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A Bad Week For Rupert Murdoch

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We all know how this awful week began.  For Rupert Murdoch, one of his prized investments — Sarah Palin — had become the subject of heated debate.  Murdoch’s News Corp publishes her ghost-written books and Palin works for News Corp’s Fox News as a contributor.  While a team of doctors in Tucson heroically scrambled to save the life of Representative Gabrielle Giffords, a team of spin doctors at Fox News scrambled to save the political life of Sarah Palin.  At this point, I defer to an excellent piece written by Glynnis MacNicol of The Business Insider:

It is clear that Palin spent the last few days testing the waters and leaving the heavy lifting of the defending her to the folks at Fox News, most notably Glenn Beck.

As Ms. MacNicol explained, Palin returned to her Facebook page on January 12:

In equally typical fashion, Palin offered little introspection into her role in the political dialogue of the past year and laid the blame directly at the feet of the media, whom she accused of “blood libel.”

As MacNicol and many other commentators pointed out, this choice of words exemplified yet another classic Palin mistake.  Palin’s gaffe drew criticism from the Anti-Defamation League and it gave her critics yet another opportunity to emphasize that Palin has been in over her head with her attempts to establish a national leadership identity.  The Hill quoted what Representative James Clyburn had to say about Palin’s latest misstep:

“You know, Sarah Palin just can’t seem to get it, on any front. I think she’s an attractive person, she is articulate,” Clyburn said on the Bill Press radio show. “But I think intellectually, she seems not to be able to understand what’s going on here.”

While Rupert Murdoch’s investment in Sarah Palin was obviously deteriorating and becoming an embarrassment for his Fox News organization, things were headed in a more catastrophic direction in his Australian homeland.  The intense flooding that had been ongoing for the past several weeks was being attributed to climate change.  A report from Reuters began with this statement:

Climate change has likely intensified the monsoon rains that have triggered record floods in Australia’s Queensland state, scientists said on Wednesday, with several months of heavy rain and storms still to come.

Although Murdoch now personally admits that climate change poses a serious environmental threat, his News Corp subsidiaries have an established track record of denying that any such threat exists.

An article from the Treehugger website provided details about how badly conditions had deteriorated in Queensland:

When 75% of Queensland is disaster declared due to flooding, that is a huge area, roughly equivalent to two Texas’s or the entirety of South Africa.  On the 31st of December Reuters was saying flood water was “covering an area bigger than France and Germany combined, inundating 22 towns and stranding 200,000 people.”  This is a continually unfolding natural disaster, of which the financial bill alone was projected to reach $5 billion AUD, and that was before the flash flooding of the past day or so.

*   *   *

Australia is a rich, industrialised ‘First World’ country.  But it’s third most populous state, Queensland, is currently coping with floods which have already decimated food crops, livestock, road and rail infrastructure, mining and so on.  The impacts of which will flow on (pardon the pun) to effect most every Australian. Already some particular fruits have all but disappeared from commercial markets.

If all that weren’t bad enough, what must have been the most chilling news for Rupert Murdoch came from Julian Assange of Wikileaks.  Ian Burrell of The Independent provided this report:

A year that has begun badly for Rupert Murdoch grew a little worse yesterday after the founder of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, claimed to be in possession of secret documents damaging to the media mogul and his News Corp empire.

Mr Assange told John Pilger in the New Statesman he had withheld a cache of confidential US government cables and files relating to Mr Murdoch’s business as “insurance”.  He has claimed that his life is in danger if he is extradited to Sweden to face allegations of sexual assault.

*   *   *

Mr Assange indicated that he had paperwork which could be hurtful to News Corp.  “There are 504 US embassy cables on one broadcasting organisation and there are cables on Murdoch and News Corp.”

Assange does lots of talking about documents he is holding as “insurance”.  Nevertheless, many commentators have mentioned the possibility all this boasting could amount to nothing more than a bluffing strategy.

In addition to discussing the Wikileaks threat, the Independent article provided us with the perspective of a former Murdoch associate on the possibility that Rupert might not be too happy with the way things are going at Fox News:

In a further broadside yesterday, one of Mr Murdoch’s former henchmen, Andrew Neil, publicly questioned whether the world’s most powerful media figure retained his grip over his organisation.

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“My own view is [Fox] is out of control,” Neil told Richard Bacon yesterday on BBC Radio 5 Live.  “I think Rupert Murdoch has lost control of it. I know from sources he’s not happy with a lot that appears on it and I think he’s lost over the Glenn Becks and the O’Reillys,” said Mr Neil.

“[Murdoch] is uncomfortable with Glenn Beck and various other positions they take and some of the things they say.”  Neil, who fell out with Mr Murdoch in the early Nineties, claimed he had “very good sources at the heart of News Corp”.

If there is any truth to Andrew Neil’s revelations, it will be very interesting to see if Mr. Murdoch makes any changes at Fox News, due to his reported concerns.  Either way, 2011 could turn out to be a very important year for Rupert Murdoch.


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Bye, Bayh!

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August 14, 2008

Rumors abound concerning the potential Vice-Presidential choices of both Barack Obama and John McCain in the 2008 Presidential campaign.  Recently, many prognosticators have been voicing their opinions that Obama will choose Indiana Senator Evan Bayh as his running mate.  (Bayh’s real name is Birch Evans Bayh, III.)  As this speculation heated up, so did the tempers of many Democrats.  These Democrats recalled that not only did Bayh vote in favor of the Joint Resolution for the Use of Military Force in Iraq, he co-sponsored it with John McCain and was part of the cozy, Rose Garden ceremony on October 2, 2002 when President Bush thanked Bayh and McCain for co-sponsoring the Resolution.  The rationale supporting Bayh’s viability as VP choice is based on his reputation for being a “centrist” Democrat and therefore, a good selection as Obama’s running mate.

On August 13, Ari Melber reported for The Washington Independent that a man named Steve Clemons, described by Melber as “a former Democratic Senate aide who sometimes traffics in Washington rumors”, provided this insider’s assessment of the outlook for an Obama – Bayh ticket:

Word has reached me that at Barack Obama’s Hawaii retreat, Evan Bayh’s chances to find himself the next Democratic VP candidate have moved to better than 50/50.

(Steve Clemons is actually the Director of the American Strategy Program at the New America Foundation and he is the publisher of the political blog, The Washington Note.)  Ari Melber also pointed out that Mr. Clemons opposed the choice of Bayh and that Clemons “urged Democratic voters to contact the Obama campaign with their views on the potential pick”.  This wasn’t the first rumor making the rounds concerning the dreaded announcement that Bayh would get the nod to share the Democratic ticket.  As Melber reported:  “apprehension over the feared choice of Bayh has resulted in a new Facebook group called ‘100,000 Strong Against Evan Bayh for VP’”.

We often hear pundits recite the Cardinal Rule for Presidential candidates, in selecting their Vice-Presidential nominee, as: “Do No Harm”.  In other words:  Don’t screw up your campaign by choosing a controversial running mate.  It has become obvious that Obama would severely damage his campaign with the choice of Bayh as his VP.

Obama’s biggest campaign hurdle is his popularity with Independent voters, since they are more likely to scrutinize a candidate’s authenticity, due to the fact that they have no party allegiance.  When Obama voted in favor of the FISA “wiretap” bill to avoid looking “weak” on national security, he shot himself right in the authenticity.  When the time came to take a stand on the issue of offshore drilling (to increase the supply of oil ten years from now, when we won’t need it) he repeated the same mistake.  The choice of Evan Bayh would be “Strike Three”.  Such a misstep would alienate the Democratic “base” and dilute whatever perceived measure of authenticity he has remaining, from the standpoint of Independent voters.

A crucial “negative” in considering Bayh as Obama’s running mate is Bayh’s wife:  Susan Breshears Bayh.  Four years before Evan followed in the footsteps of his father, Birch Bayh, to pursue a seat in the United States Senate, Susan launched a career sitting as a director on the boards of fourteen different corporations.  These corporations are involved in the pharmaceutical, broadcast, insurance, food-distribution and finance industries. The Fort Wayne Journal Gazette reported on December 16, 2007 that Mrs. Bayh earns approximately one million dollars per year in director’s fees.  That article by Sylvia Smith, went on point out that as Senator, Evan Bayh cast many votes “on issues of keen interest” to those very industries.

Any Presidential candidate, whose campaign is based on the theme of “Change”, would degrade his authenticity with the selection of such a “second generation” Senator as his running mate.  As I have said before (on July 14): In the age of YouTube.com, authenticity has become a politician’s stock in trade.  For Obama, the choice of Evan Bayh as his running mate would be Barack’s third strike against his own authenticity.  Should Obama go that route, it would be time to say “Bye – Bayh!” to his chances of living in The White House.