Tag Archives: Murdoch

July 17, 2014 · 10:20 am

The dinosaurs of old media still shake the earth

By Christopher B. Daly

Is all the coverage of Rupert Murdoch’s play for Time Warner a bit of an over-reaction?

The NYTimes, for example, cleared the decks and went all-in, devoting nearly a double truck of today’s Business section to coverage of an 83-year-old business mogul who wants to take over a 91-year-old media company.

Here’s a column/story by Boston University professor David Carr and more stories here, here, and here.

So, it turns out that Murdoch wants to own the company that is a distant relative of the company founded in 1923 by Henry Luce, one of the earliest of the modern media moguls. Luce created TIME magazine with his co-founder and frenemy Briton Hadden, and in its day, TIME was the cool new thing. Over the decades, Time Inc. added more magazines that became household names — Fortune, Life, SI, People, etc. As I wrote in my book Covering America, Luce used his midas touch with magazines to become a wielder of great influence in American politics, culture, business, and foreign policy. In the late 20th Century, Luce’s successors made a series of mergers and acquisitions that transformed a magazine publisher into a multimedia giant. More recently, the company’s executives decided to spin off the print properties, leaving Time Warner as a company with a desirable core of television and film content-makers. That’s what Murdoch wants.

Murdoch himself went through a similar process of corporate cell division last year, dividing his News Corp. into separate print and video divisions. He is using his profitable new company, 21st Century Fox, to gobble up Time Warner. If he succeeds, as he might, it would also represent the final victory of 20th Century Fox movie studios founder Daryl F. Zanuck over his great Hollywood rival, Jack Warner. (Ironically, Zanuck learned the business at Warner Bros., making his bones with “Rin Tin Tin” but left after creative differences with Jack Warner over the making of “Baby Face.”)

It’s hard to find anyone to root for in all this.

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February 23, 2014 · 1:52 pm

Inside the Meme Factory: Conservatives gin up “studies” to suit needs

By Christopher B. Daly 

Here’s a peek inside what I call “the Meme Factory” — the interlocking set of institutions that conservatives built, mainly since WWII, to manufacture “studies,” slogans, and ideas that could probably not pass muster at most universities or scholarly journals but are very useful to the conservative movement. Briefly, the way it often works is that a conservative funder or activist has a notion. The notion is taken to a conservative “think tank,” where it can be refined, simplified, and outfitted with some academic-sounding “research.” The whole package can be offered to sympathetic conservative “journalists” who work at conservative media outlets like Fox, National Review, Newsmax, Breitbart, etc. Then, when real scholars and responsible journalists ignore it, conservatives can cry foul and denounce everyone else as “biased.”

Today’s case in point: a story in the NYTimes not about this phenomenon but which nevertheless reveals a bit of how this system operates. The story naturally focuses on the latest developments. Igt is essentially a “stage-setter” for a hearing set for Tuesday in a federal court in Detroit over the suitability of same-sex couples as parents. But it’s the backstory that really deserves equal attention:

–To start at the beginning, in August 2010, a federal judge in a different federal court in California writes in a ruling that he found “no reliable evidence that allowing same-sex couples to marry will have any negative effects on society.”

–Alarmed, conservatives swing into action.

–In late 2010, they gather at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, one of the central nodes in the Meme Factory. According to the Times, “opponents of same-sex marriage discussed the urgent need to generate new studies on family structures and children.” In other words, they wanted to commission studies whose outcome was pre-determined.

–Result: “the marshaling of $785,000 for a large-scale study by Mark Regnerus, a meeting participant and a sociologist at the University of Texas who will testify in Michigan.” The money comes from two conservative foundations: Witherspoon and Bradley.

–His study comes out in 2012 in the journal Social Science Research, and conservatives immediately start citing it. No surprise: the study “finds” that children do best when raised by their own straight, married, monogamous parents.

–Scholars criticize his methods and motives, prompting the journal to launch an internal audit of its own procedures. Basically, the folks at Social Science Research need to determine how they got so badly used in this case.

–No matter. The Meme Factory has delivered: a study, a controversy, victim status, and news coverage.

Who says American manufacturing is dying?

Below, as a public service, I offer a version of a work in progress. It’s a timeline of the interlocking institutions that make up the Meme Factory — think tanks and media outlets. You’ll notice that some names crop up again and again: Scaife, Mellon, Murdoch, Kristol.

(Please help me fill in any blanks.)

CONSERVATIVE MEDIA AND INSTITUTIONS

 

A TIMELINE

 

Compiled by Christopher B. Daly

MEDIA OUTLETS

 

Debut              Name                                                   Owner/Founder

(not to mention: WSJ, Chi Tribune, LA Times, US News, Reader’s Digest, Forbes, etc)

1944                Human Events                                        Henry Regnery et al.

1955                National Review                                 William F. Buckley Jr.

 1965                Public Interest                                        Irving Kristol  (folded, 2005)

1967                American Spectator                             R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr./Regnery

196?                Commentary (turns right)                 Norman Podhoretz/

1968                Reason  (libertarian)                            Robert W. Poole Jr.   

1975                Conservative Digest                           Richard Viguerie

1982                Washington Times                              Rev. Moon/Unification Church

1985                The National Interest                         Irving Kristol

1988                Rush Limbaugh                                     Limbaugh/Clear Channel

1995                Weekly Standard                                 Murdoch/News Corp/ Wm Kristol

1995                Townhall.com                                      offshoot of Heritage

1996                Fox News                                                Ailes/ News Corp. (Murdoch)

1996                The Drudge Report                             Matt Drudge

 1996                Free Republic (website)                   James C. “Jim” Robinson

1997                World Net Daily                                 Jos.&Eliz. Farah

1998                Newsmax Media                                 Christopher W. Ruddy  (Scaife)

2001                InstaPundit                                         Glenn Reynolds

2002                The American Conservative (mag)     Pat Buchanan, Taki, et al.

2002                Glenn Beck Radio Program                 Glenn Beck

 2007                Breitbart.com                                      Andrew Breitbart

INSTITUTIONS                 [major donors: Olin, Coors, Scaife, Richardson, Bradley]

1943                American Enterprise Institute                        big business

1947                Regnery Publishing                             Eagle Publishing

1957                Hoover Institution                              ?????/ Stanford

1960                Young Americans for Freedom           William F. Buckley

1961                Christian Broadcasting Network        Pat Robertson

1963                Oral Roberts University                     Oral Roberts

1969                AIM                                                    Reed Irvine

1973                Heritage Foundation                           Paul Weyrich             (Coors)

1975                Eagle Forum                                        Phyllis Schlafly  (radio, Web)

1977                Cato Institute                                      Edward H. Crane                                                                                       (Koch, Olin, Scaife, Bradley)

1977                Focus on the Family                           Dr. James Dobson

1977                National Journalism Center                M. Stanton Evans (Buckley; YAF))

1978                Inst. for Educational Affairs               Irving Kristol/William E. Simon                                                (Olin, Scaife, Richardson)

1979                Moral Majority (thru 1989)               Weyrich, Viguerie, Falwell.

1982                Federalist Society                               Edwin Meese, Robert Bork, Olson

1987                Media Research Center                       L. Brent Bozell III

1997                Project for  New American Century         Wm. Kristol / Robert Kagan 

 

 

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July 2, 2013 · 11:33 am

The re-making of the news media

By Christopher B. Daly 

We are living through a period of great flux in the news business. There are new ventures, new hybrids, new devices for gathering and disseminating information, documents, and polemics. It’s a treat to have a front-row seat (Goodbye, Google Reader! Hello, Feedly!), but it can be disorienting at times.

To wit: the decision by the mighty Time Warner media conglomerate to abandon its shiny, still-new namesake building at Columbus Circle in Manhattan and decamp to a still-unfinished tower in a lower-rentPennStation district the developers refer to as Hudson Yards. (Does anybody really call it that? It’s really a vast wasteland on the Far West Side between Chelsea and Hells Kitchen, but it is slowly becoming a new media hub within Manhattan.)

But not to be missed is a more powerful trend sweeping through much of Big Media: the break-up of many of the big conglomerates. At Time Warner, at News Corp., and at Tribune Co., the same de-conglomeration process is underway: the division of those big companies into a print division and a (for lack of a better word) video division.

–Time Warner is spinning off its magazine division, which has been the cornerstone of the Time empire since Henry Luce founded Time magazine in 1923.

–News Corp. took out a double-truck ad in the NYTimes on Monday to signal its separation into two divisions. One made up of the Wall Street Journal, the NYPost and many, many other newspapers along with some magazines, almost all of which lose money. The other is a new company (called “21st Century Fox”) made up of the highly profitable television, cable, and movie-making subsidiaries. (The new video division began trading on the stock market on July 1; shares opened at $29 and basically stayed there all day. The new print division has not started trading yet.)

–Tribune Co., which traces its roots to the Chicago newspaper empire founded by Joseph Medill and taken over by his grandson, Col. Robert R. McCormick, announced this week that it is going to spend $2.7 billion to buy 19 local television stations around the country. At the same time, Tribune Co. is trying to sell “some or all of its newspaper properties,” including the cornerstone Chicago Tribune, according to a story in today’s NYT business section.

–The New York Times Co., which traces its roots to the founding of the New-York Daily Times newspaper in 1851, began selling off its broadcast units about six years ago and completed the process a few years later. The Times Co. is apparently pursuing a strategy of shrinking to its core business and trying to defend the castle keep with a paywall.

The big open question: What will any of this mean for the quality of the journalism that is carried out by these companies?

Stay tuned.

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June 8, 2013 · 11:46 am

Murdoch to racing writers: drop dead

By Christopher B. Daly

When the horses run today in the Belmont Stakes in New York, there will be some empty seats in the press box. Just days before the running of the prestigious horse race, the New York Post fired all its racing reporters, according to a story in the Daily Racing Form. 

The thinking?

Here’s my guess: the Post, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., was included in the print half of the company that Murdoch recently spun off in order to protect his more-lucrative broadcasting properties from the legal and financial catastrophes that his print properties have brought upon themselves. So, among the money-losing print properties, the strategy seems to be to slash costs by getting rid of reporters.

The timing?

That seems like a bit of egregious cruelty. They shoot horses, don’t they?

[A hat-tip to my brother, Ned, for pointing me to the Racing Form.]

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December 1, 2012 · 11:15 am

Memo to Britain

By Christopher B. Daly 

I’ll keep this brief. Just 11 words, in fact:

CONGRESS SHALL MAKE NO LAW ABRIDGING THE FREEDOM OF THE PRESS. 

It has worked here (on the whole) since 1791. As the Brits grapple with the fallout from the multiple disasters in their news media inflicted by the minions of conservative media mogul Rupert Murdoch, they might want to consider doing nothing.

Keep calm and carry on and all that. Not to be missed: The Guardian‘s comprehensive coverage.

leveson-report-government-prepares-draft-bill-live-coverage

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November 20, 2012 · 1:52 pm

Keeping up with the Murdochs

By Christopher B. Daly 

Now, British authorities are saying they plan to bring bribery charges against former top-ranking editors in the Murdoch media empire.

I’m confused: I thought these people were so intimidating and tight with the powers that be in Britain that they would not have to pay for anything. Sheesh.

Paying is so tacky.

No matter. Somehow, the troubles in Britain seem to have done little to slow down the News Corp. juggernaut. The Times says Murdoch (still never convicted of a felony in the U.S.) is shopping for new companies to acquire.

Now that the U.S. election is over, maybe we will be hearing from the Justice Dept about the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.

 

 

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October 20, 2012 · 10:15 am

For Fox News chief: 4 more years

By Christopher B. Daly

Politics aside (now, how often do you see that phrase in a presidential campaign season?), let’s give Roger Ailes of Fox News his due. He did the following:

–had an original idea

–got someone else to fund his idea

–built a news outlet from scratch

–made it profitable

–made it hard to ignore

–took home $21 million in salary and bonuses from News Corp. last year.

On that set of facts, he deserves to be ranked with Horace Greeley, Ted Turner, or Arianna Huffington. (I know, I know: there are other facts that I have not introduced into evidence here. I’m just saying. . .)

Ailes, who is 72, signed a new contract with Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. that extends his work life (and his ultimate control over Fox News) through the 2016 elections.

Roger Ailes (Jennifer S. Altman / LA Times)

Roger Ailes (Jennifer S. Altman / LA Times)

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September 21, 2012 · 1:40 pm

Murdoch dodges a bullet

By Christopher B. Daly

So, British regulators have blinked in their showdown with Rupert Murdoch and decided that the media mogul can go ahead and stay in the business of broadcasting in the U.K., notwithstanding the fact that Murdoch’s employees have been charged with dozens of crimes and thousands of violations of privacy. The regulators declared that he met the British legal standard of being a “fit and proper” person.

Hmmm. . .

The British Office of Communications found, after a lengthy investigation, that the officials in charge of Murdoch’s broadcast operations (BskyB) did not know about the shenanigans and crimes being carried out by reporters and editors at Murdoch’s newspaper properties, according to the Guardian.

Hmmm. . . .

And now that that’s out of the way, Rupert Murdoch seems poised to elevate his son James to head up his flagship (and lucrative) Fox TV channel in the United States. Question: does our FCC consider James Murdoch “fit” or “proper”? That’s not the standard for broadcasting executives in this country, of course. Maybe more germane is the question of how long James Murdoch can avoid being a convicted felon?

Hmmm. . .

 

 

 

 

 

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July 25, 2012 · 10:58 am

Murdoch scandals (cont.)

The estimable John F. Burns updates the unfolding Murdoch meltdown in today’s Times.

Question: will we ever see Murdoch in handcuffs, or slinking into a courthouse with a trenchcoat over his head?

Here’s the takeaway:

What is becoming clear, media analysts say, is that the push-the-legal-limits newsroom culture that has gone untrammeled for years at the British tabloids and has even found its way into some of the country’s upmarket broadsheets, including Mr. Murdoch’s Times and Sunday Times, could be a casualty of a new culture of caution.

 

Already, some who work at British newspapers say, the scandal has had a chilling effect on newsrooms, with editors, reporters and their proprietors less eager to trumpet splashy exposes that might involve, or be perceived to involve, less than ethical standards of news gathering.

One tabloid journalist, who insisted on anonymity because of concern for his job, lamented what he called the end of the “anything goes” era. “Before, it was a case of ‘Don’t tell me how you get it, just get it,’ ” he said. “Now things are looked at differently.”

 

l-r: Coulson, Murdoch, Brooks, shown in a church service in 2005. Photo by Graeme Robertson/Getty

l-r: Coulson, Murdoch, Brooks, shown in a church service in 2005. Photo by Graeme Robertson/Getty

 

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June 4, 2012 · 9:05 am

News about the News

By Christopher B. Daly

As so often happens, the Monday business section of the New York Times delivers an array of stories about journalism and media worth reading. (Why doesn’t the paper have a “media” tab on its homepage?)

1. David Carr reports on talks between CNN, the ratings-challenged cable news pioneer, and Anthony Bourdain, the macho chef/traveler of Travel Channel fame. CNN execs are trying to address a problem I discuss in my new book (Covering America), which is much easier to formulate than to solve: what can a news-oriented cable channel do to fill all those hours when all hell is not breaking loose?

Bourdain could be part of the answer.

What else might help CNN? You comment; you decide!

 

2. Following up on the recent cutback in printing by the New Orleans Times-Picayune, comes a look at the broader trend, including some pros and cons.

3. From London, word that Rupert Murdoch’s troubles extend into an area he really cares about: the circulation figures of his newspapers.

4. From Shantou, a piece about how tricky it can be for Westerners to teach journalism to Chinese students in China. As a Westerner who teaches journalism to Chinese students in Boston, I can certainly sympathize. This piece also includes a bonus: an answer to the question of what Peter Arnett has been up to since he was forced out of CNN (in a failed attempt to pump up CNN’s prime-time audience ratings — see item #1 above).

So, there you go. (Just a typical Monday at the Times: four original, reported stories from across the globe that other people will be talking about for a week. )

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