NewsTrust - Media Ownership - Most Recent Stories: Opinion (Mainstream)

Phone hacking row shows News Corp is no ordinary news company

Wed, 20 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By Jay Rosen - Jul. 20 (Opinion) - Rupert Murdoch's news organisations are not in the news business. What they crave is influence Watching the phone hacking crisis crack wide open over the last few weeks has left me puzzled about its ultimate causes: what is it about News Corp that has produced these events? I don't think we understand very much about this. We can say things like, "Ultimate responsibility goes to the man at the top," meaning Rupert Murdoch, chairman and CEO. And that sounds right, but it still doesn't explain how any of it happened. "The key people are criminals, liars, or willfully blind..." We could say that, but then we would have to explain how so many of them ended up at one company. Puzzles like these have led many people to the conclusion that there's a culture inside News Corp, that is in some way responsible, and I basically agree with that. Mark Lewis, lawyer for the family of Milly Dowler, said after Rebekah Brooks resigned: "This is not just about one individual but about the culture of an ...

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Robert Fisk: Why I had to leave The Times

Sat, 16 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0700

The Independent - By Robert Fisk - Jul. 16 (Opinion) - These past two weeks, I have been thinking of what it was like to work for Murdoch, what was wrong about it, about the use of power by proxy. For Murdoch could never be blamed. Murdoch was more caliph than ever, no more responsible for an editorial or a "news" story than a president of Syria is for a massacre – the latter would be carried out on the orders of governors who could always be tried or sacked or sent off as adviser to a prime minister – and the leader would invariably anoint his son as his successor. Think of Hafez and Bashar Assad or Hosni and Gamal Mubarak or Rupert and James. In the Middle East, Arab journalists knew what their masters wanted, and helped to create a journalistic desert without the water of freedom, an utterly skewed version of reality. So, too, within the Murdoch empire.

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Tabloid's actions bring shame on Murdoch's empire

Mon, 11 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Seattle Times - Jul. 11 (Editorial) - SHAME on Rupert Murdoch, News Corp., News International, the new poster children for guerrilla tactics of the tabloid news business and a hideous lack of ethical and moral business values.

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Murdoch's malign influence must die with the News of the World

Sun, 10 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - Jul. 10 (Editorial) - The scandal over phone hacking has exposed a rotten empire and the urgent need for stronger press regulation Suddenly, Rupert Murdoch seems much less a global mogul, much more a diminished man of glass. He flies into London this weekend from Sun Valley, Idaho, in time for the last rites of the most successful Sunday newspaper in Britain, the News of the World . One hundred and sixty-eight years ago, it pledged: "Our motto is the truth, our practice is fearless advocacy of the truth." After today, the tabloid will appear no more, felled not by one royal rogue reporter but by the arrogance, ambition and apparent tolerance of systemic criminal behaviour by members of the senior News International management. The loss of a newspaper, especially one with a proud history of award-winning investigative journalism, is a cause for sadness. The News of the World was the biggest-selling Sunday tabloid in the English-speaking world. The death of a paper in such rude health is unprecedented and ...

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Learning to Love the (Shallow, Divisive, Unreliable) New Media

Wed, 16 Mar 2011 10:25:51 -0700

Atlantic Monthly - By James Fallows - Mar. 16 (Opinion) - Consumer-obsessed, sensationalist, and passionate about their work, digital upstarts are undermining the old media—and they may also be pointing the way to a brighter future.

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SEO Speedwagon

Mon, 07 Feb 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Slate - By Jack Shafer - Feb. 07 (Opinion) - Back in 2005, no self-respecting journalist would ever sink so low to chum the waters with such foul SEO bait. But thanks to Huffington, all self-respecting journalists—especially those who fear for their jobs—have abandoned those anxieties and are happy to chase Arianna's SEO Speedwagon wherever it may go.

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WikiLeaks cables are dispatches from a beleaguered America in imperial retreat

Sat, 04 Dec 2010 00:00:00 -0800

The Guardian - By Neal Ascherson - Dec. 04 (Opinion) - There's more to the WikiLeaks dispatches than leaks. Look behind them, at the writers, and you see the loyal rearguard of America: an imperial power in retreat.

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Julian Assange answers your questions

Fri, 03 Dec 2010 00:00:00 -0800

The Guardian - By Julian Assange - Dec. 03 (Interview) - The founder of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, answers readers' questions about the release of more than 250,000 US diplomatic cables.

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What do we want copyright to do?

Tue, 23 Nov 2010 00:00:00 -0800

The Guardian - By Cory Doctorow - Nov. 23 (Opinion) - A recurring question in discussions of digital copyright is how creators and their investors (that is, labels, movie studios, publishers, etc) will earn a living in the digital era. But though I've had that question posed to me thousands of times, no one has ever said which creators and which investors are to earn a living, and what constitutes "a living".

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Juan Williams: "I was fired for telling the truth."

Thu, 21 Oct 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Fox News - By Juan Williams - Oct. 21 (Opinion) - Yesterday NPR fired me for telling the truth. The truth is that I worry when I am getting on an airplane and see people dressed in garb that identifies them first and foremost as Muslims.

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Fear and Favor

Sun, 03 Oct 2010 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Paul Krugman - Oct. 03 (Opinion) - As Politico recently pointed out, every major contender for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination who isn’t currently holding office and isn’t named Mitt Romney is now a paid contributor to Fox News. Now, media moguls have often promoted the careers and campaigns of politicians they believe will serve their interests. But directly cutting checks to political favorites takes it to a whole new level of blatancy.

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Is China's Xinhua the Future of Journalism?

Sat, 04 Sep 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Newsweek - By Isaac Stone Fish,Tony Dokoupil - Sep. 04 (Editorial) - For decades Xinhua has been an unavoidable presence in China. It has a monopoly on official news and the regulatory power to complicate life for other media outfits. But as China has grown in wealth and international stature, Beijing has tired of feeling overlooked or maligned by the Western press.

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Argentine president moves to control newsprint

Wed, 25 Aug 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Michael Warren - Aug. 25 () - Fernandez said leading newspapers, Clarin and La Nacion, used the newsprint company, Papel Prensa SA, to impose media monopolies on Argentina, stifling other viewpoints by refusing to sell paper at fair prices to competitors.

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How to Save the News

Tue, 11 May 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Atlantic Monthly - By James Fallows - May. 11 (Opinion) - Plummeting newspaper circulation, disappearing classified ads, “unbundling” of content—the list of what’s killing journalism is long. But high on that list, many would say, is Google, the biggest unbundler of them all. Now, having helped break the news business, the company wants to fix it—for commercial as well as civic reasons: if news organizations stop producing great journalism, says one Google executive, the search engine will no longer have interesting content to link to. So some of the smartest minds at the company are thinking about this, and working with publishers, and peering ahead to see what the future of journalism looks like. Guess what? It’s bright.

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Fatal contest should be end of KDND

Sat, 17 Apr 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Sacramento Bee - By Sue Wilson - Apr. 17 (Opinion) - Last week, Entercom Communications' 107.9 The End rode in like a white knight to rescue El Camino High School's radio station after the Federal Communications Commission fined KYDS three-quarters of its annual budget. Why? Because the students had filed for their station's license renewal 64 days late. The End paid the kids' $1,500 fine and received grateful applause from the community. But people need to remember that 107.9 The End is the same radio station that a jury found liable for the 2007 water drinking contest death of a 28-year-old married mother of three, Jennifer Strange. Last October, a diverse jury awarded Strange's family $16 million to compensate them for her loss.

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Jon Stewart Catches Sean Hannity Falsifying Footage To Make GOP Protest Appear Bigger

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Daily Show - By Jon Stewart - Nov. 11 (Comedy News) - Sean Hannity and his team did more than cover the event. They not only inflated the number in attendance with their words, but actually used footage from a heavily-attended protest this summer to make this health care rally appear more popular. Hannity even pointed out that this was a huge crowd for a Thursday, when the protest footage they used was from a Saturday.

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How much editorial control do newspaper proprietors really exert?

Mon, 27 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By Roy Greenlade - Jul. 27 (Editorial) - The Desmond libel trial highlighted the tricky relationship between a newspaper owner and its editor. But how much editorial control do proprietors really exert? Roy Greenslade, who worked under Robert Maxwell, reports

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Recession could fuel new era of local newspaper ownership

Fri, 12 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Seattle Times - By Ryan Blethen - Jun. 12 (Opinion) - For nearly 40 years, newspapers have been acquired by publicly traded corporations or ever-expanding privately held, but highly leveraged, companies. The inexorable, greed-fueled feast might finally be coming to an end. An industry-transforming recession has exposed the decay of decades of corporate and profit-driven newspaper ownership. In the detritus comes real opportunity. Some of the remaining Bigs are going to have no choice but to get out of the newspaper business or shed a number of what corporate types call "properties." This jettisoning of newspapers and the near valueless Wall Street assessments could give rise to an era of independent and local ownership. One of the many intriguing ideas that could again place newspapers in the hands of local ownership is a new take on a tested business model: low-profit, limited-liability corporations. The new incarnation is called an L3C.

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Mourning a Scourge of the Comfortable

Sun, 07 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Dana Milbank - Jun. 07 (Comment) - When an investigative reporter passes on it’s not just the family that suffers.

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Trusted voice of newspapers needed

Thu, 19 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Seattle Post Intelligencer - By Eric Bowman - Feb. 19 (Opinion) - Our institutions have failed us. Not just with faulty presidential intelligence reports, companies knowingly selling tainted products and billion-dollar Ponzi schemes. But with the contraction of our newspaper industry at a critical juncture in American history. The foundation of our democracy rests on free access to accurate information and the factual events of our world.

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Financial collapse threatens real journalism

Sun, 15 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Seattle Post Intelligencer - By David Horsey - Feb. 15 (Opinion) - Arguably, newspapers are as vital to American democracy as banks are to the American financial system. Yet the implosion of the news business is the most underreported story amid the great flood of bad economic news.

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News You Can Endow

Wed, 28 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - By David Swensen, Michael Schmidt - Jan. 28 (Opinion) - Today, we are dangerously close to having a government without newspapers. American newspapers shoulder the burden of considerable indebtedness with little cash on hand, as their profit margins have diminished or disappeared. Readers turn increasingly to the Internet for information — even though the Internet has the potential to be, in the words of the chief executive of Google, Eric Schmidt, “a cesspool” of false information. If Jefferson was right that a well-informed citizenry is the foundation of our democracy, then newspapers must be saved. Although the problems that the newspaper industry faces are well known, no one has offered a satisfactory solution. But there is an option that might not only save newspapers but also make them stronger: Turn them into nonprofit, endowed institutions — like colleges and universities. Endowments would enhance newspapers’ autonomy while shielding them from the economic forces that are now tearing them down. In the standard business model, newspapers rely on revenues from circulation and advertising to pay for news coverage and generate healthy profits. In the past decade, however, as Americans embraced the Internet, newspaper circulation has declined every year. Advertising revenues, which are tied to circulation levels, fell even faster. Classified ads, in particular, suffered as the Web offered cheaper, easier and more effective alternatives.

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Washingtonpost.com Executive Editor Steps Down

Mon, 22 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Washington Post - By Zachary A. Goldfarb - Dec. 22 (Editorial) - Jim Brady to Continue in Role Through January

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Stoking Fear Everywhere You Look

Mon, 08 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - By David Carr - Dec. 08 (Comment) - Every modern recession includes a media séance about how horrible things are and how much worse they will be, but there have never been so many ways for the fear to leak in. The same digital dynamics that drove the irrational exuberance — and marketed the loans to help it happen — are now driving the downside in unprecedented ways.

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Ban media cross-ownership

Sat, 16 Aug 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Seattle Times - Aug. 16 (Editorial) - The U.S. House of Representatives has a chance to do what it would not in 2003: take a stand against media consolidation, which is one of the greatest threats to democracy. The resolution was introduced by Reps. Jay Inslee, D-Bainbridge Island, and Dave Reichert, R-Auburn. The resolution currently has 45 sponsors, of which Reichert is the only Republican.

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