“Doomed”: Rupert Murdoch Stands By His Horribly Shameless And Irresponsible Tabloid
Last week was not a great week for the New York Post. But then again, not many weeks are. It’s front page last Thursday wrongly identified two innocent young men as the bombers of the Boston Marathon. (It did so without explicitly referring to them as suspects, just to ensure that they wouldn’t lose a lawsuit or have to apologize.)
Murdoch defended his paper on Twitter, because it is 2013 and stuff is weird:
All NYPost pics were those distributed by FBI.And instantly withdrawn when FBI changed directions.
— Rupert Murdoch(@rupertmurdoch) April 20, 2013
Hm. Here’s how Col Allan defended his story to Salon: “The image was emailed to law enforcement agencies yesterday afternoon seeking information about these men….” So “distributed by the FBI” might be technically accurate (not that we have any way of knowing) but it is not a great defense. The photos were not distributed to the press or to the public, as the photos of the Tsarnaev brothers would be the same day that Post cover ran. The photo was never intended to be put on the front of a newspaper with copy asserting that the people pictured were responsible. There’s also no way to “withdraw” a physical newspaper printed and distributed all over New York City. I saw copies of the paper at bodegas in Brooklyn well into the evening.
Murdoch (who has become shockingly respectable in his old age) loves his New York Post and he will always defend it.
As long as Richard Murdoch has owned it, the New York Post has been defined by its shamelessness and total lack of interest in taking responsibility for its worst errors and poor judgment. It is quite hard to get fired — or be forced to resign in disgrace — from the Post, for the crime of getting something disastrously wrong. No heads rolled when the paper reported in 2004, on the front page, that John Kerry had selected Dick Gephardt as his running mate. The paper even still prints the cartoons of Sean Delonas, a hateful,unfunny, repetitive cartoonist who invariably draws all gay people as mincing cross-dressers and who once plagiarized his own joke within two months of making it. In 2003 the Post published an editorial bemoaning a Yankees loss to the Red Sox the morning after the Yankees beat the Red Sox.
Murdoch’s Post cares so little what others think of it that it doesn’t even make editorial changes that would make it more successful — say, by being less racist and terrible in a diverse, liberal city. The Post is so awful that it has allowed the Daily News — a terminally boring rival tabloid published by a slightly less terrible but much less interesting rich person — to survive.
The thing all these incidents have in common is that no one was punished for them. Post editor Col Allan might be an irresponsible drunk pigfucker (we have no way of confirming or denying the charge!) but he is Rupert’s irresonsible drunk pigfucker. As long as the old man is around, Col’s job is safe.
There are reasons to be cheerful, though: The New York Post is assuredly going to die, and it may even do so fairly soon. This summer, News Corp will split into two companies. One will be made up of the money-making bits of News Corp.: TV stuff and the movie studio, basically. The other will be the newspapers and magazines and book publishing. Murdoch will be chairman of the new newspaper company. Its CEO will be Robert Thomson, former editor of the Wall Street Journal and Murdoch’s “closest confidant,” according to The Australian (a Murdoch paper). Murdoch loves the newspapers. No one else does, which is why that company’s CEO will be an editor, not a person with actual company-running experience. Once Murdoch goes, though, none of his children will care to subsidize their father’s bizarre newspaper-publishing habit. And Rupert Mudoch is 82 years old.
And the Post will probably be the first paper to fold or be sold. The New York Post loses millions of dollars a year. Unlike the Wall Street Journal, rich people who control vast amounts of other rich people’s money don’t read it, making it less interesting to advertisers. The paper, after the Murdoch and Allan regime, is worthless. The New York Post is doomed. Right now we’re just seeing how many people it can smear on its way out.
By: Alex Pareene, Salon, April 22, 2013
“Paranoid And Ethically Challenged”: Boston And The Right-Wing Media’s Collapse
Prefacing his comments by insisting he knows “how foreign affairs work,” Glenn Beck on April 18 announced that his website, The Blaze, was breaking news about the Boston Marathon bombing: A Saudi national student on a student visa and was “absolutely involved” in the Patriot’s Day blast was being deported by the U.S. government for security reasons.
Beck went further, claiming the student, or “dirt bag,” as the host described him, was “possibly the ringleader” in the bombing that killed three people and injured more than one hundred, and the government was deliberately covering it up.
Beck urged listeners to spread the breaking news via Twitter and Facebook because, he warned, the mainstream media would ignore the revelation. But the right-wing media would pick up the slack. Fox News’ Sean Hannity helped launch the story on April 17 and continued to fan it yesterday, claiming the student had previously “been involved with a terrorist or terror activity,” while a swarm of right-wing sites pushed the paranoid tale.
By making his wild allegations, Beck was asking listeners to ignore the fact that law enforcement officials had previously, and repeatedly, denied earlier right-wing media claims that the Saudi student had been taken into “custody,” or was in any way responsible for the blast.
Indeed, officials at Immigrations and Customs Enforcement and the Department of Homeland Security both soundly denied the story, explaining that there were two different Saudi nationals: one recovering in a Boston hospital who had witnessed and been injured in the explosions but was not a suspect, and another in ICE custody who was unrelated to the bombing investigation. Beck responded by calling for President Obama to be impeached for what he considered the sprawling government cover-up that now surrounded the student, Saudi Arabia and Al Qaeda.
So yeah, it was that kind of week for the right-wing media. It was a debacle.
In the same week that Pulitzer prizes were announced honoring the finest in American journalism, many in the far-right media worked to set news standards in mindless, awful behavior in the wake of the Boston attack.
Faced with covering the most important American terror news story in a decade, too many players opted to just make stuff up. Prompting witch hunts, they cast innocents as would-be killers and then couldn’t be bothered with apologies.
It was a memorable week in which the conservative media’s highest profile newspaper, Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post, seemed committed to getting as many stories wrong about the Boston attack as possible.
The hapless Post somehow managed to completely botch the simplest Journalism 101 fact of how many people were killed in the Patriot’s Day attack. But hey, according to beleaguered Post editor Col Allan the Post tried its best and that’s all that really matters. (It would’ve taken a “crystal ball” to get the story right, Allan now complains.) So no, there doesn’t appear to be much introspection unfolding inside Murdoch’s daily; a big-city tabloid that managed to get wrong, for days, a breaking crime story.
Yes, CNN this week was forced to concede mistakes when it reported sources had informed the news channel that arrests had been made in the case. But CNN quickly, and publicly, corrected the errors. Those unfortunate miscues happen when reporters let a be-first mindset trump the more important be-right standard. What we saw from portions of the far-right press this week however, was completely different; they almost couldn’t have gotten more stories if they had tried.
Of course Fox News contributor Laura Ingraham used the terror attacks to push her partisan agenda about immigration reform. (This, before she knew anything about the suspects.) Of course chronic Obama critics like Fox News host Oliver North attacked the president for traveling to Boston to attend a prayer service for the terror victims; to try to help comfort the rattled city. And of course Fox News couldn’t wait more than five minutes after that prayer service concluded before inviting Stephen Hayes on to criticize Obama for how he’d handled the issue of gun legislation.
That’s what anti-Obama programming looks like and Fox News saw little reason to alter that chronically caustic approach this week.
What was truly stunning though, as highlighted by irresponsible rants about the Saudi student, was the aggressive push by key conservative media players to simply concoct stories about the breaking news event.
Back to Beck:
I believe this is possibly the ringleader, this guy is absolutely involved, and we are flying this dirt bag out of the country because he has connections and we are covering up.
Keep in mind, this was after unethical right-wing bloggers had already harassed the Saudi bombing victim online, publishing his name, home address, and what they claimed were Facebook pictures of the 20-year-old Saudi national student. The same student police had cleared of any implication in the blast. (His only crime this week appeared to be his Saudi origin.)
And who led the early crusade against the bomb victim? Murdoch’s New York Post, which erroneously reported he was a “suspect” who had been taken “into custody.”
The same Post, of course, which then made headlines by irresponsibly splashing on its front page a photo of two local men at the marathon finish line, one a high school runner, and putting them under the headline “Bag Men,” strongly suggesting they were involved with the terror attack. They were not. But that didn’t stop ethically-challenged blogger Jim Hoft from referring to them six times in one report as “suspects” in the deadly blast.
“Grossly irresponsible” and “egregious” were some of the descriptions media pro’s used to explain the Post’s shocking performance this week. As one journalism professor told Media Matters, “It does appear that the Post, there is something crazy going on there.”
Trust me, it’s not just the Post.
By: Eric Boehlert, Media Matters for America, April 19, 2013
“Playing The Fools Against The Marks”: Why Fox News Finally Dumped Dick Morris
I suppose I should have weighed in on this already, given that it’s been an entire day, but in case you were wondering, here’s what I think about Fox News’ decision to finally give Dick Morris the boot. Erik Wemple probably spoke for many people when he said, “this is a time to celebrate Fox News. It has seen the lunacy of Dick Morris, and it’s taking the appropriate step to inoculate itself against the ravages.” This comes fast on the heels of Sarah Palin being shown the door, some post-election house-cleaning that thankfully has left sage contributors like Karl Rove standing.
So what does this show? It doesn’t, alas, indicate that real accountability is coming to the pundit industry. I’ve always thought it’s too simplistic to view Fox News as nothing more than a partisan organization, as many people on the left do. Since he started the network in 1996, Roger Ailes’ genius has lied in a careful melding of business and ideology, in which neither one ever moves too far ahead of the other and each serves the other’s needs. Fox is extremely valuable to the Republican party and the conservative movement, and it’s also a huge money-maker for Rupert Murdoch’s NewsCorp. Anyone who appears on the channel has to satisfy both strands of that ideological/financial double helix.
And as Morris shows, satisfying the ideological needs of Fox’s viewers is more complicated than just telling them what you think they want to hear. Morris was so laughably wrong in almost everything he said that even many die-hard conservatives no doubt found him to be a buffoon. When he tells you over and over again that there’s no way your side can lose, and then they do, his credibility suffers even with people who want to believe him. But what really did him in, I think, was when it came out in December that he was, in all probability, running a scam on the Fox News viewers whom he implored to contribute to his super PAC to defeat Barack Obama. None of the money went to that cause, instead probably finding its way back into Morris’s pocket. It’s one thing to treat Fox viewers like fools—most of the network’s personalities do that every day. But it’s quite another to treat them like marks. If you do it as blatantly as Morris did, the entire brand is threatened.
In the end, it became too obvious that Dick Morris wasn’t working for the betterment of the conservative movement, or the Republican party, or Fox News. He was working for the betterment of Dick Morris. Once that became all too obvious, I’m sure Ailes had no qualms about showing him the door. After all, there’s plenty more where he came from.
By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect, February 6, 2013
“In Conspicuous Handcuffs”: The GOP Has A Fox News Problem
Poor Mitt Romney has become a Republican punching bag as leaders within the party denounce his post-election comments about how President Obama won re-election by promising government-funded “gifts” to minority groups and young voters. As Republicans jab Romney though, they’re missing the larger, more pressing point: They don’t have a Mitt Romney problem. They have a Fox News problem.
Romney’s “gifts” put-down echoed the infamous claim Romney made during the campaign that 47 percent of Americans see themselves as “victims” and are overly dependent on the government. With the campaign concluded, lots of fellow Republicans now feel free to bash Romney:
• “It’s nuts,” said former House Speaker Newt Gingrich.
• “I absolutely reject what he said,” announced Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal.
• “When you’re in a hole, stop digging. He keeps digging,” complained Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC).
Though prominent conservatives are now lashing out at the former presidential candidate, the truth is Fox News has loudly championed the divisive philosophy behind Romney’s “47 percent” and “gifts” comments for months and practically authored them for the Republican candidate. Last week Fox talkers cheered Romney’s “gifts” post-election critique, treating it as a universal truth. (According to Fox Business host Stuart Varney, Obama was “buying votes with taxpayer money. Handouts all over the place.”)
And it’s not just a Fox News problem. Republicans have an even more expansive right-wing media problem (television, radio, Internet, etc.), which now doubles as the face and voice of the GOP and which celebrates the kind of toxic “47 percent” and “gifts” rhetoric that’s being condemned within the party. The far-right press is convinced Obama won re-election by “offering” voters a “check” in exchange for their support.
As Media Matters noted:
Fox host Bill O’Reilly said that voters feel economic anxiety and just “want stuff,” while Fox host Eric Bolling said Obama is a “maker versus taker guy.” Fox contributor Monica Crowley said that the election showed that “more people now are dependent on government than not.” Rush Limbaugh compared the president to Santa Claus, saying that “small things beat big things” in the election and “people are not going to vote against Santa Claus.”
In fact, O’Reilly and Limbaugh rushed to take credit for Romney’s “gifts” comments last week, since both of them had been pushing the “maker vs. taker” narrative in the wake of Romney’s election loss.
The split over Romney’s “gifts” remark highlights the larger divide within the conservative movement between two distinct camps: activists and politicians who want to get more Republicans elected vs. right-wing media players who want to grow their audience.
Note that after the Republican flop on Election Day, talk radio’s Laura Ingraham dismissed conservative hand-wringers who worried about the political future by stressing that “talk radio continues to thrive while moderate Republicans like John McCain and to some extent Mitt Romney continue to lose presidential elections.” That’s how hosts like Ingraham view the political landscape. That’s how they determine success and failure, not by tallying the wins and losses posted by Republicans candidates, but by counting up the number of radio stations that carry their syndicated show.
The same is true with Daily Caller editor Tucker Carlson. Asked why the conservative media completely failed in their attempt to “vet” Obama, who easily won re-election despite four years of hysterical, far-right claims about him, Carlson told BuzzFeed his publication’s work had been a success because traffic to the site was up. (Carlson also blamed the “legacy media” for being hostile to his site’s supposed “journalism.”)
I’m sure that’s comforting news to RNC leadership. And I’m sure the Daily Caller chasing inane, anti-Obama conspiracy theories for the next four years will put the Republican Party on firm footing for 2016.
For now, it’s easy to blame Romney. That’s what losing parties often do after an election, they pile-on the vanquished candidate. The part that would take some guts and fortitude would be calling out the right-wing media that are generating the type of hate rhetoric that Romney embraced and routinely used during the campaign.
Republicans won’t because they’re intimidated by the right-wing media’s power. That’s why New Jersey Governor Chris Christie quickly got on the phone with Fox News owner Rupert Murdoch after Murdoch tweeted that Christie, in the wake of Hurricane Sandy and his bipartisan appearances with Obama, needed to re-endorse Romney or “take the blame” for the president’s re-election.
Murdoch: Jump! Republicans: How high?
That unhealthy relationship is the reason why, when it comes to the simple question of whether America is divided between “makers and takers,” and if the 62 million Americans who voted for Obama represent a decaying nation of moochers in search of handouts, there’s a wide gulf within the conservative movement. The right-wing media consider the claim to be a central tenet, while Republican leaders think saying it out loud is completely batty and a prescription for an electoral losing streak.
So yes, those are conspicuous handcuffs the GOP is wearing: Fox News has hijacked the party’s communications apparatus and is pushing the type of paranoid, blame-the-voter rhetoric that loses elections, and the type of rhetoric Romney’s now being blamed for. But the GOP can’t turn it off. In fact, most Republicans can’t even work up enough courage to ask Fox News to turn down the volume.
Unwilling to acknowledge the GOP’s future poses a long-term media problem (the topic is not to be discussed), Republicans pretend they have a short-term Romney one.
By: Eric Boehlert, Media Matters For America, November 20, 2012
“Competing Voices”: Did Rupert Murdoch Throw Fox News Under the Bus?
Rupert Murdoch veered off script this week with some tweets that ran completely counter to the Fox News spin this campaign season. In fact, they undercut the entire political premise at Fox, which is to attack Democrats without question, and to force Republican politicians to champion a truly right-wing agenda. Is there a rift brewing?
It’s true Murdoch has a history of taking stances on issues such as global warming and immigration that are diametrically opposed to the propaganda programming Fox airs. So perhaps this is another example of that.
And some observers might say Murdoch’s candid comments suggest competing voices are welcome within News Corp. I think that’s unlikely though, at least within Roger Ailes’ Fox world where you’re either on the team or off. Remember that in 2008, angry that Murdoch might use his New York Post to endorse Obama after Fox had tagged him a terrorist sympathizer, Ailes reportedly “threw a fit” and threatened to quit. (Murdoch’s Post endorsed McCain instead.)
Did Murdoch’s curious tweets cause similar consternation?
Note this one:
Election: To win Romney must open big tent to sympathetic families. Stop fearing far right which has nowhere else to go. Otherwise no hope.
Murdoch stresses Romney has “no hope” of winning in November if he keeps kowtowing (my word) to the “far right.” Instead, he has to embrace the “big tent.”
Where to begin in describing the lack of self-awareness in that statement? Or is it just shocking hypocrisy in play?
Murdoch owns Fox News, the epicenter of the “far right” in America, and Fox News has been relentlessly urging Republican candidates to wage right-wing battles against Obama. But seven weeks before Election Day, Murdoch now thinks Romney should stop trying to impress the “far right”? He should stop trying to appeal to the Fox News audience?
Urging a “big tent” appeal, Murdoch actually sounds like the Republican strategists who try to win elections for a living (instead of winning cable ratings races) who fretted that the vice presidential selection of Paul Ryan would doom the Romney campaign because of the “extremely unpopular” policies Ryan advocates.
The irony is Murdoch (and Fox News) was among those who all but demanded Ryan be the VP pick, and who then loudly cheered his selection. The pivotal Ryan pick was a perfect example of Romney catering to the “far right” in a way that Murdoch now says is counter productive to the candidate.
Also, it’s a bit baffling the way Murdoch dismissively refers to the “far right,” as if he’s not the most important broadcaster within the “far right,” and as if Fox isn’t the “far right” sun around which the conservative movement orbits every day. There’s a reason New York magazine labeled Ailes “the head of the Republican Party.” And there’s a reason a GOP source told the magazine “You can’t run for the Republican nomination without talking to Roger. Every single candidate has consulted with Roger.”
And note to Rupert: The Republican Party, at the urging of Fox News, eagerly folded its “big tent” years ago.
Here’s another Murdoch tweet from this week that likely produced bewildered looks inside the Fox News green room:
Retrospect; Conventions mixed but net big win for democrats. Michelle O and Clinton the big stars. Bill brilliant, Hillary away until 016.
The proclamation from the Fox News owner that the DNC was a hit last week, and that “big star” Bill Clinton was “brilliant,” must have come as a surprise to Fox talkers who spent last week denigrating the convention and bemoaning Clinton’s flat, “self-indulgent” speech.
In fact, Fox tried for days to deflate the convention by lying about its television ratings, misleading about what Obama said in his acceptance speech, and in general just endlessly bemoaning its very existence. (Fox was simply part of the larger right-wing media crackup over the convention.)
Turns out though, Murdoch thought the whole thing was a “big win for Democrats.”
I don’t know what Murdoch’s long-view strategy is, but in the short-term, by touting the success of the Democratic convention and downplaying the political importance of the “far right,” it sure looks like he’s throwing Fox News under the bus.
By: Eric Boehlert, Media Matters, September 13, 2012
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