tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6130830332820181818.post3562351729719550303..comments2024-03-29T03:56:08.315-04:00Comments on johnshaplin: Murdoch Comes To America by Michael Wolffjohnshaplinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17618981988062495637noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6130830332820181818.post-61115209261771071142009-07-11T14:07:27.300-04:002009-07-11T14:07:27.300-04:00Gossip is Rupert Murdoch's world, he lives in ...Gossip is Rupert Murdoch's world, he lives in the world of gossip 24/7. In any business deal he often ends up knowing more about those engaged on the other side then they know about themselves. This is one reason, besides his partial deafness, he seems so distracted and inarticulate in the abstract. His days are filled rounding up gossip. Needless-to-say, then, a biography like this is bound to be filled with juicy tidbits of insider gossip.<br /><br /><br />"Alastair Campbell in his diaries described a dinner with Tony Blair, Murdoch and his sons James and Lachlan early in 2002. "Lachlan" noted Campbell, "seemed a bit shy of expressing his views whereas James was anything but." Murdoch gave his usual, and deeply felt, defense of Israel, and James, from across the dinner table, told his father that he was "talking fucking nonesense." Murdoch went on, saying that he failed to understand the Palestinian complaints, and James replied, "They were kicked out of their fucking homes and had nowhere to fucking live." Murdoch then said he didn't think James should be talking like that in front of the Prime Minister- who later said how impressed he was that Rupert let his sons do most of the talking."johnshaplinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17618981988062495637noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6130830332820181818.post-54617002389365304392009-07-11T13:50:31.501-04:002009-07-11T13:50:31.501-04:00The Man Who Owns The News; Inside The Secret World...The Man Who Owns The News; Inside The Secret World of Rupert Murdoch by Michael Wolff, Broadway Books, 2008<br /><br />The focus of this narrative is how Rupert Murdoch came to but Dow Jones and the Wall Street Journal.<br /><br />'It was not without cause for some concern or self-scrutiny that Murdoch was willing to sit for extensive interviews for this book, something he had done only in a begrudging and limited fashion in the past with would-be biographers.<br /><br />Possibly his willingness had something to do with his perception that I regarded many of his enemies- particularly the journalistic priesthood- with some of the same contempt with which he regarded them. Uncomfortable talking about himself, he was never-the-less immediately animated when it came to talking about his various nemesis. To the extent that I had written about what had long seemed to me a fatal flaw among many anti-Murdoch journalists- namely that they were increasingly part of an anemic and dwinding business, that they had lost the ability to make people want to read what they had written- I was, he seemed to think, on his side."johnshaplinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17618981988062495637noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6130830332820181818.post-18917476475764139262009-07-11T13:47:11.492-04:002009-07-11T13:47:11.492-04:00In the end, so much of News Corp. is not very memo...In the end, so much of News Corp. is not very memorable. It is a company that has refined the profit margins on the third-rate. But Fox News is original. It has taken the News Corp. formula of the on-the-cheap and the third-rate and turned it into a culture-changing, paradigm-altering, often jaw-dropping spectacle. About this, Murdoch is proud.<br /><br />Roger Ailes is Murdoch's monster- but a very profitable one. If media success is its own justification- the essential principle Murdoch's own career has been built upon- then Ailes is not only justifiable but untouchable. He is the one person with News Corp. whom Murdoch will not cross.<br /><br />And this is not because he's blind to what Ailes is doing, or to what Fox News is. In steady, discomforting ways, Murdoch shares the feelings about Fox News regularly reflected in the general liberal apoplexy. Everybody outside Fox News and inside News Corp. suffers Fox News. Everybody outside Fox News and inside News Corp. is afraid of Roger Ailes. Furthermore, everybody outside Fox News and inside News Corp. thinks there is a bit of insanity at Fox News. Murdoch, Chernin and Ginsberg are routinely- as often as every day- peppered with complaints by friends, family, business associates, and people of great influence about Fox, and none of them can do anything. It is some bizarre testament, really, to editorial freedom. It's uncontrollable.<br /><br />Even witin Fox News, under Ailes, there are people who have become so powerful that they can't be controlled. It is not just Murdoch (and everybody else at News Corp.'s highest levels) who absolutely despises Bill O'Reilly, the bullying, mean-spirited, and hugely successful evening commentator, but Ailes himself loathes him. Success, however, has cemented everyone to each other. Within Fox News, the two PR executives Brian Lewis and Irena Briganti- famous through media for the violence with which they attack anybody who attacks Fox News- are themselves feared by everybody else, even the most senior people at Fox and a News Corp. Lewis is one of the few people who scares Ailes because he has notes of many conversations that should never have occurred..johnshaplinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17618981988062495637noreply@blogger.com