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    Every one is dancing at 72Point.com  getting ready for the 2010 New Year after a successful 2008 year as  the leading PR company in the United Kingdom

    Rupert Murdoch's Favorite Lie
     Microsoft Willing to Pay News Corp. To List Exclusively with Bing
    Rupert Murdoch Plans to sue the BBC £ 2 billion a year and growing loses his New Corp makes, the way thisng are going for News Corp, they either have sue the BBC and send it bankrupt through court actions or buy the BBC, so that Rupert Murdoch can start charging for online news content, because while the BBC remains in public hands and not his privatised control, the BBC will continue to provide free information, investigative, fun, interesting news, arts, music, entertainment and information...the reality for Rupert Murdoch is that the main foundation he has build up News Corp on is hard copy newspapers, with billions invested in the best pronting presses in the world, and having to destroy millions of trees everyday to continue to print is newspapers. The sad reality that Rupert Murdoch is discovering a bit to late is that hard copy newspapers do not make money, because young people do not read them, as they gey all they need and want as far as  news, arts, music, entertainment and information  from the Internet.  Even older people are reading hard copy newspapers less and less, as they become more and more familiar on how to access the extensive information on the Internet, that is there at the click of a mouse on their computer, when you start pressing surf on a Google Search page about any information in the world.

    Thus, Rupert Murdoch and his powerful News Corp has to
    (a) either destroy the BBC through legal action,

    (b) buy the BBC out altogether, which would require  News Corps to use it's unlimited media power and influence through it's newspapers and online websites and TV channels to make sure David Cameron and his Tory Party win political power from Gordon Brown and his Labour Party at the 2010 British Election, and have David Cameron and his Tory party change the rules and have the BBC dismantle altogether.
      
    (c) use News Corps unlimited media power and influence through it's newspapers and online websites and TV channels to make sure David Cameron and his Tory Party win political power from Gordon Brown and his Labour Party at the 2010 British Election, and have David Cameron and hisa Tory Party change the rules, and have the BBC dismantle altogether.

    http://www.slate.com/id/2189903/

    Rupert Murdoch's Favorite Lie 

    As long as he insists on telling it, I'll keep calling it out. By Jack Shafer Updated Thursday, April 24, 2008, at 5:17 PM ET

    Rupert Murdoch can't stop telling his favorite lie. In this week's Newsweek, he claims that he booted the BBC World Service Television from his Star satellite TV system in Asia in 1994 for financial reasons, not for its China coverage. The article also quotes from a note Murdoch sent to New York Times Publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. taking issue with a Times editorial that touched on the matter. "I don't know how many times I have to state that I didn't take off the BBC," Murdoch wrote.It's a lie, and the genocidal tyrant knows it. Here's how a cross section of the press reported the BBC's eviction from Star, which he bought in late 1993:Especially sensitive is the matter of the BBC World Service news channel carried by Star TV, which has broadcast reports embarrassing to the Chinese government. A … contract prohibits Star from dropping the BBC, but Murdoch is trying to negotiate a deal that would substitute documentary and educational programming for the British news service.Los Angeles Times (Feb. 13, 1994)Rupert Murdoch says the British Broadcasting Corp. could lose its spot on his Star TV satellite network unless it addresses bias charges leveled by India and China.Murdoch told reporters in New Delhi that he is inclined to replace the BBC with his own Sky TV news channel to improve the overseas image of both countries as well as to seek better ties with them."That may be a solution that we may have to come to," Murdoch said. "We have a legally binding contract with the BBC. We would hope that we can resolve most of these complications with them before taking such a drastic step as that." —Media Daily (Feb. 15, 1994)Mr Murdoch has made several trips to China since and the Chinese leadership has wasted no time publicising his efforts to placate it. A month ago Guo Baoxing, of China's Ministry of [R]adio, Film and TV, said Beijing had told Star to drop the BBC world service which is carried on one of their five channels. The BBC has offended China by producing and airing a documentary on Mao Zedong, a few minutes of which mention that he enjoyed sexual encounters with young women. The Chinese also got a bit upset when the BBC aired graphic pictures of the Tiananmen Square massacre near its anniversary. This week it was confirmed that Star is doing just what the Chinese asked. —the Sun-Herald of Sydney, Australia (March 20, 1994)Last year the outspoken mogul declared that satellite television was "an unambiguous threat to totalitarian regimes everywhere." A month or so later the Chinese government clamped down on the installation of satellite dishes. Dumping the BBC … appears to have been Mr. Murdoch's penance. Seldom has he let ideology stand in the way of profits; nor is he especially fond of the BBC. Recently he told The Economist that the BBC caused him "lots of headaches" with a number of Asian governments—especially the one in Beijing—because of its critical news coverage. —the Economist (March 26, 1994)It became increasingly clear that News Corp. regarded the BBC news service as a political liability in Star's quest to develop better relationships with a number of Asian governments, notably the Communist regime in China.—Variety (March 28, 1994) Once the BBC had been dumped, a Murdoch minion categorically denied that politics had anything to do with it, as this next clip illustrates. Satellite broadcaster STAR-TV, owned by media mogul Rupert Murdoch, denied reports that it bowed to political pressure in deciding to beam Mandarin-language movies instead of a BBC news channel into China. Gary Davey, STAR-TV chief executive, told reporters commercial considerations and a lack of capacity on the northern beam of the Asiasat-1 satellite led it to scrap BBC World Service Television. —USA Today, international edition (March 23, 1994)

    Rupert Murdoch

    Keith Rupert Murdoch, AC (US: /'ru?p?rt 'm??d??k/; born 11 March 1931) is an Australian-born American media mogul. He is the founder, a major shareholder, chairman and managing director of News Corporation (News Corp).

    Beginning with one newspaper in Adelaide, Murdoch acquired and started other publications in his native Australia before expanding News Corp into the United Kingdom, United States and Asian media markets. Although it was in Australia in the late 1950s that he first dabbled in television, he later sold these assets, and News Corp's Australian current media interests (still mainly in print) are restricted by cross-media ownership rules. Murdoch's first permanent foray into TV was in the UK, where he created Sky Television in 1989. In the 2000s he became a leading investor in satellite television, the film industry and the Internet.

    According to the 2009 Forbes 400, Murdoch is the 132nd-richest person in the world, with a net worth of $4 billion.

    Early life

    Keith Rupert Murdoch was born in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia in 1931. At the time, his father, Sir Keith, was a regional newspaper magnate based out of Melbourne and as a result, the family was quite well off.

    Rupert was groomed by his father from an early age, and went off to study at Oxford University in England[citation needed] where he apparently supported the Labour Party. At just 22, his father passed away and Rupert Murdoch returned from Oxford to take charge of the family business becoming managing director of News Limited in 1953

    Start in business

    He began to direct his attention to acquisition and expansion. He bought the Sunday Times in Perth, Western Australia and, using the tabloid techniques of his father's mentor Lord Northcliffe, made it a success.[citation needed]

    Over the next few years, Murdoch established himself in Australia as a dynamic business operator, expanding his holdings by acquiring suburban and provincial newspapers in New South Wales, Queensland, Victoria and the Northern Territory, including the Sydney afternoon tabloid, The Daily Mirror, as well as a small Sydney-based recording company, Festival Records. His acquisition of the Daily Mirror allowed him to challenge two powerful rivals in Australia's biggest city and to outmaneuver his afternoon rival in a lengthy circulation war.[citation needed]

    His first foray outside Australia involved the purchase of a controlling interest in the New Zealand daily The Dominion. In January 1964, while touring New Zealand with friends in a rented Morris Minor after sailing across the Tasman, Murdoch read of a takeover bid for the sleepy Wellington paper by the British-based Canadian newspaper magnate, Lord Thomson of Fleet. On the spur of the moment, he launched a counterbid. A four-way battle for control ensued in which the 32-year-old Murdoch outwitted his rivals. He took an active interest in the paper, at least until distracted by bigger undertakings, and remained the dominant shareholder in New Zealand's Independent Newspapers Limited - the nationwide media group that ultimately developed from his takeover of The Dominion - until 2003.

    Later in 1964, Murdoch launched The Australian, Australia's first national daily newspaper, which was based first in Canberra and later in Sydney. The Australian, a broadsheet, was intended to give Murdoch new respectability as a 'quality' newspaper publisher, as well as greater political influence. The paper had a rocky start that was marked by publishing difficulties and a rapid succession of editors who found it impossible to cope with Murdoch's persistent interference. Touted as a serious journal that was devoted to covering the affairs of the nation, the paper actually veered between tabloid sensationalism and intellectual mediocrity until Murdoch found a compliant editor who was able to tolerate his frequently unpredictable whims.

    In 1972, Murdoch acquired the Sydney morning tabloid The Daily Telegraph from Australian media mogul Sir Frank Packer, who later admitted regretting selling it to him. In that year's election, Murdoch threw his growing power behind the Australian Labor Party under the leadership of Gough Whitlam and duly saw it elected. As the Whitlam government began to lose public support following its re-election in 1974, Murdoch turned against Whitlam and supported the Governor-General's dismissal of the Prime Minister.

    During this period, Murdoch turned his attention to Britain. His business success in Australia and his fastidious policy of making prompt periodic repayments of his borrowings had placed him in good standing with the Commonwealth Bank, which provided him with finance for his biggest venture yet, the takeover of the family company that owned The News of the World, the Sunday newspaper with the biggest circulation in Britain.

    Building the Empire

    Acquisitions in Britain

    When the daily newspaper The Sun entered the market in 1969, Murdoch acquired it and turned it into a tabloid format; by 2006 it was selling three million copies per day.[3]

    Murdoch acquired The Times (and The Sunday Times), the paper Lord Northcliffe had once owned, in 1981. The distinction of owning The Times came to him through his careful cultivation of its owner, who had grown tired of losing money on it.

    During the 1980s and early 1990s, Murdoch's publications were generally supportive of the UK's Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.[4] At the end of the Thatcher/Major era, Murdoch switched his support to the Labour Party and the party's leader Tony Blair. The closeness of his relationship with Blair and their secret meetings to discuss national policies was to become a political issue in Britain.[5] Though this has recently started to change, with The Sun publicly renouncing the ruling Labour government and seemingly lending its support toDavid Cameron's Conservative Party, Prime Minister Gordon Brown's official spokesman said in November 2009 that Brown and Murdoch "were in regular communication" and that "there is nothing unusual in the prime minister talking to Rupert Murdoch".[6]

    In 1986, Murdoch introduced electronic production processes to his newspapers in Australia, Britain and the United States. The greater degree of automation led to significant reductions in the number of employees involved in the printing process. In England, the move roused the anger of the print unions, resulting in a long and often violent dispute that played out inWapping, one of London's docklands areas, where Murdoch had installed the very latest electronic newspaper publishing facility in an old warehouse.[7] The unions had been led to assume that Murdoch intended to launch a new London evening newspaper from those premises, but he had kept secret his intention to relocate all the News titles there.[citation needed]The bitter dispute at Fortress Wapping started with the dismissal of 6000 employees who had gone on strike and resulted in street battles, demonstrations and a great deal of bad publicity for Murdoch. Many suspected that the Conservative government of Margaret Thatcher had colluded in the Wapping affair as a way of damaging the British trade union movement. Once the Wapping battle had ended, union opposition in Australia followed suit.[citation needed]

    In response to print media's decline and the increasing influence of online journalism [8] Murdoch proclaimed his support of the micropayments model for obtaining online revenue,[9]although this has largely been criticised by thinkers on the subject.[10]

    News Corporation has subsidiaries in the Bahamas, the Cayman Islands, the Channel Islands and the Virgin Islands. From 1986, News Corporation's annual tax bill averaged around seven per cent of its profits.[11]

    Moving into the United States

    Murdoch made his first acquisition in the United States in 1973, when he purchased the San Antonio Express-News. Soon afterwards, he founded Star, a supermarket tabloid, and in 1976, he purchased the New York Post. On September 4, 1985, Murdoch became a naturalized citizen in order to satisfy the legal requirement that only US citizens were permitted to own American television stations. In 1987, in Australia he bought The Herald and Weekly Times Ltd, the company that his father had once managed. By 1991, his Australian-based News Corp. had worked up huge debts, forcing Murdoch to sell many of the American magazine interests he had acquired in the mid-1980s. Much of this debt came from his British-based satellite network Sky Television, which incurred massive losses in its early years of operation. As many of his other business interests had been, Sky was heavily subsidized by the profits generated by his other holdings, but eventually he was able to convince rival satellite operator British Satellite Broadcasting to accept a merger on his terms in 1990. (The merged company, BSkyB, has dominated the British pay-TV market ever since.)

    In 1995, Murdoch's Fox Network became the object of scrutiny from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), when it was alleged that News Ltd.'s Australian base made Murdoch's ownership of Fox illegal. However, the FCC ruled in Murdoch's favor, stating that his ownership of Fox was in the best interests of the public. In the same year, Murdoch announced a deal with MCI Communications to develop a major news website and magazine, The Weekly Standard. In the same year, News Corp. launched the Foxtel pay television network in Australia in partnership with Telstra.

    In 1996, Murdoch decided to enter the cable news market with the Fox News Channel, a 24-hour cable news station. Following its launch, the heavily-funded Fox News consistently eroded CNN's market share and eventually proclaimed itself as "the most-watched cable news channel." Ratings studies released in the fourth quarter of 2004 showed that the network was responsible for nine of the top ten programs in the "Cable News" category at that time.

    In 1999, Murdoch significantly expanded his music holdings in Australia by acquiring the controlling share in a leading Australian independent label, Michael Gudinski's Mushroom Records; he merged that with Festival Records, and the result was Festival Mushroom Records (FMR). Both Festival and FMR were managed by Murdoch's son James Murdoch for several years.

    Expansion in Asia

    In 1993, Murdoch acquired Star TV, a Hong Kong company founded by Richard Li (son of Li Ka-shing) for $1 billion (Souchou, 2000:28), and subsequently set up offices for it throughout Asia. It is one of the biggest satellite TV networks in Asia. However, the deal did not work out as Murdoch had planned, because the Chinese government placed restrictions on it that prevented it from reaching most of China. It was around this time that Murdoch met his third wife Wendi Deng.

    Recent activities

    In late 2003, Murdoch acquired a 34 per cent stake in Hughes Electronics, the operator of the largest American satellite TV system, DirecTV, fromGeneral Motors for $6 billion (USD).

    In 2004, Murdoch announced that he was moving News Corp.'s headquarters from Adelaide, Australia to the United States. Choosing a US domicile was designed to ensure that American fund managers could purchase shares in the company, since many were deciding not to buy shares in non-US companies. Some analysts believed that News Corp's Australian domicile was leading to the company being undervalued compared with its peers.

    On July 20, 2005, News Corp. bought Intermix Media Inc., which held MySpace.com and other popular social networking-themed websites for $580 million USD.[citation needed] On September 11, 2005, News Corp. announced that it would buy IGN Entertainment for $650 million (USD).[12]

    Rupert Murdoch and Ted Turner are long-standing rivals. In 1996 Murdoch launched the Fox News Channel to compete against Turner's CNN.[13]

    The subject of Murdoch's alleged anti-competitive business practices resurfaced in September 2005. Australian media proprietor Kerry Stokes, owner of the Seven Network, instituted legal action against News Corporation and the PBL organization, headed by Kerry Packer. The suit stems from the 2002 collapse of Stokes' planned cable television channel C7 Sport, which would have been a direct competitor to the other major Australian cable provider, Foxtel, in which News and PBL have major stakes.

    Stokes claims that News Corp. and PBL (along with several other media organizations) colluded to force C7 out of business by using undue influence to prevent C7 from gaining vital broadcast rights to major sporting events. In evidence given to the court on September 26, 2005, Stokes alleged that PBL executive James Packer came to his home in December 2000 and warned him that PBL and News Limited were "getting together" to prevent the AFL rights being granted to C7.

    Recently, Murdoch has bought out the Turkish TV channel, TGRT, which had been previously confiscated by the Turkish Board of Banking Regulations, TMSF. Newspapers report that Murdoch has bought TGRT in a partnership with the Turkish recording mogul Ahmet Ertegün.

    Murdoch has just won out a dispute with Italian Prime Minister Silvio Burlusconi in a media war. "A judge ruled the Italian PMs media arm was preventing News Corp's Italian unit, Sky Italia, from buying ads on its television networks."[14]

    Political activities

    Australia

    Murdoch's disconcerting experience with Thomas Playford in South Australia and his early political activities in Australia set the pattern he would repeat around the world.[15]

    Murdoch found a political ally in John McEwen, leader of the Australian Country Party, who was governing in coalition with the larger Menzies-Holt Liberal Party. From the very first issue of The Australian Murdoch began taking McEwen's side in every issue that divided the long-serving coalition partners. (The Australian, July 15, 1964, first edition, front page: “Strain in Cabinet, Liberal-CP row flares.”) It was an issue that threatened to split the coalition government and open the way for the stronger Australian Labor Party to dominate Australian politics. It was the beginning of a long campaign that served McEwen well.[16]

    McEwen repaid Murdoch's support later by helping him to buy his valuable rural property Cavan, and then arranged a clever subterfuge by which Murdoch was able to transfer a large sum of money from Australia to England in order to finalize the purchase of The News of the World without obtaining the required authority from the Australian Treasury.

    After McEwen and Menzies retired, Murdoch transferred his support to the newly elected Leader of the Australian Labor Party, Gough Whitlam, who was elected in 1972 on a social platform that included universal free health care, free education for all Australians to tertiary level, recognition of the People's Republic of China, and public ownership of Australia's oil, gas and mineral resources.

    Rupert Murdoch's flirtation with Whitlam turned out to be brief. He had already started his short-lived National Star[16] newspaper in America, and was seeking to strengthen his political contacts there.[17]

    Acquiring American Citizenship

    In 1985 Murdoch became a United States citizen to satisfy legislation that only United States citizens could own American television stations. This also resulted in Murdoch losing his Australian citizenship.[18][19]

    Asked about the Australian federal election, 2007 at News Corporation's annual general meeting in New York on October 19, 2007, its chairman Rupert Murdoch said, "I am not commenting on anything to do with Australian politics. I'm sorry. I always get into trouble when I do that." Pressed as to whether he believed Prime Minister John Howard should be re-elected, he said: "I have nothing further to say. I'm sorry. Read our editorials in the papers. It'll be the journalists who decide that – the editors."[20]

    United States

    Murdoch's publications generally have conservative leanings, in comparison with other national newspapers. During the buildup to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, all 175 Murdoch-owned newspapers worldwide editorialized in favor of the war.[21] Murdoch also served on the board of directors of the libertarian Cato Institute.

    On May 8, 2006, the Financial Times reported that Murdoch would be hosting a fundraiser for Senator Hillary Clinton's (D-New York) Senate reelection campaign.[22] Murdoch's New York Post newspaper had opposed Clinton's Senate run in 2000.[citation needed]

    In May 2007, Murdoch made a $5 billion offer to purchase Dow Jones, owner of the Wall Street Journal. At the time, the Bancroft family, which controlled 64% of the shares, firmly declined the offer, opposing Murdoch's much-used strategy of slashing employee numbers and "gutting" existing systems. Later, the Bancroft family confirmed a willingness to consider a sale – besides Murdoch, the Associated Press reported that supermarket magnate Ron Burkle and Internet entrepreneur Brad Greenspan were among the interested parties.[23] On August 1, 2007, the BBC's "News and World Report"[24] and NPR's Marketplace[25] radio programs reported that Murdoch had acquired Dow Jones; this news was received with mixed reactions.

    In a 2008 interview with Walt Mossberg, Murdoch was asked whether he had "anything to do with the New York Post's endorsement of Barack Obama in the democratic primaries." Without hesitating, Murdoch replied, "Yeah. He is a rock star. It's fantastic. I love what he is saying about education. I don't think he will win Florida... but he will win in Ohio and the election. I am anxious to meet him. I want to see if he will walk the walk."[26][27]

    United Kingdom

    In Britain, Murdoch formed a close alliance with Margaret Thatcher, and The Sun credited itself with helping John Major to win an unexpected election victory in the 1992 general election.[28] However, in the general elections of 1997, 2001 and 2005, Murdoch's papers were either neutral or supported Labour under Tony Blair. This has led some critics to argue that Murdoch simply supports the incumbent parties (or those who seem most likely to win an upcoming election) in the hope of influencing government decisions that may affect his businesses. The Labour Party under Blair had moved significantly to the Right on many economic issues prior to 1997. Murdoch identifies himself as a libertarian.[29]

    In a speech delivered in New York, Rupert Murdoch said that the UK Prime Minister Tony Blair described the BBC coverage of the Hurricane Katrina disaster as being full of hatred of America. Murdoch is a strong critic of the BBC, which he believes has a left-wing bias and is the major UK competitor to his satellite network Sky.[citations needed]

    In 1998, Rupert Murdoch failed in his attempt to buy the football powerhouse Manchester United F.C. with an offer of £625 million. It was the largest amount anyone had yet offered for a sports club. It was blocked by the United Kingdom's Competition Commission, which stated that the acquisition would have "hurt competition in the broadcast industry and the quality of British football".

    On June 28, 2006 the BBC reported that Murdoch and News Corporation were flirting with the idea of backing Conservative leader David Cameron at the next General Election.[30]However, in a later interview in July 2006, when he was asked what he thought of the Conservative leader, Murdoch replied "Not much".[31] In a 2009 blog, it was suggested that in the aftermath of the News of the World phone tapping scandal, Murdoch and News Corporation might have decided to back Cameron,[32] although there had already been a converging of interests between the two men over muting of the UK's communications regulator Ofcom.[33]

    In 2006, the UK’s Independent newspaper reported that Murdoch would offer Tony Blair a senior role in his global media company News Corp. when the UK prime minister stood down from office.[34]

    He is also accused by former Solidarity MSP Tommy Sheridan of having a personal vendetta against him and of conspiring with MI5 to produce a video of him confessing to having affairs – allegations over which Sheridan had previously sued News International and won.[35] On being arrested for perjury following the case, Sheridan claimed that the charges were "orchestrated and influenced by the powerful reach of the Murdoch empire".[36]

    Private meetings with politicians

    Murdoch has a history of hosting private meetings with influential politicians. Both parties naturally dismiss such meetings as politically insignificant; social events, informal dinners or friendly drinks. It has however been argued that such meetings are significant because of Murdoch's exceptional influence as a media oligarch, as well as his consistent interest in and involvement with politics issues.[37]

    David Cameron

    In August 2008 David Cameron accepted free flights to hold private talks and attend private parties with Murdoch on his yacht, the Rosehearty.[38] Cameron has declared in the Commons register of interests he accepted a private plane provided by Murdoch's son-in-law, public relations guru Matthew Freud; Cameron has not revealed his talks with Mr Murdoch. The gift of travel in Freud's Gulfstream IV private jet was valued at around £30,000. Other guests attending the "social events" included the then EU trade commissioner Lord Mandelson, the Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska and co-chairman of NBC Universal Ben Silverman. The Conservative and Unionist Party, a conservative political party in the United Kingdom, are not disclosing what was discussed.[39]

    Kevin Rudd

    On April 21, 2007, future Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd dined with Rupert Murdoch in New York, following a one-hour private meeting at Murdoch's News Corporation Building.[40]The two men refused to say what they had discussed. Mr Murdoch would say only that they had discussed "a lot of things". Rudd would say only: "It was just a good chat about things. Life, the world, politics."[41]

    News Limited’s resources involvement and coverage, in Australia, on the 2009 OzCar affair controversy caused antagonism by Rudd. Rudd responded to a press conference question fromThe Australian journalist Matthew Franklin, questioning “what sort of journalistic checks were put in place” for publishing a story claiming he was corrupt without “having sighted any original document in terms of this email.” Although such newspapers Daily Telegraph, the Courier-Mail and the Adelaide Advertiser are owned by News Limited, it has been viewed that Murdoch’s personal involvement is unlikely and “the anti-Rudd push, if it is coordinated at all, is almost certainly locally driven.”[42]

    Murdoch recently said that Rudd is "...oversensitive and too sensitive for his own good..." in relation Rudd's response to criticism made of him by News Corporation's Australian newspapers.[43] Murdoch also described Rudd as "...more ambitious to lead the world than to lead Australia..." and criticised Rudd's expansionary fiscal policies as unnecessary: "We were not about to collapse...I thought we were trying to copy the rest of the world a little unnecessarily." [44]

    Barack Obama

    In early summer 2008, a "tentative truce" was brokered during a once secret meeting between Barack Obama, Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes (President of the Fox News Channel) at the Waldorf-Astoria hotel in New York.[45][46] Obama had initially resisted Murdoch's propositions, despite senior News Corp executives having recruited the Kennedys to act as go-betweens.[46] Obama resented Fox News's portrayal of him "as suspicious, foreign, fearsome - just short of a terrorist," while Ailes said "it might not have been this way if Obama had more willingly come on the air instead of so often giving Fox the back of his hand."[46] A "tentative truce" was agreed upon.[45]

    Personal life

    Murdoch has been married three times. In 1956 he married Patricia Booker, a former shop assistant and air hostess from Melbourne with whom he had his first child, a daughter Prudence Murdoch, who was born in 1958. They were divorced in 1967, the same year that he married Anna Torv, an Estonian-born cadet journalist working for his Sydney newspaper The Daily Telegraph. Torv's niece, also named Anna Torv, is now a voice actor and television actor on the Fox network show Fringe.

    Torv and Murdoch had three children: Elisabeth Murdoch (born in Sydney, Australia on August 22, 1968), Lachlan Murdoch (born in London, UK on September 8, 1971), and James Murdoch, (born in Wimbledon, UK on December 13, 1972). Murdoch's companies have published two novels by his then wife: Family Business (1988) and Coming to Terms (1991); both are widely regarded as vanity publications. Anna and Rupert divorced acrimoniously in June, 1999.

    Anna Murdoch received a settlement of US$1.2 billion in assets.[47] Seventeen days after the divorce, on June 25, 1999, Murdoch, then aged 68, married Chinese-born Deng Wendi (Wendi Deng in Western style). She was 30, a recent Yale School of Management graduate, and a newly appointed vice-president of STAR TV. In October 1999 Anna Murdoch also remarried, to William Mann.

    Rupert Murdoch has two children with Deng: Grace (born in New York November 19, 2001) and Chloe (born in New York July 17, 2003).

    Children

    Murdoch's eldest son Lachlan, formerly the deputy chief operating officer at the News Corporation and the publisher of the New York Post, was Murdoch's heir apparent before resigning from his executive posts at the global media company at the end of July 2005. Lachlan's departure left James, chief executive of the satellite television service British Sky Broadcasting since November 2003, as the only Murdoch son still directly involved with the company's operations, though Lachlan has agreed to remain on the News Corporation's board.

    After graduating from Vassar College and marrying classmate Elkin Kwesi Pianim (the son of Ghanaian financial and political mogul Kwame Pianim) in 1993, Murdoch's daughter Elisabeth, along with her husband, purchased a pair of NBC-affiliate television stations KSBW and KSBY in California with a $35 million loan provided by her father. By quickly re-organizing and re-selling them at a $12 million profit, in 1995 Elisabeth emerged as an unexpected rival to her brothers for the eventual leadership of the publishing dynasty's empire. But after quarrelling publicly with her assigned mentorSam Chisholm at BSkyB, she struck out on her own as a television and film producer in London, where she has enjoyed independent success in conjunction with her second husband, Matthew Freud.

    It is not known whether Murdoch will remain as News Corp's CEO indefinitely. For a while the American cable television entrepreneur John Malone was the second-largest voting shareholder in News Corporation after Murdoch himself, potentially undermining the family's control. In 2007, the company announced that it would sell certain assets and give cash to Malone's company in exchange for its stock. In 2007 Murdoch issued his older children with equal voting stock, perhaps to test their individual levels of interest and ability to run the company according to the standards he has set.

    Portrayal on television, film and in music

    Rupert Murdoch has been portrayed by Barry Humphries in the 1991 mini-series Selling Hitler, Hugh Laurie in a parody of It's a Wonderful Life in the television show A Bit of Fry & Laurie,Ben Mendelsohn in Black and White, Paul Elder in The Late Shift and by himself on The Simpsons.

    On his 1994 album Happiness?, Queen drummer Roger Taylor recorded Dear Mr Murdoch, a song critical of Murdoch and which referred to him as “The King of the Tits”

    Some have speculated that Elliot Carver, the villain in the James Bond movie Tomorrow Never Dies is a parody of Rupert Murdoch. The writer of the film, Bruce Feirstein has stated that Carver was actually a portrayal of Rupert Murdoch's arch rival, British press magnate Robert Maxwell.[48]

    Tax avoidance

    In 1999, The Economist reported that Newscorp Investments had made £11.4 billion ($20.1 billion) in profits over the previous 11 years but had not paid net corporation tax. It also reported that after an examination of the available accounts, Newscorp could normally have been expected to pay corporate tax of approximately $350 million. The article explained that in practice the corporation's complex structure, international scope and use of offshore tax havens allowed News Corporation to pay minimal taxes.[49][50]

    Compensation

    While CEO of News Corp in 2008, K. Rupert Murdoch earned a total compensation of $30,053,157, which included a base salary of $8,100,000, a cash bonus of $17,500,000, stocks granted of $4,049,988, and no options.[51]

     
     
     

    Murdoch hints he will sue BBC and Google

    By Ben Fenton, Chief Media Correspondent

    Published: November 9 2009 12:38 | Last updated: November 9 2009 12:38

     

    Rupert Murdoch indicated on Monday that News Corporation would sue the BBC over breach of copyright for “stealing” material from his newspapers round the world. Mr Murdoch, interviewed on Sky News Australia, was asked how he would be able to instigate his proposal to charge for newspaper websites such as The Times in the UK or The Australian when the BBC and ABC produced free news content on their sites. “But we are better,” said Mr Murdoch, chairman of News Corp. “And anyway, if you look at them, most of their stuff is stolen from the newspapers now, and we’ll be suing them for copyright. “They will have to spend a lot more money on a lot more reporters to cover the world when they can’t steal from newspapers.” But he added that he didn’t think it would be necessary to go to court.

    “They know the law. They will adapt.”

    There was no immediate response from the BBC.

    Mr Murdoch also indicated that he would use legal methods to prevent Google and other search engine “news aggregators” from taking his newspapers’ material. Asked how he reacted to the challenge of Google and others for newspaperssuch as his to remove their newspapers from search results, Mr Murdoch said that once they had in place the means to charge for news, “I think we will”. He also challenged the idea that Google and others could take just the headlines and opening lines from his papers’ stories, indicating that he would not tolerate even that. “[They use] a doctrine called fair use, which we believe can be challenged in the courts and will bar it altogether,” he said. But he added that News Corp papers currently benefited to some extent from the advertising around its freely available internet content so “we will take that slowly”. In a wide ranging interview, the 78-year-old media magnate also said that President Barack Obama was “going badly” at present and defended the reporting standards of his Fox News network. He also described the BBC’s conduct as “a scandal”. Asked why, Mr Murdoch said: “Everybody with a TV set [in the UK] is compelled to pay approximately £150 a year, they [the BBC] have £4.6bn revenue and will go into any commercial enterprise where they see an opening. “I think public broadcasting should be of the highest quality providing programmes and services where commercial broadcasting can’t afford to; where there is a hole. I think that’s fine. I don’t mind some taxpayer support for that.” In August, Mr Murdoch’ son James, who is chief executive of News Corp in Europe and Asia, attacked the BBC for its “chilling” overreach into the commercial sector and suggested that its huge internet organisation should be “dealt with”.

    Recent Reports

    Market research reports

    Published: Tuesday November 10, 2009

    Media mogul Rupert Murdoch threatens to sue BBC

    SYDNEY: News Corp. chief executive Rupert Murdoch threatened to sue the British Broadcasting Corp. for allegedly stealing content from his company's newspapers and said News Corp. is considering pulling its stories from Google news searches.

    In an interview with Australia's Sky News, of which News Corp. is a partial owner, the media mogul was asked why he expects Internet users to accept his plan to charge readers to access his newspapers' stories online when they can read the news for free on other Web sites such as the BBC's. "But we're better," he said in the interview broadcast Saturday. "And anyway, if you look at them, most of their stuff is stolen from the newspapers now, and we'll be suing them for copyright. They'll have to spend a lot more money on a lot more reporters to cover the world when they can't steal from newspapers." But he said he didn't think the matter would end up in a courtroom. "They know the law," he said. "They will adapt." There was no immediate response from the BBC. In August, Murdoch said visitors to the Web sites of newspapers owned by News Corp., which include The New York Post and The Times of London, will have to start paying fees to read the news within the next year. Murdoch told Sky News that once the company's online pay model is launched, it will probably remove its stories from Google news searches. "I think we will, but that's when we start charging," he said. Murdoch acknowledged that search engines such as Google direct traffic to his company's Web sites. But he said the benefit of that is marginal. "What's the point of having someone come occasionally who likes a headline they see on Google?" he said. "We'd rather have fewer people coming to our Web sites and paying." - AP

    http://www.businesspundit.com/rupert-murdoch-indulges-in-verbal-tantrum-against-google-and-bbc/

    Rupert Murdoch Indulges in Verbal Tantrum Against Google and BBC

    The Financial Times reports on a recent Sky News Australia interview with News Corporation’s Rupert Murdoch. He threatened to sue the BBC and ABC for stealing content, and Google for employing Fair Use:

    Rupert Murdoch indicated on Monday that News Corporation would sue the BBC over breach of copyright for “stealing” material from his newspapers round the world. Mr Murdoch…was asked how he would be able to instigate his proposal to charge for newspaper websites such as The Times in the UK or The Australian when the BBC and ABC produced free news content on their sites.

    “But we are better,” said Mr Murdoch, chairman of News Corp. “And anyway, if you look at them, most of their stuff is stolen from the newspapers now, and we’ll be suing them for copyright.”

    But he added that he didn’t think it would be necessary to go to court. “They know the law. They will adapt.”

    He also challenged the idea that Google and others could take just the headlines and opening lines from his papers’ stories, indicating that he would not tolerate even that. “[They use] a doctrine called fair use, which we believe can be challenged in the courts and will bar it altogether,” he said. But he added that News Corp papers currently benefited to some extent from the advertising around its freely available internet content so “we will take that slowly”.

    BNet’s David Weir speaks to the apparent insanity of Murdoch’s words:

    …it appears there will continue to be delays in implementing the paid content strategy, which continues to strike me as a non-starter for newspaper content. Murdoch seems unwilling to concede that news is a commodity in today’s world, and placing it behind a paywall would simply help his competitors grab audience share.

    Then again, Murdoch is a man used to getting what he wants, so the delays and other problems (including possible anti-trust issues) plaguing his paid content plan must be frustrating him beyond belief. Thus the angry threats, but it remains to be seen whether he actually carries any of them out in the end.

    Mediabistro has more commentary:

    Look, the entire publishing industry is grappling with how to craft a winning business model. It’s not easy. But “the world’s most powerful media owner,” as Sky News Australia interview David Speers calls Murdoch (video below), clearly is letting his frustration cloud his judgment. What he’s saying is nonsense. Blocking Google and other search engines is tantamount to online publishing suicide. Does he really think that subscription revenue will more than make up for the ad revenue he’ll lose when page views plunge? I don’t know what News Corp.’s traffic data says, but plenty of sites out there get half their PVs or more from Google.

    Rupert, never mind all this talk of pay walls and banning Google. The solution to your problem is clear: More Page 3 girls!

    Amen to that.

    http://www.businesspundit.com/google-publishers-can-limit-free-articles-has-the-media-game-changed/

    Google: Publishers Can Limit Free Articles. Has the Media Game Changed? Filed in archive NEWS, SELF-PRESERVATION, STRATEGY by DREA on DECEMBER 2, 2009 |

    Google recently announced that online newspapers can now limit how many free articles people read. The new “First Click Free” program lets publishers restrict access to users after reading up to five free articles through Google. When Google senses that you have clicked on more than five free articles in a day, you’ll be routed to a pay or registration wall. Rupert Murdoch’s loud complaints seem to have worked.

    Marketing Pilgrim’s Andy Beal observes that Google’s small concession still keeps its ad revenue intact:

    The Financial Times report on how much news scraping exists on the web:

    The study of 101,000 articles published by 157 newspapers found that more than 75,000 sites reused 112,000 almost exact copies without authorisation, and a further 520,000 articles in part…The study found Google accounted for 53 per cent of the advertising being run alongside unlicensed stories…

    Is it pure coincidence that on the day News Corp’s Rupert Murdoch was in Washington telling the FTC about the need to reform “fair use” laws to prevent the “theft” of its content, Attributor pulls out some heavy numbers in support and Google decides to bend a little?

    I think not!

    Forget the fact that Bing is rumored to be courting the newspaper industry to dump Google, the search engine plans to lose a significant slice of revenue, if the publishing industry faces any kind of mass reform. Think about it, Google offers to change the “First Click Free” terms in order to save the AdSense revenue it makes from bloggers, and the more nefarious scrapers.

    It’s a small sacrifice, right?

    Indeed. Google’s “sacrifice” also muffles news publishers’ war cries, at least for the time being, because their sites can now have both limited access and high visibility. But Google’s move doesn’t play an integral part in the media debate, unless every mainstream outlet follows the paywall plan.

    Image: Hkam

    http://www.businesspundit.com/microsoft-willing-to-pay-news-corp-to-list-exclusively-with-bing/

    Microsoft Willing to Pay News Corp. To List Exclusively with Bing iled in archive NEWS, STRATEGY, WHAT THE...? by DREA on NOVEMBER 23, 2009

    Is Rupert Murdoch finally going to get his way? The Financial Times has the story:

    Microsoft has had discussions with News Corp over a plan that would involve the media company being paid to “de-index” its news websites from Google, setting the scene for a search engine battle that could offer a ray of light to the newspaper industry.

    The impetus for the discussions came from News Corp, owner of newspapers ranging from the Wall Street Journal of the US to The Sun of the UK, said a person familiar with the situation, who warned that talks were at an early stage.

    However, the Financial Times has learnt that Microsoft has also approached other big online publishers to persuade them to remove their sites from Google’s search engine.

    News Corp and Microsoft, which owns the rival Bing search engine, declined to comment.


    Read the whole story here
    .
    PCWorld’s Ian Paul has a good analysis of how this move could bite Microsoft and Web users:

    In a Bing partnership with News Corp. world Google would just display non-News Corp. sources discussing the same stories. Who loses there? Not the user.

    Microsoft could waste a lot of money and effort on buying up exclusivity deals with News Corp and The Financial Times’ other unnamed major Web publishers. Meanwhile, Google can just sit back and watch Microsoft pay big bucks to give Bing users exclusive access to news content that will only remain exclusive until a non-News Corp site summarizes the story or does their own reporting on the same subject.

    …in an intensely fractured Web search world (which this deal could lead to), Google and Bing may have no choice but to cut metasearch deals with each other, which would make exclusive indexing even more pointless.

    The Atlantic’s Derek Thompson claims that although the Wall Street Journal would lose 25% of its traffic by delisting from Google, that wouldn’t be a revenue-killer:

    The central struggle of monetizing online news is that ad rates for web pages are significantly worse than the print ad rates that once buttressed newspapers. So for a newspaper publisher like Murdoch, big online traffic helps, but it doesn’t pay for a sprawling roster of reporters and editors. Somebody’s gotta break the tyranny of revenue-light banner ads, eventually. You can go the Daily Beast model and try to infuse online ads with a dash of glamour to drive up premiums and juice click-through rates. You can go the Financial Times/WSJ model of combining limited free content with paid registration for full access. Or you can think outside the box, turn off Google and get another search engine to pay you for exclusive rights to your content.

    …remember, big traffic numbers are a fig leaf. Ryan Chittum of the Columbia Journalism Review found that this 25% Google crowd accounted for less than $12m a year in advertising. If Murdoch can get a better deal with Bing — at a time when Bing might be desperate to increase its news integrity — then we should take this threat seriously.

    With so much innovation going on in journalism right now, I would hate to see outlets win the readership wars based only on deep pockets. Regardless of outcome, I have to give Rupert Murdoch credit for giving unfolding events a soap-operatic quality.

    http://www.businesspundit.com/bing/

     Bing Filed in archive HUMAN NATURE, HUMOR by DREA on JULY 31, 2009 

    http://www.businesspundit.com/one-reason-to-hate-bing/

    One Reason to Hate Bing Filed in archive COMPANIES, INNOVATION, NEW PRODUCTS by DREA on JUNE 1, 2009





     

    Microsoft released Bing, its new search engine, today. If you have doubts about the newproduct, you’re not alone. Here’s one good reason to hate Bing.

     

    http://www.businesspundit.com/fortune-500-ceo-quiz/

    Fortune 500 CEO Quiz  Filed in archive MISCELLANEOUS by ROB MAY on APRIL 12, 2005

    This quiz is pretty cool. Some of the answers are surprising. Who would have thought that Rupert Murdoch was once a socialist?!

     


     

     

     
     News Corporation, which is the largest shareholder in BSkyB, lost $3.4bn (£2bn) in the year to the end of June, which his father, News Corporation boss Rupert Murdoch, said had been "the most difficult in recent history".
     
    Click here for  Key excerpts from Murdoch's speech from the BBC
     
    "The BBC has a very strong competitor in Sky, and not one to be ignored" Sir Michael Lyons, BBC Trust
     
     
    I Believe in the BBC
    HISTORY: This page went live immediately after the release of the Hutton report and the harsh, opportunistic attacks on the BBC that followed. Since then, two months have gone by, and Michael Grade has been appointed BBC chairman. Mind you, in this same amount of time we've heard nothing about Lord Hutton's 'urgent' investigation into the leak of his report by Murdoch's Sunnewspaper that so helpfully set the tone for a BBC lynching and blinded many to the almost criminal abuse of the word 'subconcious'. (The Sun said the BBC would be criticised in the report, and lo and behold it was; why bother with details?) The I Believe In The BBC page is now to be stored as a time capsule clearly showing how people felt when the corporation was seriously under threat, and as a reference point for anybody searching for information relating to Rupert Murdoch and why he is so hostile toward the BBC. I'd like to thank everybody who participated for their support and feedback during this short but intense online campaign. Tim Ireland
      4th April, 2004
    UPDATE: 196 days later and the 'urgent' Hutton leak inquiry "is yet another whitewash"... do try to contain your surprise.
     
    I Believe In The BBC January 29, 2004

    BBC Chairman Gavyn Davies has resigned, as has BBC Director General Greg Dyke. Rest assured that this won't be enough for some people. As hard as it may be to believe, there are already people calling for the complete dismantling of the British Broadcasting Corporation because Lord Hutton has ruled that one aspect of it was flawed in one instance. (We all await with bated breath the announcement that the team from Blue Peter presented the Iraq conflict with a pronounced anti-war bias by not showing the kiddies how to build their own Mark 77 firebombs with some kerosene, a few pipe cleaners and an empty detergent bottle.)

    The man who is sure to lead the angry mob will be the media magnate Rupert Murdoch. He has made no secret of his hatred for the BBC, and his plans for the void its absence, under-funding or effective castration would create should be obvious.

    Through his newspaper The Times and 'news' paper The Sun, Murdoch's minions will no doubt reach millions with a barrage of negative messages intended to bring about the under-funding, over-regulation or complete destruction of a the most vital public institution in this country.

    The BBC not only serves to inform us, educate us and entertain us; by its very existence it also serves to protect us from a level of commercial saturation that would destroy much of what we currently take for granted. If you've ever watched television anywhere else in the world, you'll know what I'm talking about...

    In the face of what is sure to be a bitter and concerted attack (no doubt including claims of bias from people with a very clear agenda of their own), I'm proposing a simple show of solidarity and support that is also meant to spread valuable information to those who may not know exactly who is behind this attack and what their motives are.

    To show your support:

    1. Simply copy and paste the code below to show this button on your website or weblog. (If you wish, you can simply save this graphic to your own server and remove the link code.

     
    Can Murdoch really end free online news?
    BBC 24 November, 2009
    Click here Listen to Rupert Murdoch in Biejing to fellow media executives  on October on the need to act against online search engines

    Getting your daily dose of free news through the internet could be a thing of the past if Rupert Murdoch gets his way.

    He wants search engines like Google, which are also known as aggregators, to pay for the journalism generated by his newspapers, such as the Wall Street Journal and the Times in London.

    Now, reports suggest that

    Microsoft wants to strike a deal with Mr Murdoch's company, News Corporation. Microsoft would pay for news articles to appear on its new search engine Bing, on condition they were removed from its rival, Google.

    However, the risks for News Corporation include destroying the advertising revenue most news websites depend on if their traffic goes down, because Google users would not be able to find their stories.

    Jeff Jarvis is a media blogger and journalism lecturer at New York's City University, and the author of a book called What Would Google Do?.

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/technology/2009/11/microsoft_and_murdoch_teaming.html

    Microsoft and Murdoch: Teaming up to bash Google?

    Rory Cellan-Jones | 11:24 UK time, Monday, 23 November 2009

    There's a fascinating story in this morning's edition of the Financial Times, which could signal a big shift in the balance of power between parts of the web and other parts of the media. The piece says that Microsoft has been in talks with the media giant News Corporation over a plan which could see the firm behind papers from the Wall Street Journal to the Sun being paid to stop Google searching its news websites. The implication is that Microsoft's search engine Bing would be the place to go for news - and that Google would have to start paying if it wanted to retain that kind of content. The FT's story comes a week or so after theTechcrunch UK blog reported that Microsoft had held talks with European publishers about what sounds like a similar plan to get them onside as part of a battle to make Bing a more attractive and lucrative place than Google for their content. So is there any truth in either report? Well, a couple of days after the Techcrunch post, I was due to interview a senior executive from Bing, and Microsoft called to ask whether I would be asking about that story. When I said yes I would, they said he could not talk about it - and we therefore pulled out of the interview. Make of that what you will. All of this comes against the background of Rupert Murdoch's campaign to start getting people to pay for the online content of his newspapers, a move fleshed out last week in a speech by the editor of the Times, James Harding. But Mr Murdoch has also made it clear that Google - and indeed the BBC - are two major obstacles to this campaign, because they are both major ways to get free news. Meanwhile, Microsoft is anxious to do two things - to give Bing a big push, and to get in on Google's profit margins. So it's understandable that News Corp and Microsoft might want to unite against the idea that news content on the internet should be free. But there are also plenty of reasons why Microsoft in particular would want to keep these negotiations as quiet as possible. After all, if internet users get it into their heads that Bing's results are not as unbiased as Google's appear to be, because of an alliance with news providers, then they may well be less keen to switch to Microsoft's search engine.

    Ah, but what if Bing were the only place to get quality news because such content had been shut out of Google? Well, that would be an interesting test of just how important news is to the mass of internet users. For we professional journalists, that could be a worrying moment - one where we find out the true market value of our content.

     

     

     

     
     
    I Believe in the BBC
     
     
    The BBC shouldn't have suspended Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand is on Facebook

    The BBC shouldn't have suspended Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand

    The BBC shouldn't have suspended Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand Entertainment & Arts - Television

    Angry the BBC now apparently does whatever The Daily Hell and Rupert Murdoch tells it to? Register your dismay. Open: All content is public

    The decision to suspend Brand and Ross is an absolute disgrace, far worse than them choosing to repeatedly call Sachs. Since when was the Daily Mail put in charge of the BBC? I'm really angry about this actually.
    Let's look at the facts:
    1. Brand did sleep with her, so they were telling the truth.
    2. Andrew Sachs says he was happy with their apology and that's all he wanted - an apology.
    3. Perhaps the most important point. After the radio show was put out on air only 2 people out of Brand's 2 million listeners complained. That's an aproval rating of 99.9999%. This means that the few people who heard the podcast , me included, didn't think there was anything wrong with it. Everyone I know who's listened to it found it hillarious.
    4. The other 17,998 complaints were made after the the Murdoch press and the Daily Hell publicised the story. They hate the BBC and are always looking for an excuse to destroy it. If they claim their disagreement with it is down to the swearing , let's examine that complaint.
    4.A The Daily Mail editor calls his employees the c word every single day. Surely calling an employee the c word is much worse than what Ross did. Paul Dacre (for it is he) has never been suspended.
    4.B The editor of The Sun was arrested for beating up her husband. Domestic violence is far more serious than swearing. She (Rebekah Wade) remains in her job as well.
    5. Georgina Baillie can't be too bothered if she's cashing in by talking to The Sun.
    6. A minor point. The Daily Heil supported the nazis during the 30's. The proprieter Lord Rothermere was friends with Hitler.
    7. The BBC employs Pier's Moron's arch nemesis Jeremy Clarkson. He despises both and is such a hypocrite he does freelance work for the BBC when they give him money.


    This whole media created affair which started with an incredibly hillarious radio show has been used by people who hate Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand (and who don't listen to their shows anyway) and the BBC hating press to deprive us the viewers of shows we like to watch.

    18.20 = Russell Brand resigns
     
     

    Media mogul Rupert Murdoch threatens to sue BBC  Published: Tuesday November 10, 2009

    SYDNEY: News Corp. chief executive Rupert Murdoch threatened to sue the British Broadcasting Corp. for allegedly stealing content from his company's newspapers and said News Corp. is considering pulling its stories from Google news searches. In an interview with Australia's Sky News, of which News Corp. is a partial owner, the media mogul was asked why he expects Internet users to accept his plan to charge readers to access his newspapers' stories online when they can read the news for free on other Web sites such as the BBC's. "But we're better," he said in the interview broadcast Saturday. "And anyway, if you look at them, most of their stuff is stolen from the newspapers now, and we'll be suing them for copyright. They'll have to spend a lot more money on a lot more reporters to cover the world when they can't steal from newspapers." But he said he didn't think the matter would end up in a courtroom. "They know the law," he said. "They will adapt." There was no immediate response from the BBC. In August, Murdoch said visitors to the Web sites of newspapers owned by News Corp., which include The New York Post and The Times of London, will have to start paying fees to read the news within the next year. Murdoch told Sky News that once the company's online pay model is launched, it will probably remove its stories from Google news searches. "I think we will, but that's when we start charging," he said. Murdoch acknowledged that search engines such as Google direct traffic to his company's Web sites. But he said the benefit of that is marginal. "What's the point of having someone come occasionally who likes a headline they see on Google?" he said. "We'd rather have fewer people coming to our Web sites and paying." - AP

     

    Blair tells Murdoch: 'gloating' BBC is 'full of hatred for America'

     

    Extraordinary attack on corporation's coverage of New Orleans disaster

    By Francis Elliott, Deputy Political Editor Sunday, 18 September 2005

    Tony Blair has told Rupert Murdoch he believes the BBC's coverage of Hurricane Katrina was "full of hatred of America and gloating".

     

    In an extraordinary disclosure that will acutely embarrass Mr Blair, the world's most powerful media mogul revealed details of a private conversation that took place in New York on Thursday.

    Addressing a conference of influential media figures in the United States, Mr Murdoch said the Prime Minister had told him he had been shocked at the way the BBC had handled the disaster.

    "Tony Blair... told me yesterday that he was in Delhi last week and he turned on the BBC World Service to see what was happening in New Orleans, and he said it was just full of hate at America and gloating about our troubles," the chairman and chief executive of News Corporation said.

    Mr Blair's criticism drew a withering response from the BBC last night and plunged its relationship with the Prime Minister to a new low. Opposition politicians and respected journalists also rounded on Mr Blair for siding with Mr Murdoch against his commercial rival.

    Greg Dyke, the BBC former director-general forced out in the wake of the Hutton report, last night said Mr Murdoch had provided a telling insight into his relationship with Mr Blair.

    "If it's an accurate record, Mr Murdoch has provided a fascinating glimpse of his private relationship with Mr Blair," he said. "It may not come as a great surprise that the Prime Minister aims to please Murdoch but it comes as a bit of a shock he goes this far." He added: "Mr Blair, it might be said, is hardly the best judge of the impartiality of news coverage, given his behaviour in the run-up to the Iraq war."

    Theresa May, Tory culture spokeswoman, said: "If that is Tony Blair's view of the BBC's coverage, he should be giving it to the BBC, not to the head of a rival news organisation."

    Anger over Mr Blair's comments will be heightened by a claim made in a diary kept by a former Downing Street spin doctor that Mr Murdoch was allowed to veto any change in UK policy towards Europe.

    An entry in a diary kept by Lance Price, who worked for the PM between 1998 and 2000, said: "We have promised News International we won't make any changes to our Europe policy without talking to them."

    But, according to today's Mail on Sunday, that diary entry was altered on instructions from the Cabinet Office.

    Mr Murdoch revealed Mr Blair's private remark as he took part in a New York seminar hosted by Bill Clinton on Friday night. The former US president also took the BBC to task, saying it was "stacked up" to criticise the federal government's slow response.

    The BBC said in a statement last night: "The BBC's coverage of the Katrina devastation was committed solely to relaying the events fully, accurately and impartially, an approach we will continue to take with this and other stories." Some of the BBC's most distinguished correspondents leapt to its defence. Charles Wheeler said: "If one looks back at what was said compared to what the federal authorities were saying, then and now, it becomes clear that it was first-class accurate reporting." Sir Christopher Bland, a former chairman of governors, called Mr Blair's reported remark "nonsensical". Martin Bell added: "If Mr Blair is really siding with Murdoch against the BBC, many will despair."

    Downing Street last night declined to comment.

    Mr Murdoch has warned of possible job losses

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8186701.stm

    Murdoch signals end of free news

    News Corp is set to start charging online customers for news content across all its websites.

    The media giant is looking for additional revenue streams after announcing big losses. The company lost $3.4bn (£2bn) in the year to the end of June, which chief executive Rupert Murdoch said had been "the most difficult in recent history". News Corp owns the Times and Sun newspapers in the UK and the New York Post and Wall Street Journal in the US.

    'Revolution'

    Mr Murdoch said he was "satisfied" that the company could produce "significant revenues from the sale of digital delivery of newspaper content". "The digital revolution has opened many new and inexpensive methods of distribution," he added. "But it has not made content free. Accordingly, we intend to charge for all our news websites. I believe that if we are successful, we will be followed by other media. "Quality journalism is not cheap, and an industry that gives away its content is simply cannibalising its ability to produce good reporting," he said. In order to stop readers from moving to the huge number of free news websites, Mr Murdoch said News Corp would simply make its content "better and differentiate it from other people".

    Charging options

    Newspapers across the world are considering the best way to make money from the internet, particularly in a time of falling advertising revenues. The risk is that charges may alienate readers who have become used to free content and deter advertisers. When the New York Times abandoned its subscription model - visits to its website jumped from about 12 million per day to almost 20 million per day, said the former general manager of NYTimes.com, Vivian Schiller. Ms Schiller, now chief executive at National Public Radio (NPR) in the US, told the BBC's PM programme that the higher audience had "more value than the limited number of people who were prepared to pay for content". However last month the paper said it was studying different ways to charge for access to its website. The Financial Times and Wall Street Journal already charge readers. Different news organisations have tried alternative charging structures - either pay-per-article or a monthly subscription fee. The FT allows users to access a certain number of stories for nothing each month; if they want to access more than that, they need to subscribe.

    'Well-differentiated content'

    Some analysts say that financial newspapers are better placed to charge readers for online content, because of the specialist nature of the information they provide. Alfonso Marone, analyst and partner at Value Partners Group, told the BBC that the model could work "for well-known publications - for must-read, must-know content. The Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times are already charging for content, for example," he said. He believes that a micro-charging structure, where readers pay just 5p or 10p to access an article, might work. "This is less than the price of an SMS [text message]," he argued. "This is definitely the way the [newspaper] industry is going," he concluded. Sly Bailey, the chief executive of Trinity Mirror, said that while a "paid online model already exists for unique, high value and well-differentiated content", she doubted "that it is possible for publishers to charge for general news content when the same content is given away for free by the BBC, Google News and others". "I don't think this is about what Rupert Murdoch wants. It's about what the consumer is prepared to pay for. And why would you pay when you can get the same thing somewhere else for free?" she said.

    Recovery

    News Corp has suffered from falling advertising revenues. "Our financial performance clearly reflects the weak economic environment that we confronted throughout the year," Mr Murdoch said. He did, however, say that there were signs of life in the advertising market. "I think the worst may be behind us, but there are no clear signs yet of a fast economic recovery." He added that News Corp was "particularly well-placed for the coming recovery". New Corp's $3.4bn loss was due to $8.9bn in write-downs already announced, compared with a $5.4bn profit a year earlier. Revenues at the media giant, which owns BSkyB and 20th Century Fox, fell 7.8%. In the fourth quarter of its financial year, News Corp lost $203m compared with a net profit of $1.1bn in the same period a year ago.

     


     
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    08 Apr 08 |  Business
    Dow Jones shareholders clear bid 
    13 Dec 07 |  Businesshttp://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/2162658.stmI'm rather sick of snobs who tell us they're bad papers. Murdoch lambasts his criticsProbably the bravest deal-maker the world has ever known. Andrew Neil

    Wednesday, 31 July, 2002, 02:04 GMT 03:04 UK
    Rupert Murdoch: Bigger than Kane
    Rupert Murdoch: Never afraid of a scrap
    By Andrew Walker  BBC News profiles unit
    To some he is little less than the devil incarnate, to others, the most progressive mover-and-shaker in the media business. Whatever the case, as head of a global broadcasting empire worth £30bn, Rupert Murdoch continues to provoke strong emotions.
    No-one who saw Melvyn Bragg's dramatic interview with Dennis Potter in 1994 will ever forget it. Potter, who was terminally ill with cancer, yet had lost none of his waspish wit, mused on his life, his work...and his illness.
    "I call my cancer Rupert," he told Bragg.
     "Because that man Murdoch is the one who, if I had the time (I've got too much writing to do)...
     I would shoot the bugger if I could
    . "There is no one person more responsible for the pollution of what was already a fairly polluted press."

    The focus of Potter's hatred - Rupert Murdoch - is now 71, with a new baby daughter by a new wife. He is as ambitious as ever, still planning to expand his business, News Corporation (News Corp), and intent on establishing his children as worthy successors to their old man. From Page Three through the Simpsons and BSkyB to Twentieth Century Fox and digital television, Murdoch has created a personal media empire before which even Citizen Kane would tremble. But, his many detractors would say, Murdoch's success has resulted in the dumbing-down of the media, with quality entertainment and journalism replaced by mindless vulgarity.

    'Wheeler-dealer'

    Beyond this, they mutter darkly about his emergence as a voracious political wheeler-dealer. Keith Rupert Murdoch was born in Australia in 1931. His father, Sir Keith, was a regional newspaper magnate, based in Melbourne, and the family enjoyed considerable wealth. Even as a child, Murdoch knew his own mind.

    He was, his mother recalls, "not the sort of person who liked playing in a team".

    Groomed by his father, young Rupert was educated at Oxford, where he supported the Labour Party. But, aged just 22, Sir Keith died and Murdoch returned to Australia to take charge of the family business. "My father left me with a clear sense that the media was something different," Murdoch recently told one interviewer. Taking charge, not of his father's more prestigious titles, but of the Adelaide News, a loss making newspaper based in the provinces, Rupert Murdoch began his spectacular rise.

    'Sleaze'

    Soon he had expanded his legacy into a nation-wide business, encompassing newspapers, magazines and television stations. He also found time to found Australia's first national newspaper, the Australian. Even then, he was accused of peddling sleaze. He responded with typical directness. "I'm rather sick of snobs who tell us they're bad papers, snobs who only read papers that no-one else wants," he said 1968 brought a major breakthrough, when Murdoch beat Robert Maxwell to buy London's News of the World. He later incorporated the Sun, the Times and the Sunday Times into his News International group. It was the Sun which introduced bare breasts to the breakfast table and which, during the 1982 Falklands conflict, provided history's most infamous headline.

    GOTCHA!, screamed the paper's front page after the sinking of the Argentinian cruiser, General Belgrano, to huge outrage.

    As Charles Foster Kane once put it: "If the headline is big enough, it makes the news big enough". Murdoch went from strength to strength. Moving to New York in the '70s, he snapped up, and revitalised, both the New York Post and New York magazine. But it was the 1980s which, in many people's minds, defined Murdoch.

    Leaving Fleet Street for good, he re-located to Wapping in London's East End, refused to recognise unions and sacked 5000 workers. Vowing to "shock people into a new attitude", Murdoch fought a year-long battle which, though eventually victorious, made him into a bogey-man for many on the left. But Andrew Neil, his former right-hand man at the Sunday Times and Sky Television, called Murdoch "probably the most inventive, the bravest deal-maker the world has ever known". Profits from Murdoch's lower-cost newspaper empire offset the losses he accrued at Sky Television, allowing him to buy the rights to Premiership football and revolutionise the sport, to many people's disgust.

    Global reach

    But it is the United States which has proved Murdoch's happiest hunting ground. He even became a US citizen in 1985 to comply with the country's media ownership laws. As owner of Twentieth Century Fox and the Fox television network, he has been responsible for both the Simpsons and the feature film, Titanic. The Dirty Digger of popular repute now enjoys a global reach, using a sophisticated system of communications satellites to reach his audience, whether in Baltimore, Basingstoke or Beijing. Domestically, though, Murdoch's life has been complicated, to say the least. After a short-lived early marriage, he and his second wife, Anna, divorced in 1999, after 31 years Three weeks later, he married Wendi Deng, a Chinese-born News Corp executive. He was 68, she 32. Their child, Grace, was born in November 2001. Strangely for a man who despises the aristocracy and praises meritocracy, Murdoch has shamelessly promoted three of his four grown-up children to run his companies. Though his daughter, Elizabeth, left Sky Television to pursue her own dreams, sons James and Lachlan remain poised to take over from their father, whose recent brush with prostate cancer caused tremors in financial markets. Whether pronouncing on New Labour (he is broadly in favour) or on the Euro (he is firmly against British participation), Rupert Murdoch continues to live up to his billing as a press baron. An early apostle of digital broadcasting, Murdoch entered the internet business just as the smart money left town. It is clear that he still sees plenty of dragons ripe for slaying.

    With no intention of retiring, Rupert Murdoch's many fans and enemies may well have to put up with the Digger for some time yet.

     Murdoch shook up publishing in the '60s

    The "battle of Wapping" left many scars
     
    Young Rupert with father, Sir Keith
     
    Rupert Murdoch: Never afraid of a scrap
     
     BBC: Murdoch attack on 'dominant' BBC Saturday, 29 August 2009 
     

    News Corporation's James Murdoch has said that a "dominant" BBC threatens independent journalism in the UK.

    The chairman of the media giant in Europe, which owns the Times and Sun, also blamed the UK government for regulating the media "with relish".

    "The expansion of state-sponsored journalism is a threat to the plurality and independence of news provision," he told the Edinburgh Television Festival.

    The scope of the BBC's activities and ambitions was "chilling", he added.

    Organisations like the BBC, funded by the licence fee, as well as Channel 4 and Ofcom, made it harder for other broadcasters to survive, he argued.

    'Chilling'

    "The BBC is dominant," Mr Murdoch said. "Other organisations might rise and fall but the BBC's income is guaranteed and growing."  News Corporation, which is the largest shareholder in BSkyB, lost $3.4bn (£2bn) in the year to the end of June, which his father, News Corporation boss Rupert Murdoch, said had been "the most difficult in recent history". Other media organisations are also struggling as advertising revenues have dropped during the downturn. Sir Michael Lyons, chairman of the BBC Trust, told the BBC's World Tonight that Mr Murdoch had underplayed the importance of Sky as a competitor. "Sky continues to grow and get stronger and stronger all the time so this is not quite a set of minnows and a great big BBC," Sir Michael said. "The BBC has a very strong competitor in Sky, and not one to be ignored."

    Free news

    Mr Murdoch said free news on the web provided by the BBC made it "incredibly difficult" for private news organisations to ask people to pay for their news. "It is essential for the future of independent digital journalism that a fair price can be charged for news to people who value it," he said. News Corporation has said it will start charging online customers for news content across all its websites. Former BBC director general Greg Dyke said Mr Murdoch's argument that the BBC was a "threat" to independent journalism was "fundamentally wrong". He told BBC Radio 5 live: "Journalism is going through a very difficult time - not only in this country but every country in the world - because newspapers, radio and television in the commercial world are all having a very rough time." He said declining advertising revenues in the recession, rather than the corporation, were to blame for the problems facing the commercial media. "That is nothing to do with the BBC, that is just to with what's happening," he said. News Corporation owns the Times, the Sunday Times and Sun newspapers and pay TV provider BSkyB in the UK and the New York Post and Wall Street Journal in the US. Rupert Murdoch addressed the same festival 20 years ago, and was also critical of the UK's media policy.

     

     

     

     
     

    http://money.aol.com/article/media-mogul-rupert-murdoch-threatens-to/760083?icid=sphere_blogsmith_inpage_bloggingstocks

     

    http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Rupert_Murdoch:_Blair_says_BBC_"hates_America"

     

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8186701.stm

     

    http://www.movie3mai.net/d9QuJG62D_Y4.html

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    Rupert who is a US Citizen now having renounced his Australian Citizenship to expand his media empire in the USA
    and at the same time, use the billions a year his News Corp makes through its very profiable almost monopoly position
    in the Australian Print Media, to finance the expansion of his loss making activities in the USA media,
    has two main reasons to hate the BBC,

    (1) one is that the BBC it the only media organisation that is standing between him being able to charge for online content, and if he can not eventually achieve his aim, News Corp will eventaually run our of capital making billions in losses every year, their share price will continue ot fall and eventually the company will end up in liquidation,

    (2) he is a USA man now and he wants to detroy the BBC so it can no longer report independent, well researched and well informed information aboiut what is happening in the USA and how the USA is run...Rupert Murdoch knows full well tha the BBC is the only large and well funded media organisation that can provide the world with independent, investigative and well researched news in any part of the worl, not just in Britain...the world relies on the BBC to report tjings that are going wrong in th world form an independent an dunbiasd view point and has the financial reasources to send journalists anywhere in the world at any time to do this. If Rupert Murdoch and is powerful News Corp get their way, they will not only destroy the BBC, bu buying it out,suing it and/ortgetting the Tory Givernment, if they can, obtain power to dsimantle the BBC altogether, which will destroy a big fabricate of British Society which make British Society unique, but it will also mean in the end Rupert Murdch will gte his way and eventually have all news paid for on the internet, because he will be able to convince all the other major media groups to join a cartell with him to make all news contend only available if you pay.

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2005/sep/18/uk.usa

    Blair attacks BBC for 'anti-US bias'
    James Robinson, David Smith and Ned Temko  The Observer, Sunday 18 September 2005  Article history

    Blair allegedly made the remarks privately to Rupert Murdoch, chairman and chief executive of News Corporation, which owns the rival Sky News. The comments threatened a new rift between the government and the BBC following the Andrew Gilligan affair over events leading to the Iraq war and recent criticisms of ministers Today presenter John Humphrys, which were controversially leaked to the press. Downing Street said last night it had no comment on the report in the Financial Times. The BBC said that its coverage had been 'committed solely to relaying the events fully, accurately and impartially'.

    Murdoch, a long-standing critic of the BBC, was addressing the Clinton Global Initiative conference in New York. Chuckling, he said: 'I probably shouldn't be telling you this' before recounting a recent conversation with Blair. He said the Prime Minister was in New Delhi when he criticised BBC coverage of the catastrophe in New Orleans: 'He said it was just full of hatred of America and gloating at our troubles.'

    Tony Blair has denounced the BBC's coverage of Hurricane Katrina as 'full of hatred of America' and 'gloating' at the country's plight, it was reported yesterday.
    Bill Clinton, the former US President who was hosting the conference, also attacked the tone of the BBC coverage at a seminar on the media. He said it had been 'stacked up' to criticise the federal government's slow response. Sir Howard Stringer, chief executive of Sony Corporation and a former head of CBS News, said he had been 'nervous about the slight level of gloating' by the corporation. The disapproval will come as a blow to BBC executives, who had declared themselves delighted with the hurricane coverage, led by Matt Frei. They believed they had learnt the lessons from the Boxing Day tsunami in Asia, when the BBC was regarded as being slow off the mark. Blair's reported comments were strongly criticised last night by Martin Bell, the former BBC war correspondent and former MP. Bell said: 'Assuming it's accurate - it may of course be that Tony Blair was simply telling Rupert Murdoch what he thought he wanted to hear. If he really does have a gripe with the BBC coverage, there is no shortage of forums in which he can say so publicly. But the last time he picked a fight with the BBC, as I recall, the government came off rather badly.' He added: 'I think Matt Frei's reporting was absolutely immaculate and reflected the fact that one of the things the BBC is there for is to report events as they happened rather than as politicians may want them perceived to have happened. If Tony Blair does want to confront the BBC over this, I'd be surprised - because he would find absolutely zero support, except perhaps among his usual henchmen.' Charles Wheeler, the veteran former US correspondent for the BBC, said: 'I don't believe Murdoch actually said that. It doesn't sound like Blair to me. The coverage I saw was extremely good and got better and better. Matt Frei was very good. He got quite angry, which is what might have annoyed people. 'I don't see why people should be unemotional; I never was. You have to tell people what you feel and what you hate - that's part of legitimate reporting.'
    A spokesman for the BBC said last night: 'We have received no complaint from Downing Street, so it would be remiss of us to comment on what is reported as a private conversation'

    Rupert Murdoch: 'There's no such thing as a free news story'
     News Corp chief Rupert Murdoch tells US regulators that users will pay for news – and aggregation is theft

    Help Rupert - rent his yacht
    Fancy chartering a yacht? Then why not enjoy a week aboard Rupert Murdoch's 184ft
    Why Ridding and Murdoch can't stop talking about pay walls

    Help Rupert - rent his yacht  Fancy chartering a yacht?  Then why not enjoy a week aboard

    Murdoch lost millions on his London free and achieved nothing in the process
    Help Rupert - rent his yacht
    Fancy chartering a yacht? Then why not enjoy a week aboard Rupert Murdoch's 184ft
    (56m) Rosehearty, described as an "aluminium masterpiece" with a "stunning interior by famous French designer Christian Liagre". It isn't exactly cheap. For just one week the rental charge is $310,000 (£200,000). Still, a media mogul running a loss-making corporation has to make ends meet somehow. Sources (plus pictures): Cityfile/monacoeyeWhy Murdoch closed the London Paper

     Holiday like a media mogul on Rupert Murdoch's superyacht
    Rosehearty, his 180-foot 'masterpiece', is yours for a mere€210,000 … a week

    Help Rupert - rent his yacht
    Fancy chartering a yacht? Then why not enjoy a week aboard
     Rupert Murdoch's 184ft (56m) Rosehearty, described as an "aluminium masterpiece" with a "stunning interior by famous French designer Christian Liagre". It isn't exactly cheap. For just one week the rental charge is $310,000 (£200,000). Still, a media mogul running a loss-making corporation has to make ends meet somehowFancy chartering a yacht? Then why not enjoy a week aboard Rupert Murdoch's 184ft (56m) Rosehearty, described as an "aluminium masterpiece" with a "stunning interior by famous French designer Christian Liagre". It isn't exactly cheap. For just one week the rental charge is $310,000 (£200,000). Still, a media mogul running a loss-making corporation has to make ends meet somehow. Sources



    http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/greenslade/2009/sep/21/charging-for-content-rupert-murdoch

    Murdoch's digital news cartel will not persuade people to pay for content


    The market research revelation that only 5% of UK web users would pay for online news doesn't surprise me in the least. But I doubt that it will stop Rupert Murdoch in his tracks. According to the survey, by Harris Interactive, if people are confronted by their favourite news site charging for content, then 74% of them will find another free site. That's just as I would expect. I am convinced that paywalls will fail. Say, however, there is no other free site available? By which I mean a site with similar values to the one people currently choose. In Britain, there will always be the BBC - unless the Murdoch-inspired anti-BBC propaganda forces it to close or to reduce its online service. I don't see how any paper will circumnavigate that problem. In the US, there is no equivalent to our public service broadcaster. So let's imagine that Murdoch's attempt by his own News Corporation to stitch together a digital news cartel comes off. He may persuade all the leading newspapers and publishing companies - from the New York Times and the Washington Post, for example, to the sites owned by Gannett (such as USA Today) and Tribune - to erect paywalls at the same time. Would that work? Well, there are still the TV news sites, such as ABC News (which managed to attract 16.3m uniques in July, edging it into the top five US news destinations). So he would need to persuade them too. Then there is the Associated Press to think about. It is owned by the major publishers, but would have to cease its current deal with Google. Of course, news is only one part of the websites' offerings. Each carries commentary, analysis and opinion by bylined contributors who are often sought by users. These could prove more of a lure in specific instances. But what about being able to access a range of columnists? Would people be happy to pay subscriptions to, say, three sites in order to be able to read contributions by commentators? That's very doubtful. Murdoch has confronted and overcome orthodoxy throughout his career. In so doing, he has always stressed that he has defeated "the establishment" on behalf of "the people" (the audience, the readers, the viewers). His mantra: I am giving the people what they want. This time, by contrast, he appears to be flying in the face of peoples' wishes. He is taking away from them what they want. It is his first major strategic error and I am convinced that charging for content - no matter how justified it might appear - will not work.

    Sources: PaidContent/Media Guardian

    BlairwasagoodPM

    22 Sep 2009, 7:54PM

    Murdoch is just going to add the Times to one of his Sky packs - so people will not actively be choosing to pay for it but their overall subscription will go up £2 a month and it will be included. Since Sky is a monopoly they can do that.


     

    Waltroon

    21 Sep 2009, 1:58PM

    Here is the problem: newspaper circulations and ad revenues are in freefall. Millions of people prefer the online versions and – a bit like Kim Fletcher and his wife Sarah Sands – prefer their papers in aggregate. Sadly, the digital titles generate very little cash. Readers who used to consider it obvious that news came at a price – a cover price – now want it for free.

    Murdoch has read the runes and has decided that the old rules should still apply: if you want to read his stuff, you're going to have to pay him for the privilege.

    Will it all work out? I don't know. Young people read less real news than they used to. My son and his friends – all graduates – hardly read news at all. But it seems to me that Murdoch at least has logic on his side. If his model fails, then I have no idea what will happen.

    You disagree, Herr Professor. Presumably you don't receive cash for anything you do and are kept afloat by advertisers who support your many platforms.

    Or have I got that wrong?

    BlairwasagoodPM

    22 Sep 2009, 11:41AM

    What journalist is going to want to write for papers who lose 95% of their readers overnight? Journalists need reach, it's their oxygen.

     

    ClaireinOz

    21 Sep 2009, 11:16PM

    Please, Roy, it's people's, not peoples'. Sub, anyone?

    Anecdotal evidence indicates that in-depth news and comment is becoming increasingly peripheral to the lives of generation Y, or Z, or whatever it is these days. Younger twentysomethings are already out of the habit of reading anything more demanding than special-interest blogs and their mates' Facebook entries. Do we really want to drive them - as well as older generations - further away from "serious" sites?

    AJFrance

    22 Sep 2009, 12:06PM

    i gave up newspapers some years ago. I thought I rediscovered news recently online but I didn't, I rediscovered the discussion. The problem with offering news is that people will be selective in what they read. I f i were to subscribe to a guardian site I would expect a good coverage of those things that interest me or I would stop using it. I would also stop if I felt the site was being apologist for any group. I have been in France for two years and the cost of reading any english paper is extortionate so I read the french Midi-Libre in the bar. A genuine free press in every sense of the word.

    I remember my Dad taking me to the Library to read the papers when I was little. The internet will be used in the same way. The only solution would be a paywall for everything. I suppose when the paywall hits the western press then we will all watch al-jazeera.

     

     

    forthurst

    22 Sep 2009, 12:06PM

    Murdoch should at least be congratulated for attempting to create a more viable delivery model in respect of the established newspaper titles than existed before. The question is to what extent readers value content which has been shaped to confirm a very specific world view. This issue does not have to be faced nearly as starkly by sites which offer specialised content e.g. the FT.

    There exists also the question of whether much of what passes for journalism offers any essential added value rather than a mere distraction which could be obtained from innumerable free sites. What value can be placed on the opinions or reportage of an English graduate when operating well outside their sphere of competence?

    On the web there exists specialist sites where the content and journalistic endeavour is highly focused. These potentially must be attractive to advertisers and cohorts of readers. This raises the question as to whether general news media have a future per se.

    Lastly there is the issue of censorship: it has been very noticeable, for example, how poor the reporting on the 'War on Terror' has been from 9/11 onwards. It is also very noticeable that when a major newspaper attempts to dangle its toes in the water, they are met with a solid wall of anger from a select group. So the question is to what extent should newspapers be constrained by the opinions of a self-important minority when there are so many blogs that put up two fingers and discuss freely areas where others fear to tread? How much longer can you get away with reporting casualty figures or suggesting the war is a mistake without examining the question 'why' until a satisfactory answer is given.

    jonnyankles

    22 Sep 2009, 11:04AM

    @emilybell, 'curtailing the delivery system' has worked extremely well as a model for lots of other successful information-based businesses - all of them in fact! and the idea that online news delivery has a billion potential business models floating around, is severely limited if you want to remain a quality news organisation. this will always cost a lot of money

    i know it's easy to claim that a cranky old man like Murdoch doesn't understand the rules of the intertubes (personally I think he might), but what about the whizz kids at Google? they have recently announced a content-payment structure ... i think they're a much better chance to do it successfully (despite the fact about 95% of their ideas fail) as they're in a strong position to leverage news providers to partner with them

    EastFinchleyite

    22 Sep 2009, 10:14AM

    There is another factor to consider. The existence of web based news services has changed the relationship between writer and reader. It was a clear one way transfer with the old paper based systems (if you ignore readers letters). Now its has become much more bothway.

    For example, Roy's original article ATL is 462 words long including headings.

    The comments BTL so far up to Harbinger at 8.51am are 3622 words. This means that, purely in numbers of words, in this isolated case 89% of this part of the Guardian has been contributed free by the readers. I make no allowance or adjustment for quality either way!

    If Murdoch's papers have a similar arrangement then setting up a paywall will cut his publications off from a large amount of content which they get for free at the moment.

    harbinger

    22 Sep 2009, 8:38AM

    The bottom line is that Murdoch has tried this before and quietly dropped the scheme. Why he thinks it's going to work a second time around beats me.

     

    harbinger

    22 Sep 2009, 8:51AM

    @AlanRusbridger -
    I for one praise The Guardian for its digital content and further more its editorial attitude and guidelines.

    The Guardian unlike every other newspaper trusts its readers and allows them as much freedom as possible. And furthermore as Alan here demostrates is prepared to join in the discussion.

    The contrast with Murdoch's empire is very stark. It is run on autocratic lines where only those opinions that broadly conform to those of the newspapers are allowed. Some criticism gets through for the sake of face saving, but in reality commenting on Murdoch's websites is a bit like offering a comment to the old Pravda.

    The Mail group is just as bad, probably worse when it comes to censorship and complete disdain for what readers actually think.

    The Telegraph is a bit of an eye popper. Either the only people who read the Telegraph are Colonel Blimps, or they are the only ones allowed through, or God forbid the world is full of Jingoists!

     

    harbinger

    22 Sep 2009, 8:51AM

    @AlanRusbridger -
    I for one praise The Guardian for its digital content and further more its editorial attitude and guidelines.

    The Guardian unlike every other newspaper trusts its readers and allows them as much freedom as possible. And furthermore as Alan here demostrates is prepared to join in the discussion.

    The contrast with Murdoch's empire is very stark. It is run on autocratic lines where only those opinions that broadly conform to those of the newspapers are allowed. Some criticism gets through for the sake of face saving, but in reality commenting on Murdoch's websites is a bit like offering a comment to the old Pravda.

    The Mail group is just as bad, probably worse when it comes to censorship and complete disdain for what readers actually think.

    The Telegraph is a bit of an eye popper. Either the only people who read the Telegraph are Colonel Blimps, or they are the only ones allowed through, or God forbid the world is full of Jingoists!

    jochebed2

    22 Sep 2009, 8:42AM

    Mr Greenslade, Mr Rusbridger, the EU could use its own cartel law and ban Murdoch from using OUR taxpayer-funded satellites for his transmissions and then having the chutzpah to double- or triple-charge EU citizens for using their own satellites for his TV and web content. (We still boycott Murdoch at our house; its feasible).

    What about lobbying the EU on behalf of the independent media and their supporters?

    Corinthian11

    22 Sep 2009, 8:29AM

    My morning routine used to involve reading the Guardian Newspaper either on my way to work or during lunch break. Since the advent of the digital version and as I now work from home, I dip into it during the day and every now and again I feel compelled to add my thoughts on emotive subjects or to cheer on columnists such as Hadley Freeman, Marina Hyde or Charlie Brooker.

    Would I pay for the privilege? - absolutely not. I'd find another distraction. The reason is, I don't really come here much for 'news' I come to be entertained when I'm bored or the work is at a lull period.

    The web is a big place... start erecting digital turnstiles and people like me who don't really care much whether you exist or not will merely drift away to find other things to pass the time.

    Impressive

    22 Sep 2009, 4:00AM

    Emily Bell - I'm no Luddite when it comes to online opportunities to spread news to a wide audience and make money out of it. I don't want to uninvent the internet, so apologies if my earlier contribution suggested otherwise.
    My interest is content quality, not the medium of delivery. Elsewhere on this site I've been castigated by posters for apparently wanting to flush all papers down the plughole right now.
    I agree these are still early days, horribly exciting days, if you like.
    However, it's a fact that if you going to charge for viewing, or to make your money from advertisers impressed by the passing eyeball numbers, then you will need good content to lure an audience. And that has a price.
    It's great that the Guardian is open about the current gap between accrued revenue on this excellent site against operating and Capex costs. It's still a sound investment for the future.
    I think the real danger is to the big regional groups as they belatedly try to gear up for the adventure. Many are already running their limited lifespan print operations on an editorial shoestring and their content will not have the gravitas to hold an audience.
    What a dilemma.... their weakened newspapers are losing a dying or disinterested readership too quickly, and not making enough money to properly fund website development or sustain editorial operations capable of changing up a gear and producing dynamic content for print or online.
    Some are turning themselves inside out to solve this and, as the internet adventure settles down into a more lucrative future, they will face two further threats to their online revenue streams.
    Firstly, start-up costs and overheads for a website are much lower than those for a print operation. I reckon a couple of good, commercially aware journalists and a part-time ad rep will be able to give them a run for their money in some markets.
    The regional media operations also face losing a chunk of their bread and butter advertising because web-savvy small businesses are picking up customers directly through their own online sites. They don't need a middleman, at least not one that wants to charge what the traditional newspaper groups will need to do to make their required profit margins.
    This week, having had to break into my home following a lost key fiasco, I simply put the name of my small town and 'odd job man' into Google. Up came names within a 10 miles radius, mostly on 'homemade' off-the-shelf websites. A phone call later I had a guy living three street away willing to come round the next day to fix my door.
    I didn't even need to go to the local newspaper website, and he hadn't paid to advertise. He told me he stopped 'using the papers' about a year ago and relied on his 'page' and people passing on his website address and mobile number via email and social networks.
    He provided an excellent service. Unless media businesses do the same they will have wasted online investment money while not making the maximum out of their print offerings in the meantime.

    pauljaymes

    22 Sep 2009, 1:34AM

    Let Murdoch and others charge for their news content and go out of business. I see only a bunch of regurgitated PR material and week-old blogger stuff there anyway. The real news is on the blogs - like Guido Fawkes - and low budget sites like IndyMedia and Holy Moly - way before it ever gets to established media. Take last week's tube map 'river-gate' as an example. It was all over the blogs days before any print journalists picked it up.

    All a lot of traditional print titles are doing now is acting as aggregators and editors for news content that's already out there - some may think there's value in that, but it's exactly what twitter, facebook, delicious and others are doing in a much more automated and faster way. And the kids just aren't reading tabloids any more.

    If RM wants to make money from selling internet content in this world, it's going to have to be pretty special content. I'm thinking less news, more exclusive interviews. To sell, you have to provide content you can't get anywhere else; like the sports on Sky.


     

     

    FreshTedium

    22 Sep 2009, 7:32AM

    Newspapers and their ilk will always get a small slice of total ad revenue as long as Google dominate so dramatically the placement of ads across the internet. If they wanted to make more they would invest jointly in a competitor and then cease buying from Google en-masse.

     

     

     

     

     

    LordWotWot

    22 Sep 2009, 10:22AM

    As much as I hate the vile Murdoch Empire and everything it stands for, I think caution is required when assuming charging for online news will fail. Here is a vicious media group who can swing a general election with a biased newspaper cartel. News International now provide all commercial radio news in the UK (and beyond). Who would have thought in 1988 that we would have to pay to watch most sport on TV? - This group has a history of getting its way - I wouldn't be surprised if it owned the worldwide web in a few years

     

     

     

    AJFrance

    22 Sep 2009, 12:06PM

    i gave up newspapers some years ago. I thought I rediscovered news recently online but I didn't, I rediscovered the discussion. The problem with offering news is that people will be selective in what they read. I f i were to subscribe to a guardian site I would expect a good coverage of those things that interest me or I would stop using it. I would also stop if I felt the site was being apologist for any group. I have been in France for two years and the cost of reading any english paper is extortionate so I read the french Midi-Libre in the bar. A genuine free press in every sense of the word.

    I remember my Dad taking me to the Library to read the papers when I was little. The internet will be used in the same way. The only solution would be a paywall for everything. I suppose when the paywall hits the western press then we will all watch al-jazeera.

     

    BlairwasagoodPM

    22 Sep 2009, 7:54PM

    Murdoch is just going to add the Times to one of his Sky packs - so people will not actively be choosing to pay for it but their overall subscription will go up £2 a month and it will be included. Since Sky is a monopoly they can do that.

    Carnac

    22 Sep 2009, 6:36PM

    The simple reason that the Murdoch clan want the BBC to charge is to create another monopoly for themselves in the UK.

    The demise of newspapers is near because of censorship of contributors. It will be the blogs that will win if newspapers charge for onine content.

    chass

    22 Sep 2009, 6:29PM

    I think one problem is, is that the product (news) is in many cases non-essential or not good enough. As someone with an interest in economics I find the blogs (and often their comments) more useful and better than the pay for sites (a lot of which insisted there would be no crisis). Non-essential would be the celebrity and much of the sports journalism. I think in the future there will some paid for news sites, and these will be of high quality (e.g. the FT) but the weaker ones (I can't see a valid online model for the Sun), will go back to being print only and the rest won't survive. It's partly the media's and Murdoch's fault for dumbing down over the past 30 years. Murdoch is part of the problem and not part of the solution.

    farisyakob

    22 Sep 2009, 6:04PM

    indeed - the idea that there are only two models to monetise content is short sighted - i don't think the world is going to change back to the way it was because Murdoch is a recidivist ;-)

    I wrote a piece about this for Contagious Magazine:

    http://farisyakob.typepad.com/blog/2009/06/the-content-republic.html

    @faris

    djembajdjemba

    22 Sep 2009, 4:50PM

    The essential problem here as I see it is the Murdoch sites, in the UK at least, aren't ones that are worth paying for. The Times has dull regurgitated articles and a style that seems to have missed any of the advances in website design over the last few years. The Sun is The Sun and offers little compelling reason to pay for sensationalist showbiz gossip and over the top football coverage when superior versions can be found elsewhere.

    To convince people to change, there needs to be carrot as well as stick.

    gondwanaland

    22 Sep 2009, 4:44PM

    harbinger

    "commenting on Murdoch's websites is a bit like offering a comment to the old Pravda." You can say that again!

    during the Gaza massacre i left a mild-mannered comment on a Danny Finkelstein article supporting the Israelis. Not only was it never posted, but after 36 hours there were only 16 posts. All of them supporting Israel.

    Disgraceful. Thank god for the Guardian

    RGreenslade

    22 Sep 2009, 4:26PM

    Contributor

    The comments have run on without my being able to respond until now. There is an obvious forecasting split between those who believe paywalls will work and those who don't. We shall, of course, see about that.

    I note that <strong>Alan Rusbridger</strong> and <strong>Emily Bell</strong> have dealt with Guardian online's losses and revenue. So I've no need to add to that, except to say that GMG's financial numbers are transparent.

    And, lest the point did not get across, <strong><em>ALL</em></strong> media companies are in trouble. I spoke about this last week in an interview with <strong>Rory McLeod</strong>. Hear it at

    http://www.nationalbroadcastingschool.com/blog/?p=287

    @<strong>Waltroon</strong>, I am a paid contributor to The Guardian, online and print (as you probably well know).

    @<strong>ClaireinOz</strong>, I plead guilty to the subbing error. Your other point is one that I am pursuing all the time. There is a profound change in interest in news, and not only from the emerging generation.

    @<strong>SidSmith1</strong>, an interesting idea. Google will like that one.

    @<strong>newsinusacom</strong>, in answer to your questions: I don' have a final salary pension, let alone a generous one.

    I did benefit from my university fees being paid but, as a mature student, I paid for everything else (by casual subbing at weekends on the <strong>Sunday Mirror</strong> and <strong>Reveille</strong>).

    I am not a media Trustafarian ring fenced from this current economic downturn. I am in the same perilous boat as all working journalists.

    I most certainly am concerned about the levels of debt run up by the government, as every citizen should be. My children and my children's children may well suffer in future.

    If there is only one show in town providing news, whether the BBC or BBC/Google, it is plainly not plural and definitely not in the best interests of democracy. (By the way, the BBC agrees).

    Finally, I have never owned any Google shares, directly or indirectly. The only shares I own, or have have ever owned, are some 200 Trinity Mirror shares. I bought them during the post-Maxwell period specifically to enable me to attend annual meetings and obtain early copies of annual reports and accounts. They are, in financial terms, worthless. And they have not stopped me from being critical of Trinity Mirror when I felt it necessary.

    BernardoB

    22 Sep 2009, 3:47PM

    I make a point of never knowingly paying for anything connected with Rupert Murdoch, if I can help it. The exception being Fox Films.

    FAFENG

    22 Sep 2009, 3:37PM

    @Landice
    22 Sep 09, 3:12pm
    I wonder what they'd be holding it (their nerve) for? As @emilybell has said

    Guardian's digital revenues have grown ten fold in eight years, to approaching £30m

    There are examples of youtube, amazon and others
    http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2009/sep/16/facebook-money
    or maybe Guardian will become official Google partner, break even and remain free!

    wikipedia

    22 Sep 2009, 3:34PM

    News reporting has historically been a losing proposition, more often than not. That fact hasn't always been seen as an impossible situation, either.

    We've had people buying a newspaper simply as a platform for their own views (Col. McCormick at the Chicago Tribune, Hearst) - if you want to make a small fortune in newspapers, start with a large fortune. Of course that meant the playing field wasn't level, because the (losing) newspapers were being subsidized by other sources of income. Remember when Murdoch did his price wars to destroy his competition? Same thing. That's what people do when they hold the public in contempt - they don't believe in the free market of ideas, but try to emulate the old robber barons of industry by making themselves the only game in town.

    TV news used to be subsidized by the more popular, cheaper-to-produce entertainment programs (watch "Good Night and Good Luck"), same as local phone service was once subsidized by long-distance. For better or worse, those days are gone. Now everything's supposed to be its own profit center.

    The US has PBS (TV) and NPR (radio) and I would guess those are getting more popular for news as network news gets shorter and fluffier, and cable news gets more partisan and less reliable. Americans also have access, through the internet, to news media from around the world - including the Guardian. Obviously that means the Guardian is much more influential now, as are their commentators.

    Remember when the NYT put all their columnists behind the pay wall? Krugman suddenly went from being read by everyone to being read by relatively few - and this in the middle of the economic debacle. What Murdoch defines as 'good' is what the rest of us define as 'bad'.

    The current problem seems to be that advertising isn't working as a subsidy. Either advertising techniques have to improve, or another subsidy has to be found or invented. I just don't think online subscriptions are going to work.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

    ...
    SidSmith1

    22 Sep 2009, 12:43PM

    I think it might work.

    Google is talking about administering such a set-up. It needs to operate as follows:

    A known company (eg, Google) runs a one-stop registration process. You get access to every major newspaper in the world. It's cheap.

    If it became popular, you might even find sites that are currently free, including blogs, opting to move inside the system on the basis that tuppence a month is better than now.

    Sazclark

    22 Sep 2009, 12:20PM

    Rupert Murdoch already has an exceptionally well proven business model for charging for content that used to be free. It's called the Sky Sports Pack, Children's Pack, News & Events Pack etc.

    As Film 4 found out, it's true that very few people are interested in paying to subscribe to individual channels/publications. But Sky has proved that people are perfectly happy to pay for a combination pack of services that appeal to their particular interests.

    Ask consumers if they would pay for a package of internet services (say a 'current affairs pack', a 'music pack' or a 'sports pack' that included the leading publications in the field as well as video content and access to comment from the leading experts) and, I think, you'll get a rather different answer.



    Keith Rupert Murdoch and his son James Murdoch who is now in charge of the News Corp's media empire in the United Kindom
    It appears that James Murdoch and David Cameron the leader of the British Tory Party, have teamed up together ,

    as Mr Wijat in his articles in the USAWeeklyNews describes


    "James Murdoch and David Cameron as two kindergarden kids just graduated from play school, that have both been given some power and sanctioned by God Himself, Rupert Murdoch, to run the British political and media system....".
     Mr Wijat goes on to ask " Really folk.....would you seriously let these two young kindergarden kids run the wolrd political and media system in Britain, just because they have parents and/or connections that are multi billionaires are welll conncted with the right people such as Rupert Murduck who has been named ats the seventh most powerful person in the world by Forbesm and because they were both top of their class at play school...I would have thought that they have another 20 years of life's lessos and experience before they could be even considered for the job to run Britain, one of the most important economies and cultures in the world today...I suggest the British public, tell them both to come back in twenty years time with a longer list of experience and then reapply for the job then...."


    who have been responcible for the successful careers of may British prime minsters and the destruction of others through the power of the press in his powerfil and well read newspapers in Britain. However, the developmet of the Internet in the last ten years with search engines like Google and wensites like YouTube and the millions of independent news and information websites and blog sites, the ball game has completely changed and the power of the print, media, even though still strong is over time dimionisting, with the reality that young people no lomnger read newspapers and get 99% of their news and information formt he Interent.

     

    James Robinson

    James Robinson is Observer media editor. He was previously deputy business editor at the Sunday Express and worked as a reporter for Sunday Business and, before that, the Birmingham Post. He supports West Bromwich Albion

    Father and Sun: how the Murdoch dynasty handover crippled Labour
    The extraordinary run-in between the Sun and the prime minister over Afghanistan last week was a sign of a more aggressive approach from the tabloid as Rupert Murdoch's son James puts his stamp on the media empire.
    ames RobinsonThe Observer, Sunday 15 November 2009Article history
    James Robinson is Observer media editor. He was previously deputy business editor at the Sunday Express and worked as a reporter for Sunday Business and, before that, the Birmingham Post. He supports West Bromwich Albion

    In the 1990s, when the Sun enjoyed unparalleled influence, its editor Kelvin Mackenzie could tell the prime minister John Major that he was about to pour "a large bucket of shit" over him.
    Last week's coverage of the Jacqui Janes affair suggests the paper has lost none of its power to intimidate, despite falling sales. Gordon Brown's correspondence with Janes, the mother of a soldier killed in Afghanistan, and his subsequent apology, which was secretly taped, dominated the headlines.
    The growth of the internet may hasten the hour when the sun finally sets on Rupert Murdoch's tabloid, but it can still make the political weather.
    Peter Mandelson took to the airwaves last week, claiming that Murdoch had done a deal with the Tories, promising slavish support – and unstinting criticism of Brown – in exchange for policy concessions.
    Brown's phone call to Janes, meanwhile, was quickly followed by another to Murdoch, whom the prime minister described last week as "a friend". During that conversation, Brown told Rupert Murdoch that the Sun'svitriolic attacks over his letter to Janes had been unwise and unfair. He made his points firmly, but was careful to avoid sounding riled. There is a recognition in government that the electorate is unlikely to vote for a man who is bullied by a newspaper proprietor.
    Brown and Murdoch have forged an unlikely friendship, based in part on a shared admiration for America, but the prime minister may have been appealing to the wrong man.
    Murdoch has handed control of his British operation to his younger son, James, who now oversees the European and Asian arm of News Corp, the media conglomerate his father controls, and is being groomed to take charge of the company.
    One senior industry source with intimate knowledge of News International, the Murdoch subsidiary that owns his UK papers, said that Murdoch senior is "not really interested in Britain" at all.
    He has been based in America for many years, but his purchase of theWall Street Journal, now the biggest-selling paper in the US, has kept him busy. He is also gearing up for a fight with Google over copyright, a battle he believes he must win to ensure consumers pay for his newspapers' online content.
    Murdoch didn't phone the prime minister before the Sun loudly declared it had lost faith in Labour on the day of his speech to party conference, according to the source. That should not be regarded as a snub, he added. Murdoch is simply detached from events in the UK.
    It was Rebekah Brooks (née Wade), the former Sun editor and now chief executive of News International, who delivered the news of the Sun's U-turn to Peter Mandelson after failing to get through to the prime minister.
    Brooks's importance cannot be overstated. She acts as a foil for Murdoch, an American who can hardly be expected to share her instinctive understanding of the concerns of Sun readers.
    She was also behind the paper's increasingly rabid attacks on the Ministry of Defence over the summer, which made the Janes controversy such a compelling story for the Sun.
    Fleet Street sources point out that Brooks began an email exchange with the MoD several months ago, as her time as editor of the Sun drew to a close.
    She wanted the department to give her reporters better access to Helmand province, where British troops were fighting and dying as they battled to regain control. The department was not keen on the idea but Brooks persisted. The email requests became demands, and their tone grew more belligerent.
    Shortly afterwards, when it became clear that the MoD was not willing to cooperate, Brooks told it: "The gloves are off." The Sun's coverage has been hostile ever since, offering unqualified support for British troops while traducing their political masters.
    Its subsequent decision to ditch Labour and back the Tories gave the Jacqui Janes controversy added impetus. Some senior executives who had not relished supporting Labour in the first place seized on the chance to mount a highly personal attack on a man who represents many policies they detest.
    Murdoch claimed last week that the decision to abandon Brown had been taken by "the editors in Britain" who "have turned very much against Gordon Brown, who is a friend of mine. I regret it." The 78-year-old has always taken the major editorial decisions at the Sun, and to imply that its new editor, Dominic Mohan, could switch its political allegiance without his consent is, at the very least, disingenuous.
    Crucially, however, it is James Murdoch who masterminded the timing of the decision to swing behind David Cameron, and set the hostile tone of the paper's coverage.
    "James is behind the decision to make it tough and bloody because he wants to be like his dad," said one acquaintance.The problem, according to his critics, is that he has his father's aggression but does not share his political instincts.
    Murdoch junior ran pay-TV giant Sky for five years before his promotion in 2007 and his business acumen is not in doubt, but when Rupert placed James in charge of his British operation, he was expecting him to spend as much time in Westminster as he had in the City.
    Like his father, the 36-year-old James is firmly on the right, but he subscribes to a particularly trenchant form of free market orthodoxy. Those who know him describe him as a radical libertarian who believes that government should stay out of the public sphere, limiting its role to defence and policing.
    The News International observer described last week's coverage as "bullying" and "mean-spirited", and suggested it was motivated by a genuine dislike of Brown. "The lunatics are now running the asylum," he said. "Back in the day, an editor might disagree with Rupert, but he was a serious person; there were proper checks and balances. If they went over the top Rupert would pull them back."
    There is little doubt that the Sun's support will give Murdoch leverage over a Conservative government, and that power is already being used. Brooks is thought to have told Andy Coulson, the Tories' director of communications, that the paper could not back David Cameron while Dominic Grieve remained shadow home secretary. He was replaced by Chris Grayling shortly afterwards.
    Few were surprised when the paper backed Cameron, but James Murdoch's decision to do so long before an election, and risk the ire of an administration that will still be in power for many months, was a bold move.
    Government sources deny it took revenge on Murdoch last week by placing Ashes cricket matches between England and Australia — currently broadcast by Sky — on the list of "crown jewels" that must be broadcast free-to-air, but it was a timely reminder of how it can make life difficult for the Murdoch empire.
    Nor is there any hope of a reconciliation. Brown has tried to woo James, said a senior political source, but with little success: "Despite Brown's efforts there is no personal connection between the two men like there was with Rupert."
    Cameron, in contrast, was quick to cosy up to James, and cemented those ties by hiring the former News of the World editor Coulson, who is close to Brooks, and is also a friend of Mohan.
    Along with Brooks's new husband, racehorse trainer Charlie Brooks, they form a coterie who occasionally socialise at weekends in north Oxfordshire, where the Brooks have a home – as does James's sister, Elisabeth, with her husband, Matthew Freud. Cameron's constituency is also in the county. The Labour party has tried to portray the Tory leader and his new friends in the press as a wealthy, impenetrable clique, although Labour's own relationship with News International is also built largely on a network of fragile friendships.
    There are rumours of a loss of nerve at the Sun, meanwhile, following a public backlash over its personal attack on Brown. The fact that it spelt Janes's name wrong on its website is acutely embarrassing. Murdoch is heavy-hearted about abandoning Brown. He is not convinced by Cameron, but he know it makes good business sense to back him. In the end, that is the only consideration that really counts

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/nov/15/rupert-murdoch-google-content-payment
    Murdoch must turn Fleet Street into Quality Street if he wants us to payContent is already available free - and consumers never paid a realistic price for it anyway
    Rupert Murdoch's declaration, in an interview with Sky News, that he was thinking of barring Google's search engine from indexing all of News Corporation's websites, had a magnificent Canutian ring to it and got the blogosphere in a tizz. Some commentators saw it as an early sign of dementia; others interpreted it as an invitation to Microsoft to do an exclusive deal.
    Cory Doctorow, for example, thought Murdoch is "betting that one of Google's badly trailing competitors can be coaxed into paying for the right to index all of News Corp's online stuff if that right is exclusive. Rupert is thinking that a company such as Microsoft will be willing to pay to shore up its also-ran search tool, Bing, by buying the right to index the fraction of a fraction of a sliver of a crumb of the internet that News Corp owns".
    The prevailing sentiment however can be summed up as a paradox: nobody thinks that a "screw-you-Google" strategy makes sense, but they assume that Murdoch knows something they don't, and that the strategy will make sense when all is revealed. In that way, the Digger is rather like Warren Buffett: his past investment record is so good that people are wary of questioning his judgment.
    I have no idea what Murdoch's thinking, but I know what he's thinking about, and that's "content". Everyone's thinking about it too. Content takes many forms – news, opinion, features, audio, video, images – but they can all be lumped into one broad category: information goods.
    These goods cost money to produce, so the producers need to earn revenues from them. Until recently, that was relatively easy to do, which is how owners of newspapers, magazines, broadcasting networks, record labels and movie studios became rich and powerful.
    This happy state of affairs, however, is terminally challenged in a networked world in which people expect to access information goods for free and where perfect copies can easily – and illicitly – be made. Therefore, the Murdoch argument runs, we must return to the world as it used to be, where people are forced to pay for content.
    But if you want to return to the past, it makes sense to understand it, and here we run into some puzzles. Take the notion that, in the good ol' days of print, customers paid for content.
    Shortly before writing that sentence I was handed a copy of the LondonEvening Standard, which contained lots of "content" but was, er, free. And although this is the most conspicuous example in the UK of printed content being given away, free newspapers have been thriving for decades. The only thing that marks out the Standard from a provincial freesheet is that its content is of a higher class. So even in the newspaper world, lots of content has been free for ages.
    But surely people who buy the Sun, Telegraph, Mail and Times are paying for content? Maybe they are, but we'd need to know what proportion of those publications' revenues came from cover sales rather than from advertising to know how much their readers are actually paying for the content. If newspapers had to recoup the costs of content-creation solely from retail sales, cover prices would be a lot higher and circulations correspondingly lower. So let's not kid ourselves: even in the print days consumers weren't paying anything like a realistic price for content. Why should things be any different in an online world?
    But what to charge? Here the print world gives contradictory advice, as a visit to www.newsstand.co.uk will show you. On the one hand, theEconomist sells there for £4.29 an issue and the New Yorker for £4.92, whereas Nuts costs £2.47 and Zoo is £2.37. Quality content clearly commands a higher price.
    But why is Ideal Home £6.65 per issue and World of Interiors £5.85? There's no real rationale here, beyond charging what different markets will bear. In the print world, in other words, higher prices could be justified by having better content – but also just by having glossier layout, heavier paper, better colour reproduction, etc.
    The trouble is that glossy production values don't cut much ice online. We're moving to what essayist Paul Graham calls "post-medium publishing" (bit.ly/ZBhb8), where the intrinsic quality of the content will determine what people will to pay. If the Digger really wants to charge for his stuff, it had better be good.
    http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/nov/14/peter-preston-sun-gordon-brown
    The Sun got too hot without its coolest headLes Hinton, now departed for Dow Jones, would never have allowed the paper to make such intemperate attacks on Gordom Brown

    Les Hinton, chairman of News International. Photograph: Murdo Macleod
    Two little words sum up what may be one big problem. Those words are "Les" and "Hinton". Quiet, shrewd Les, now running Dow Jones forRupert Murdoch in New York, used to be top dog in Wapping. He didn't let his ego get in the way. He let Rupert be Rupert, descending from New York on sub-royal tours. And he let editors edit, giving prudent advice when asked. But now he's gone. And now things seem a trifle problematic.
    What, asks Melanie Reid in the Times, are we supposed to think when "a disabled man is being humiliated for his handicap? Nice. Really nice". Yes, "there's something pretty vile about the personal attacks being levelled at" our PM. Gordon Brown is attacked for failing to bow at the Cenotaph (when he is said to have become disoriented – his wretched eyesight problem). It's "public bullying" he does not deserve. It's like watching "the wings being pulled off flies".
    And the wing-puller in chief of course, is the Sun, just across Wapping's forecourt. What Lord Mandelson swiftly labels "crude politicking" even splits Murdoch paper from Murdoch paper. It also sets TV and political circles chomping, as the Indy asks on its front page: "Has Cameron done a deal with Murdoch?"
    That's a crudely discomforting question to pose at this stage. It doesn't help Dave or Rupe or son James (in his own Wapping top slot). Fragmentary polling shows that the world in general, and many Sunreaders in particular, think the confrontation between an outraged mother of a war victim and a battered, obviously saddened prime minister has been crassly handled. Public sides with Gordon shock. It was theSun wot lost it?
    But go back more forensically to the paper's treatment of Mrs Janes and Brown last week. Front page headlines: "PM sends gaffe-strewn note to soldier's grieving mum then fails to bow at the Cenotaph". Leader page cartoon of premier holding scrawled letter that says: "Er, Sory Gordon". An editorial pillorying his "slapdash condolences" headlined: "Shoddy, PM". And, of course, that covert tape recording of the phone call he made to say sorry again.
    Didn't it occur to anyone at Bun HQ that readers might indeed find this treatment shoddy? Which is where the departed spirit of Les Hintonwalks Wapping's byways again.
    Dominic Mohan was Rebekah Brooks's hand-picked successor in theSun chair when she moved up to succeed Les as News Internationalchief. He was in situ when the paper turned floridly against Brown (though that had been predictable for months, because Murdoch never backs obvious losers). But nobody could possibly think that Brooks is sitting at some distant desk with the phone off the hook.
    Would Hinton, if still around, have been consulted about the Sun's Sorry blast? Of course. Brooks as editor would have wanted his political counsel, since Rupert himself has long been a welcome Brown visitor to Numbers 10 and 11. So, unless incredibly foolish, Mohan must have called Brooks first. In which case, the buck travels up, not down.
    Brooks has been in plenty of scrapes before, but she always had Les around to calm her down. Now she's flying solo. Now she's the political adviser to James, who is congenitally unlikely to phone his dad and ask whether the he wants a few adjectives toned down.
    Let's be charitable on the politicking front. All incoming governments pay their dodgy dues at the court of King Rupert. Talk of done deals is far ahead of reality: the relationship between Downing Street and Wapping is much broader-brush than that.
    But the presence of James Murdoch, master of BSkyB and lord of the print, makes the lobbying harder to manage. It runs up an obvious flag marked "TV interests". And the new presence of Brooks, who invited both Dave and Gordon to her nuptials a few months ago, makes the cruelty of the Sun's vituperation look idiotically inhumane.
    Rupert, far away in Oz, says that he still respects Gordon himself. Gordon, newly sympathetic on Today, says he still respects Rupert, too – but that this (he's obviously been told from afar) was something handled by those who run "the British operation".
    So, more of a domestic botch than an international battle royal. Crude? To be sure. But, worse (as cool, lost Les might sadly observe): plain dysfunctional.

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/nov/13/views-on-the-news-rupert-murdoch-lloyds-redundancies
    Views on the news: Murdoch's madness, more banking redundancies and bonuses for Barclays bigwigsBloggers unite in their dim view of Rupert Murdoch and his views on Google, but further job losses at Lloyds reset the dividing line
    Teena Lyonsguardian.co.uk, Friday 13 November 2009 14.29 GMTArticle historyWho would have believed it? This week Rupert Murdoch succeeded where countless other stories have failed - uniting business bloggers to one dominant viewpoint.
    "It is a novelty to see a Guardian Comments with near unanimity,"summarised gpjcyprus after hundreds wrote in to disparage this week's tale that the media baron is considering blocking news from his media empire from Google's search index.
    ItalioDutch imagined the scenario: "Breaking news: Pope to visit Iran.
    "From The Guardian: Pope's visit to strictly Shiite country first ever.
    "From the New York Times: Pontiffs visit already historic.
    "From Le Monde: Benoît XVI au pays des Ayatollah
    "From The Times: 403 forbidden
    "That is going to be a fantastic success."
    "News International – big. Google – bigger," said kingfelix. "Murdoch has forgotten the first rule of bullying (which is his business model), the bully must be stronger than those it targets.
    "Google won't be getting its dinner money stolen or its PE kit flushed down the bog."
    "Excluding yourself from the single biggest source of web traffic?" wroteSsieth. "What could possibly go wrong with that plan?"
    "What a numpty," concluded Tisiphone.
    Fortunately there were some banking stories out this week that helped restore the combative status quo. Lloyds' announcement that it was cutting a further 5,000 jobs, for example, got a mixed reaction.
    Fabiusmaximus a blogger who claims unfair treatment from the bank, had little sympathy for the workforce: "May I be the first to say what goes around comes around. Happy redundancy."
    Robotier on the other hand sympathised with the human cost, adding: "It must be a barrel of laughs working in the lower echelons of Lloyds now. The ones below the ivory towers. Especially if you've just been redeployed from Bank Of Scotland and thought you'd escaped the guillotine.
    "I really feel for anyone who has worked hard for a career in banking because all they've got to look forward to now is consistent job insecurity and an expectation to jump through flaming hoops as Lloyds take advantage of the workforce."
    Siff had an interesting point: "Did you notice the way they worded the job cuts announcement? Only so many jobs will go because we are going to get rid of this many contractors and temporary staff. Contractors and temps are obviously some sort of subhuman who don't register as staff and presumably will not register as unemployed either."
    And so to Barclays, which is on track for record profits and is, apparently considering pay rises for its top bankers. Vernier could not resist commenting on the name of the bank's chief operating officer: "Can't help noticing one banking bigwig rejoices under the name of 'Rich Ricci'.
    "Presumably, he will now be changing his name to: 'Mega Rich Ricci'".
    And, do you think MadBillMcMad was being ironic by writing: "I think these guys work and they deserve their bonus. If it was that easy then why don't we all just do it? Just take your money out of the banking system and invest it elsewhere.
    "I have some magic beans you can buy."
    You decide.
    Of course, most bloggers are quite clear in their views on bankers and bonuses, a view reiterated after Hector Sants, the Financial Services Authority chief executive, said that bankers had not learned lessons from the financial crisis.
    Eckythump begged to differ: "They have learned that if they screw up they don't need to worry because the taxpayer will bail them out and they can continue to rake in their massive bonuses."
    Of course, for a lively analysis on lessons learned, you really need look no further than a discussion on house prices.
    Jpwill2009 was one of many who was less than impressed to hear house prices are rising at the fastest rate since 2006: "Celebrating house inflation again? It's like Groundhog Day. If houses go much higher we'll all be living with our head in the clouds."
    LeeWashington was not the only one to smell a rat following the news that the number of homes repossessed in the UK have risen by 3% in the third quarter: "If repossessions are up and house prices are rising because of a shortage of property for sale, does this mean the banks aren't putting the houses back onto the market?"
    Indeed, said harmonyfuture: "They [the banks] take cheap taxpayer money, lend to themselves via shadow companies to prove to government they are lending whilst propping up the asset value of their newly acquired, knock down priced property portfolio. This is anti competitive insider dealing and requires proper investigation."
    Credit card firms were in the firing line too, with outof offering a firm warning for those who are considering charging an annual fee to cardholders once again: "The credit card companies have to tread very carefully here.
    "If they alienate too many customers (and any sort of fee will do that) then they will no longer have the critical mass necessary to force retailers to accept their cards."
    For any bloggers who think the economy is getting better – and there are not many – EvilMike had a sobering tale, who wrote following the announcement that unemployment figures rose by the smallest amount since the recession: "I lost my long term contract job (8 years) at the end of September. Because of money I'd been saving for the last 12 months (I could see the writing was on the wall...) it's not worth me registering as unemployed. I'm looking for another job now. I'm sure there are plenty more people like me out there who don't appear in the statistics."
    Indeed, according to nocod: "There should soon be an upsurge of jobs in the wheelbarrow making industry as we cart our wages home. "Recession not even started in my book."
    However, BrownsHeadDownToilet thought there was room for one more on the list of unemployed, posting: "I would like to see Mandelson join their ranks."
    Best not to start discussing this one with the current mood of harmony on the boards. Keep them coming.


    72 Point achieves more national news coverage than any other PR agency in the UK

    72 Point is the PR division of SWNS - the UK's largest independent press agency.

    We have a unique and direct link to the UK press due to:

    • A 40 year relationship with national news editors
    • An EXCLUSIVE, in-house newswire service which every media organisation in the country subscribes to
    • An in-house team of over 100 trained journalists, feature writers and photographers
    • Journalists from the Telegraph, Sun and women's magazines working in the same office.
    • Access to global market research site www.onepoll.com which can sample thousands of respondents

    No matter who you are or what you do - We can achieve positive exposure for you. An interesting, quirky news story is powerful. We know what will "make" in the newspapers and will aim to build a story which satisfies two key requirements:

    a)It has strong news value
    b)It gets your key brand messages across

     

    72 Point - About Us

    72 Point is part of the SWNS Group ? the UK?s largest independent press agency and newswire service.

    Our relationship with SWNS secures our position as national news PR specialists.

    No other agency has:

    • Direct access to a newswire which every media organisation in the country subscribes to.
    • A news desk which takes daily calls from editors on the hunt for stories - it could be yours on our list.
    • Journalists from the Sun, Daily Telegraph and women's magazines working in the same building.
    • Over 100 trained journalists, photographers and feature writers.
    • Direct access to Onepoll.com - the UK's leading supplier of survey-based national news.

    Click on the following links to see information about SWNS, 72 Point, Onepoll.com and the other parts of our company?

    SWNS 
    South West News Service, the largest independent press agency in the UK 
    http://www.swns.com

    72 Point Ltd 
    National News PR Specialists

    72 Point Plus Ltd 
    Specialist Media Relations, Communication Consultancy, Issues Management, Public Affairs, Event Management and more

    OnePoll.com 
    Global Market Research Specialists 
    http://www.onepoll.com/

    YoungPoll 
    Youth based Market Research Specialists (soon to come)

    Ventutec Ltd 
    Specialists in Website Design and Development, SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) and PPC (Pay Per Click) 
    http://www.ventutec.com/

    Click here to enquire about any of our Services
    Or simply call us on 0117 9066 555.

     


    72 Point - Why PR?

    At least 15% of coverage in the national press on a daily basis comes from SWNS. Based in the heart of the South West, with key regional reporters working for both The Sun and the Daily Telegraph in-house and a team of dedicated news reporters, photographers and features writers - SWNS has been producing stories and pictures for the national press for over 40 years.

    Most importantly - what makes in print leads the news agenda for all other types of media on any given day, be it online, radio or TV, with stories generated by SWNS fining their way literally around the world.

    72 Point is the only PR agency in the UK that works hand in hand with a national news agency and the only PR agency specialising in national news.

    Take a look at some 'Frequently Asked Questions' below:

    Q: Why is PR important?

    Q: Is PR cost-effective?

    Q: Can PR improve my online search results?

    Q: How can PR benefit my product?

    Q: Can PR help with recruitment and other staff issues?

    Click here to find out how we can help get your brand in the National Press and other Media.
    Or simply call us on 0117 9066 555.

    72 Point - Why 72 Point?

    The comparisons below highlight exactly how and why 72 Point
    continuously delivers high-impact PR Coverage in the national press.

    The Benefits of using 72 Point over a Traditional PR Agency


    Traditional PR Agency


    Press releases are written by PR Executives.


    Traditional agencies phone round a number of national journalists to get interest in their story.


    The release gets sent out via email to news agencies / newsdesks / reporters.


    The story gets sent out regardless of the days' news 

    agenda.


    PR Executives might ring the news editors on the nationals throughout the day to receive feedback.


    The nationals have direct access to the client once the PR agency has issued the press release.


    Research is commissioned externally, often using expensive suppliers/agencies.


    Creative sessions are conducted by PR professionals only.



    Photography is commissioned externally.


    Photos are not available on immediate request and need to be commissioned externally in advance


    Agencies often charge the client to produce lengthy documents and detailed PR plans according to client specifications.


    They provide PR services and support for end user clients


    Agencies tend to have a low national press success rate


    72 Point Ltd



    Press copy is written by trained national journalists/creative writers.

    SWNS receive phone calls daily from 7:30am from national news reporters and editors to discuss what stories they have sourced, ready to go out that day.

    The news copy gets fed via the SWNS newswire (Wordflow). All our client stories are guaranteed to be on the newswire on the agreed date. The newswire feeds the copy to the receiving news systems of named reporters/editors on the nationals.

    Our newsdesk gives us the heads up if they hear of a busy news day, or sudden breaking stories. A PR story might be held back at the last minute if breaking news is likely to dominate the papers.

    SWNS may well be aware of the reception of a story and wherever possible feedback is provided to the 72 Point team.

    The nationals always liaise with our news team once the copy has been issued, enabling us to field any enquiries and act as liability insurance for the client.

    Research is conducted using our low cost, quick turnaround in-house survey facility www.onepoll.com, which can also be accessed via the 72 Point website and affiliated survey sites. 1000's of different individuals have responded to our surveys over the past years and continue to do so, on a regular basis. OnePoll functionality is constantly evolving and panel membership numbers increase daily.

    Creative sessions are conducted by a diverse team of experienced journalists, news editors, PR professionals and features staff.

    SWNS have an in-house national news picture desk, with trained photographers who provide pictures for the national press every day.

    If the newspapers request photos to accompany a story, we already have a database of over 500,000 images. If the appropriate pictures are not immediately available, one of our national press photographers can often take them within the hour.

    We side-step the admin, and produce relevant newsworthy briefs within short timescales, based on the opinions of the news team

    Provides PR services and support for end user clients and PR agencies.

    We have an 80% success rate of national press coverage.

    72 Point - Contact

    Are your competitors enjoying more frequent or more targeted coverage than you? Curious to find out whether you could be communicating better with your key audiences? Or would you just like to know more about what we do?

    Simply call us on +44 (0)117 9066 555 

    or fill out the contact form below and we will be in touch ASAP.


     


    72 Point - Clients

    Over the years, 72 Point has worked with literally hundreds of clients, working on sustained awareness of huge corporate household names, through to new business start-ups wanting to break into already competitive markets.

    We have also worked with PR Agencies of all sizes to support them with their own clients' activity - either as part of a larger campaign or sometimes simply to help out on a difficult brief or previously unsuccessful project.

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