"Michelle Chen"- How Murdoch’s Empire Suffocates the Craft of Journalism

With guilty pleasure, the mainstream media have been serving us a virtual buffet of reasons to despise Rupert Murdoch's evil media empire. Amid this fetid mess, however, it shouldn't be forgotten that beneath every media mogul, however rotten, is an enterprise of real people—a culture of workers who represent the embattled and tragic state of journalism today.

The ethical breaches at issue clearly reflect top-to-bottom corruption. Yet more importantly, the underlying criminality lies in a vulgar laissez faire corporate culture in which honesty and critical thought are dismissed as an impediment to commercial success.

Click to read more ...

"Uri Avnery"- The Charge of the New York Times or - Baksheesh for the Doorkeeper

A Riddle: Which fleet did not reach its destination but fulfilled its mission?

Well, it’s this year’s Gaza solidarity flotilla.

It could be said, of course, that last year’s “little fleet” – that’s what the word means in Spanish, much as “guerrilla” means “little war” – is also a reasonable candidate . It never reached Gaza, but the commander of the Israeli navy could well repeat the words of Pyrrhus, king of Epirus, whose victory over the Romans was so costly that he is said to have exclaimed: “Another such victory, and I am lost!”

Click to read more ...

"Sarah Jaffe" - The Unemployed Aren't Invisible: -- Washington and the Media Just Aren't Paying Attention

It hits you like a punch in the gut, losing your job. Being laid off. Being fired.

It stops you cold in the middle of your day even if you've seen it coming. Even if you hate your job and being out of it will be a relief. If you love your job, it hurts like a bad breakup—it's heartbreaking.

I was laid off not long ago, and I know all too well the mix of panic and hurt that comes with the news. I know the jumble of thoughts that come rushing in—how will I pay my rent blending with I'll never find a job I like this much again, worst-case scenarios and ways to make money and plans I'll have to cancel all at once.

Click to read more ...

"The Anomaly" - Fmr. Fox News Executive: Americans' Phones Were Hacked

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Fmr-Fox-News-Executive-A-by-Daily-kos-110718-484.html

July 18, 2011

By Daily kos

By The Anomaly

Former Fox News executive Dan Cooper has claimed that a special bunker, requiring security clearance for access was created at the company's headquarters to conduct "counterintelligence" including snooping on phone records:

"Has Roger Ailes been keeping tabs on your phone calls?"

That's how Portfolio.com began a post back in 2008, when a former Fox News executive charged that Ailes had outfitted a highly secured "brain room" in Fox's New York headquarters for "counterintelligence" and may have used it to hack into private phone records.

After helping chairman Roger Ailes create the Fox News channel in 1996, Cooper was fired for doing an anonymous interview with New York Magazine:

"I'm frightened right now," said a former Fox employee, noting the vast array of powerful connections Ailes maintains throughout the political and media worlds. "I've been told that if Ailes figures out I talked to you, he'll hunt me down and kill me."

Click to read more ...

"Adele M. Stan" - Senators Call for Murdoch Investigations Amid Allegations of 9/11 Victim Phone-Hacking

By Adele M. Stan, AlterNet
Posted on July 14, 2011, Printed on July 14, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/151632/senators_call_for_murdoch_investigations_amid_allegations_of_9_11_victim_phone-hacking

Rupert Murdoch probably didn't think his week could get much worse. Then, three U.S. senators called upon federal agencies to investigate the actions of his News Corporation, which owns, among a number of media entities, Fox News and the Wall Street Journal. Senators Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., and Jay Rockefeller, D-W.V., sent a joint letter to Attorney General Eric Holder, asking for a Justice Department investigation of possible phone-hacking by News Corp outlets in the U.S., and to Mary Schapiro, chief of the Securities and Exchange Commission, asking her to investigate News Corp for possible violations of U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., sent his own letter to Holder and Schapiro requesting the same.

Meanwhile, Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., asked FBI Director Robert Mueller to conduct his own investigation.

These actions have given hope to News Corp critics who have long lamented the timidity of both Democrats and most of the mainstream news establishment in the face of the blatant political organizing, race-baiting, opponent-smearing and outright disinformation promulgated by Murdoch's U.S. news outlets. But given the influence of Murdoch ally David Koch on the U.S. Congress -- many of whose members the billionaire helped to elect, both through direct donations and the organizing of Americans for Prosperity, the astroturf group he founded -- Murdoch may currently enjoy even greater insulation in Congress than he once did in the British Parliament.

Click to read more ...

"JOHN FEFFER" - Foreign Policy Goes Gaga

World Beat
by JOHN FEFFER | Tuesday, June 14, 2011
Vol. 6, No. 27

Foreign Policy Goes Gaga

Lady Gaga and Alice Walker don't have much in common. One dresses in red meat; the other doesn't even eat the stuff. One writes lyrics like "I want your ugly, I want your disease, I want your everything as long as it's free." The other writes The Color Purple.

But they are both cultural celebrities, and the media gravitates to them for comments. And they both have used this celebrity status to weigh in on global issues.

Alice Walker, for instance, was a passenger on the Audacity of Hope, one of the boats that tried to break the Israeli blockade of Gaza. She appeared in the first paragraph of The New York Times story on the second flotilla's formation, made her case on CNN, parried questions in a Foreign Policy interview, and prompted a disparaging Commentary commentary entitled "The Alice Walker Flotilla." Walker used her celebrity status to raise the media profile of the initiative but also to bring her own sensibility to bear on the issue. She compared the blockade-busting to the civil rights movement and spoke of her "awareness of paying off a debt to the Jewish civil rights activists who faced death to come to the side of black people in the American south in our time of need."

Click to read more ...

"C.J. Ciaramella" - Government wiretaps increase by 34 percent in 2010

By C.J. Ciaramella   7:27 PM 07/08/2011

The Daily Caller

The number of wiretaps conducted by federal and state law enforcement in 2010 jumped 34 percent from the prior year, according to a new federal report.

The 2010 Wiretap Report said federal and state courts approved 3,194 orders for intercepting wire, oral or electronic communications. That was up from the 2,376 intercepts approved in 2009.

Here’s some more fun facts from the report:

• Of all the applications for wiretap intercepts, 84 percent (2,675) cited illegal drugs as the most serious offense under investigation. The top three state wiretaps resulting in the most arrests were all narcotics related.
• The average cost of a wiretap was $50,085, down 4 percent from 2009.
• The average number of persons whose communications were intercepted rose from 113 per wiretap order in 2009 to 118 per wiretap order in 2010.
• Only 26 percent of intercepted communications in 2010 were incriminating. Only one request for authorization was denied.
• The top three states with approved wiretap applications were California, New York and New Jersey.

The report did not include wiretaps regulated by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) or those approved by the president outside the authority of the federal wiretap law and the FISA.

http://dailycaller.com/2011/07/08/government-wiretaps-increase-by-34-percent-in-2010/#ixzz1RtPormmq

“Mark Howard” - Is Fox News Scared? Desperate Attacks on Watchdog Group Media Matters Suggest Yes

http://www.alternet.org/media/151558/is_fox_news_scared_desperate_attacks_on_watchdog_group_media_matters_suggest_yes/

AlterNet / By Mark Howard

The Fox News pack is on the warpath against media watchdog group Media Matters.

July 8, 2011

In the untamed jungle that is cable news, there is a ferocious and predatory beast stalking the terrain. Anyone who has encountered Fox News in the wild can attest to the spine-chilling threat imposed by the pseudo-news network. And now Fox News has the scent of new game.

The Fox News pack is on the warpath against the media watchdog group, Media Matters. In the past two weeks it has featured over 30 stories with the express purpose of challenging the group’s right to exist. Fox has assigned network stalwarts like Bill O’Reilly, Bret Baier, Charles Krauthammer, James Rosen, Dick Morris, and Bernie Goldberg to the mission. This is an unprecedented, broadly distributed attack by a major media enterprise against a non-profit group it regards as an adversary.

This latest batch of complaints stem from comments made last March by Media Matters founder, David Brock. He was quoted in Politico as saying that the organization was shifting its focus toward Fox News to one of “guerrilla warfare and sabotage.” Giving Fox the benefit of doubt, one might conclude it’s only fair that Fox defend itself from such an overt declaration of war. The only thing that might refute that perspective is – reality.

If this is war, Fox is the aggressor. Fox News initiated its attacks long ago with aggressive and false assertions that cast Media Matters as hacks, anti-American, violent, and communist. Fox alleged that George Soros was pulling their strings long before Soros ever made any contributions to the group. Bill O’Reilly and Glenn Beck engaged in rhetoric so hostile that it inspired actual physical attacks against Media Matters and its progressive allies. A video (posted at the end of this story and courtesy of Media Matters) was posted two years ago and illustrates the hostility harbored across the Fox platform long before Brock’s recent comments.

The new and highly coordinated offensive by Fox asserts that Media Matters has violated the terms of its tax-exempt status by setting its sights on Fox. Fox quotes from the IRS rules governing non-profits that state that…

Click to read more ...

WHY FACTS NO LONGER MATTER IN THE MEDIA DISCOURSE

By Danny Schechter

""No matter how big the lie; repeat it often enough and the masses will regard it as the truth."How should we understand this latest and most troubling insight into the reality of our media ecology? In the aftermath of the resolution of the Great Birther bash-up, even as President Obama tried to lay the issue at rest by producing the document that showed, proved, verified, documented, and validated his birth in one of the great states of our disunion, it was said that its release would only fuel more debate, and convince no one. In other words, in the end, this long debated fact didn’t matter. Facts no longer seem to matter on other issues, too, as articulated in the now infamous memo issued by retiring Senator Jon Kyle whose office, when confronted with evidence that he misspoke on the matter of how much money Planned Parenthood spent on abortions—he claimed 90%, the truth was but 3%, issued an advisory that said, “The statement was not meant to be factual.”

Click to read more ...

"Gary Null" - The New American Folly in Libya

What happens when we extend the logic and beliefs of Ed Schultz and others, including Rachel Maddow and Lawrence O’Donnell, who accept Obama’s rationale for intervening militarily in Libya, which mirror those of the neocons and personalities like O’Reilly and Hannity on the radical right? For the reason that Gaddafi was responsible for the bombing of the Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie Scotland, killing 259 passengers, we are being told that arming, funding and training any opposition factions in Libya is perfectly justified. But then, is it not also true by that same logic that any civilians or innocent bystanders that were killed, tortured or disappeared as a direct result of America’s interventions in other nations are also justified to attack Americans and US interests globally? It is this old adage of “an eye for an eye” reactionary posturing that repeatedly leads us into multiple disasters, wars, revolutions, regime changes and a trail of failed foreign policies.

Click to read more ...