NY Magazine: Righties worry Rupert Murdoch is moving left

[DeepModem Mom]

Righties Worry Rupe’s Gone Soft
Media baron to be pestered at annual meeting.
By Geoffrey Gray

Conservative watchdogs have a surprising new target: Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation. Members of Accuracy in Media, the Washington-based monitor of the wayward mainstream press, found themselves in the unusual position of wondering, as AIM’s Cliff Kincaid puts it, “Is Mr. Murdoch moving his media properties to the left?” Murdoch didn’t exactly allay their fears last week in the New Yorker piece on his ideological drift. So the activists have bought up enough shares in News Corp. to go to its October 20 stockholders’ meeting at the Asia Society in New York. Kincaid has a laundry list of questions: Will the Murdoch-controlled DirecTV follow his British Sky Broadcasting and carry the forthcoming English-speaking version of Al Jazeera? And why did BSkyB also ink a recent distribution deal with Al Gore’s Current TV? Has Murdoch gone into business with left-wing billionaire Ron Burkle, who backs Current TV and went to war against the Post’s “Page Six” earlier this year, claiming extortion? And, of course, what about Murdoch’s new coziness with the Clintons: the Hillary fund-raiser? The big donations to the Clinton Global Initiative?...

http://nymag.com/news/intelligencer/22824/

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

1. Rupert Murdoch's only ideology is money. n/t

[Hugin]

4. Dang, you beat me to it!

:thumbsup:

[LTR]

12. Very true

And I've always maintained that FOX News reflects Roger Ailes' ideology than Murdoch's.

Some of Murdoch's other properties sometimes do lean left. I mean, look at the TV network. They carry The Simpsons, and even aired Michael Moore's old TV show (TV Nation). Plus, some of his international newspapers have a somewhat left-lean to them.

Murdoch only cares about money, power and ego.

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

13. OK, let me clarify.

He's a conservative, no doubt about it. However, when it comes to his businesses, he does what's best for his bottom line, not what's best for his personal ideology. I guess the best way to put it is this: Money trumps ideology when it comes to business.

[LTR]

16. I agree with that (nt)

[zbdent]

2. Just checked ... no monkeys

flying out of my butt ...

[Hugin]

3. One nice thing about Murdoch...

He'll do whatever is necessary to keep the $$$ flowing in.

That's a given.

If He feels the winds of change are blowing, the RWers may very well be
left swinging in that breeze.

[Hobarticus]

5. They eat their own...things not going well? Kill your idol!

Fun for the whole family!

[Cha]

19. What is with your sig

line? It's funny!

[SharonAnn]

23. So they admit he's been right-wing?

[SteppingRazor]

6. A resurgent American left means new markets for progressive media...

Murdoch goes where there's money to be made.

[Vexatious Ape]

7. Maybe it's all about the $

or perhaps he's become frightened by the fundies and is having second thoughts about the american right.

[Joe for Clark]

8. I don't think Murdoch is a conservative.

Two weeks ago, maybe, Ted Turner was on the Donny Deutsh show and he talked a little about Murdoch. He said that Murdoch was not a conservative - said "Who do you think put Blair into power (to that effect)" and that Murdoch's philosophy is only about whats good for Murdoch. Ted said he thinks Murdoch is a very dangerous man (from lack of principles, he implied).

I like Ted - maybe I'm slanted - but I believe Mr Turner.

Joe

[EmperorHasNoClothes]

9. A Hillary Clinton presidential run would be GREAT for Murdoch's business

All Hillary bashing, all the time. It's all about the money.

[SeveneightyWhoa]

10. My theory:

He knows Dems will win big. (He suspects Clinton will be the one.)

It's all about business -- certainly not ideology -- and he doesn't want to lose his companies' many benefits obtained under the Bush administration, i.e. media concentration. Surely another "Fairness Doctrine" would be killer.

[hsher]

11. Here is a weird true story about Murdoch

Two men of Central Asian Muslim extraction kidnapped and murdered a woman who was close to him during the Seventies in London. She was his aunt or cousin or something, or it was another man's wife whom the killers mistook for Murdoch's wife. I think her name was Muriel or Margaret or something. She was kidnapped because the two killers wanted ransom money and thought she was another person; instead they accidently abducted her in a case of false identity, held her a long period of time, tortured her, and murdered her. Rupert Murdoch was horrified by the crime and how long a period it stretched out over. She was allowed by her captors to issue small heartwrenching notes to her family. I read about it by complete surprise in a very old Readers' Digest book of strange Scotland Yard mysteries, published in the middle Seventies. Is there anyone else who knows about this story?

I still own the book, but it's 2500 miles away from me at my mother's house, under a bunch of crap in a cardboard box. I *swear* this story is true. It's gotta be Googlable somewhere.

[Synnical]

15. Well, lookee here - The History Channel Tonite (UK)

http://www.thehistorychannel.co.uk/site/tv_guide/full_details/Crime/programme_917.php

GREAT CRIMES AND TRIALS: The McKay Kidnapping

Mon October 16th at 12:00pm

Mon October 16th at 7:00pm



Just after Christmas 1969, Muriel McKay, the wife of an Australian newspaper executive was taken from her London home - mistaken for the wife of her husband's boss Rupert Murdoch.

It was the first kidnap in Britain for centuries. After abortive efforts to catch her abductors the police were led to a lonely farmhouse - and two brothers with a ghastly secret.

More at: http://www.crimeandinvestigation.co.uk/famous_crime/76/home/1/The_McKay_Kidnapping.htm

When kidnappers mistook Muriel McKay for Rupert Murdoch’s wife Anna, the case would go gone down in history as one of the most notorious murder cases of our time and Britain's first kidnapping.

Born in Trinidad in 1955, Arthur Hosein came to England as a tailor’s cutter. After completing his National Service he married a German woman named Elsa. Arthur had dreams of becoming a local squire and in 1967 he borrowed heavily to buy an old farmhouse on the borders of Hertfordshire and Essex. He applied to become a member of the local hunt, but couldn’t ride a horse or afford the subscription.

While watching media magnate Rupert Murdoch and his wife Anna on television one night with his 21-year old brother Nizamodeen, Arthur thought of an easy way to make enough money to pay for the lifestyle he desired. Later they followed Murdoch’s Rolls Royce to a house in Wimbledon thinking they knew where the Murdoch’s lived, but they were holidaying in Australia.

At 7.45pm on Sunday 29th December Murdoch’s deputy chairman, Alick McKay was dropped off at his Wimbledon mansion to find the front door open, the lights on and his wife Muriel gone. The phone was pulled out of the wall and the contents of his wife's handbag were strewn over the stairs and a rusty meat cleaver lay on the floor. The fire was still burning.

The police were suspicious that Alick’s 55-year-old wife may have left her husband and they were angered when Alick called the editor of The Sun asking him to run the story the following morning.

Several hours later, Alick received a call from a phone box. “We are Mafia M3,” said the male caller. “We tried to get Rupert Murdoch’s wife. We couldn’t get her so we took yours instead. You have a million by Wednesday night or we will kill her.”

[hsher]

17. THAT'S IT: you are the absolute bomb :D

That's it! Thank you for posting that!

Makes me wonder if Muriel, etc., is Murdoch's secret, racist reason for lining up FOX and its agenda the way he has. It's just too tempting to ignore.

[hsher]

18. And it airs *tonight*??? *Eerie*

[Synnical]

21. Coincidence, don't make anything of it

[Perky]

14. This place would be up for grabs if suddenly ORielly started

sounding like a progressive....lol

[Synnical]

20. Well, Faux News has changed their online color from red to blue

Wonkette had a screen cap, but their search engine sucks, so I cannot locate it right now.

But take a look:

http://www.foxnews.com/

Blue everywhere.

[tinfoilinfor2005]

28. A skunk by any other color is still a skunk.

Once he raises his tail.

[David Zephyr]

22. He is on global warming, dining with the Clintons and hiring Wes Clark.

The problem is Roger Ailes. Ailes has delivered the goods for Murdoch and Ailes is a rightwing ideologue. That's the sticking issue.

[Zhade]

24. Neither of the Clintons are remotely "left"...

...so THAT'S not any indication, that's for sure!

[Cheney Killed Bambi]

25. Rupert

is all about the dollars. It's really not that complicated.

[Dover]

26. Vanity Fair did a piece that said the Clintons were among his best buddies

but he wouldn't vote for Hillary if she ran.

So what's all this sudden PR that associates Murdoch with Dems (or a least DLCers)?

Lest we forget, it's always a class divide, not some faux ideological partisanship. That's just for the sheeples. Lean to the left OR right...whatever keeps their yachts afloat.

The political winds shift and so does the money. And often enough the money shifts and so does the political wind.

[Dover]

27. Why the reassociation now? For one thing, Fox will go under if Dems

are in the White House, as I'm sure they will be. Rupert knows it, and knows there isn't a large enough minority of rightwing audience to support the garbage on Fox. Simple math.

I'm sure all the rightwing talking heads will get busy reinventing themselves too. Such is propaganda.