Guardian UK - "Rupert Murdoch accused of using Wall Street Journal to 'play politics'"

[TomCADem]

I am just shocked and amazed. :sarcasm:

Rupert Murdoch, owner of News Corp and Fox News, using a media property to advance his right wing ideology? Imagine that!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/dec/14/rupert-murdoch-wall-street-journal

When Rupert Murdoch bought the Wall Street Journal two years ago, Manhattan's media observers predicted it wouldn't be long before battle lines were drawn between the two US newspaper titans.

And today the antagonism that has been simmering between the Journal and its liberal rival, the New York Times, boiled over, with editors of the esteemed organs trading a series of barbed comments.

Displaying a combative style more often associated with Fleet Street than the North American market, the Journal's editor-in-chief, Robert Thomson launched a vigorous defence of his title in response to a New York Times column that alleged the Journal was "tilting rightwards". Murdoch, it added, was now using the Journal to "play politics".

In a statement, Thomson said: "The news column by a Mr David Carr is yet more evidence that the New York Times is uncomfortable about the rise of an increasingly successful rival while its own circulation and credibility are in retreat."

He went on to accuse the Times of basing the article on quotes from ex-employees and using "a succession of anonymous quotes and unsubstantiated assertions".

[old mark]

1. Imagine THAT!!!! Probably not truthful on Fox News, either......nt

[Zoeisright]

2. Gee, ya think??

NO, couldn't be.

[charlie]

3. Imagine that

There used to be somewhat of a firewall between its news coverage and the nutters on the opinion page. I hope he loses his ass with his Fair and Balanced tabloidization of the Journal.

...Mr. Baker, a neoconservative columnist of acute political views, has been especially active in managing coverage in Washington, creating significant grumbling, if not resistance, from the staff there. Reporters say the coverage of the Obama administration is reflexively critical, the health care debate is generally framed in terms of costs rather than benefits — “health care reform” is a generally forbidden phrase — and global warming skeptics have gotten a steady ride. (Of course, objectivity is in the eyes of the reader.)

The pro-business, antigovernment shift in the news pages has broken into plain view in the last year. On Aug. 12, a fairly straight down the middle front page article on President Obama’s management style ended up with the provocative headline, “A President as Micromanager: How Much Detail Is Enough?” The original article included a contrast between President Jimmy Carter’s tendency to go deep in the weeds of every issue with President George W. Bush’s predilection for minimal involvement, according to someone who saw the draft. By the time the article ran, it included only the swipe at Mr. Carter.

On Aug. 27, a fairly straightforward obituary about Ted Kennedy for the Web site was subjected to a little political re-education on the way to the front page. A new paragraph was added quoting Rush Limbaugh deriding what he called all of the “slobbering media coverage,” and he also accused the recently deceased senator of being the kind of politician who “uses the government to take money from people who work and gives it to people who don’t work.”

On Oct. 31, an article on the front of the B section about estate taxes at the state level used the phrase “death tax” six times, but there were no quotation marks around it. A month later, the newspaper’s Style & Substance blog suggested that the adoption of such a loaded political term was probably not a good idea: “Because opponents of estate taxes have long referred to them as death taxes, the term should be avoided in news stories.”...

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/14/business/media/14carr.html

[Eric Condon]

4. Under GD on the front page, this link just said "Guardian UK - Rupert Murdoch accused..."

I honestly kind of expected to open the link and it say something like "of rape" or "of child molestation" or something.

[Eric Condon]

5. Under GD on the front page, this link just said "Guardian UK - Rupert Murdoch accused..."

I honestly kind of expected to open the link and it say something like "of rape" or "of child molestation" or something.

[snot]

6. good gosh. Is anyone pointing out that the NYT

has itself been tilting rightwards for years if not decades?