Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} Murdoch's World The Last of the Old Media Empires by David Folkenflik Review: Murdoch’s World – the last of the old media empires. David McKnight has previously written a book on Rupert Murdoch, "Rupert Murdoch: An Investigation of Power". Partners. UNSW provides funding as a member of The Conversation AU. The Conversation UK receives funding from these organisations. Email Twitter Facebook LinkedIn WhatsApp Messenger. The eruption of the News International phone hacking scandal has caused significant problems for Rupert Murdoch and his business empire. It forced him to close his big money spinner, News of the World, and to withdraw his takeover bid for the enormously profitable BSkyB satellite TV broadcaster. All of this has spawned a veritable tsunami of Murdoch books, including David Folkenflik’s Murdoch’s World. It’s a well written account of some of the most dramatic events surrounding Murdoch’s career and impact. Folkenflik argues the hacking scandal reflects a corporate culture at News, a culture in which there is a contempt for rules which govern the rest of us. In Britain this took the form of no-holds-barred journalism in which cops were bribed and the law systematically broken. In Australia this culture of contempt for rules translates into a disregard for any balance when reporting certain issues or in targeting Murdoch’s enemies du jour . All of this is a reflection of the group think which Murdoch sponsors among his editors and executives that they are rebels and enemies of the “establishment”. As Folkenflik says, this is a corporation which “has accumulated more influence than any other media company in the world and yet remains convinced of its status as an outsider”. But there are some odd absences. Murdoch’s obsessive support for the invasion of Iraq saw him mobilise his battalions of television and print outlets in support of George W. Bush. It is a text book example of the kind of power Murdoch can summon, yet this is barely mentioned. Nor does he mention Murdoch’s role as a long time funder of right-wing causes and think tanks. Folkenflik does better in highlighting that other major issue of our time – climate change. In the US and Australia, Murdoch’s media is the main public sources of climate scepticism. And except for a small window in which he veered off course, Murdoch himself has been happy with this. Another strength is the book’s account of the meaning of Murdoch’s takeover of the Wall Street Journal. This includes the struggle within the newspaper over whether to publish critical stories about phone hacking. A London-based WSJ reporter had uncovered new evidence that News of the World had openly referred to hacking in a story but this was dropped in later editions of the paper, presumably on orders of one of its chiefs. This raised the obvious question about the prior knowledge of the paper’s chiefs of the criminal act. Folkenflik reports that WSJ editor Robert Thomson “tried to kill the story several different times”. Eventually, however, it was published. Folkenflik also convinced the past editor of the New York Post, Ken Chandler, to open up about the New York Post’s reporting on issues of race and homophobia. Much speculation has focused on the succession. Who will run the global media giant after Rupert? When Murdoch himself is asked this, he points out mischievously that his mother lived to 103. Rupert Murdoch plans to be around for a while, reminding reporters his mother lived until 103. Public Affairs. He plans to be around for a lot longer and there is no reason to think he is not healthy and fit. But the succession also raises issues about the beneficiaries who will ultimately inherit shares and run the company – the children by Anna and Rupert Murdoch. This is a group of people who have quite different outlooks on the world. Elisabeth is the most independent minded and politically progressive. She supported Obama and is critical of the politics of Fox News. She didn’t endear herself to other members of the family by saying that James Murdoch and Rebekah Brooks had “fucked the company”. For his part, James Murdoch also takes his distance from his father but in a more measured way. He is an American-style centrist liberal who, for example, understands very well the dangers of climate change. Lachlan Murdoch is a man in his father’s image. He is on the right – under his leadership the New York Post hysterically beat the war drum in favour of the Iraq invasion. The division of the company into two parts (one mainly newspapers and books and the other TV and movies) may make it easier for them to divvy up the inheritance. But Rupert will be around for quite some time to come, I think. Murdoch’s World: The Last of the Old Media Empires by David Folkenflik is published by Public Affairs and available in Australia through NewSouth Books. Cookie Consent and Choices. NPR’s sites use cookies, similar tracking and storage technologies, and information about the device you use to access our sites (together, “cookies”) to enhance your viewing, listening and user experience, personalize content, personalize messages from NPR’s sponsors, provide social media features, and analyze NPR’s traffic. This information is shared with social media, sponsorship, analytics, and other vendors or service providers. See details. You may click on “ Your Choices ” below to learn about and use cookie management tools to limit use of cookies when you visit NPR’s sites. You can adjust your cookie choices in those tools at any time. If you click “ Agree and Continue ” below, you acknowledge that your cookie choices in those tools will be respected and that you otherwise agree to the use of cookies on NPR’s sites. Murdoch's World. How afraid are Aussie politicians of the Murdoch press? → From the Guardian’s account of top aide’s memoir. Harry Evans testifies before House of Lords on Murdoch and media concentration → Former Times of London editor under Murdoch fears further consolidation in UK. New book: 'Wall Street Journal' reporters stymied on News Corp. phone-hack scandal | Capital New York → Capital New York’s first look at my chapters at the tumult inside the Wall Street Journal at the height of the hacking scandal. "It was an amazing document, a mixture of error, fact, exaggeration, prejudice, and the most sentimental patriotism, which made highly damaging charges against the British general staff…many of them untrue. But the basis of the charges – that the Gallipoli expedition was in danger of disaster – was correct." — – the Australian writer Phillip Knightley, on Keith Murdoch’s role in revealing the botched British invasion in World War 1, which took a heavy toll on Australian and New Zealand forces. The Independent reports Rupert Murdoch spoke about his father’s effort to reveal the extent of the debacle during an hour-long interview with the BBC, a competitor that he routinely trashes in Twitter and elsewhere. Rupert Murdoch survives challenge over control of 21st Century Fox → The LA Times’s Meg James reports from the annual shareholder meetings for the new 21st Century Fox that an investor effort to shunt him aside as chairman failed once more. This move to win an independent chairman was led by Tim Shaler of Christian Bros. Investment Services, who oversees $4.6B in investments on behalf of Catholic institutions. Two years ago, Rupert had a curt riposte to a critical query from an investor who acted on behalf of the Church of England: “Your investments haven’t been that great.” “A disproportionate focus on historic matters” Such was the phrase used to dismiss the concerns of a shareholder advisory group, ISS, over the presence of the Murdochs (and their associates) on the 21st Century Fox board by corporate spokesman Nathaniel Brown. Given that the Murdochs and their largest outside investor and close ally, Saudi Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal, control about 47 percent of all voting shares, the call holds little peril for the family. Brown’s dismissal alluded to the ISS concerns over the reaction of 21C’s predecessor company, the old News Corp, to the hacking scandal in the UK. Historic or not, the scandal cost News Corp (and 21C) hundreds of millions of dollars since the summer of 2011, with the tab still running; several former UK top executives and prominent journalists for the company are about to go on trial later this month. When is the last time Fox News fell for an equally damaging fake story that cut against the GOP or conservatives? Fox News’ Fox&Friends host Anna Kooiman reported that President Obama would pay out of pocket to keep open a “Museum of Muslim Culture” amid the government shutdown. The liberal group Media Matters tracked down the source: a fake story from the satiric “National Report.” Note the photo of the “International Museum of Muslim Cultures” in Jackson, Miss - pretty clearly the Milwaukee Art Museum. It is hard to recall when a similar mistake on Fox wrongly cast a figure on the political right in an equally embarrassing light. Obviously, journalists prove capable of fallibility on a daily basis. But Fox once again comes off, at best, as awfully credulous of anything that will make Obama & the Dems look bad. George Will takes his Post on Fox News. I tuned in Friday evening to Bret Baier’s panel of pundits in the second half of the 6 pm hour to see longtime ABC NEWS pundit George Will make his Fox debut and it hit me: With Will, Charles Lane, and Charles Krauthammer on board, three of the four commentators are pundits for the Washington Post . (The exception: Democratic strategist Kirsten Powers.) Who says newspapers are irrelevant? As shown with Fox’s hiring of former WashPo and Daily Beast (and CNN) media critic Howard Kurtz, Fox News chairman Roger Ailes actually loves to raid the supposedly hated MSM. "[W]hile many of you claim to respect people in the public eye who stand up for their views, no matter how unpopular, what you really mean is you respect people in the public eye who stand up for your views. What I’ve learned reading your comments over several years now is that many of you only want your views validated. Nothing else is good enough." Fox News’ Bernie Goldberg on the conservative “ayatollahs” among his viewers. He is also author of “Bias: A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distorts the News” and “A Slobbering Love Affair: The True (and Pathetic) Story of the Torrid Romance between Barack Obama and the Mainstream Media.” “The Orchestra Pit Theory by Roger Ailes” A play by Lincoln Tobier that takes inspiration from a memorable Ailes quote: “If you have two guys on a stage and one guy says, ‘I have a solution to the Middle East problem,’ and the other guy falls in the orchestra pit, who do you think is going to be on the evening news?” Tobier earlier wrote the 1992 play “Roger Ailes: A Retrospective in Context” about the Fox News chief’s previous career in politics. Cookie Consent and Choices. NPR’s sites use cookies, similar tracking and storage technologies, and information about the device you use to access our sites (together, “cookies”) to enhance your viewing, listening and user experience, personalize content, personalize messages from NPR’s sponsors, provide social media features, and analyze NPR’s traffic. This information is shared with social media, sponsorship, analytics, and other vendors or service providers. See details. You may click on “ Your Choices ” below to learn about and use cookie management tools to limit use of cookies when you visit NPR’s sites. You can adjust your cookie choices in those tools at any time. If you click “ Agree and Continue ” below, you acknowledge that your cookie choices in those tools will be respected and that you otherwise agree to the use of cookies on NPR’s sites. Murdoch's World: The Last of the Old Media Empires by David Folkenflik. The Last of the Old Media Empires. Description. Rupert Murdoch is the most significant media tycoon the English-speaking world has ever known. No one before him has trafficked in media influence across those nations so effectively, nor has anyone else so singularly redefined the culture of news and the rules of journalism. In a stretch spanning six decades, he built News Corp from a small paper in Adelaide, Australia into a multimedia empire capable of challenging national broadcasters, rolling governments, and swatting aside commercial rivals. Then, over two years, a series of scandals threatened to unravel his entire creation. Murdoch's defenders questioned how much he could have known about the bribery and phone hacking undertaken by his journalists in London. But to an exceptional degree, News Corp was an institution cast in the image of a single man. The company's culture was deeply rooted in an Australian buccaneering spirit, a brawling British populism, and an outsized American libertarian sensibility -- at least when it suited Murdoch's interests. David Folkenflik, the media correspondent for NPR News, explains how the man behind Britain's take-no-prisoners tabloids, who reinvigorated Roger Ailes by backing his vision for Fox News, who gave a new swagger to the New York Post and a new style to the Wall Street Journal , survived the scandals -- and the true cost of this survival. He summarily ended his marriage, alienated much of his family, and split his corporation asunder to protect the source of his vast wealth (on the one side), and the source of his identity (on the other). There were moments when the global news chief panicked. But as long as Rupert Murdoch remains the person at the top, Murdoch's World will be making news. Praise For Murdoch's World: The Last of the Old Media Empires … “Entertaining and informative…Folkenflik, the media correspondent for NPR… has developed the contacts and style that make this reportage fascinating and credible.”— Booklist. “Folkenflik lucidly and effectively sorts out the complicated phone-hacking story and its political ramifications.”— Kirkus. “ Murdoch's World is bolstered by deep reporting, including scores of interviews, and laced with delicious anecdotes.”— Los Angeles Times. “I'm not sure I've seen a more apt capturing of Roger Ailes, a hardcore ideologue, the creator of one of the great anti-fact engines in the history of American life but at some level at [his] core someone who knows how to create and loves great television above all else.”— Josh Marshall, publisher of Talking Points Memo.