Rupert Murdoch Owns Half This Stuff Too!

I am currently taking a wonderfully interesting class called Media in Britain. The really intriguing part about this class has become a showcase of the way the professor hates the fact that News Corp owns half the news in Britain just like in the US. Thats right, the same News Corp that owns Fox News, run by Rupert Murdoch, supports a very right-wing agenda in the UK. Although it stinks that those in the news who are more left-wing must deal with this constant battle, it definitely will give me something to talk about for the next 3 months.

The Guardian is the newspaper to pay attention to that is basically the UK's Washington Post. So thats awesome since my professor for Media in Britain sides on the left, and pretty much with Labour. He loves The Guardian and literally despises prominent right-wing papers like The Daily Telegraph and The Daily Mail. The professor even had us analyze a Sunday Times(conservative) article where they very subjectively, and without a lot of evidence, said that the Archbishop of St. Andrews damned the BBC for having 'anti-christian' broadcasting. It was very interesting how the Archbishop's comments, that said he thought the channel had an 'institutional bias,' were suddenly turned into him damning the BBC. It really shed a lot of light on the way a news agency can spin a message to help itself out. Even the BBC has admitted its bias against religion, so yes its probably true. Yet the language which really got to me referred to something not quoted, but put into the article as a valid summary of the Archbishops opinion. The author said,

"Cardinal Keith O’Brien, the Archbishop of St Andrews and Edinburgh, claims that a radically secular and socially liberal outlook is tainting the corporation’s news and current affairs output." 


I mean come on. It isn't a quote from the archbishop that the author gets the words "radically secular and socially liberal." That is simply the author's way to make it seem like the Archbishop disapproves of the BBC for their association with these two terms. The Sunday Times is also owned by Murdoch.

In the end, the thing that really gets me is that, for a country so rooted in liberal democracy and its leftists traditions, newspapers sold by Murdoch are getting the most audience of all. Now with New Labour and the Conservatives forming a coalition with the Liberal Democrats, things are only going to get worse for those on the left-wing side of British politics. As it seems, my professor and I will only get more disgusted. Lets hope the midterms in the US aren't another example of that!

I am also endorsing Sarah Palin for President in 2012....just so the Republicans won't win.

I'll leave you with this very unappealing find. To say the least, he's really good at making money.

"The Guardian reports that Rupert Murdoch plans to launch a digital newspaper in the US geared specifically to younger readers and to digital outlets such as the iPad and mobile phones. The paper, as yet unnamed, will pool the huge editorial muscle of Murdoch's combined holdings within News Corporation, which include the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post and the financial wire service Dow Jones, as well as his newspapers in the UK and Australia. Earlier this month, Murdoch said of the iPad: 'It's a real game-changer in the presentation of news,' adding 'We'll have young people reading newspapers.'"