quote:

Rupert Murdoch's planned takeover of the Wall Street Journal

quote:

ORIGINAL: michaelOfGeorgia

quote:

Rupert Murdoch's planned takeover of the Wall Street Journal

forgive me for this post, but...who cares?

quote:

I share your concern. I do, I really do. But NorthernGent has already done a pretty good job of showing how that moment has come and gone - it's a done deal.

Of interest to me was the fact that NorthernGent placed that moment at some 25 years ago. Yet the term "yellow journalism" goes back at least as far as a hundred years ago when Pulitzer and Hearst were going at it. This style of journalism is one of the most telling subtexts in the classic film "Citizen Kane." Kane wields political power because he first controls the means of directly influencing how the people think and feel about all kinds of issues; Kane tells them what to think and feel via his newspapers!

So, it's not that I don't care - I do. But, 'twas always thus...

quote:

 

NEW YORK - Wall Street became increasingly skittish about Rupert Murdoch’s prospects for clinching a deal to buy Dow Jones & Co., sending the stock of The Wall Street Journal publisher down more than 5 percent Monday as a deadline arrived for the Journal’s controlling shareholders to make a decision.



Members of the Bancroft family, which has controlled Dow Jones for a century, had a 5 p.m. deadline Monday to tell the family’s lead trustee how they would vote on Murdoch’s $5 billion offer to buy the company. A Bancroft family spokesman declined to comment on the vote’s outcome late Monday.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Lordandmaster

Have any of you been following the Wall Street Journal saga?  There's a very good article about it by Ken Auletta:

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/07/02/070702fa_fact_auletta

One aspect of this whole fiasco that I really enjoy is watching those sanctimonious assholes at the Journal squirm.  The free market is exactly what they've been preaching for decades, and now when it comes back to bite them in the ass, in the form of a multi-billionaire who wants to buy their company and change how they themselves do business, they start squealing like schoolboys.  The free market works for everyone else but not for them?  Fucking hypocrites.

One aspect of the fiasco that I DON'T enjoy, however, is the recognition that ordinary people no longer have easy access to unbiased news.  In the Auletta article, Murdoch freely admits to tilting the news, using his media outlets to settle personal scores, and advocating political agendas that advance his business interests.  Those of us who take the time to find independent reports of current events aren't fooled by any of this bullshit, but most people have neither the time nor the inclination to do so.  What exactly are we as a society going to do about this?  Are we just going to sit back and let corporations tranform the news into insidious propaganda?  We object mightily when governments do it, but why are we so reluctant to object when it's a private corporation?