(MintPress) – Not too long ago, Rupert Murdoch was the feared emperor of a media empire that stretched along both sides of the Atlantic. From his beginnings at Australia’s News Limited, he slowly and steadily acquired newspaper properties in Australia and New Zealand before taking over England’s News of the World and the Sun, and seven years later, the Times. In America, he took over the New York Post, 20th Century Fox (which ultimately lead to the formation of the Fox Broadcasting Company and — much later — Fox News), Dow Jones, HarperCollins and the Wall Street Journal. In all, at his empire’s height at 2000, Murdoch was worth $5 billion and his News Corporation controlled 800 companies in over 50 countries.
However, it is expected that large businesses will not compromise the safety of the public, and it is always shocking when we learn that they did. In 2002, in Walton-on-Thames, a suburb of London, Milly Dowler, aged 13, disappeared. Her remains were found that following September. In the very public investigation, the News of the World was able to report on this case daily, seemingly, with materials no other outlet had access to.
In November of 2005, representatives of the British Royal Court complained to the police that voicemail messages were being intercepted. Prince William suffered from a knee injury, which was not made public. Despite this, the News of the World ran a story about the injury. This led to the arrest of the News of the World’s royal editor Clive Goodman and private investigator Glenn Mulcaire for the unauthorized wiretapping of Royal Court’s telephones. Goodman received four months, Mulcaire six. Andy Coulson, News of the World’s editor, claimed ultimate responsibility, and resigned. He was picked up by then Conservative Leader David Cameron as party’s director of communications in May of 2007.
In July of 2009, it was revealed that the senior staff of the News of the World illegally hacked and accessed the messages from the cellphones of celebrities and politicians during Coulson’s tenure of 2003-2007. It was also revealed that more than ₤1 million was paid out to settle claims of journalists alleged involvement in hacking. It wasn’t until January of 2011, however, that the British police formally started investigations into phone hacking. This happened after Sienna Miller, Member of Parliament George Galloway and union leader Bob Crow complained of their phones being hacked. More and more victims emerged, and the News of the World repeatedly apologized and made reparations … until the ball dropped July 4, 2011.
On that day, it was revealed that the News of the World hacked into Milly Dowler’s phone, accessed the voicemail and seeing that it was full, erased the saved messages to make room for new ones. The activity on the phone made the police and the family believe that Milly was alive. It was also revealed that the parents of two 10-year-old girls from Soham — kidnapped and murdered by their school’s custodian — had their phones hacked by the News of the World, as did the family spokesman for Madeleine McCann, who disappeared in Portugal in 2007.
Since then, News International has been a dying brand.
The News of the World was shuttered, Murdoch’s bid to control the remainder of BSkyB was forfeited. Andy Coulson and Rebekah Brooks — News Corporation executive and head of the News of the World during the hacking scandal — were arrested. James Murdoch resigned from the company and Rupert Murdoch stepped down as CEO. News Corporation is to be split into two separate corporations, and the FBI is investigating if News Corp. accessed the voicemail of 9/11 victims and the Justice Department is examining if the corporation is guilty of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act — which, in this case, concerns the bribing of foreign officials by American citizens (Rupert Murdoch was naturalized as an American citizen in 1985).
Tom Mockridge, Rebekah Brooks’ replacement in News International, has recently reported his intentions to step down. This is thought to be in part because the 22-year News Corp. veteran is likely to be phased out in the upcoming corporate restructuring, according the media insiders.
Some would say this cannibalization of the company — this time, of a “a world-class executive with unprecedented strategic and commercial experience,” as Murdoch described Mockridge — is just desserts, the final, cruel act of a cruel corporation.
Others would say that — besides some embarrassment and some minor losses to Murdoch’s portfolio (the restructuring is designed to protect News Corporation’s more profitable film and television properties from the more legally exposed and less lucrative print properties) — Murdoch is in no real danger in all of this.
Last week, U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron rejected part of a ruling issued by Lord Justice Leveson that directly regulates the media. The argument that any regulation would replace the free press with state-run media was so polarizing that the ruling’s more positive attributes, such as guaranteed and safeguarded freedom of the press and cuts to the cost of libel suits, were discarded wholesale. The blocking of this regulation, which would introduce an independent press regulator, so infuriated many of the victims of the phone hacking scandal that many refuses to talk to the culture secretary or any other member of Cameron’s Cabinet. J.K. Rowling, author of the “Harry Potter” series and a phone hacking victim, wrote this in an article for the Guardian:
“I am alarmed and dismayed that the prime minister appears to be backing away from assurances he made at the outset of the Leveson inquiry.
“I thought long and hard about the possible consequences to my family of giving evidence and finally decided to do so because I have made every possible attempt to protect my children’s privacy under the present system – and failed. If I, who can afford the very best lawyers, cannot guarantee the privacy of those dearest to me, what hope did the Dowlers, the McCanns and the Watsons ever have of protecting their own children and their own good names? Those who have suffered the worst, most painful and least justifiable kinds of mistreatment at the hands of the press, people who have become newsworthy because of the press’s own errors or through unspeakable private tragedy, are those least likely to be able to defend themselves or to seek proper redress.”
It was unlikely that Cameron was serious about prosecuting Murdoch or reforming U.K.’s media system. News Corporation has had a close relationship with the Conservative Party since the administration of Margaret Thatcher. Cameron’s unusually close relationship to Rebekah Brooks and the blind hiring of Andy Coulson is evidence to the comradery that the media company and 10 Downing Street shares. The opposition Labour Party is equally in bed with News Corp.; former Prime Minister Tony Blair is godfather to Murdoch’s child and named Murdoch an unofficial but yet senior member of his administration.
Media and politics have always been strange bedfellows. To control the media is to control the hearts and minds of the people, to influence their opinions, to control their desires and fear. Any true investigation into the wrongdoing in media would expose the wrongdoings in politics. The use of media as propaganda has been so prevalent in modern history that any valid discussion into the ethics of politics must start there.
The news as a weapon
In response to Fox News’ Election Night 2012 coverage, David Carr of the New York Times reported this:
“It has been suggested, here and elsewhere, that Fox News effectively became part of the Republican propaganda apparatus during the presidential campaign by giving pundit slots to many of the Republican candidates and relentlessly advocating for Mitt Romney once he won the nomination.
“Over many months, Fox lulled its conservative base with agitprop: that President Obama was a clear failure, that a majority of Americans saw Mr. Romney as a good alternative in hard times, and that polls showing otherwise were politically motivated and not to be believed.
“But on Tuesday night, the people in charge of Fox News were confronted with a stark choice after it became clear that Mr. Romney had fallen short: was Fox, first and foremost, a place for advocacy or a place for news?”
No one, except for those that run Fox News, denies that Fox News has a clear bias. Meant to give “fair and balancing” reporting, it does this by assuming that the “mainstream media” is liberal by intention and by offering a conservative counterpoint to “balance the argument.”
However, one could argue that conservatives already unbalanced the argument years ago.
George W. Bush’s administration was accused of feeding the news to the media, from producing TV-ready “news releases” to paying Armstrong Williams, a syndicated host, $24,000 from the Education Department to promote No Child Left Behind, and commentators Maggie Gallagher and Michael McManus were given $21,500 and $10,200, respectively, to advise the Department of Health and Human Services on its marriage initiatives.
The use of these pre-recorded “news releases” were ruled as propaganda by the General Accounting Office. Such “news releases” included Iraqi-Americans celebrating the fall of Baghdad, the “success” of further TSA implementation and the administration’s determination to open markets for American farmers. These clips were disseminated to and broadcast by local affiliates indiscriminately.
The use of government-made “news reports” started under the Clinton administration but flourished in the Bush administration, despite promises of media transparency. In the past, the relationship between the government and politicians was adversarial; even though there were agreed-upon “rules” — such as not reporting directly on John F. Kennedy’s infidelity or Franklin D. Roosevelt’s paralysis — politicians kept reporters at arm’s length; this was primarily to preserve the politician’s privacy, but also, to avoid allowing reporters to see things they shouldn’t, have it be classified or morally compromised in nature.
However, as of recently, both Democrats and Republicans have been using the media to form public views. President Obama used social media to create a ground swell for himself and fellow Democrats in 2008, and both Obama and former Republican candidate Mitt Romney used “soft media,” or the intentional, candid-looking but completely fabricated newsclip that presents the candidate as an “average, everyday man” to curry votes.
While none of this mirrors the ultimate use of media as propaganda — Nazi Germany — the parallels cannot be ignored. As reported from the Centre of Research on Globalization:
“These types of relationships have continued in the decades since, although perhaps more covertly and quietly than before. For example, it was revealed in 2000 that during the NATO bombing of Kosovo, ‘several officers from the US Army’s 4th Psychological Operations (PSYOPS) Group at Ft. Bragg worked in the news division at CNN’s Atlanta headquarters.’ This same Army Psyop outfit had ‘planted stories in the U.S. media supporting the Reagan Administration’s Central America policies,’ which was described by the Miami Herald as a ‘vast psychological warfare operation of the kind the military conducts to influence a population in enemy territory.’ These Army PSYOP officers also worked at National Public Radio (NPR) at the same time. The US military has, in fact, had a strong relationship with CNN.
“In 2008, it was reported that the Pentagon ran a major propaganda campaign by using retired Generals and former Pentagon officials to present a good picture of the administration’s war-time policies. The program started in the lead-up to the Iraq War in 2003 and continued into 2009. These officials, presented as ‘military analysts’, regurgitate government talking points and often sit on the boards of military contractors, thus having a vested interest in the subjects they are brought on to ‘analyze.’”
Last June, Salon reported on the Obama administration’s use of the word “militant” to describe any military-aged male killed in a drone attack. Ultimately, in a democratic system, those who seek power must solicit the people’s will, which is invested in the trust of the press. It is the misuse of that trust that most endangers us all, for the press is our mouthpiece to our representatives and our constantly-vigilant watchdog.
What would become of us all if we lose our watchdog?