A 24/7 Spotlight on Murdoch - Katrina vanden Heuvel

[Swede]

Despite the fact that News Corp. is a Delaware-registered corporation, the FCC has tried to pretend that Rupert Murdoch is just a problem for the Brits to contend with. But in consolidating his US media holdings Murdoch is famed for cutting corners and using money and power to gain regulatory favors. As early as 1995, The Nation’s Robert Sherrill wrote, “FCC Commissioners do not like to displease Murdoch. They have done a number of extraordinary favors for him in the past.” Over the past decade, as media reform groups battled to prevent FCC and Congressional moves to undermine controls on media consolidation, Murdoch and his lobbyists have been a constant, well-funded presence—pushing to rewrite media ownership rules so that one corporation, and one man, accumulated extraordinary power.

This week, New York Times reporter David Carr picked up on the theme of extraordinary favors, writing of allegations in 2003 against News Corporation subsidiary, News America, by Floorgraphics—a small New Jersey–based company and a competitor. Floorgraphics accused News America CEO Paul Carlucci—now the publisher of the News Corp.-owned New York Post—of threatening to “destroy” it before someone at News America hacked into Floorgraphics’ computer network. An FBI agent who examined the evidence described it as an “excellent paper trail.”

http://www.thenation.com/blog/162701/247-spotlight-murdoch