Defend the Indefensible - Rupert Murdoch

John Lanchester wrote a good piece on Murdoch in the LRB recently - argued that Murdoch thrives on a certain type of media, and that as the cosumers of that media, all his money ultimately comes from us. It was more sophisticated than that obv, but the basic points holds. L:anchester starts by saying Murdoch is the kind of media mogul we deserve, and concludes that he's the mogul we want.

He's right though. Murdoch's empire is responsible for excessive competition facing the Virgin/ntl group the erosion of parliamentary democracy in this country.

who's whining that the big boys stole his lunch money.

(although fox DOES make 'the shield'...)

i never defended maggie neither, just suggested that MAYBE she wasn't responsible for EVERYTHING THAT HAPPENED in the last three decades of UK politics and economics.

yesterday at work i argued *very hard* with this guy who'd come in to explain the new labour agenda for training in the nhs. he was an internal market true believer. they're doing things the tory right of the late 80s dreamt about. alas i work for one of the old royal colleges, and thus represent a 'conservative' vested interest of um people who know things about health care. hence the doh has set up a quango to replace us.

anyway *he* used thatcher as an example of the bad old days in the nhs. it was useful cover.

Tonight:
Malcolm in the Middle
Malcolm in the Middle
Simpsons
Simpsons
Stargate
Stargate
Lost

Tomorrow evening:
Malcolm in the Middle
Malcolm in the Middle
Simpsons
Simpsons
Simpsons
Simpsons
Bones

Friday evening:
Malcolm in the Middle
Malcolm in the Middle
Simpsons
Simpsons
Football Icon 2
Raod Wars
Las Vegas

Saturday evening:
Malcolm in the Middle
Malcolm in the Middle
Futurama
Futurama
Mission Implausible
The Big Idea

4 different episodes of Stargate SG-1 in one day is better than just repeating the same one or two in that same time i guess

i don't get sky. i paid for murdoch-produced films and tv shows though. if itv could do one (1) show worth watching... that'd be nice.

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/non-fiction/article5859108.ece

strange days

Rupert Murdoch vows to take all of Newscorp's websites out of Google

don't let the door smack ur arse on the way out, rupe

Petition vs Murdoch's takeovers here:
http://www.avaaz.org/en/murdoch_bskyb/97.php?cl_tta_sign=7ecb089befcae54ba8fc64edcbd1dcf4

Adam Curtis on Rupert Murdoch. The Wogan interview is especially bizarre.

Can't really defend him too much, if at all, but today his Sun newspaper boasted the sentence

"Her clients simply arrive at the cockroach-infested motel, undress, then have hardware store silicone pumped into their backsides."

It caused me to wriggle in a pleasing way and to think that there are things going on in the world that I want to know more about.

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/features/3421071/Claudias-death-is-tragic-but-it-wont-stop-my-illegal-booty-shots.html

The Wogan interview is especially bizarre.

otm - was fascinating to watch, from such a different time (wogan actually really good and provocative but blatantly biased in a way you surely couldn't get now)

Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation has been given government approval for its controversial takeover of BSkyB.

The green light follows News Corp's offer to spin-off Sky News as an independent company.

The decision follows concerns about the concentration of media outlets in the hands of one organisation.

The decision follows ignores concerns about the concentration of media outlets in the hands of one organisation.

fixed.

fucking tories

And then there's his wife

http://gawker.com/5926705/it-was-like-a-war-zone-a-former-nanny-for-rupert-murdoch-and-wendi-deng-speaks-out

RT @rupertmurdoch Why Is Jewish owned press so consistently anti- Israel in every crisis?

Why no hashtag, Mr. Murdoch?

RM reached out to general petraeus, begging him to run, offering full support from fox ews and the use of roger ailes as campaign manager?

http://blogs.ajc.com/jay-bookman-blog/2012/12/04/president-petraeus-fox-news-sure-liked-the-ring-of-it/?cxntfid=blogs_jay_bookman_blog

fair and balanced!

That's big news. Wonder if anything will come of it.

On RM's behalf, I'd like to say that he has probably managed to undermine the prestige and influence of the WSJ, which if true would be a good thing.

Every time this thread gets revived I get my hopes up.

I thought this revive was either going to be about today's fucked up NY Post cover or The Daily going under

guess there's a lot going on in Murdoch land

his mom died

His mother was still alive? She must have been at least 100...

103 even

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-en7uMFB0Bys/UxYF4t1M_tI/AAAAAAACxL0/Q6aY2Nhk8rg/s1600/Murdochtweet4.JPG

There is no extant big mess that I can point to, ergo the required big mess must be coming. QED.

kinda feel like destroying National Geographic is the worst thing he's ever done. A rightly revered genuine institution, down the drain in my lifetime.

http://boingboing.net/2015/11/05/shortly-after-rupert-murdoch-b.html

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/national-geographic-chief-says-layoffs-done-to-avert-financial-derailment/2015/11/04/83fae59a-8314-11e5-9afb-0c971f713d0c_story.html

Current Ceo Knell says he ordered the cuts prior to Murdock taking over. The Post doesn't address whether Knell's pension will be cut. Of course it won't, until Murdoch tires of him.

Murdoch is trying to spin this, by claiming only 4 people are being canned from the magazine; as if canning folks from a still financially successful entity who work for their tv channel is ok; or freezing pensions is fine...

earlier W. Post article
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/national-geographic-society-sets-biggest-layoff-in-its-history/2015/11/03/2966e1b4-8252-11e5-a7ca-6ab6ec20f839_story.html

The reduction, the largest in the organization’s 127-year history, appears to affect almost every department of the nonprofit organization, including the magazine, which the society has published since just after its founding in 1888. The reduction also will affect people who work for the National Geographic Channel, the most profitable part of the organization. Several people in the channel’s fact-checking department, for example, were terminated on Tuesday, employees said.

Sad about this. It's the one magazine I still had a subscription to. I cancelled that yesterday, which was the first I'd heard of Murdoch taking over.

can someone count up the times new management of a major publication promised to not fire/mess with editorial and actually held to those promises

King James Bible

What In The Living Fuck?

Murdoch's life is like the grossest Woody Allen movie

So, Jerry, what first attracted you to multi-billionaire, Rupert Murdoch?... and so on.

For those who've always wondered how he sleeps at night, finally the answer they've been hoping for.

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/sep/13/rupert-murdoch-hurt-by-closeness-of-wendi-deng-and-tony-blair-editor-reveals?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Funny that he's left twitter, I wonder what the motivation was in the first place

“It seemed to me at the time that, in the post-phone-hacking media world, Rupert’s marriage breakdown was treated vindictively and that a man well in to his 80s losing a wife with whom he had fathered two children was given no room to grieve for his loss.”
*Lilliputian Pagnini holds the world's tiniest Stradivarius aloft*

the lack of self-awareness is genuinely remarkable

the rich have no need for self-awareness

i live for the day this morally bankrupt fuckfaced sack of shit dies, in chronic and untreatable and excruciating pain

the ONLY reason i wouldn't piss on his grave is that it would not be fair to subject my bodily waste to this revolting bigoted fuck

goddammit i was hoping this was a ‘he’s dead lol’ revive

technically he has been dead for decades

i assumed losing 150 mil to theranos was no big whoop but acc to bad blood it’s by far his biggest investment loss ever so that’s something

Hopefully that will take a few years off his life.

good

also i like to think the scuppered bskyb acquisition made him cry and gave him syphilis

Murdoch seems like the Mr. Potter character in It's a Wonderful Life, but instead of just spinning his evil web over Bedford Falls, MA, he fucks up whole nations.

Haven't read this thread but I didn't know he was nearly done.

6 December 1990: the day Rupert Murdoch almost went out of business. If the Pittsburgh National Bank had only stood firm and refused him that ten million dollars!

— Elvis Buñuelo (@Mr_Considerate) April 20, 2020