Ahead of this afternoon’s select committee appearance, it’s worth reminding ourselves of the worrying level of control Rupert Murdoch has over the news agenda.
Ahead of this afternoon’s select committee appearance, it’s worth reminding ourselves of the worrying level of control Rupert Murdoch has over the news agenda, particularly in the US.
Not content with just bowing to Murdoch’s wishes while on air, Fox News have gone beyond mere sycophancy and actually attempted to position their parent company as one of the victims of phone hacking.
This video, taken from last Friday’s edition of Fox and Friends, shows the depths to which the Murdochs are willing to go to attempt to downplay the issue in the USA.
After briefly running through the closure of the News of the World as a result of public outrage, News Corp’s name was then linked with the Pentagon and Citibank, both recent victims of hacking, in a crude attempt to defend Murdoch’s reputation.
Not content with just downplaying News Corp’s involvement, the week’s resident sycophant Bob Dilenschneider, showed a basic lack of understanding of the public outrage surrounding the scandal, saying:
“For some reason the public keep going over and over this… we are teetering on a default and what do they do, they keep talking about this.”
As someone whose background is in public relations and crisis management, surely Dilenschneider should have a better understanding of why the public are reacting in such a way. However, given his background, it is a mystery why the show goes on to position him as an expert on the hacking crisis and its broader implications.
As the following quote shows, his knowledge about the actual details of the crisis and what it entails is laughable at best:
“The issue really is, why are so many people piling on at this point? We know it’s a hacking scandal. shouldn’t we get beyond it and really deal with the issue of hacking?
“We’ve got a serious hacking problem in this country… so we’ve got to figure out a way to deal with this hacking problem.”
In many ways, the spin being attempted by Fox is eerily reminiscent of lines being parroted by Conservative MPs.
Nick Boles on Newsnight was the latest Tory to drastically underplay the current crisis, describing the scandal as a “little local difficulty” in a desperate attempt to justify David Cameron’s initial decision not to cut short his Africa trip.
What is clear is one thing, in the words of Ed Miliband, the Right on both sides of the Atlantic:
“…still just don’t get it.”
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16 Responses to “Fox take Murdoch sycophancy to new lows”
connal99
Fox take Murdoch sycophancy to new lows: http://bit.ly/oZoFsE reports @TRouse11 #hackgate #NewsCorpse
Paul Evans
Fox take Murdoch sycophancy to new lows http://t.co/YeJM7fw
Michael
Fox take Murdoch sycophancy to new lows – http://tinyurl.com/3nnyatw
Ed's Talking Balls
I don’t know anything about Dilenschneider. If he’s appearing on Fox News and is seen as trying to downplay a media scandal then obviously he’s going to be accused of having suspicious motives. Yet anyone could have said the words you quote him as having said (i.e. that while US credit ratings are at threat and there is a sovereign debt crisis across Europe, all the press can talk about is the despicable behaviour of News International) and I would have to commend them for talking sense. Make no mistake, this is a scandal. It won’t simply “go away”. It has to be addressed and hopefully will be, through the various inquiries which have been announced, together with the ongoing police investigations. But to pretend that this is the only major news story going on, or even the most important, is baffling in my eyes.
As for Nick Boles, he was responding to a question as to why the Prime Minister is in Africa instead of in the UK. He responded, reasonably, that it would be a great affront to the Presidents of South Africa and Nigeria if he were to cancel pre-arranged and highly important visits concerning trade and implied, essentially, that the Prime Minister has a great many things to concern himself with besides merely the News International saga. In fact, Cameron has reached a compromise position by honouring his commitments in Africa while returning early, having extended Parliament, to try to deal with the press scandal. In my eyes this is more sensible than causing a diplomatic rift and harming trade prospects in the future.
As regards just who doesn’t “get it”, people from across the political spectrum can be accused of this. Cameron certainly didn’t seem too, when he reacted slowly and didn’t even seem clear on whether or not Brooks should resign. But given that the press are focussing solely on News International and not on rising fuel prices, constantly above-target inflation, Libya, etc, it is clear that they don’t “get it” either. And although there appears to be a concerted effort to persuade people that Ed Miliband “gets it”, I’m not convinced; attempting to make this a party political issue doesn’t persuade me that he’s a serious politician committed to dealing with serious issues.
Dave Citizen
I consider myself to be pretty cynical but having watched the video clip I am even more convinced than ever that something has to be done about concentrated private ownership of news media.
If this was a story being run under the old soviet regime we would all be congratulating ourselves on how our free press could not distort public understanding of an issue to further a narrow self interest in this way.