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The Beginning of the End of Murdoch's Empire


magekillr

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I went back a couple of pages, and I saw no evidence that anyone has made a thread about this, so I've decided to do the honors:

 

Les Hinton, one of the top executives of Rupert Murdoch's embattled News Corporation, has quit.

 

The resignation by Mr Hinton, chief executive of the media group's Dow Jones, was announced by the Wall Street Journal newspaper.

 

The 67-year-old is the most senior executive to exit News Corp since its engulfing by a phone-hacking scandal.

 

Rebekah Brooks - chief executive of the media group's UK newspaper arm, News International - also quit on Friday.

 

The resignations of two top Murdoch lieutenants follows News Corp's decision this week to abandon a multi-billion dollar bid to take full control of British pay-TV operator BSkyB.

 

Mr Hinton worked for News Corp for more than half a century after joining Mr Murdoch's business as a cub reporter with the Adelaide News in Australia.

 

News Corp's Les Hinton resigns amid phone-hacking scandal

 

I gotta say that I'm surprised there hasn't been a thread on this. From what I hear in the UK, it's the biggest story of a lifetime in terms of coverage and complexity. My friend Angela tells me that mainstream news junkies are treating it as if the dictator (Murdoch) is falling and everyone's realising just how undemocratic our democracy was. And even the right wing press is reporting heavily since the Milly Dowler revelation.

 

As far as US coverage, it's not nearly as big (especially because we're still waiting to learn if The Very Serious People in Congress are going to allow the US to default).

 

I, for one, could not be happier. The entire world will be a better place when it's ridden of this propagandist criminal syndicate.

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This won't end Murdoch empires and to be honest I wouldn't be surprised if it came back far stronger. These people where probably shoved out in an attempt at quickly controlling the damage to allow Murdoch to at least hold some reputation. Another possible reason is the power this "Empire" of his holds over the news spectrum and the politicians. If Murdoch fall I wouldn't be surprised to see a few MPs follow hence why I think there could be some potential dampening of the severity of the situation. The last thing the Government wants now is another collapse in the support of the Government and the House of Commons, especially with all these cuts he's trying to force through currently. Also, remember, the papers of Murdoch are heavily supportive of the Government (Times/The Sun) so I doubt the government will act as harshly as they could; we've already seen their response to the take over of sky: "We have no power, we will pass it to the OFCOM."

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I suspect it won't be ended either, but it's still a pretty BFD (in the immortal words of Joseph Biden). Their top lawyer guy Tom Crone's gone also; everyone below James 'n Rupert have either been thrown under the bus or scarpered from the sinking ship.

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If you don't know who Murdoch is, you don't possess any real knowledge of current affairs.

 

The thing that annoys me about this is Brooks admitted to a crime in 2006 (paying police for information). Forget resignation, she should be in prison. Secondly, there's this idea that the tabloids experienced a rare blip in standards when they hacked Milly Dowler's phone--utter codwash. They've made their whole business on salacious gossip and justified it by saying other people deserve to have their privacy violated because they happen to earn lots of money, and that it's in the "public interest". It's a matter of national security that Gordon Brown's son had cystic fibrosis? No.

 

They didn't break the MPs expenses story despite being given the opportunity to do so, because they felt it wasn't sexy enough. Says it all really, given the MPs expenses story was far greater a voting issue than this ever will be.

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I think this could be the beginning of the end for a few key reasons:

 

1) Despite thier best effort to offload the issue by ending the news of the world etc its not dying; if anything the scandal is growing

2) All 3 major political partys united to object the take-over bid. I can't recall of any other issue n my life time that has united all 3 of them.

3) It was big enough for a parliamentary inquiry to occur as well as legal proceedings, can't think of many things that got parliamentary inquiries let alone in issues that aren't direct linked to politics/politicians

 

At the very least his empire is gonna implode a bit, I heard that advertisers, clients etc have started to pull out of other products within his empire.

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Um...someone has to explain to me who and what this guy did.

 

Rupert Murdoch is a media baron that owns a number of major newspapers around the world, including (most notably) the wall street journal. The issue being discussed is that one of his other papers, a british tabloid by the name of The News of the World was caught unethically and (probably) illegally gathering information for stories.

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I would like to hope this is the end of Murdoch's empire but sadly I think he is too big and too powerful to fail but then again with the right political movements much "bigger" people have fallen. The odd thing is the revelatory context of all this as far as I can see anyone who had a brain or was at all media savvy new this thing went on in most tabloids and has been going on for at least the past decade. I mean there were aspersions made to the unethical journalism of 'The News of the World' as far back as the 1990's. I think the world would be a better place if RM lost his monopoly but personally I can't see it happening. Perhaps this is this century's Profumo Scandal and will see a mass change in the media and politics but I doubt that also. In conclusion I think this will be damaging to RM and will probably mean he fails to take over BskyB but I don't think it will end his monopoly and I can see him recovering his stranglehold on British newspapers and many MPs in the next 5 years.

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... yeah, I don't think anything will happen, as pessimistic as it sounds.

 

News Corp is a massive conglomerate, loss of one of his big income sources although significant is really a drop in the bucket. It's definitely explosive in the UK (pffft, what one newspaper ?), but I doubt this is going to gather anything in the US .

 

Half the news there is already in his pocket, I'd expect high level gov't too judging from this whole News of the World scandal.

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1aZcsY-O8Q

 

I don't really see this bringing about the end of the Murdoch empire, chances are after a few years this will be forgotten and he will pick up where he left off. He already reportedly has plans in place to replace the News of the World with The Sun on Sunday.

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Off topic but thanks to the above poster I searched for Fry & Laurie one of my favourite sketch shows and was pleased to find all four series on youtube . :)

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I think the investigation by Parliament and the FBI will definitely tarnish his name, but there are enough sheeple that will continue to buy his newspapers and watch his programming that are totally oblivious to the scandal.

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I think the investigation by Parliament and the FBI will definitely tarnish his name, but there are enough sheeple that will continue to buy his newspapers and watch his programming that are totally oblivious to the scandal.

 

If that was true, the News of the World would still be in business. Never underestimate the power of public opinion, especially when they've got a pantomime villain to antagonise.

~ W ~

 

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I've been keeping tabs on this for a bit now.

 

The short list of stuff these journalists have done so far include hacking and altering a slain 13-year-old's phone and deliberately throwing off the investigation, alongside other things up to threats to national security by paying off guards for information about the queen's movements.

 

Goddamn this is ridiculous. Everyone involved maliciously needs to be jailed. I have no sympathy for the ones involved.

I was going to eat hot dogs for dinner tonight. I think I will settle for cereal.

 

OPEN WIDE HERE COMES THE HELICOPTER.

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Worth reading:

 

Murdoch's Watergate

 

The Journal Becomes Fox-ified

 

Many people's alarm bells went off when Murdoch bought Dow Jones and the Wall Street Journal. You had to be skeptical that he wouldn't degrade the paper (the reporting anyway, the editorial page had long been a cesspool). But I wondered how the world would fare when one of its most important sources of financial news became corrupted by a player with both a political and financial interest in slanting the news. That NYT article spells it out pretty nicely.

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The distortion in this world is none other than murdoch. The bastard's caused more damage than Bradley Manning or Julian Assange are accused of. This distorton has brought shame to everyone.

 

He needs to fall once and for all. I don't care how it happens, assassination, jailing, or otherwise, but he MUST fall. He's the reason why news is a mess.

I was going to eat hot dogs for dinner tonight. I think I will settle for cereal.

 

OPEN WIDE HERE COMES THE HELICOPTER.

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The distortion in this world is none other than murdoch. The bastard's caused more damage than Bradley Manning or Julian Assange are accused of. This distorton has brought shame to everyone.

 

He needs to fall once and for all. I don't care how it happens, assassination, jailing, or otherwise, but he MUST fall. He's the reason why news is a mess.

I was going to eat hot dogs for dinner tonight. I think I will settle for cereal.

 

OPEN WIDE HERE COMES THE HELICOPTER.

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I think the investigation by Parliament and the FBI will definitely tarnish his name, but there are enough sheeple that will continue to buy his newspapers and watch his programming that are totally oblivious to the scandal.

 

If that was true, the News of the World would still be in business. Never underestimate the power of public opinion, especially when they've got a pantomime villain to antagonise.

Let's see how the Sun on Sunday goes but, I'm not convinced that public opinion is that strongly against Murdoch that people will stop buying his papers. Have you seen how heavily The People and the Daily Star have been advertising this weekend, using words like 'trust'? The NotW allegedly had a readership of ten million, they won't suddenly turn away from tabloids because one of them was found guilty of phone hacking, and as soon as the Sun starts publishing on a Sunday, they'll run back to him thinking that the NotW was just the 'bad apple' and the Sun was totally oblivious.

 

Too much emphasis in modern politics is placed on 'public opinion'. People whining on Twitter are deluding themselves if they think they're changing anything. Facebook even moreso, since you're not even whining to a global audience there--you're whining to friends, most of which won't care, and that's it. If they want an example of changing something, try Liverpool following the Hillsborough Disaster, and given how well the final copy of the NotW sold, I'm not anticipating anything similar.

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Public opinion isn't all about social media though. It's there when two or more people talk with each other about current affairs. It's here, it's in the pub, it's at the dining table, it's practically everywhere. Assuming that, I maintain that politics is heavily based on public opinion, and should be.

 

I agree though that people are deluded if they think that Twitter or Facebook is going to alter the course of events here. It's down to what gets uncovered, the facts, and what is enough to make a significant number of people stop buying News Corp's products. Nobody knows that until it happens. Too many variables.

 

I wouldn't judge the number of copies of the last edition of the World sold as an indicator of support. There's very much a human instinct to get the 'last' of something that went on for 163 years, perhaps as a historical document with potentially lasting value.

For a similar reason, I happen to have in my possession some of the last batch of Iraqi currency printed while Saddam Hussein was in power. Long story.

~ W ~

 

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I'm in two views about the NOTW shutting down. On one hand, the paper had a very dodgy past and anything which can crumble part of a media empire which can almost blanket a country from news is good. However, I'm also very disappointed to see those in charge get away with almost no punishment so far, while all of the current NOTW staff who had little or no contact with any illegal actions all lost their jobs. I really feel for these people who have had their livelihoods threatened by some bad eggs. Having NOTW on their CV's will not be the best of things right now. It's also very disturbing and annoying how few people realise just how many papers are owned by Murdoch. Many cry out at NOTW but then go buy The Sun the next day. It was so obvious today at work while putting the newspapers out in my shop just which papers he owned an how they are trying to cover the scandal as little as possible. Papers such as The Guardian and Independent had Murdoch plastered on the front pages while His papers didn't mention it at all on the front.

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Rumour is she's in for a $3.5m payout from Murdoch's own back pocket, but if she serves time for what happened, I'm not too fussed about that. It only reaffirms our convictions that Murdoch has no interest in doing the right thing, and would rather continue to pay his 'henchmen' even after they've been caught.

 

All of which only strengthens the argument for new media ownership rules, to prevent people like him holding too much control.

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