Bill O'Reilly: Why Experience Matters

Last night I was reminded how Rudy was the leading the polls through the summer and into the fall in 2008, and the McCain campaign was on its last legs after some of his paid staff had spent all his money.  When McCain fired them, they went back to Romney.  Amazing isn't it -- Rove was hard at work in 2008 to elect Romney and was up to his usual dirty tricks we have seen on display this election for Romney once again.

The best reason to vote against Romney is not to have Rove near the White House.  Was Rove the leak to the Cain campaign on Chris Wilson who works for a Perry Super PAC not the candidate or Curt Anderson who works for Perry who gave a very good interview on CNN that he was not the leaker.  Anderson said he  knew nothing about this from Cain which Cain has now admitted he might not have told him after saying he did tell him.  If he had told him, I would bet money that Anderson would not have worked for his campaign.

Cain went after Perry again last night twice after his campaign backed off and some people think that if Cain is going down he is going to try to take out Perry for Romney.  If that is true, it speaks volumes about the attacks on Perry by Cain and Block.  Why does he hate Perry so much?  Is it because Perry is ethical and stands up for his beliefs even if some of them are not popular with the far right or some of the new Tea Party types posing as conservatives who are actually Democrats.

There are more new Tea Party groups then I can count now.  They are springing up right and left and all have my email address.  Since I was never part of the original Tea Party movement, where did they get it.  Is Rove behind this or is it Ailes at Fox News or the Koch Brothers.  Throw a dart!  Some of you might think that I blame Rove for a lot but his fingerprints are everywhere.  Ask Sarah Palin what she thinks of him or others.  He has been after Perry starting in 1998 and hasn't let up as he has tried to take him out in the two recent years as Governor's races.

Word is that Cain is pretty much out of control and won't listen to his advisers when they have told him not to continue to attack Perry.  Then we have some of the conservative pundits who are going full speed ahead reporting the Cain spin instead of the facts and blaming the media instead of Cain.  Their defense of his Super PAC using the term 'lynching" is reprehensible.  I can guarantee you if Cain was white, those same pundits would have thrown him overboard just like they did Foley.  The scandals are not limited to Democrats and any pundit or Conservative who thinks that it is has their head buried in the sand.  We have a group of men in both parties who consider themselves God's gift to women and it is an insult to women.

How many of these Conservatives doing all the talking in support of Cain are actually Republicans?  We know Hannity is not a Republican and would be willing to bet a lot of Conservatives telling Republicans what to do are not Republican.  

On top of all of that comes this article from O'Reilly about the real reason Cain should not be elected -- lack of experience and frankly lack of knowledge of how Government works or the Constitution, I might add.  This is what is being covered up by the scandal.  Is this what the Cain camp wanted all along not to have to defend his positions?

Is Cain drip, drip, dripping this to hide his lack of experience and some of his dumb ideas that the Democrats would throw at him if he received the nomination.   Still have not recovered from the electrified fence on the border, or that he is going to sign a Constitutional amendment, or will not sign a bill over five pages in length.  Then you discover that Cain has been a lobbyist and is not an outside the beltway type. There are not more inside the beltway types than lobbyist.  He is the associate minister in one of the most liberal black Baptist Churches in America which these same pundits who went after Rev Wright won't touch his minister who uses Malcolm X as his guide.

Bill O'Reilly has a handle on the real reason that Cain should not be the Republican nominee -- experience which is thinner than Obama's.  The fact that Cain was willing to change his 9-9-9 plan for the empowerment zones of the urban areas should tell you all you need to know.  Empowerment zones are a code word for minority areas of the city where billions of tax dollars have already been funneled over the years.  Now he wants to give business owners a tax break so when they hire people it will come off their taxes.  If that is not ripe for fraud nothing is.

So who are these conservatives supporting Hermain Cain?   Tea Party types who were Democrats or still are or the far right that thinks the liberal media never reports the truth and the conservative media never lies.  The fact that so many conservative pundits have managed to demonize the media is missing the fact that today's young media for the most part is pretty honest and and always have sources.  Guess six sources are not enough for some of these pundits who have refused to disclose their relationship with Cain like Hannity.

Pollsters can say all they want that it hasn't affect his numbers or his campaign talking about fundraising numbers which you won't find out until January, but in the end when Republicans go in the booth to vote, most are not going to vote with this in his background especially when he has followed the same path as Clinton -- deny, deny, deny, and then drip, drip, drip, and then attack others.  Note that I said Republicans not conservatives because a lot of the conservatives posting are not Republican and from 3rd parties.

The bottom line, however, should be about the lack of experience by Cain which is being covered up by his scandal.  O'Reilly has it correct.

Why Experience Matters
Voting for any political candidate is a gamble. But supporting one who is light on policy achievement is a long-shot play. 

Put aside Herman Cain's social problems for a moment, and look at his resume: Successful businessman with a patriotic streak. That's pretty much it. Yet, Mr. Cain leads the Republican field in some polls, prompting a new Quinnipiac survey to ask, "Does the fact that Herman Cain never served in public office make you more likely/less likely to vote for him, or doesn't it make a difference?" 

Well, 43% said it doesn't make a difference, 41% would be less likely to vote for Cain, and just 14% are more likely to support him. 

The takeaway from this poll is that close to 60% of Americans don't believe any political experience is necessary in order to run the country. 

Looking back, only two American presidents have ever been elected without political or military experience. William Howard Taft and Herbert Hoover had scant public sector exposure (and we know how that turned out with Hoover), but the vast majority of chief executives had politics in their blood. 

Barack Obama might be an exception to that rule. His experience in the Senate was short and rather ordinary. The president has a strong legal background, but little hands-on policy experience. 

That has caused him major problems, especially with the economy. Mr. Obama, a devoted liberal, bought the idea that massive federal spending would ramp up the private sector. It did not. It never has. But because the president believed he could combine economic growth with social justice, he did not listen to opposing points of view. And here we are three years later with massive economic pain. 

The lesson is that experience counts. Like President Obama, Herman Cain is a charismatic speaker. He is forceful, yet accessible. Millions of folks like him and that for which he stands. But, truthfully, Cain simply does not know enough about the world to formulate specific future strategies. If he is elected to the presidency, he would have to rely on a bevy of advisors, just as President Obama has done. Paging Lawrence Summers! 

We are living in a complicated, dangerous world where what happens in a chaotic nation like Greece can cause the Dow to drop 300 points in a day... where a rogue country like Iran can directly threaten us and get away with it... where our alleged ally Pakistan can hide bin Laden for years, and not pay any price. Even Lincoln and Washington would be up nights dealing with problems like these. 

Thank God that President Obama appointed Leon Panetta to blow up the al-Qaeda and Taliban thugs. As CIA chief, Panetta has served the president extremely well and largely taken foreign policy criticism off the election table. Mr. Obama got lucky with Mr. Panetta. The president has been unlucky in other advisory areas. 

So, experience does matter. Voting for any political candidate is a gamble. But supporting one who is light on policy achievement is a long-shot play.  

Source:  Bill O'Reilly 

Hacking Testimony of James Murdoch is Disputed

We were hard on the Wall Street Journal several days ago when they did their attack piece on other news agencies while defending News Corp which we thought was over the top and not something we would have expected out of the Wall Street Journal.  Today we are extremely happy to report the Journal is back on track with this in-depth report.  On their site they have background information that goes with this article including the connections that have not been included in other stories on the scandal.

Makes you wonder if the former owners speaking out have made a difference at The Journal since they are not the least bit happy with Murdoch.  With this latest revelation, seems that the most logical conclusion to save News Corp would be to have the Murdoch's hand over control.  This is only going to get worse as more keeps coming out.  Personally would like to see The Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones sold so the Journal can go back to being the business paper everyone wants to read in the morning before starting the work day.

The reporters at the WSJ have done an excellent job with this article and it starts to gain credibility bacl.

Hacking Testimony Is Disputed

By CASSELL BRYAN-LOW, PAUL SONNE and STEVE STECKLOW  

July 22, 2011 

Two former executives broke ranks with News Corp. for the first time on Thursday over whether James Murdoch knew in 2008 that the phone-hacking scandal at the company's now-defunct U.K. tabloid likely involved more than just one rogue reporter, as the company had long maintained. 

The rupture in the ranks comes as News Corp. is under pressure over a key piece of its defense against phone-hacking allegations: a 2007 internal investigation by an outside law firm. That inquiry appears to have been less rigorous than company executives have said. 

On Thursday, Colin Myler, former editor of the News of the World tabloid, and Tom Crone, a former lawyer for the paper, said in a joint statement that in 2008 they informed Mr. Murdoch, now News Corp.'s deputy chief operating officer, about a crucial email suggesting that phone hacking went beyond one reporter. Mr. Murdoch on Tuesday said before a parliamentary committee in the U.K. that he had never been made aware of the email—even though he had approved a roughly £700,000 settlement ($1.1 million) in the matter.

In a statement, Mr. Murdoch said, "I stand by my testimony." The settlement was one of his first major decisions after becoming head of News Corp.'s Europe and Asia operations in 2007. He didn't work at News Corp. at the time of the alleged hacking.

The two executives' statement amounts to an unusual public rebuke by long-serving allies of News Corp. Chairman and Chief Executive Rupert Murdoch, who is the father of James. Mr. Myler edited the New York Post before returning to the U.K. to run the News of the World in 2007. Mr. Crone had made his name defending the company's racy tabloids in court. 

Separately, the Justice Department is preparing subpoenas as part of preliminary investigations into News Corp. relating to alleged foreign bribery and alleged hacking of voice mail of Sept. 11 victims, according to a government official. While the company has sought to isolate the legal problems in the U.K., it has been bracing for increased scrutiny from both the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission, according to people familiar with the company's strategy. Final approval to issue the subpoenas hasn't yet happened, the official said.
A person close to News Corp. said the preparation of subpoenas is "a fishing expedition with no evidence to support it." 

Meantime, News Corp. and its former U.K. law firm are increasingly at odds. 

As recently as last week, in an interview with The Wall Street Journal, News Corp. founder Rupert Murdoch said the company had hired "the best lawyers in London" to investigate the hacking claims in 2007, providing them with "thousands of documents." Mr. Murdoch said Harbottle & Lewis LLP was hired "to inquire into the whole situation" and that "it was their major mistake in reporting that there was nothing further to worry about." 

However, the law firm's inquiry was limited—not a full-blown investigation but rather a narrow inquiry related to an employment dispute—according to public evidence submitted to parliament and people familiar with the matter. It was based on a review of at least 300 emails forwarded to the law firm by two executives at News International, the media company's U.K. newspaper unit, according to the parliamentary committee evidence. The law firm's remit was limited to whether or not five staffers at the News of the World tabloid knew about one reporter's illegal hacking activities or had engaged in similar activities, according to evidence submitted by News International to a parliament committee.

Furthermore, the batch of emails also contained evidence of police bribery, according to a lawyer recently hired by News Corp. to review some of them. The indications of bribery weren't reported to the police until last month, according to News Corp.; it isn't clear why. The recently hired lawyer, a former U.K. prosecutor and current News Corp. adviser, Ken MacDonald, on Tuesday told a parliamentary committee that the nine or 10 emails he reviewed contained "blindingly obvious" evidence of bribes. 

Lord MacDonald and other legal specialists said British lawyers generally don't have a duty to report crimes to authorities because advice to clients is privileged. But lawyers said it would be typical to alert a client if evidence of serious wrongdoing were found.  

Excerpt:  Read more at The Wall Street Journal and follow the web of connections that the WSJ  has laid out for readers.

Will Murdoch's Move into Education be Affected by the News Corp Scandal?

Another day, another story on Murdoch and News Corps.  This time is about their acquisition of Wireless Generation to get them into the field of education technology.  We will leave the pie throwing incident to the conservative media who went nuts but frankly there seems to have been a lack of security for someone to not only get a pie into the room but to get so near to Murdoch with no security around when he was testifying.  We will say one thing -- his wife was really quick.

News Corp domestic holdings include the 20th Century Fox film company, Fox’s numerous TV enterprises, The Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, and the book publisher Harper Collins.  They should be able to withstand this scandal because of the reputation of The Wall Street Journal and other holdings.  News Corp is reporting that Murdoch will not be replaced. It would not come as a shock to see the News Corp board, the 2nd largest media corporation behind Walt Disney Co., in the end remove Murdoch as CEO and  replace him with the Chief Operating Officer Chase Carey.  The stock of News Corp rose when the rumors swirled that Murdoch was going to be replaced but now with News Corp saying he is not, will the stock tank?  We are reminded of the proverbial coach that gets the praise in the NFL that there is no chance he is going to be replaced only to see him fired in a couple of weeks so the jury is still out on Murdoch.

The  attack piece in the Wall Street Journal this week did not help the News Corps credibility and was in poor taste.  Then today Bloomberg is out with the story of Murdoch’s Refusal to Take Responsibility May Undermine Credibility as CEO.  Not only does it look like he was behind the orchestrated hit piece on other news agencies from the WSJ but now he refuses to take any responsibility.  What happened to the 'buck stops here' for CEO's and others including the President.  His defense reminds me of Obama and it is never his responsibility or fault when something goes wrong.

We don't usually agree with the teacher's union and not sure when is the last time that happened, but in this case they have legitimate concerns:

Officials at Wireless Generation, News Corp.’s only education technology acquisition so far, insist they are just another in a diverse line of reputable companies to join the conglomerate. 

They dispute suggestions in the New York City media that because Wireless Generation creates and sells data systems as part of its business, education agencies should be wary of a potential data breach, given the hacking into private phone information by News Corp.’s now-shuttered News of the World and allegedly by other Murdoch newspapers in Britain. 

Why was Murdoch allowed to purchase so many media entities in NYC that overlap or doesn't the FCC and SEC care anymore.  We found the answer:

F.C.C. Votes to Relax Rules Limiting Media OwnershipBy THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: June 2, 2003 

WASHINGTON -- Federal regulators relaxed decades-old rules restricting media ownership Monday, permitting companies to buy more television stations and own a newspaper and a broadcast outlet in the same city. 

The Republican-controlled Federal Communications Commission voted 3-2 -- along party lines -- to adopt a series of changes favored by media companies. 

These companies argued that existing ownership rules were outmoded on a media landscape that has been substantially altered by cable TV, satellite broadcasts and the Internet. 

Critics say the eased restrictions would likely lead to a wave of mergers landing a few giant media companies in control of even more of what the public sees, hears and reads. 

Excerpt:  Read more at NY Times

Will someone tell us when deregulation has really worked?  Or has most deregulation hurt the consumer with higher prices with mergers and smaller companies put out of business?

Having a hard time figuring out how News Corp is a good fit to move into Education.  Eventually do they want to be like the Washington Post who owns for profit Kaplan by expanding from technology into on-line for profit teaching?  Time will tell if it is a good fit, but not sure a company would want to be known as part of News Corp right now.

Published Online: July 20, 2011
News Corp. Scandal Clouds Murdoch's Move Into Education 

Joel Klein, executive vice president of News Corp., left; Rupert Murdoch’s wife, Wendi Deng; and Rupert Murdoch leave a Parliament office building after Murdoch gave evidence to the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee on the News of the World phone-hacking scandal on July 19.
—Sean Dempsey/PA Wire/AP

When News Corp. announced last fall its entry into the education technology market, some observers said the media conglomerate led by Rupert Murdoch was a bad fit for education.
Between the ownership of conservative-leaning outlets like Fox News and a reputation for identifying opportunities to generate lots of revenue very quickly, News Corp. had a business model, they suggested, that wouldn’t mesh well with a world where public-employee unions hold influence and business development typically is gradual. 

Now, just as News Corp. had appeared set to expand its education holdings beyond its recently acquired subsidiary Wireless Generation, those concerns are joined by a deluge of legal and ethical issues surrounding the phone-hacking scandal in the conglomerate's United Kingdom division. 

At the same time, New York state and city contracts awarded to Wireless Generation have prompted questions, and critics and industry analysts are closely watching the performance of Joel I. Klein, the chief executive officer of News Corp.’s fledgling education division, who went to work for Mr. Murdoch after an often-contentious eight years as chancellor of the New York City schools. 

“They carry baggage with them,” Dick Iannuzzi, the president of the 600,000-member New York State United Teachers union, said of Mr. Klein, Mr. Murdoch, and News Corp. “They’re going to have to figure out how to overcome that baggage if they want educators to look at their work.” 

But even in a time of crisis, if any company has the resources and internal culture to prevail, media experts say it may in fact be News Corp., the second-largest media corporation in the world behind the Walt Disney Co. News Corp.’s domestic holdings include the 20th Century Fox film company, Fox’s numerous TV enterprises, The Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, and the book publisher HarperCollins. 

....

“I think everyone by this point is appalled by the allegations,” Zachary Silverstein, a senior vice president and the chief of staff of Wireless Generation, said of charges that include an unsubstantiated report of possible phone hacking stateside of victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. 

“But to try to connect them to business units or others who have absolutely no connection,” he said, “is really a stretch and frankly unfair.” 

Wireless Generation’s co-founder and chief executive officer, Larry Berger, serves on the board of trustees of Editorial Projects in Education, the nonprofit corporation that publishes Education Week.

Hiring ‘Star Power’

Analysts of the education technology industry say New York City-based News Corp. may be showing a willingness to follow a hands-off policy that leaves developing solutions—as well as trust—in the hands of individual companies like Wireless Generation. 

In addition to Mr. Klein, prominent recent hires for News Corp.’s education division include Peter C. Gorman, the superintendent of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg, N.C., schools; former New York City schools Chief Operating Officer Kristen Kane; and Diane Rhoten, the founder of Startl, a nonprofit group that specializes in linking up digital education innovators with funders.
“A company like News Corp. can afford to wait,” said Karen Billings, the vice president of the education division at the Washington-based Software and Information Industry Association, or SIIA. “Because of the people and the star power that they’re hiring, they could also afford to leave them alone for a while and let them do some really interesting innovative things.” 

But Ms. Billings underscored that education clients will need to understand News Corp.’s motivations for entering the education market, as well as its long-term commitment. Both have the potential to be undermined by the continuing scandal over its employees’ news-gathering practices, which also are said to include payments to British police officers. Even as investigations proceed in Britain, some American lawmakers have pressed for probes of any infractions of U.S. law. 

Under its chairman and chief executive officer, Mr. Murdoch, an Australian-born news tycoon who is now a U.S. citizen, News Corp. has grown its brand by letting the outlets it absorbs maintain their own identities and business structures, Mr. Silverstein of Wireless Generation said. That approach to business fits well with both Mr. Klein and Wireless Generation, he said, and has resulted in a smoother takeover than he had anticipated. 

Excerpt:  Read More at Education Week

We will be watching to see what happens in the coming months to this foray of News Corp into Education technology as we are sure they will be more to come out in the months ahead about Murdoch and News Corp.  

Wall Street Journal Covers Parent Company, News Corp, and Murdoch 's Scandal with Facts

Since Murdoch and his News Corp was allowed to buy The Wall Street Journal (WSJ), their coverage of corporate  news has been sinking into more general news and less in-depth business articles we had come to expect on the front page.  Then we learn the facts from The Daily Beast that since 2007 only 12% of articles on The Wall Street Journal front page were about corporations.  The first question that pops in your mind is WHY?

 "Did Murdoch Costs The Wall Street Journal the Scoop on the Goldman-Sachs/SEC Story?"  According to the linked Daily Finance article it did.  Turns out that Murdoch bought the WSJ to compete with the New York Times for local news and politics which ended up bitting the WSJ on this story when the New York Times broke the full story and 20 minutes later the Journal went with a bare bones story.

Why would Murdoch have WSJ sit on the story?  Was Murdoch's purchase of the WSJ meant to help Obama when he took office with Murdoch's switch of the WSJ to more political news and less business news?  With only 12% front page stories being about corporate America, it left a big hole for those stories how corporate America was affected by the Obama Administration.  That may be a reach but in hindsight, that looks to be a possibility.   Makes sense with the bad economy that Murdoch, who supported Obama, would make the Journal into more of a regular newspaper ignoring what was happening in corporate America for the most part.

Murdoch's support of Obama was largely ignored by the loyal supporters of Fox News who turned even more on McCain.  If Fox News told them to jump off the Brooklyn Bridge, some of them would probably do just that.




There you have it -- Murdoch supporting Obama and the Wall Street Journal goes more mainstream news and less corporate.  Connect the dots.

Why have most of the conservative pundits from the beginning been ignoring this huge story out of London on News Corps which has now reached inside the United States with the FBI investigation opened?  This should be big news to everyone.  It made our local papers and the broadcast news.

Murdoch Scandal Roils WSJ

Faced with sleazy corporate cousins, reporters at the august Wall Street Journal are grappling with how to cover their boss’s scandal—and their own survival 

By Nick Summers
Jul 14, 2011 10:24 PM EDT

On Tuesday, July 5, bureau chiefs and editors at The Wall Street Journal dialed into a conference call organized by Dennis Berman, the newspaper’s new editor in charge of corporate coverage. He trotted out some numbers: of the more than 1,200 front-page stories the Journal had run in the previous year, only 12 percent had been about corporations—formerly the paper’s bread and butter. 

Since its 2007 sale to Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., the Journal had been steadily devolving, old-timers thought, into a general-interest daily—still a fine newspaper, but no longer the essential first read of corporate America. “We have to raise our ambitions,” Berman said, according to someone who listened to the call. And it wasn’t hard to believe that the Journal would. A week earlier, it had won three Gerald Loeb Awards, the highest honors in business journalism, after being shut out in 2010 for the first time in decades. 

At that moment, though, a long-simmering story in the British press was exploding, dictating that the next major corporation the Journal would be covering would be its own parent.
The bombshell admission by the News Corp.-owned tabloid News of the World that its reporters had hacked the voicemail of a murdered teen, giving her parents false hope that she might still be alive, has made the Murdoch company one of the most reviled on the planet, as more allegations of unethical practices at its various properties have surfaced. News Corp.’s hasty decisions to shutter the tabloid, as well as scuttle a $12 billion bid for complete ownership of a lucrative British satellite broadcasting company, have done little to stanch the outcry. In the sprawling story’s latest developments, the FBI opened an investigation into whether News Corp. outlets violated the privacy of 9/11 terror victims in America; Murdoch himself consented to testify before Britain’s Parliament; and Rebekah Brooks, the CEO of his U.K. newspapers, resigned. 

In the last week and a half, reporters and editors at the august Journal have had to come to terms with the fact that they share corporate DNA with publications that have paid police for news, paid large settlements to keep phone-hacking victims quiet, and provided Parliament with incomplete information, among other sins against journalism. The Journal's publisher, Les Hinton, has been widely discussed as a possible fall guy for their malfeasance. For the Journal, covering it all has been an awkward and frustrating challenge. 

“It stinks. It makes our stomachs churn, to be bizarrely held accountable for some dipshit tabloid guys from eight years ago. It’s absurd,” said a staffer who has been at the Journal since before Murdoch bought the paper. Another reporter, also speaking anonymously, described an end to the era of pretending away the Murdoch taint: “This slightly naïve notion that nobody really knows that we’re part of News Corp., that what they do, what Fox News does, what Rupert Murdoch does, doesn’t affect us—when something like this happens, it forces people to recognize that it does.” 

In covering the story, the Journal has walked a fine line. After running articles on page B1 and B3 on its first two days, the News of the World closure made the front page last Friday. The story was then relegated back inside—although Journal reporters Jessica Vascellaro and Russell Adams broke news Wednesday with a report that News Corp. was contemplating the sale of its remaining British newspapers. As the scandal has continued to explode anew each day, the Journal has, indeed, upped its game. Murdoch’s decision to revoke his bid for British Sky Broadcasting was fronted again Wednesday, and yesterday, the paper published the first extensive interview with Murdoch. 

It hasn’t been an entirely smooth process, especially because Journal staffers are acutely aware of who among their ranks might be termed “AM” and “PM”: after Murdoch and pre-Murdoch. Gossip flows freely in a newsroom, and spreading through the Journal grapevine now is the tale of a contentious moment last week between No. 2 editor Gerard Baker—a Murdoch hire—and Bruce Orwall, a longtime bureau chief now in London. During a conference call to plan stories, the journalists were discussing Rebekah Brooks, the News of the World editor at the time of the hacking of the teen murder victim’s phone. Baker, murmuring a word of support for the vilified Brooks, noted that she had been on vacation when the offense occurred. Orwall shot back quickly: “The last I checked, cell phones still work in Italy.” Orwall declined to comment; Baker, through a spokesperson, did the same. Journal Editor-in-Chief Robert Thomson also declined to comment. 

The Journal's competitors say the paper is performing admirably, under the circumstances. “We all know how tricky it is to cover your own company. I think the Journal has played it pretty much down the middle,” Bill Keller, the executive editor of The New York Times, emailed The Daily Beast. One Times reporter, who did not wish to be named discussing a competitor, agreed. “I think they’re doing the most they can with a very unpleasant and uncomfortable situation. No one ever wants to write about their boss,” he said. “And when you do, there’s always a degree of self-editing that goes on. Knowing that, it’s pretty impressive how they have been very tough on Murdoch and News Corp. at times.” 

Excerpt:  Read More at The Daily Beast

First time we heard of Rupert Murdoch was when we lived in the San Antonio area and he bought the San Antonio Light which was a very good newspaper -- lot of military news and facts.  The San Antonio Express at that time was more fluff.  Murdoch then got approval behind closed doors to buy the Express News promising the Light employees there would be little change.  That was one big fat lie.  Next thing we know we are down to one paper as he merged the papers and the Light employees were in the unemployment line.  Why was he allowed to buy the Express News to put the Light out of business is a question that was never answered.

Now in NYC he owns the cable Fox News, The New York Post, and now The Wall Street Journal.  The question remains of why he was allowed to buy different venues in the same city.  His aim is to put The New York Times out of business using The Wall Street Journal is failing miserably.  Journal reporters are not too happy being part of News Corp either.

If I don't like what a newspaper has to say, I don't read it and certainly will not buy it. There is Freedom of the Press along with my right to not read a particular paper if I don't agree with them.  The very idea that Murdoch bought the WSJ to put the NY Times out of business goes against everything I believe.  Don't want one sided news and that is what Murdoch seems to be after.  How long would it take him if he could buy the NY Times to merge the WSJ and lay off Journal employees in favor of the Times?  He has a track record that is not good.  Conservatives who buy into Murdoch are setting themselves up for an eventual fall because he is not conservative.  No conservative would hire Geraldo.

Very black eye for News Corp but since it is Rupert Murdoch, I am shedding no tears and consider it the beginning of payback for the San Antonio Light employees and their readers.