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You are here: Home / Economics / C.R.E.A.M. / “A Man-Statue Made of Overripe Ham”

“A Man-Statue Made of Overripe Ham”

by Anne Laurie|  August 2, 20113:33 am| 34 Comments

This post is in: C.R.E.A.M., Assholes, Our Failed Media Experiment

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Thus is Rupert Murdoch described by a Guardian commentor to Keith Olbermann’s victory jig post, “How I was hired – and fired – by Rupert Murdoch“. The Dirty Digger seems to have lived by the old Sicilian maxim that it is better to be feared than loved, but not even a Sicilian can outlast a medianista when it comes to cherishing every detail of a long-nursed grudge.

So Frank Rich, another ex-Murdoch-employee, has five pages of high-minded vituperation in New York Magazine on “How Murdoch Hacked America, Too“:

… The real transgressions of the Murdoch empire are not its outré partisanship, its tabloid sleaze, its Washington lobbying, or even what liberals most love to hate, the bogus “fair and balanced” propaganda masquerading as journalism at Fox News. In fact, these misdemeanors are red herrings—distractions from the real News Corp. corruption that now threatens to bring down its management and radically reconfigure and reduce its international corporate footprint. The bigger story is this: An otherwise archetypal media colossus, with apolitical TV shows (American Idol), movies (Avatar), and cable channels (FX) like any other, is controlled by a family (and its tight coterie of made men and women, exemplified by the recently departed Rebekah Brooks) that countenances the intimidation and silencing of politicians, regulators, competitors, journalists, and even ordinary citizens to maximize its profits and power and to punish perceived corporate, political, and personal enemies. And, as we now know conclusively, some of this behavior has broken the law. […] __
It’s not just because Roger Ailes once worked for Richard Nixon that Watergate analogies abounded as News of the World and then the key Murdoch executives Rebekah Brooks and Leslie Hinton were abruptly sacrificed in the family’s efforts to save Rupert and James. Carl Bernstein, more attuned to those echoes than anyone, got it exactly right when he wrote in ­Newsweek that “too many of us have winked in amusement at the salaciousness without considering the larger corruption of journalism and politics promulgated by Murdoch Culture on both sides of the Atlantic.” And not only “liberal” journalists feel this way. Conrad Black, the right-wing Canadian media mogul who has lately been in prison for fraud, recently described Murdoch in the Financial Times as not merely a “tabloid sensationalist” but “a malicious mythmaker, an assassin of the dignity of others and of revered institutions, all in the guise of anti-elitism.” Or as the former Bush speechwriter David Frum said more than a year ago, “Republicans originally thought that Fox worked for us, and now we’re discovering we work for Fox.”
__
If Murdoch is to be undone in America, as in England, it won’t be politicians who take the lead. It will take aggressive journalism, law enforcement, and civil actions to force jettisoned News Corp. executives to sing. The latest so-called independent “management-and-standards committee” commissioned by Murdoch to conduct an internal investigation is particularly laughable, even by his standards. Its scope is limited to News Corp. behavior in England. Its chairman, Tony Grabiner, a London commercial lawyer, reports to Joel Klein, who in turn reports to Viet Dinh, a former Bush-­administration lawyer who, in what one hopes is an unintended sick joke, is best known for embracing government phone hacking in his role as principal author of the Patriot Act. Both Klein and Dinh are on the News Corp. board. Klein’s News Corp. compensation this year is expected to be in the neighborhood of $4.5 million.


So far, the only major American news organization to follow the lead of the Guardian in London and devote serious resources to reporting on this scandal is the Times. (The Washington Post, once of Watergate fame, is now edited by Marcus ­Brauchli, who received a reported $6.4 million News Corp. severance check when he left as editor of The Wall Street Journal in 2008, four months after the Murdoch takeover.) When the Times published its first major examination of News of the World’s hacking as a magazine cover story last fall, News Corp. shills protested that it was motivated by rivalry with the Journal…

Rich’s piece is sidebarred with an “incomplete” list of “Pols on the News Corp Payroll“, including some embarrassingly laudatory pro-Murdoch statements by those same public servants, and a brief Aaron Sorkin satire.

Conrad Black’s smarmy stiletto job in the Financial Times was really far nastier than Rich’s excerpt: “Although his personality is generally quite agreeable, Mr Murdoch has no loyalty to anyone or anything except his company. He has difficulty keeping friendships; rarely keeps his word for long; is an exploiter of the discomfort of others; and has betrayed every political leader who ever helped him in any country, except Ronald Reagan and perhaps Tony Blair. All his instincts are downmarket… He masquerades as a pillar of contemporary, enlightened populism in Britain and sensible conservatism in the US, though he has been assiduously kissing the undercarriage of the rulers of Beijing for years… “

Even Michael Wolff, whose “unprecedented access to Rupert Murdoch for an authorised, candid biography… so irked the media mogul that Wolff found his own love life exposed in Murdoch’s New York Post” can’t resist telling the London Evening Standard that he

… cannot suppress gleeful astonishment at the extraordinary dramas that have engulfed Murdoch, his family and his company, News Corporation, since the phone-hacking scandal broke a month ago… He is convinced Murdoch, 80, will be forced to step down from both his roles as chairman and chief executive. “Rupert has to leave any kind of management position in this company. This man is out of a job,” he says.

Of course, it’s Wolff’s current media home, Adweek, that’s just announced “Rupert’s Worst Nightmare Come True“:

Nick Davies, the tenacious investigative reporter for the Guardian who has broken much of the Hackinggate story, comes to the U.S. in search of News Corp. crimes and coverup…
__
Davies arrives in New York today. He’ll be there until Friday, and then he’s going to Los Angeles in pursuit of hacking-type practices that might have been carried out on U.S. soil by Murdoch’s U.S. reporters, by his U.K. reporters working in the U.S., or by private detectives hired by News Corp.
__
If such crimes were committed here, that could mean real trouble for News Corp.—the legal system here is more tenacious and the remedies more draconian than in the U.K.

And Vanity Fair has just announced the publication of its second e-book, “The Master Mogul of Fleet Street”. Its first was an elaborate eulogy for the late Elizabeth Taylor.

Do I hear a faint echo of the “I’m not dead yet!” sketch from Monty Python & the Holy Grail, spoken with just the trace of an Australian accent?

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Reader Interactions

34Comments

  1. 1.

    Erin

    August 2, 2011 at 4:01 am

    Remember when Tory MP Louise Mensch had the gall to remark to Piers Morgan that hacking went on under his tenure at NOTW, live on CNN?

    Well Murdoch’s reporters have been unleashed on her, bullying her and publishing personal things and embarrassing sexual rumors about her past.

    Via Sully:

    Here’s a sharp insight into the viciousness and bullying nature of Britain’s tabloid press. The Tory MP has challenged News Corp for phone-hacking and implicated Piers Morgan of CNN under parliamentary privilege. This is what she got for doing so:

    Dear Mrs Mensch

    We are informing you that we have come into possession of the following information, about yourself, and would like to ask you for any comments, before we publish this information.

    1. Whilst working at EMI, in the 1990s, you took drugs with Nigel Kennedy at Ronnie Scott’s in Birmingham, including dancing on a dance floor, whilst drunk, with Mr Kennedy, in front of journalists. Photos of this exist.

    2. Whilst working at EMI, in the 1990s, you wrote a novel, of a sexual nature, on your work computer, during working hours, and that it was this that caused EMI to terminate your employment. Correspondence of this exists.

    3. The resultant novel included derogatory references to a driver called Roger, a character you based on Roger Lewis, your then line manager, Managing Director at EMI, who is now Group Chief Executive of Welsh Rugby Union.

    We look forward to hearing from you.

    With thanks

    David Jones Investigative Journalists

    She fights back the good old-fashioned way: by conceding most of what these bullies were trying to silence her with.

    http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2011/07/payback-for-louise-mensch.html

  2. 2.

    Dennis SGMM

    August 2, 2011 at 4:18 am

    Do I hear a faint echo of the “I’m not dead yet!” sketch from Monty Python & the Holy Grail, spoken with just the trace of an Australian accent?

    Either that or the scene where Terminator’s nemesis pulls itself back together in the second movie.

    The Fox news-Conservative nexus bears some looking into. So does the emmessemm’s ongoing “both sides do it,” meme. I think that the second, bolstered by the fact that the emmessemm would have to admit complicity, laziness, and whoring after a quick dollar back to the Reagan years precludes any sort of shake up.

    I wish Nick Davies all of the luck in the world.

  3. 3.

    Dennis SGMM

    August 2, 2011 at 4:26 am

    @Erin:
    They attacked Mensch who seems to be a mensch?

  4. 4.

    Amir_Khalid

    August 2, 2011 at 4:28 am

    @Erin:
    Alas, and also alackaday: the crappy blog server at the Daily Beast times out on me more often than not, so I’m unable to follow your link. But that excerpt with the letter to Mensch — if that isn’t a straight-up hatchet job, I don’t know what is.

  5. 5.

    Sharl

    August 2, 2011 at 5:23 am

    Olbermann is a blowhard, but I like him just the same – the fact that his mere presence in the media drives wingnuts into a frothing rage provides a certain satisfaction. And I strongly suspect that all the moderator-removed comments in that CiF post are a manifestation of that wingnut rage.
    Ehhhxcellent{/Montgomery Burns}

  6. 6.

    JGabriel

    August 2, 2011 at 6:27 am

    @Erin:

    Remember when Tory MP Louise Mensch had the gall to remark to Piers Morgan that hacking went on under his tenure at NOTW, live on CNN? Well Murdoch’s reporters have been unleashed on her, bullying her and publishing personal things and embarrassing sexual rumors about her past.

    Ironically, I think Mensch was trying to help Murdoch & Brooks by deflecting responsibility for News International’s crimes to the ‘culture of Fleet Street’. Mensch is a Tory, and she was hardly their toughest questioner or most vociferous critic.

    Although some of the stuff these “Investigative Journalists” accuse her of is pretty ridiculous:

    … dancing on a dance floor, whilst drunk, with Mr Kennedy, in front of journalists …

    I mean, what’s the crime here? Dancing while drunk or dancing in front of journalists? What’s wrong with dancing on the dance floor? Is it more acceptable in Britain to dance upon the tables instead?

    Seriously, if that’s the worst they’ve got on Mensch — that she had fun, wrote her book on company time, and insulted an asshole — then I don’t think she really has all that much to be worried about.

    Frankly, I think being a Tory is a worse sin than anything David Jones Investigative Journalists is accusing her of. And if Mensch isn’t embarrassed by being Tory, then it’s hard to see how any of the other stuff is going to be a problem for her.

    .

  7. 7.

    bjacques

    August 2, 2011 at 6:45 am

    @JGabriel:

    In other words, publish and be damned! Good for her.

  8. 8.

    bob h

    August 2, 2011 at 6:52 am

    And let us not forget the role Fox/Murdoch has played in inflicting the Tea Party on us with the debt limit horrors in mind.

  9. 9.

    Southern Beale

    August 2, 2011 at 7:31 am

    Carl Bernstein, more attuned to those echoes than anyone, got it exactly right when he wrote in Newsweek that “too many of us have winked in amusement at the salaciousness without considering the larger corruption of journalism and politics promulgated by Murdoch Culture on both sides of the Atlantic.”

    Oh, fuck me. This is just warmed over “nobody could have anticipated” crap. This is post-Iraq War, “we should have done our jobs a little better” bullshit. How many times do we have to hear this from the news media?

    I seem to recall a bunch of foul-mouthed bloggers asking the “legitimate” news media why they defended Fox News, why did they not rebel when Fox got the cushy seat at the White House press room, why after Fox’s obvious and repeated sins against the Fourth Estate they didn’t close ranks and treat the Murdoch “news” folks like the tabloid sleaze they were. No one listened.

    WTF was it, the access? Were they blinded by the fact that Fox News people got to go to picnics in Crawford, Texas or something? I don’t get it.

    No, I don’t buy this Sunday morning hangover bullshit. You knew, Carl. We all told you. The “liberal media” has been lying to itself for years about this stuff. I don’t feel sorry for you.

  10. 10.

    wrb

    August 2, 2011 at 7:34 am

    It would be good to see Rupie go but I have trouble seeing how his monsters can be tamed other than by somehow destroying them. Given their profitability and the hate addicts he’s created no new manager is going to clean them up.

  11. 11.

    Sharl

    August 2, 2011 at 7:45 am

    @Southern Beale:
    Ayup. For example, from 2009: Jake Tapper Defends Fox News (against White House claims that it is not really a news org).

  12. 12.

    Southern Beale

    August 2, 2011 at 8:10 am

    @Sharl:

    Damn I forgot about that. Well who’s the asshole now?

    I smell another blog post! Media malfeasance of the highest order. Call a blogger ethics panel!

  13. 13.

    someofparts

    August 2, 2011 at 8:29 am

    Friends come and go but enemies accumulate.

  14. 14.

    Emma

    August 2, 2011 at 8:54 am

    Southern Beale: Ditto. Ditto. Ditto.

  15. 15.

    Pongo

    August 2, 2011 at 9:01 am

    Having a little trouble understanding the glee at the potential for Rupert’s demise. There is something distinctly anti-climactic in the departure of a guy who was eligible for retirement more than a decade ago and who fully enjoyed his half century of screwing up the world for everyone else already. He got everything he wanted. Now he gets to quit working and enjoy the spoils of his own personal war against standards, ethics and truth. He perverted the course of democracy in at least two major superpowers and was continuously rewarded for it. After all the political, cultural and economic damage he has done, to watch him be punished by being forced to take his Depends and go home hardly feels like justice.

  16. 16.

    Anya

    August 2, 2011 at 9:03 am

    @Amir_Khalid: You didn’t miss anything. That’s the whole post, including the last sentence abour her fighting the good old-fashioned way.

  17. 17.

    dave

    August 2, 2011 at 9:28 am

    I love the fact that Olbermann’s beef with Murdoch is that Murdock fired Olbermann despite the fact that Olbermann sought and received permission to do the story from Murdoch’s PR guy.

    Shorter Olbermann: “Despite acting as a hack and propagandist for Mr. Murdoch, I was fired because I failed to put my request for permission to conduct basic journalistic functions through the appropriate bureaucratic channels at NewsCorp.”

  18. 18.

    Gregory

    August 2, 2011 at 9:44 am

    If Murdoch is to be undone in America, as in England, it won’t be politicians who take the lead. It will take aggressive journalism

    Oh, well. So much for that idea.

  19. 19.

    BruinKid

    August 2, 2011 at 9:55 am

    @JGabriel: Heh, at the closing night party of Netroots Nation in Minneapolis this year, I took a photo of a member of Congress dancing on the stage. However, it seems my camera has a built-in Breitbart filter, so as not to give him any incriminating evidence. Amazingly enough, there’s a white cloud of smoke in the photo that completely obscures who the member of Congress is, but nothing else in the photo. LOL.

  20. 20.

    BruinKid

    August 2, 2011 at 9:56 am

    @dave: I’m sorry, but how was Olbermann a propagandist for Murdoch while working at Fox Sports?

  21. 21.

    Sebastian

    August 2, 2011 at 10:18 am

    Let’s not forget that Murdoch gave us W by calling Florida

  22. 22.

    Steve M.

    August 2, 2011 at 10:26 am

    the legal system here is more tenacious

    BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

    Stop, you’re killing me.

  23. 23.

    burnspbesq

    August 2, 2011 at 10:27 am

    @Sebastian:

    Say what now?

    Sorry to reopen old wounds, but Ralph Nader’s ego gave us W. Remember the CNN exit polling?

  24. 24.

    scav

    August 2, 2011 at 11:08 am

    To a degree, Herr Overripe Omerta is merely where the most easily digestible and packagable story is at the moment. The media got an easy buffet of fast-breaking news that they didn’t have to do shit to before pushing online for a bit only that’s slowed to a (temporary, I’m hoping) trickle. So now they move to the next lowest-hanging fruit, talking among themselves and publishing that, helped by the big easy recognizable punching bag face of Mr. M. Bastard seriously needs punching (while not really being the ultimate real target) but in the present case he’s just the easy baited hook. The mills of god are still grinding with that newest arrest (Stuart Kuttner, another NotW editor honcho) and the dodgy looking e-mail deletions. Looks like October might turn out to be a very interesting month if the schedule holds. I’m also wondering what the hell was in that mail if the more desirable outcome is risking looking like an inept attempt at a coverup? (Bit tinfoil there, I admit it.)

    And isn’t the Mensch thing an absolute chick-lit hoot? Apt.

  25. 25.

    scav

    August 2, 2011 at 11:21 am

    @JGabriel: Also, in fairness, I don’t think this is the select committee to take out Rupe M and kin. The activities of all the media is its baliwick. She wasn’t the brightest questioner but she was far from the worst and she certainly didn’t play the “oh let’s be cuddly and sweet to the poor old pied man card” after the intermission. There do seem to be some odd whiffs surrounding Piers Morgan despite Mensch’s apparent climbdown.

  26. 26.

    Dollared

    August 2, 2011 at 11:28 am

    @burnspbesq: For all of you who would like to start this fight over: If you’re looking for single causal factors Bill Clinton’s lack of self control gave us Bush. Period.

  27. 27.

    Dollared

    August 2, 2011 at 11:31 am

    @Southern Beale: This. The lack of the profession’s ability to police itself is nothing short of incredible.

    Astrologers have higher professional standards than journalists, in practice.

  28. 28.

    scav

    August 2, 2011 at 12:10 pm

    @Dollared: As though Bill was unique is his lacking a functional zipper that stayed up. Easy game of infinite regress here.

    ETA: cause who fanned the flames of oh a polito’s zipper is supposed to stay up unlike every other man’s on the freaking planet? um, press.

  29. 29.

    Nutella

    August 2, 2011 at 12:40 pm

    @scav:

    Mensch was making the point that NotW wasn’t any different from all the other papers so they shouldn’t be singled out. Her evidence for the others hacking was sloppy and she had to back off. She was not coming out against phone hacking, though, she as trying to shrug it off as no big deal.

  30. 30.

    scav

    August 2, 2011 at 12:58 pm

    @Nutella: Didn’t say she was good at it, but I think your reading of it as absolving everyone is only one possible interpretation.

  31. 31.

    scav

    August 2, 2011 at 1:07 pm

    @scav: For all I know or care she’s a attention-seeking minor politico seeking some limelight: I’m just not buying the simplistic equations of Tory=Pro-Murdoch and Arguing-Everyone-Does-It=Absolution&Benediction.

  32. 32.

    SRW1

    August 2, 2011 at 2:57 pm

    That portrait of Rupert looks awfully …, Broderesque.

  33. 33.

    Draylon Hogg

    August 2, 2011 at 3:05 pm

    @Dollared

    Just think. If Kennedy wasn’t hanging out of Marilyn with a syringe of weapons grade speed hanging out of his arse Vietnam would never have happened.

  34. 34.

    AAA Bonds

    August 2, 2011 at 7:19 pm

    I am solely responsible for the 2000 election

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