Category: Media

Yes, I Heard His Speech, and It Pissed Me Off…

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Same sh%$, different day, it’s the culture of Washington, both sides are at fault, if we do nothing disaster looms.  (False: doing nothing means letting the Bush tax cuts expire in 2012, and deficits drop by a lot)

It seemed to be more of a plaintive whine that people just don’t get how awesome he is, or they would go all happy non-partisan.

This is all largely an artifact of his own making, he could have gotten this all done in December, but Obama wanted an opportunity to cut Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, so we have this hostage situation.

That’s not what pissed me off the most though, it’s that, because of the speech, Maddow was preempted by that fatuous f%$# Lawrence O’Donnell.

I know that it’s not rational, but his voice sets my teeth on edge.

I Think that Jimmy Murdoch is Going to Jail…

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Of course, if the Parliamentary inquiry committee had sworn him in, it would have been even more likely.

You see, according to tow of James Murdoch’s staffers, he was specifically made aware of the phone hacking when he signed off on settlements with litigants:

James Murdoch has been accused of misleading the parliamentary select committee this week in relation to phone hacking, igniting yet another fire for the embattled News International boss to extinguish.

In a highly damaging broadside, two former News of the World senior executives claimed the evidence Murdoch gave to the committee on Tuesday in relation to an out-of-court settlement to Gordon Taylor, chief executive of the Professional Footballers Association, was “mistaken”.

The statement came as something of a bombshell to the culture, sport and media select committee, which immediately announced it would be asking Murdoch to explain the contradiction.

Colin Myler, editor of the paper until it was shut down two weeks ago, and Tom Crone, the paper’s former head of legal affairs, said they had expressly told Murdoch of an email that would have blown a hole in its defence that only one “rogue reporter” was involved in the phone-hacking scandal.

This contradicts what Murdoch told the committee when questioned on Tuesday.

As an aside on the media, if you want to follow this, I recommend two sources, the Guardian, which really went out on a limb in following this for years, and Keith Olbermann who has been on this like white on rice.

Here’s a Bit of Etiquette for All You Pie Flingers

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If you are going to fling a pie at some rich pig as a way of publicly taking them down a peg, the preferred, and traditional, pie is a cream pie, but you should include both a crust and a filling, even if the latter is just whipped cream (kind of lame).

That being said, I do not approve of the actions of comedian and political activist Jonathan “Jonnie Marbles” May-Bowles, who flung a pie tin full of shaving cream at Rupert Murdoch when he was testifying before Parliament. (His wife deflected the projectile, that’s love … and good reflexes)

Mr. May-Bowles, if you are to fling a pie at Rupert Murdoch, make it a real pie.

Two More Heads Roll at Newscorp

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Rebckah Brooks and Les Hinton are the last to to exit:

Two key lieutenants in Rupert Murdoch’s media empire resigned Friday as a widening scandal involving illegal phone hacking by Murdoch’s British newspaper journalists continued to engulf his company.

Leslie “Les” Hinton, head of Dow Jones & Co., the division of Murdoch’s News Corp. that owns the Wall Street Journal, resigned late in the day, providing a bookend to the morning resignation of Rebekah Brooks, the executive in charge of the company’s British newspaper unit.

Hinton, who had been in Murdoch’s employ for more than 50 years, and Brooks are key figures in the still-unfolding scandal. Hinton oversaw News Corp.’s British newspapers when one of its papers, the News of the World, began to pry into the phone accounts of hundreds of British celebrities, politicians and ordinary citizens. Brooks was editor of the News of the World at the time and succeeded Hinton as chief of the British unit, News International.

Murdoch, and his family are out at Newscorp, they just don’t know it yet.

Basically what is going on is, to paraphrase Norman Schwarzkopf, is that, “First we’re going to cut it off, and then we’re going to kill it.”

We are seeing the systematic removal their support structure, and they will be removed from the running of the media conglomerate.

Not a Good Day for Murdoch

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A Bit of Fry and Laurie have Murdoch pegged

First, he and his son try to blow off a summons to testify before Parliament, only to back down when threatened with jail time:

A threat of imprisonment by parliament forced Rupert Murdoch and his son James to perform a volte face and agree to give evidence next week to a Commons committee investigating why News International executives provided false information to MPs.

Hours after the parliamentary authorities delivered a summons by hand to the two Murdochs, News International announced that father and son would accept an invitation to appear before the Commons culture select committee next Tuesday.

Additionally, the FBI has initiated an investigation of potential violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act as possibly hacking the phones of 911 victim’s families.

It couldn’t be happening to a more deserving group of people.

Murdoch Drops BSkyB Bid

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With almost every member in Parliament, of all the parties, chomping at the bit to pass a law to ban his bid to take over the UK’s biggest satellite network, he has announced that he will withdraw the bid:

Rupert Murdoch withdrew his bid for broadcaster BSkyB on Wednesday, as outrage over alleged crimes at his newspapers galvanized a rare united front in parliament against a man long used to being courted by Britain’s political elite.

The Australian-born billionaire’s U.S.-based News Corp, thwarted in a key move to expand its media empire in television, said it would keep its 39 percent of the highly profitable pay-TV network, but left investors guessing over whether it might try again to buy up the rest, or even sell up.

The withdrawal removes the most pressing political conflict the company faced. But a police probe and new public inquiries into the scandal and into media regulation as a whole may keep an unflattering spotlight on it and weaken the influence the 80-year-old media magnate has enjoyed in Britain for decades.

I think that this is a tactical move.  He’s holding onto his 30% stake in BSkyB, so if everything is back to business as usual in 9 months, I expect him to go for another bite at the apple.

I’m kind of hoping that  things won’t be back to “business as usual” in 9 months.

OK, So I’ve Been Watching Keith, and Rachel and Ed…

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And they all covered the revelation that Michelle Bachmann’s husband, psychologist Marcus Bachmann, has been taking Medicaid money, and then, in violation of regulations, has been performing “repairative therapy,” better known as pray away the gay.

I understand how this might get coverage, it is after all, an interesting juxtaposition of the husband of an anti-Medicaid Congresswoman, and his use of unapproved, and actively harmful, therapy driven by nothing but an ignorant and fundamentalist reading of the bible.

That’s not the part that surprised me. 

The part that surprised me was all of them made a comment to the effect of, “He seems to know an awful lot about gay sex.”

I’ve heard the tapes of him, and he does seem to “mince” a bit, but it seems to me that the “nudge, nudge, wink, wink,” from the hosts bit is a bit much.

Or maybe they have heard whispers that I haven’t.

The Newscorp Scandal is Exploding

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It’s not just News of the World it’s the Times of London, specifically the Sunday Times, which hacked personal records of Gordon Brown, including financial records, legal records, and the medical records of his child with Cystic Fibrosis:

Journalists from across News International repeatedly targeted the former prime minister Gordon Brown, attempting to access his voicemail and obtaining information from his bank account and legal file as well as his family’s medical records.

There is also evidence that a private investigator used a serving police officer to trawl the police national computer for information about him. That investigator also targeted another Labour MP who was the subject of hostile inquiries by the News of the World, but it is not confirmed whether News International was specifically involved in trawling police computers for information on Brown.

Separately, Brown’s tax paperwork was taken from his accountant’s office apparently by hacking into the firm’s computer. This was passed to another newspaper.

Additionally, we now have a retired New York City Police officer who has, “alleged he was contacted by News of the World journalists who said they would pay him to retrieve the private phone records of the dead.”

Much of Murdoch’s power comes from the fear that he inspires in authorities, and now that seems to be falling away, and the next few weeks should get very interesting.

Which Murdoch Is Going to Jail

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Because it has been discovered that Newscorp systematically wiped its email archives of everything relating to their phone hacking activities, which pretty much had to had the assent of James, and probably Rupert, Murdoch:

Police are investigating evidence that a News International executive may have deleted millions of emails from an internal archive in an apparent attempt to obstruct Scotland Yard’s inquiry into the phone-hacking scandal.

The archive is believed to have reached back to January 2005, revealing daily contact between News of the World editors, reporters and outsiders, including private investigators. The messages are potentially highly valuable both for the police and for the numerous public figures who are suing News International (NI).

According to legal sources close to the police inquiry, a senior executive is believed to have deleted “massive quantities” of the archive on two separate occasions, leaving only a fraction to be disclosed. One of the alleged deletions is said to have been made at the end of January, just as Scotland Yard was launching Operation Weeting, its new inquiry into the affair. The allegation directly contradicts NI claims that it is co-operating fully with police in order to expose its history of illegal newsgathering.

The alleged deletion of emails will be of particular interest to the media regulator Ofcom, which said it had asked to be “kept abreast” of developments in the Met’s hacking investigation, so it can assess whether News Corp would pass the “fit and proper” test that all owners of UK television channels have to meet.

So now we have a fairly clear case of obstruction of justice and most, if not all, of the information that was deleted is still likely squirreled away in the system where it can be found with a extensive investigation.

I cannot imagine that this did not go on without the explicit approval of one of the Murdochs.

Rupert Murdoch Craps His Pants

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H/t Calculated Risk for the vid which puts everything in context nicely

In response to revalations that his one of Newscorp’s paper, News of the World, had hacked voice mails of dead soldiers’ families and a missing girl (later found to be murdered), Rupert Murdoch has decided to shutter the 168 year old tabloid:

Beset by a widening phone-hacking scandal, media mogul Rupert Murdoch pulled the plug Thursday on his News of the World, Britain’s best-selling weekly tabloid newspaper, which will shut down after publishing Sunday’s issue.

In a surprise announcement to the paper’s staff, James Murdoch, a top executive of the tabloid’s parent company and son of Rupert Murdoch, said the July 10 paper “will be the last issue of the News of the World.”

The feisty, hugely profitable paper, which has been continuously published for 168 years, “has a proud history of fighting crime, exposing wrong-doing and regularly setting the news agenda for the nation,” James Murdoch said. But those attributes “have been sullied by behavior that was wrong,” he said. “Indeed, if recent allegations are true, it was inhuman and has no place in our company. The News of the World is in the business of holding others to account. But it failed when it came to itself.”

Referring to the phone-hacking scandal, the younger Murdoch, deputy chief operating officer of his father’s News Corp., said the newspaper “failed to get to the bottom of repeated wrongdoing that occurred without conscience or legitimate purpose.” He added, “Wrongdoers turned a good newsroom bad and this was not fully understood or adequately pursued.” He pledged that “those who acted wrongly will have to face the consequences.”

BTW, it’s not just 1 dead girl, it appears that they hacked the phones of parents of some other missing girls.

People have already been arrested, specifically Andy Coulson, former editor in chief of News of the World, and former communications director for British Prime Minister David Cameron, as well as Clive Goodman, their former royal editor, who has been arrested on this matter before.

Additionally, it appears that this scandal has queered the deal that Murdoch had to buy satellite TV provider BSkyB, for the near term at least.


Pass the Popcorn

That being said I don’t think that it’s the business repercussions that have Murdoch running scared, it’s the possibility that he finds it likely that he, son James, could shortly be working in the prison laundry next to Conrad Black.

Heh.

Wanker of the Day

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David Streitfeld, a reporter for the New York Times just released an article
claiming a 62 year backlog of foreclosures.

The problem is that the story is based on fairly bogus stats, and the source of the stats, and for that matter, the source of pretty much the entire story, is Lender Processing Services (LPS), which is currently the target of multiple lawsuits, for defrauding investors, and (literally!!!!) having a price sheet on the web for forged documents through its DocX subsidiary (some background here)

So, this guy took a press release from what is allegedly one of the most corrupt and criminal organizations involved in the mortgage mess and phoned in an article.

Time for a blogger ethics panel.

H/t Naked Capitalism.

Olbermann’s First Night on His New Network

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The new Countdown is very similar to the old Countdown, with the only difference that he no longer has to observe the ban that MSNBC instituted against Markos Moulitsas for hurting Joe Scarboro’s feelings about a year and a half ago.

It was not one of his better shows, but it was mostly a reintroduction, and I think that there were still some rough spots.

In the long run, hope that it will be more like Countdown in 2006 than Countdown in 2010.

So, Anthony Weiner Has Resigned

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I guess the rule here, even if you are a Democrat, because they were the ones screaming for him to go, is that unlike Craig, Vitter, Coburn, Ensign, etc., is that it’s not OK if you aren’t a Republican.

The Democrats are such willing hostages to Republican political terrorism that Stockholm Syndrome should be renamed Beltway Democrat syndrome.

The only thing more pathetic is the behavior of the press, which sees fit to treat real scandals from Republicans with decorum, but turns into an (even bigger) freak show when a Democrat does something.

One final note, I would not call Anthony Weiner a dick, because a dick has a head.

Italian Voters Finally Refuse to Cover Berlusconi’s Ass

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I think that the Italian people may finally had their fill of Silvio, because they repealed a law granting him immunity, along with repealing laws restarting the Italian nuclear program,. as well as one privatizing the water supply:

Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi suffered a stinging political defeat on Monday when voters overturned laws passed by his government that would have restarted Italy’s nuclear energy program, privatized the water supply and granted him immunity from prosecution.

Analysts said the government was not likely to fall immediately over the results, which came from a popular referendum — the first since 1995 to draw the quorum of 50 percent plus one vote required to overturn the laws.

But just weeks after Mr. Berlusconi’s candidates lost mayoral races in Milan and Naples in elections he had billed as a referendum on his own popularity, Monday’s results pointed to a new reality: the man who once had his finger on Italy’s pulse appeared to be losing touch.

The truth, for course, is that he’s never really had his fingers on Italy’s pulse.

What he has had is a monopoly on private TV in Italy, and control over all the television in Italy while he is in power.

Come to think of it, what Silvio Berlusconi has is a microcosm of America’s media oligopoly.

Imagine what the world would be like if Sarah Palin were Rupert Murdoch, and you will understand the hell that was Italian politics.

Pleasant dreams.

This is Going to be an Amusing Campaign Season

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As a result of the train wreck that is Newt Gingrich, his entire campaign staff resigned.

The proximate cause was his decision to go on a cruise ship vacation while everyone else in the race is hitting places like Iowa and New Hampshire.

I’m beginning to think that this is all just a variation of his “Gingrich, Inc.” scam which Rachel Maddow had detailed, and he’s doing this because his little money making operation pretty much demands that he eventually run.

It raises a kind of a meta-media question: The standard narrative for the Washington Press whores corps about Gingrich is that he an intellectual colossus of the conservative movement, a meme which the beltway bozos continue to push, but we are seeing increasing evidence that he’s just a self serving clown.

In any case, I find the clown show, and the contortions of his fans in the media, an amusing show.

I Believe That This Crosses the Stupidity Event Horizon

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Sarah Speaks


Revere’s official response

So, because she is in New England, she makes reference to Paul Revere, only she gets it really wrong, “He who warned, uh, the, the British that they weren’t gonna be takin’ away our arms, uh, by ringin’ those bells and, um, makin’ sure as he’s ridin’ his horse through town to send those warning shots and bells that, uh, we were gonna be secure and we were gonna be free and we were gonna be armed.“

The fact that anyone listens to Sarah Palin or takes her seriously says worse things about the USA than anything that Osama could have dreamed.

I pray for the day that her 15 minutes of fame is done.

H/t UM at the Stellar Parthenon BBS for catching the story, and finding the Revere pic.

Your Moment of Schadenfreude

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One of the conditions of James O’Keefe’s probation for attempting to but Senator Mary Landrieu’s office is that he needs permission to leave the state of New Jersey.

His latest request was denied:

A federal judge has denied a request by James O’Keefe, the conservative auteur-provocateur, to make a series of trips outside New Jersey.

Since O’Keefe is on probation for his conviction last year for his role in a harebrained undercover operation inside Senator Mary Landrieu’s New Orleans district office, he has to get judicial approval to travel outside New Jersey, where he resides with his family. As part of the scheme targeting the Louisiana Democrat, two O’Keefe cronies dressed up as telephone repairmen and sought access to the politician’s telephone system (O’Keefe–himself a noted master of disguise–was secretly recording the goings-on with his cell phone).

Knowles’s order does not detail his reasons for vetoing the 26-year-old O’Keefe’s motion. The judge has routinely approved prior O’Keefe travel requests.

My guess here is that the judge realized that O’Keefe’s travel was an attempt by him to get paid for his admitted (he pled guilty) wrongdoing, and decided that this was an inappropriate way for him to spend his probation.

Maybe he can get a job washing dishes, or counseling poor people.

Heh.

Remember, It’s Only Censorship if It’s a Government

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So Murdoch owned Sky Italia dropping Current TV because it hired Keith Olbermann:

Former Vice President Al Gore’s Current TV cable network has claimed Rupert Murdoch’s Italian satellite TV company dropped the network in Italy because it hired liberal politics news anchor Keith Olbermann.

Imagine that.

If there is a lesson to the travails of Silvio Berlusconi, it is that private unregulated mass media outlets are a cancer on democracy, and Rupert Murdoch is just another example of this.