When Rupert Murdoch buys the Wall Street Journal we know that journalism is bound to improve!

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/07/business/media/07carr.html?8dpc

Rupert Murdoch, the thrill-ride version of the modern media mogul, delivered a particularly head-snapping jolt last week when the News Corporation said it intended to buy The Wall Street Journal and the rest of Dow Jones & Company for $5 billion. Now that some of the commotion has eased, it might be worth a few minutes to examine the proposal bearing in mind Mr. Murdoch’s unique business DNA.

¶ First, the deal will be made at some point, regardless of what the Bancroft family said last week. Brute-force capital, like flood waters, always finds a way to break through.

¶ Despite his allaying words to the contrary, Mr. Murdoch would operate The Journal, including its editorial operations, as he sees fit. As Mr. Murdoch himself has said throughout his relentlessly acquisitive career, he buys things to run things.

¶ There is business synergy in the deal — between the News Corporation’s proposed Fox Business cable TV channel and The Journal, for example. But far more important is Mr. Murdoch’s own version of synergy, which puts business, media and government all in a single vertical. Owning The Journal would give him a powerful leverage in all three.

We're going to be sliding into an alternate universe if this media deregulation doesn't stop. I'm thinking massive campaign to get the Democrats to focus on the FCC and stopping this run-away media consolidation. It is deadly dangerous to democracy.

Fox News already deserves large amount of credit for helping the administration lie the American public into war with IRaq ... with this kind of leverage who knows what Murdoch and News Corp will be able to do.

... that Hume is a contributor to the American Spectator and the Weekly Standard. He hardly disguises his partisanship there.

just curious, did you get that e-mail I sent you?

Also, do you have any links handy to a comment where you explain in detail the Versailles press metaphor? I plan on using that in something I'm going to write.

That's one of the points from The Elements of Journalism (which was, incidentally, endorsed by david Halberstam)

What the authors meant is that citizens should not be treated as something to be marketed to ... the corporatization of the media had changed the function of the news from serving the public interest by providing the people with the info they needed to be sovereign to turning them into consumers.

"The problem is that tying a journalist's income to his organization's fincancial performace, in effect, changes the journalist's allegiance. The company is saying that a good portion of your loyalty must be to the corporate parent and to share holders - ahead of your readers, listeners, or viewers."

yeah, I'll resend it. I put the subject matter in the header, but being a dolt, I didn't put your name.

Re: Versailles. It's pretty obvious what it means for people that have been following this issue and reading this blog, but it would be nice (and I think beneficial) to have in one spot a bit explaining exactly what it means, given that is a phenomenon that seems to be overtaking the press at an increasing rate.

If Murdoch gets the Wall Street Journal I can't imagine what is going to happen to this country.

If the President was a Democrat and Olberman was going after him I'm guessing you'd hear nary a peep that he isn't being "fair and balanced."

In fact, we already know that's what is going to happen the next time a Democrat is elected President. The same people who are criticizing Olberman for being "partisan" are going to transform into partisan lunatics and then like something straight out of 1984 the definition of "objective journalism" will again magically transform inside their brains to fit their ideological purposes.

I'm just wondering how long it will be before this metastasizes into a full blown political religion.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/07/washington/07loans.html?pagewanted=1&hp&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1178560856-HrkHeKMX/V1LsXw2yIQl3A

This story is completely partisan! It makes it appear that the Bush administration deliberately worked to allow lending companies to rob tax payers of millions of dollars from a student loan program by actively blocking the efforts of a whistle-blower to stop the money stealing. Then this completely partisan story notes that Bush's education secretary overruled a decision to get the money back that a NEw Mexico lending company stole from US citizens. Then this partisan ideological liberal story points out that Nelnet - the company Spellings pardone - was the biggest donor to National Republican Congressional Committee in 2006 and that the company's president actually sat on the board of the gov't advisory committe that audited the company.

Friggin liberal partisanship! Where's the fair and balance?

But seriously? How the hell is this administration still in power?

"I don't worship John Locke like a god"

Bertand Russell knocks him down a bit in The History of Western Philosophy, saying that more than being a theorist who philosophy changed the times, Locke was someone in tune with the political changings around him and was able to put them into clear philosophical form.

The best explanation of the contradictions in America's libertarian mythology I've seen was from Dewey in The Public and its Problems. I'm trying to finish writing somethign else up, but I skimmed for a moment and found this, which looks like a decent summary of Dewey's thesis.

http://www.fred.net/tzaka/deweypub.html

I was skimming and I caught eye of someone saying "read some Dickens"

Back around Christmas NPR had on a libertarian economist who explained that Scrooge was actually a better contributing member of society before he had his Christmas reformation. I listened with jaw dropped, because at first I thought the guy was just doing some tongue in cheek self-deprecating humor, then realized he was being deadly serious.