Motley Moose – Archive

A review of the book The Loudest Voice in the Room – the unauthorized biography of Fox cable boss Roger Ailes – after the jump …..

By: inoljt, http://mypolitikal.com/

Fox News is the most popular cable news channel in America, and it’s quite unique. Most obviously, there’s Fox’s conservatism. Other differences are more stylistic. A lot of Fox News programs are fairly similar to talk radio, for instance. Indeed, shows such as Hannity actually star on conservative talk radio stations.

Then there are the women on Fox News:

More below.

In the real world, the deliberate targeting of clinics where women seek to exercise a constitutional right is called terrorism.  In the world of Fox News contributor Kirsten Powers, it is not (h/t Media Matters):

Just b/c the bombing suspects were Muslim, that doesn’t make it ‘terrorism’ any more than a crazy abortion clinic bomber is a terrorist.

– Kirsten Powers (@kirstenpowers10) April 19, 2013)

And, as Media Matters points out:

The intent behind this tweet isn’t immediately clear, but the message it conveys — that an anti-abortion zealot who sets off a bomb inside of an abortion clinic is not a terrorist — is absolutely false. The FBI treats attacks against abortion service providers as acts of terrorism and anti-abortion movements that resort to violence as terrorist groups.

Disclaimer: This is purely hypothetical. A true Tea Party “Patriot” would never apologize; they’d simply reload. They’d also have more typographical and grammatical errors if they did write anything. Still…

February 12, 2013

Dear Joanie,

Since we haven’t talked in so long, I was shocked to see you sitting in the very back of the church at Dad’s funeral last week. I wanted to see you, to hold you, to tell you so much, but by the time I got through the crowd, you were gone.  

After that last argument when you walked out after we thanked Fox News in our Thanksgiving prayer, I wasn’t sure I would ever see you and Jamal and the kids again. I know you probably still hate me and you probably don’t ever want to talk to me again, but please at least read this letter before you decide.

Now, with everything that’s happened, I can see why you did what you did. I am so sorry, more sorry than you will ever know, that I got involved with those Tea Party people. They seemed so patriotic. It was like they “got it”. Less taxes? Who wouldn’t want that? Get the government out of our lives? Well, at first I was kind of uneasy about that, with Dad working in the defense industry, but it turns out a bunch of them were in the same sort of situation or on Social Security or disability, and it didn’t seem like it was a problem for them.  

We were all just so worried that the country was going to hell in a handbasket, with all those people out of work and the government just spending and spending and spending. It was like people like us – good upstanding people who worked hard and paid our taxes just kept losing ground to people who were… well, you know.

The people over on Fox were the only ones who made sense out of it. Your Dad was the one who first started watching them he was home from work when he hurt his back. After I started watching it, I just got hooked. Glenn Beck was his favorite. He was the only person smart enough to figure out how all this politics and money and religion stuff was connected, and brave enough to say it. It’s too bad somebody silenced him. Hannity and O’Reilly and the others were okay, though, and after a while, we left the TV on Fox all the time.  

When you screamed at us that “you love Fox more than you love me and the kids!”, I am ashamed to say that you might have been right. I DO love you and Jamal and the kids (and Dad loved you guys too), but you were back east and we hardly ever saw you. I know it sounds stupid now, but Fox was our family.  

‘For Tea Party firebrands, and likely Fox loyalists, Rove is the face of Republican Establishment, of the enemy, which means to a certain degree so is Fox News.’

Hackgate: A Pattern of Criminal  Behaviour

Yes, the Murdoch story may be flying under the mainstream media radar, but with three British police investigations ongoing, two Parliamentary committees, a televised public enquiry with full powers of subpoena starting tomorrow, a DOJ enquiry stateside, and other investigations and legal cases in the US, Australia and Italy into Newscorp anti-competitive and/or criminal behaviour, this is not about to go away any time soon.

As an early indication of this, it has just been announced that over sixty separate claims (some filed in multiple names) have been filed in the UK civil claims court against News International: these include dozens of celebrities and prominent politicians, but also the families or partners of murder victims, or casualties of other high profile incidents such as the 7/7 London bombings.

These weren’t people who thrust themselves into the limelight – but people who had already been violated by some awful event, only to have their own privacy violated by illegal means by a company whose only interest was profit and using press exposure to exert political power.

Bernstein on the Watergate Analogy and the Culture of Lawlessness

If you think the Watergate analogy is hyperbolical or fanciful, don’t forget it was first made by Carl Bernstein himself in The Daily Beast nearly three months ago

The circumstances of the alleged lawbreaking within News Corp. suggest more than a passing resemblance to Richard Nixon presiding over a criminal conspiracy in which he insulated himself from specific knowledge of numerous individual criminal acts while being himself responsible for and authorizing general policies that routinely resulted in lawbreaking and unconstitutional conduct. Not to mention his role in the cover-up. It will remain for British authorities and, presumably, disgusted and/or legally squeezed News Corp. executives and editors to reveal exactly where the rot came from at News of the World, and whether Rupert Murdoch enabled, approved, or opposed the obvious corruption that infected his underlings.

And here he is, in a Guardian interview today where he makes the same point

The parallels with Watergate… Had to do with the culture itself that made this possible. In the Nixon Whitehouse Nixon was responsible for the sensibility that permeated the place, that had to do with unconstitutional acts with a cynicism about the political process and how it was practised, and a disregard for the law. And it became apparent to me, as I read more and more what was happening here, that really at bottom what this hacking furore is about, it’s about a culture in the newsroom that has nothing to do with real journalism, real reporting (which is very simply put the best obtainable version of the truth) but rather has to do with serving up both the lowest common denominator of information and calling it news, and obtaining it through a methodology which is outrageous, whether you’re talking about hacking or other kinds of invasions of privacy, and that the atmosphere in that newsroom is a product of the culture that Murdoch in the News of the World .

This initially was a lighthearted intermission diary, supposing this would be a quiet Sunday as News International tried to manage the chaos engulfing them. But I was wrong.

UPDATE: Sir Paul Stephenson, the Met Commissioner, Britain’s senior police officer, has resigned because of his connections with the scandal. More news as this comes in. But this is affecting all levels of the British establishment. I hear now that the Serious Fraud Office is making forays into the News International books: this means that the payment to police officers is at a deeper and more complicated than first appeared. In company law, such payments would be “a gross misuse of shareholders money”.

In Sir Paul Stephenson’s resignation statement there’s a concealed timebomb; a comparison between his employee (Wallis a former News of the World deputy editor) now arrested in the Hackergate probe, and the Prime Minister’s chief press officer, David Coulson (a former editor of the same newspaper).

Now let me turn to the reported displeasure of the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary of the relationship with Mr Wallis.

The reasons for not having told them are two fold. Firstly, I repeat my earlier comments of having at the time no reason for considering the contractual relationship to be a matter of concern. Unlike Mr Coulson, Mr Wallis had not resigned from News of the World or, to the best of my knowledge been in any way associated with the original phone hacking investigation.

That’s a barb and a half. As Robert Peston says

Stephenson statement implies that Met’s employment of Wallis was less controversial than David Cameron’s employment of Coulson

UPDATE 2; IS CAMERON NEXT? Stephenson explicitly compared his taking responsibility with Cameron’s lack of taking responsibility – an amazing comparison. The Labour Shadow Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper, has gone for the kill

It is striking that Sir Paul has taken responsibility and answered questions about the appointment of the Deputy Editor of the News of the World whereas the Prime Minister still refuses to recognise his misjudgement and answer questions on the appointment of the Editor of the News of the World at the time of the initial phone hacking investigation.

People will wonder at why different rules apply for the Prime Minister and the Met, especially when as Sir Paul said himself, unlike Andy Coulson, Neil Wallis had not been forced to resign from the News of the World.

It is also a very serious concern that the Met Commissioner felt unable to tell the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary about this operational issue with Neil Wallis because of the Prime Minister’s relationship with Andy Coulson.

Amazing times. This could go all the way up to the Prime Minister – a close friend of Rebekah Brooks. Even Iain Dale, a famous Conservative Blogger agrees; Could Cameron Be Next

I can’t believe I am even writing this, but it is no longer an impossibility to imagine this scandal bringing down the Prime Minister or even the government. OK, some of you reading this may think that last sentence is a deranged ranting, and you may be right. Indeed, I hope you are. But Sir Paul Stephenson launched a thinly veiled attack on David Cameron in his resignation statement and the Prime Minister is already on the ropes about the propriety of his relationship with Andy Coulson.

Now back to the original diary

*****

To everyone’s surprise, police have just arrested the former Chief Executive of News International, Rebekah Brooks. Significantly she being questioned by detectives working on both Operations Weeting and Elveden: in other words.

They have arrested her on suspicion of both phone hacking (under the Phone Intercept Law) and corruption allegations.



This is key development, and puts James Murdoch next in the frame as per my previous diary – FALL OF THE HOUSE OF MURDOCH VI. Indeed, so dramatic was it that the best go to source for inside information on New International, Murdoch’s biographer Michael Wolff, could only emit the tweet “Jesus” at first. Now he adds this…

In 2008, during a two hour interview I did with Rebekah Brooks, she took seven phone calls from James Murdoch–that’s how often they spoke.

A Guardian Video from just seven days ago shows how close Brooks was to both James and Rupert who (rather than the hacked victims or 200 staff redundancies) said Rebekah was his ‘priority’

More on this story as it comes in.  

After Bloody Friday, and the late but inevitable resignation of Rupert Murdoch’s two closest personal lieutenants – Rebekah Brooks and Les Hinton – News Corp are trying to run damage limitation: apologies in the British Press, denials of hacking 9/11 victims.

But despite the best attempts of their PR firm Edelman, this will not wash, and there’s already enough known and proven in the public domain to turn our attention to the Newscorp Executive who took over from Hinton as head of Newscorps European arm, and who supervised the payout of millions in hush-money to the victims of phone hacking two years ago: a certain man by the name of James Murdoch.

As Michael Wolff – the Vanity Fair writer and biographer who knows the ins-and-outs of the family court – tweets:

Wolff also corrects the rumours yesterday that Elisabeth Murdoch said “Rebekah fucked the company” at a book party last Sunday. No, she didn’t say precisely that. James’ sister said:

“James and Rebekah fucked the Company”

So here’s a little more about the crass libertarian ideology that has driven her brother – and potentially the company – over the cliff.  

After Bloody Friday, and the late but inevitable resignation of Rupert Murdoch’s two closest personal lieutenants – Rebekah Brooks and Les Hinton – News Corp are trying to run damage limitation: apologies in the British Press, denials of hacking 9/11 victims.

But despite the best attempts of their PR firm Edelman, this will not wash, and there’s already enough known and proven in the public domain to turn our attention to the Newscorp Executive who took over from Hinton as head of Newscorps European arm, and who supervised the payout of millions in hush-money to the victims of phone hacking two years ago: a certain man by the name of James Murdoch.

As Michael Wolff – the Vanity Fair writer and biographer who knows the ins-and-outs of the family court – tweets:

Wolff also corrects the rumours yesterday that Elisabeth Murdoch said “Rebekah fucked the company” at a book party last Sunday. No, she didn’t say precisely that. James’ sister said:

“James and Rebekah fucked the Company”

So here’s a little more about the crass libertarian ideology that has driven her brother – and potentially the company – over the cliff.