FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
Taking down “Michael Wolff’s fat masterpiece of sycophancy about Rupert Murdoch, The Man Who Owns the News,” Murdoch Archipelago co-author Bruce Page (CounterPunch, 5/15/09) counters Wolff’s “astigmatic lens of gossip” with “a true outline” of Fox/Wall Street Journal mogul Murdoch’s roots: Rupert’s father, Sir Keith, founded the dynasty during World War I as a dirty-tricks […]
Maureen Dowd today (New York Times, 4/15/09) writes about the newspaper industry’s complaints about Google: Robert Thomson, the top editor of the Wall Street Journal, denounced websites like Google as “tapeworms.” His boss, Rupert Murdoch, said that big newspapers do not have to let Google “steal our copyrights.” The AP has threatened to take legal […]
If you look at the front page of the New York Post today (3/23/09), you see a big headline about New York State’s “Secret Deal to Tax ‘Rich.’” The scare quotes are there to indicate, presumably, that the taxpayers in question–whom the Post refers to as “anyone making more than $500,000 a year”–are not really […]
Keeping tabs on the “Fair and Balanced” network, Mark Howard (News Corpse, 3/2/09) details how last year, prior to the election, Fox News was already fortifying its right flank. New multimillion dollar contracts were handed out to Roger Ailes, Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly. Hannity’s show shed the dead weight of alleged liberal Alan Colmes. […]
The Wall Street Journal has named right-winger Gerard Baker (formerly at the Times of London) its new deputy editor-in-chief. This reaction I find somewhat puzzling: It would be one thing for Baker to move to the conservative editorial page, but the self-described “right-wing curmudgeon” will have a role overseeing news coverage, a move that surprised […]
Once Rupert Murdoch’s bid to purchase the Dow Jones Company was made public, media watchers were nearly unanimous in bemoaning the ramifications of the deal. Observers warned that Dow Jones’ most important asset—the venerable Wall Street Journal—would be transformed from a respectable business-oriented national newspaper into a down-market, New York Post-style tabloid. As advocates for […]
The controversy over comparisons between George W. Bush and Adolf Hitler in two ads submitted to the anti-Bush ad contest run by the online activist group MoveOn.org says less about the state of left discourse than it does about the double standards at Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation. News Corp‘s Fox News Channel started the controversy […]
Rupert Murdoch has become a major American power in newspapers, magazines, films and books, thanks not to his crudities, but to a process created and supported by the most respectable newspaper and broadcast organizations in the country.
