Corporatism in the world today.

Rupert Murdoch doesn't think Earth Hour is long enough. News Corporation wants it become Earth Month, at the least, and in March News Corp joined forces with the pro-human depopulation (according to Andrew Bolt) World Wildlife Fund to make it a reality.



FOX/News Corp. is supporting the 2009 Earth Hour - a global initiative in which millions of people around the world will cast a vote in favor of action on climate change by turning off their lights for one hour on March 28, 2009 at 8:30 pm local time. By voting with their light switches, Earth Hour participants will send a powerful, visual message to their leaders demanding immediate action on climate change.

All of News Corp.'s screens in in Times Square will go out for the occasion. And in a video to be shown at the Earth Hour opening ceremony in LA, several shows will be shown going 'lights out' - including American Idol, Bones, SPEED TV, Family Guy, and the sets of Good Day LA, FOX 11 News, and FOX Sports West.

And lots of other News Corp. businesses have pledged to participate, including News International (News of the World plans a 2-page feature), FOXTEL ("Let Your Actions Do the Talking" campaign), and STAR in Hong Kong and mainland China.

Join in and vote for action on climate change with your light switch.
News Corp, outside of its full-bore greenwashing, appears to understand that the purpose of Earth Hour is to encourage people to learn to conserve power and get back into the habit of switching off unused lights, just as our parents and grandparents did.

But Andrew Bolt and Tim Blair continue to dodge the crushing reality that their own boss, through his control and very real influence over his global media empire, did more to promote Earth Hour around the world in 2009 than any Evil Pagan Socialist Lefty did, or the Sydney Morning Herald or The Age, whose ability to influence anyone extends little beyond their home states, and ends in Australia.

So how do Blair and Bolt keep missing all these great Green Alarmism stories to mock and attack? Earth Hour to become Earth Month? Seriously, how did that doozy escape their Google News Alerts?

Or could it be they both are only interested in the Greenism stories and global Earth Hour initiatives that don't come from the Corporate Green media giant they work for?

Green Jihad indeed.

Monday, April 06, 2009

Murdoch : Fuck Google, Fuck Yahoo

By Darryl Mason

Rupert Murdoch has decided to try his hand at stand-up comedy :

"People are used to reading everything on the net for free, and that's going to have to change."

The ignorant old bastard really has no idea what's going on. At all.

Murdoch's on the verge of losing at least a hundred million or two on MySpace, after already kissing goodbye to a very personal couple of billion in the last year while revenue from the Wall Street Journal begins a downward spiral, and he thinks (or is praying) he can make people pay money to read online totally fabricated stories about Pauline Hanson's tits?

That's his Plan?

Ts is why he is now pissing his Depends in fear :

As online ad revenue growth stumbles and in some cases falls, publishers are being forced to rethink whether charging for access is possible, or whether readers would simply stop going to their websites.

....as they cut costs, publishers are looking for ways to get more people to read -- and pay for -- journalism.

Time is running out.

And it's particularly interesting that Rupert Murdoch sees news aggregators as "stealing" his "copyright" because they link to his media's stories and videos.

Let's see what else this alleged visionary, who happily gave up his Australian citizenship to brainwash Americans into supporting wars that would ultimately end up utterly devastating their communities, has to say about the Future Of Online Media :

Mr Murdoch also questioned whether the newspaper industry should continue to allow online news aggregators such as Google to aggregate newspaper content without being compensated for it.

"Should we be allowing Google to steal all our copyrights? If you have a brand like The New York Times or The Wall Street Journal, you don't have to," said Mr Murdoch. "You can say, thanks but no thanks."

There's a visionary plan to ratchet up the faith of stockholders. Tell Google and Yahoo to cough up some cream or go fuck themselves.

It's particularly fascinating to see that Rupert Murdoch thinks Google is "stealing" his "copyright" because they are linking to his media's stories and videos, most of which are based around things that happened to other people, people who mostly don't want to be in the news to begin with. Rupert Murdoch actually believes he really does own The News, that is The News that happens in the private lives of private people.

Stealing copyrights?

More and more of his own media's millions of worldwide newspaper column inches and thousands of hours of TV 'news' is filling up with stories and photos his journalists are "stealing" from bloggers or social networking sites and user-created aggegator sites like Digg, usually without any credit whatsoever, let alone payment. The same goes for the constant begging and badgering from his Australian online newspapers for readers to "send us your stories" and "send us your photos" on the condition that the Murdoch newspaper keeps the copyright of anything reader-submitted and can sell them into syndication with no compensation at all to the reader who submitted. In journalism, begging readers for stories is the stuff of early, humiliating defeat. We can't afford to send out so many reporters anymore, so why don't you send us stories we can run for free instead? Have you spied your neighbour fucking a goat dressed in a tutu in his backyard? Take a photo and send us a story....

When this is all over, and when the current generation growing up online hits adulthood, the New York Times and The Wall Street Journal and Fox News and almost all the other icons of modern media will be seen as so very, very 20th century, and all but worthless as mega-brands. They will be worth much, much less than what they're worth even today. The future is not massive domination of news markets by one or two mega-corporations, thank fuck, but locally based, inexpensively run, news websites and community newspapers. As it should be, as it already is across Asia.

You'd expect an allegedly visionary media mogul to know that.

Or maybe he's still betting on China letting him turn the misfortunes and humiliations of its people into another few billion for the pile.

It's not the kind of bet I'd be taking with other peoples' money.

(Source)

Murdoch's Lite Porn Meat Market

Murdoch Proudly Admits Using His Worldwide Media Empire To Shape Opinion On The Iraq War

Murdoch Execs Proudly Admit They Info-Dosed The Simpsons With Climate Change Fear Mongery

How Murdoch Influences Politicians : Do What I Tell You, Or My Newspapers Will Bury You

Murdoch Explains How He Tells His Newspapers What To Print And The Politicians They Should Get Behind


.

Saturday, March 21, 2009

I'm Not Paid To Tell The Truth You Know, Just Because I Write For The Australian

Here's how The Australian newspaper proudly promotes professional propagandist Greg Sheridan :
Greg Sheridan is the most influential foreign affairs commentator in Australia. A veteran of over 30 years in the field, he has written five books and is a frequent commentator on Australian and international radio and TV.
Here's Sheridan using all that foreign affairs experience in writing about the widespread claims of Israel war crimes committed against Palestinian civilians :
I do not believe a single story of Israeli war crimes or atrocities in Gaza. There is no evidence of any such story beyond Palestinian eye-witness accounts....
There is now :
"There was a house with a family inside .... We put them in a room. Later we left the house and another platoon entered it, and a few days after that there was an order to release the family. They had set up positions upstairs. There was a sniper position on the roof," the soldier said.

"He shot them straight away....he killed them."

Another squad leader from the same brigade told of an incident where the company commander ordered that an elderly Palestinian woman be shot and killed; she was walking on a road about 100 meters from a house the company had commandeered.

The squad leader said he argued with his commander over the permissive rules of engagement that allowed the clearing out of houses by shooting without warning the residents beforehand. After the orders were changed, the squad leader's soldiers complained that "we should kill everyone there [in the center of Gaza].

"Everyone there is a terrorist."
Greg Sheridan obviously listens very closely to his boss, Rupert Murdoch, and always does what he knows he should.

Sheridan won't be fired, he'll probably just get another award.

So is Rupert Murdoch still quietly funding illegal Israeli settlements on Palestinian land, and the ethnic cleansing it involves, or was that more of a 90s thing?

Friday, March 06, 2009

Murdoch Corporate Bosses Are Proud They Educated Billions On Climate Change Threat By Info-Dosing The Simpsons

By Darryl Mason

A very, very interesting Green Corporate video from ex-Australian Rupert Murdoch's News corporation, detailing how Fox has been purposely seeding its most popular TV shows, and in particular its highest rating cartoon shows like The Simpsons, The Family Guy and King Of The Hill, with what local Murdoch employees (the Herald Sun's) Andrew Bolt and (the Daily Telegraph's) Tim Blair would normally call "glorbal warmening" and "the most superstitious pagan faith of all".

TCFTV's Climate Change Commitment Video



Some of the key quotes from the vid, with deciphering of corporate speak in italics, in brackets, in the style of Andrew Bolt and Tim Blair :
"What could we do on a practical level to start making a difference (how can we get some taxpayer-funded action on this climate change scam)?"

"The biggest thing we've done is inserting messages about the environment into some of our content (he means TV shows like The Simspons, they're scaring our children and nieces with hysterical claims about a warming that does not exist)."

"The lifeblood of our company is the quality of our TV shows, and we would have accomplished nothing if we compromised that quality (they're sneaky bastards, these Nazi-Green Corporate Socialists)."

"....the most powerful way we could communicate the commitment on behalf of our company (corporate greenism), was to change the practices within the production (how many flights do you take? Huh? Huh?), as well as work in a message about global warming (that actually stopped in 1998), about environmental changes (the world's environment has been changing for billions of years, it has nothing to do with us), about empowering people to take responsibilities (they want to take away your plastic shopping bags and make you live in a dimly lit house and eat cold lentils)."
And how closely Murdoch's executives echo the declaration of their boss Rupert, when he pledged to turn his most popular TV shows into climate change education tools, back in June 2007 :
"We need to reach (our audience) in a sustained way. To weave this issue into our content-- make it dramatic, make it vivid, even sometimes make it fun. We want to inspire people to change their behavior.

"The challenge is to revolutionize the message.

"We need to do what our company does best: make this issue exciting. Tell the story in a new way.

"...we can change the way the public thinks about these issues..."

I never realised just how much I'd learned about the dire threats of global warming-induced climate change simply by reading The Daily Telegraph, watching Fox News and enjoying immensely, globally, popular entertainments like The Simpsons and 24.

The last word in the Murdoch Green Corporate video about how the most influential and powerful media company in the world has educated billions of people about the dire, catastrophic threats of climate change goes to an Al Gore clip from The Simpsons :
"Finally I get to save the Earth with deadly lasers instead of deadly slide shows."


In other climate change related news, a new blog has been launched called The Daily Degree.

I didn't know if Tim Blair, associate editor of the Daily Telegraph (a newspaper that seems to running many more Climate Change Is Humanity's Doom-type stories these days), was aware that there's a new blog pumping 'glorbal warmening' propaganda, because he normally loves to tear apart such blogs and mock their claims of climate change posing catastrophic threats, so I sent him an e-mail to give him a heads up on the new blog. Here's my e-mail :
Hey Tim,

I've found an hilarious new Climate Change blog for you to hammer and shred. And it's not one of those puny blogs run by one hairy old greenie with a few hundred deluded visitors, it's a big fat corporate blog. In fact, it's a new blog from the biggest and most powerful distributor of Global Warming/Climate Change propaganda in the world today.

I look forward to your witty, cutting takedown of these crazed warmenistas.

http://gei.newscorp.com/daily-degree/


Don't forget to include a 'hat tip' to me for the link if you use it.

Then again, you probably already got the memo from HQ, didn't you?
I was going to e-mail Andrew Bolt to tell him that there was yet another big money Corporate Green blog trying to pump the "the most superstitious pagan faith of all" and going on about hybrid cars and saving energy, and renewable and Green Energy initiatives that Bolt has said will "cost jobs" and destroy industries, and how this Corporate Greenism blog tells us we should ride a bicycle to work and take our own bags with us when we go shopping. You know, the usual mad claims exposed by Blair & Bolt that try to turn us all into eco-responsible, hairy, smelly, fat old hippes.

But seeing as Bolt has a number of helpers, I knew there was no way he was going to miss the launching of a major new Corporate Green blog like The Daily Degree. He doesn't need me to alert him to blogs like that.

I'm sure Bolt's attacks and comprehensive debunking of the claims made on The Daily Degree blog are all coming soon. No doubt, Tim Blair is writing up his takedown of The Daily Degree as you read this.

If past efforts are anything to go, Bolt & Blair should both be hammering The Daily Degree any moment now...because the fact they work for the same company that now admits to being the most powerful and most influential distributor of "glorbal warmening propaganda", by subtly inserting what Bolt & Blair call eco-hysteria into our favourite TV shows, won't influence their scathing criticism of a blog like The Daily Degree not one little bit.

Unless they're both total fucking hypocrites.

Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Murdoch's Warning To The World

The Drudge Report claims a scoop, or a handy leak designed to reassure Rupert Murdoch's media companies' stockholders that he is about to go on one hell of a sacking spree to rein in costs....and by the way, you're all doomed, Doomed!
Media baron Rupert Murdoch issued an urgent internal communication late Monday, warning his staff: "We are in the midst of a phase of history in which nations will be redefined and their futures fundamentally altered."
Murdoch doesn't actually say this is a bad thing, overall.
"Many people will be under extreme pressure and many companies mortally wounded...."
Murdoch's got his eye on some media properties that can be brought up and downsized, then folded into New Corp, cutting thousands more jobs.
"Our competitors will be sorely tempted to take the easy beat, to reduce quality in the search for immediate dividends."
But Murdoch has no intention of letting The Greater Depression reduce the...ahhh, quality of his media products, like Fox News, or Sydney's The Daily Telegraph or the New York Post, shimmering icons of news-o-tainment.
"Let me be very clear about our company: where others might step back from their commitment to their viewers, their users, readers and customers, we will renew ours.

"The direction of the business now and over the next few years will define the character of our company for decades."
He's going to fire a shitload of journalists, and make user-generated content play a bigger role in his media products, so he doesn't have to pay so many people so much money for all that content.

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

Rupert Murdoch's Mum Goes Where Her Son's Newspapers Fear To Tred

Dame Elizabeth Murdoch says what The Australian newspaper's most glorified columnists still refuse to fully acknowledge, in print :
"I could never quite forgive (John) Howard for insisting on going on and destroying the party and himself"
No doubt during one of her weekly hour or so long calls with her son, Liz expressed her dislike of Howard, probably around the time the Daily Telegraph and other Murdoch papers began an Obama-media like campaign hailing Kevin Rudd as the new leader of Australia.

Liz also reveals that delicate Rupert can't stand the lack of central heating in her old house.

"They get soft," she says in reference to her aubergine-haired son.

Complaining about his mum's places not having central heating isn't the sort of behaviour you'd expect from a climate change alarmist like Rupert.

This interesting Murdoch-related note, considering the past three weeks of Israel's civilian slaughter in Gaza, taken from the new Murdoch worshipping biography, The Man Who Owns The News (already being given away with Crikey subscriptions) :
When father Murdoch attacks the Palestinians, (his son) James says he’s “Talking fucking nonsense. … They were kicked out of their fucking homes and had nowhere to fucking live.”

September 2007 : Murdoch Journalist Denies Murdoch Media Conspiracy To Get Kevin Rudd Elected

The Most Influential Australian Of All Time Is....An American

Murdoch's Billion Dollar Bungle In China

Murdoch Admits Using His Worldwide Media Empire To Shape Opinion On The Iraq War

How Murdoch Influences Politicians : Do What I Tell You Or My Newspapers Will Bury You

Thursday, December 04, 2008

Murdoch 'The Fake Conservative' Pals Around With Hollywood Liberals, And Likes It

Rupert Murdoch does what he is told by the women in his life. He always has. Now Australia's most famous ex-Australian Conservative obeys his wife and becomes a damned Hollywood Lefty Loving Lefty :
The author of a new book about media mogul Rupert Murdoch, which asserts that the owner of Fox News "absolutely despises" top-rated host Bill O'Reilly, believes that Murdoch's negative feelings about Fox go far beyond a personal distaste for O'Reilly's bullying.

Michael Wolff, author of The Man Who Owns the News, told MSNBC's Keith Olbermann on Tuesday, "I would mention ... Bill O'Reilly [to Murdoch] and he would get this look which was like revulsion." Wolff added that "I started to see this around all of Murdoch's people. ... No one says, 'O'Reilly, we hate him' ... but everybody goes into a contortion."

According to Wolff, however, the real issue is that Murdoch has "come to like the liberals more than the conservatives -- and many of them have come to like him, too. ... His life is now largely spent around people for whom Fox News is a vulgarity and a joke."

"If he became utterly convinced," asked Olberman, "not only would a liberal network make you five times the money that Fox News makes you, but one will exist and it will put Fox News out of business, would he go down the street tomorrow, shut off Fox News, and put on a liberal version of it just for the money?"

"In a New York minute," Wolff replied.

"He saw a market niche," Wolff explained. "It was easy to get into, it was easy to service these people, it was cheaper to service these people, and he went for it. ... He saw a money-making formula."

"...he's with a woman 38 years his junior, quite young, quite liberal, quite open, and certainly engaged with all of the Hollywood people."
Wolff is wrong. A lefty Fox News would be nowhere near as entertaining, or flat-out hilarious.

Monday, November 03, 2008

Get Another Job You Middle Class Welfare Bludgers

By Darryl Mason

The Professional Idiot gets the nod from his ex-Australian boss and declares war on the Australian middle class, with all the venom and bile he usually reserves for single mothers, Aboriginal activists and immigrants :
"The explosion in welfare money hasn’t gone to bludgers so much as to middle-class and lower-class families that do work, but feel entitled (justified or not) to handouts of other people’s money for anything from first homes to child care. It’s bludging..."
How refreshing to hear someone who is fortunate enough to be able to work from home and still earn more than $250,000 a year lecture the middle class because they can't afford to put their children into childcare while they hold down full-time and second jobs and because they were gullible enough to believe John Howard's lies about them all being "relaxed and comfortable".

Even better to hear the same hectoring from one of the richest men in the world, about how shameful it is that the Australian middle classes (or the New Poor) want and/or expect minimal financial help to prop up their McMansion, two kids in childcare, two cars, two jobs reality, even though that fantasy was routinely primed and pumped through all of Murdoch's Australian newspapers for a decade :
...while real incomes increased since the end of the 1980s, about 20 per cent of the working aged population today receives income support, compared with only 15 per cent two decades ago. While a safety net is warranted for those in genuine need, we must avoid institutionalising idleness. The bludger should not be our national icon.
Yes, better our national icon be the working poor instead. Or perhaps a 50 year old man who worked and stressed himself to an early grave and missed out on seeing his children growing up.

But of course, when it comes to handouts, Murdoch was all for stiffing the American taxpayers with the $700 billion BailUp, which ensured some of those who traverse the same canape circuits as he does, back in Manhattan, are not forced to give up too much of their wealth because they monumentally fucked up the American economy and the retirement plans of millions of aging workers.

The lyrics of an old Insurge song, circa mid-1990ss, come to mind :
You tell me everyone without a job should go away and die,
And what the government spends on welfare really makes you cry,
Well, you're a strange little thing,
You don't mind if a rich man does his thing,
When he gets his subsidies and tax breaks,
And his research and development grants
This is welfare for the rich,
but because it's welfare for your mates,
Here I am living in a welfare state
Here's a comment I made yesterday on The Professional Idiot's near total supplication to his boss, and why he should feel the hot sting of shame for being such a monumental wuss :

Andrew Bolt’s response to Murdoch’s speech was as expected : lame and just plain sad.

Here’s the biggest and most influential promoter of Global Warming in the world, who uses his media to endorse the reality the global warming and its “catastrophic” effects on the climate (seen Fox News lately?), and Bolt has nothing to say. Nothing.

Tim Flannery? Hell, he’ll do two hundred posts on Flannery for being an “alarmist” and a “true believer” and supposedly trying to destroy the world economy, but Murdoch gets a total pass. Is Murdoch a “true believer” in the “new pagan faith?” According to Bolt’s definitions, he sure is.

Does Bolt remind Murdoch that global warming has supposedly stopped? Or that climate change belief makes you a Green Nazi? Does Bolt tell Rupert that his mind has been poisoned by Al Gore’s new religion, statistical fakery and enviro-fascism? Of course not.

The fact that Murdoch is Bolt’s boss is not enough of an excuse for Bolt not taking Murdoch’s claims and advocacy of, for starters, climate change and Aboriginal reconciliation down to the mat.

Murdoch is reiterating primarily the Labor Party platform that won them the election, and Bolt has nothing to say. AT ALL. Even more bizarrely, Bolt’s followers mostly agree with Rupert, and support Bolt’s echoing of Rupert’s Ron Paul Meets Al Gore beliefs and opinions. In fact, they praise him for his vision and clarity.

It’s hallucinatory reading those comments. How many of these commenters are paid for their work? How many are News Ltd staffers? What other explanation can there be for almost unanimous support amongst Boltists when Rupert wings in from hanging out with Evil Pagan Lefties and ‘The Hollywood Elite’ in Manhattan and LA to remind Australia that climate change is a reality, that Aboriginal reconciliation is a priority, that welfare for poor people is a necessity and that John Howard was wrong on just about everything?

Bolt doesn’t believe what he writes, not really. That couldn’t be any more obvious now. How he handles Rupert Murdoch is always a good test. No doubt, Bolt is a passionate believer in some of his regular subjects of mockery and derision, but only just a few. Most of it is there for pure entertainment, to tap and trap a target audience of dwindling Howard-era conservatives.

What sort of man lets his boss trample all over his supposedly passionate, righteous beliefs and then hails him for doing it?

It’s clear too, now, that Bolt is also there to feed really bad ideas and self-circling missions to the Liberal Party, who plunge deeper into The Shit the more they do what he tells them to do. How can Coonan, Turnbull and Abbott not see that doing Bolt’s bidding harms them, not helps them?

A perfect example of this is Bolt’s demands that the Liberal Party go nuts over Rudd’s public mocking of President Bush over the G20 phone call. The story didn’t catch fire with the media because there is essentially nothing there. Bolt knows this, but he drives the Libs on and on to chase their own tails over it, when next to no-one outside of politics or the Boltarium could give a shit. Bolt also knows that the editor of The Australian newspaper was present when the Rudd-Bush call occurred, and that’s why the story got into The Australian newspaper in the first place. Does he tell his readers this? Of course not.

Murdoch’s got five lectures to go, where he will continue to essentially shore up much of what Rudd is planning for Australia, and our eventual integration into a larger Asia community, with China as our new, more powerful, more wealthy bestest friend.

Bolt will have five more opportunities to shred what he has told his readers, daily, he believes are dangerous and culturally disruptive ideas and policies. That they come from Murdoch should make absolutely no difference to Bolt’s usually venomous dismantling of such Evil Pagan Lefty ideals and beliefs. Considering the prominence, influence and power of the man delivering these messages of mostly liberal idealism, Bolt should be expected to spend a great deal of time indeed going at him.

Unless Bolt really is a fake, a mere entertainer, a carnival huckster, which would be disappointing for his fans and critics alike.

Do What I Tell You Or My Newspapers Will Bury You

Ex-Australian Rupert Murdoch is back in town, singing the praises of the country he loved so much, he simply had to give up his citizenship so he could make another few billion dollars in the US.

Murdoch is getting an extraordinary amount of coverage in his own newspapers for what was, essentially, a fairly uninspired speech, his first in a series of six Boyen Lectures for the ABC, where he mostly reiterated the Labor Party campaign platform from 2008.

Here's a story that isn't getting any attention at all from his Australian media news drones :
A newly disclosed Down Street memo has revealed how Tony Blair helped Rupert Murdoch overcome an official investigation which was jeopardising one of his big investments. It shows that Blair, while prime minister, immediately ordered his top officials to help the tycoon who was frustrated that a potentially lucrative scheme was being blocked by a long-running European commission investigation.

Blair told the media magnate that "he was instinctively sympathetic to what Murdoch was aiming to achieve".

Blair has been accused of granting political favours to Murdoch in return for support from his newspapers; Lance Price, a former Downing Street spin doctor, said Murdoch seemed to be one of the four most influential people in the administration.

The memo reveals an episode in 1998 - a year after the Sun's conversion to Labour - in which Murdoch appears to call in one of those favours. Murdoch had privately approached Blair when he feared that the European commission investigation was hindering his business opportunities.

Blair gathered members of his inner circle to see the tycoon - his chief of staff, Jonathan Powell; James Purnell, then a Downing Street special adviser on the media and now a cabinet minister; and his press secretary, Alastair Campbell.

Murdoch complained that the investigation by the European competition commissioner into one of his planned television schemes was costing him money. He told Blair: "The competition commissioner, [Karel] Van Miert, had come up a long list of complaints and the project was being delayed at huge cost. Sky's own investment was very significant (£800m so far) and the success of the venture was crucial to their overall plans for developing digital services."

According to the memo of the meeting in January 1998, Blair backed Murdoch, saying "it was important that the UK remained at the cutting edge of developing this kind of media product".

Murdoch's 'on demand' television retail plans were already out of date by 1998, and it was hardly surprising the whole venture went tits up when people found it far easier, and more convenient, to simply shop online through their computers.

But the above story of Murdoch basically blackmailing Tony Blair with 'unfavourable headlines' must be wrong. Surely. Everyone knows Murdoch, of course, has absolutely no influence on the editorial content or direction of any his newspapers. Right?

So far, Murdoch has had far less of an influence over Rudd than he had over Howard, who seemed genuinely terrified of the old gossip. But Murdoch media executives court Rudd and his crew, heavily, excessively. For now, Murdoch's boys come to Rudd and do the groveling. But how long can that last?

It'd be fascinating to know what Murdoch has had to say to Rudd about the government's plans to introduce an internet censorship regime even more restrictive than those in China or Iran. If it helps to peel away some of the online competition, then count it as a win for Murdoch.

Murdoch Admits, With A Laugh, That He Used His Newspapers And TV Shows To Shape Opinion For The War On Iraq

"We Can Change The Way People Think" - Murdoch Admits He Tells His Newspapers What To Print
The Australian Welfare Bludger As Ex-Prime Minister

By Darryl Mason

Ex-Australian Rupert Murdoch has a message for welfare-soakers, like our ex-prime ministers, including his old mate John Howard :
(We should be) working for a society where citizens are not dependent on the government. That means ending subsidies for people who do well...

While a safety net is warranted for those in genuine need, we must avoid institutionalising idleness. The bludger should not be our national icon.
Too bloody right.

John Howard is now clocking up over $8500 per week in 'expenses', beaten only by fellow ex-Liberal prime minister, Malcolm Fraser. And that's on top of their super-super and pensions which total beyond $400,000 a year.

Some of the items and luxuries you can claim as 'expenses' when you're a living Australian ex-prime minister :

$5000 worth of newspapers and magazines, per year.

$700 to hire indoor plants.

$3000 a week for rental of office space.

$4000 a week for office staff.

$1000 a week for mobile phones.

Naturally, Howard does not want to talk publicly about this awesome display of professional welfare-soaking.

Thursday, August 14, 2008

"...Yes, Mummy...I Know Mummy...But I....Yes, Mummy....I Just Think That....Yes, You're Right, Mummy, You're Absolutely Right..."

You can be one of the richest, most powerful media men in the world, but you still have to shut up and listen when your mother has something to say.

Last month, Rupert Murdoch's mum, Elisabeth, was interviewed by Andrew Denton. The whole interview is worth watching, if you haven't seen it already. She really is an extraordinary old woman, with a fantastic attitude towards life, death, wealth and keeping your children in line. The interview also supplies some remarkable insights into Rupert himself :

ANDREW DENTON: With your own children...how did you draw the line? What was the line for you?

DAME ELISABETH MURDOCH: Well they were they would say I exercised a lot of loving discipline. I was never indulgent with them because my husband was inclined to be a bit indulgent so I had to swing the other way...I think they'd all....grew up to...appreciate my attitude...about material things, you know? I think it's a very materialistic age and....children have far too many things.

ANDREW DENTON: What is the benefit of a life with less as opposed to more material things?

DAME ELISABETH MURDOCH: I think you're more appreciative. I think you only appreciate the highs when you've known the lows, don't you think?

ANDREW DENTON: Your own family is a family associated with wealth. What are the advantages of wealth and what are the dangers of it?

DAME ELISABETH MURDOCH: Well I think the advantages of wealth is...that you have an opportunity to do so much good....wealth can be very misused but generally speaking it's a tremendous tool in here in helping community. People say to me sometimes, "You must be very proud of Rupert" and I know what they mean. They think he's made a lot of money and I say, "I am very proud of him because he's a good father and a good son." And that's what I'm proud of. Not so proud of his wealth.

*********************

ANDREW DENTON: No matter how old you are and how old your son is, he's still your son isn't he?

DAME ELISABETH MURDOCH: Yes yes yes.

ANDREW DENTON: How do you address an adult child if you feel they're going the wrong way?

DAME ELISABETH MURDOCH: Well Rupert and I don't always agree but we respect each other's attitude, I express my views very strongly and....Rupert listens to them. Sometimes takes my advice but on the whole you just have to I think...maintain your views without insisting that somebody else accepts them.

******************

DAME ELISABETH MURDOCH: I think some of the values are quite wrong. I think that ah the worship of money for one thing is quite quite wrong. Money doesn't bring happiness. It's your attitude of mind that helps you to enjoy life.

ANDREW DENTON: Do you have a sense of what happens after you die?

DAME ELISABETH MURDOCH: ....I think we leave something but we nothing happens to us personally.

ANDREW DENTON: Would you like there to be an afterlife?

DAME ELISABETH MURDOCH: No. It'd be very uncomfortable I think. [laugh]...
there'd be might be all sorts of people one didn't want to see again. [laugh]

ANDREW DENTON: You're going to be 100 in February. Are you excited?

DAME ELISABETH MURDOCH: No. I realise my time must be running out but I'm not going to waste a minute of it and I hope to live till I'm 105 at least. [laugh]

ANDREW DENTON: And why 105?

DAME ELISABETH MURDOCH: Well cause that's a fair a fair run. I might be even be able to live a bit longer. I hope so. In fact I'd like to live forever. [laugh]

Note : I have cleaned up the transcript a bit from the version that appears on Denton's Enough Rope website, solely to make it read cleaner.

Tuesday, June 10, 2008

Murdoch Admits Using His Media To Shape Opinion On Iraq War

Former Australian Rupert Murdoch fesses up, with a laugh, to purposely using his worldwide media empire (including 70% of all newspapers in Australia) to pump pro-Iraq War propaganda.



Partial transcript :

Q: For example, take the war...Have you shaped that agenda at all, in terms of perceptions of the war? In terms of how that war is viewed?

Murdoch : No, I don't think so. We tried...

Q: Tried in what way?

A: Well, we basically supported, our papers, and television...we supported the Bush policy.

No shit.

Here's but one example of the kind of propaganda Murdoch himself pumped pre-war to wash over criticisms that War On Iraq was illegal, extremely reckless, dangerous, would kill tens of thousands of Iraqis and would impact negatively on fuel prices around the world :
"The greatest thing to come out of this for the world economy, if you could put it that way, would be US$20 a barrel for oil. That's bigger than any tax cut in any country."
He was only out by about $110.

More Murdoch lies and propaganda about the Iraq War :
"(Sunni insurgents)...they’re not really trying to kill Americans."

"...things are going to be pretty sticky until we get Iraq behind us. But once it's behind us, the whole world will benefit from cheaper oil which will be a bigger stimulus than anything else."

"There’s tremendous progress in Iraq. All the kids are back at school."

The death toll of American soldiers in Iraq, according to Murdoch, is "quite minute."

"...most of Iraq is doing extremely well."

American Murdoch Whines About Australians Becoming More 'Anti-American'

Sept, 07 : Murdoch Media Launch 'Coup' To Take Down Prime Minister Howard


Rupert Murdoch - Always Wrong On The Iraq War

Murdoch Admits He Tells His Newspapers What To Print

Murdoch Journalist Denies Murdoch Media Conspiracy

Hey Rupert! What Happened To All Those Post-Saddam $20 Barrels Of Oil
Hypocrisy Over Hysteria

Blogumists Tim Blair and Andrew Bolt have proudly led the charge against hysterical claims about global warming aired on the ABC and in the pages of The Sydney Morning Herald and The Melbourne Age.

So why don't they turn their blowtorches on the far more widely read Australian newspapers and websites owned by Rupert Murdoch who do exactly the same thing, often with even more outrageous and unsubstantiated headlines?

Being dedicated advocates of exposing global warming hysteria, surely Blair and Bolt wouldn't let the fact that they are employees of Rupert Murdoch bias their choice of targets. Right?

The fact is that The Daily Telegraph (where Blair is a blogger and a columnist) and The Herald Sun (where Bolt is a blogger and columnist) actively promote the reality of global warming and regularly feature prominent news stories (not columns or blogs) pumping Rupert Murdoch's June 2007 declaration that global warming induced climate change "poses clear catastrophic threats" and that humans are, at least, mostly responsible for it.

It's like being an anti-gun advocate and working for the NRA's magazine.

Here's a prominent story from today's Daily Telegraph :

Friday, May 23, 2008

Professional Idiot Andrew Bolt Announces Boycott Against "Global Warming Hypcocrisy"

But Will He Boycott His Own Newspaper?

Dammit, you've got to have standards if you want to be viewed as a credible journalist. Which is why Rupert Murdoch's pitiful Australian Bill O'Reilly clone, the Herald Sun's Andrew Bolt has announced he is going to boycott Virgin Airlines over it's "global warming hypcocrisy (sic)".

In order to stay true to his boycott of corporations that undertake hypocritical promotion of global warming, and to avoid accusations of hypocrisy himself, Andrew Bolt will now have to boycott his own newspaper and blog.

Why?

Because his boss, Rupert Murdoch, is a self-admitted true believer in the "dire consequences" posed by global warming induced climate change.
"We need to reach (our audience) in a sustained way. To weave this issue (climate change) into our content-- make it dramatic, make it vivid, even sometimes make it fun. We want to inspire people to change their behavior.

"The challenge is to revolutionize the message.

"We need to do what our company does best: make this issue exciting. Tell the story in a new way."
And keep on a few flacks, like Bolt, to keep those who think Al Gore is the AntiChrist happy, and to sustain the illusion that Murdoch media haven't already chosen a side on the climate change controversy.

Rupert Murdoch announced last June that he was going to use his worldwide media empire, including Bolt's Herald Sun, to 'change peoples' minds' about the "dire consequences" of climate change. In short, Murdoch admitted that he was going to use the 70% of Australian newspapers he controls to ramp up the fear and terror of how global warming will destroy Australia unless we cave in and pay a carbon tax.

Rupert Murdoch is now the world's most powerful and influential promoter of the "dire consequences" of global warming-induced climate change, but Bolt, supreme hypocrite that he is, is quite happy to take Murdoch's money while he rails against the ABC and nobody columnists and non-influential university professors who don't own media for pumping global warming hysteria.

Show just how principled a journalist and man you are, Bolt, and in the process show just how huge your alleged unspoken for mass of Australian conservatives are, by quitting your hypocritical corporate salary and becoming an independent blogger.

Your boss is the world's biggest promoter of the "pagan religion" and "myths" you claim will send us back to the Dark Ages, and your own newspaper refuses to give reasonable coverage to deniers of the global warming theory. You can rant all you like in your own columns, but it doesn't mean zero unless your own newspaper is showing the other side of the story in its news pages. Unless of course, you are just a professional contrarian and entertainer instead of a principled journalist and a man who stands by his beliefs.

Monday, March 17, 2008

Murdoch's Lite Porn Meat Market

A reader forwards the below screen capture from a news.com.au story page earlier today. 'Gussal' went to look at this readers comments page about why PM Rudd must show backbone on dealing with China, after they slaughtered more than 80 Tibetan protesters. Here's the big ad box that accompanied this serious news :




Gussal : "Are the 'Monster Peenus' and 'I'm Dirty Wendy' spam e-mails following me online now? Why am I being targeted by porn ads? What the fuck is this about?"

Tits N' News. It's the Rupert Murdoch way.