The Murdoch Empire's Greatest Test

[Stavros]

Hippifried your answer reveals an important difference: the dominance of TV in the USA, the enduring role of newspapers in the UK, even though they are facing circulation problems and people under the age of 25 are less likely to have any brand loyalty to a paper. Indeed it goes further as today's Guardian runs an article that claims the kind of tabloid sins we believe Murdoch's papers have committed (belief at the moment not confirmed by a court of law) could not happen in the USA where regulations are more rightly adhered to but, crucially perhaps, where newspapers are no longer on the front line of major breaking news stories -the article is linked below.

It makes me wonder how many Americans here read a newspaper -either online, or through purchase of hard copy -? I have gone from buying a paper every day to buying one once a week, and not the bloated Sunday's -I can't see the point of paying for 100 pages of newsprint if I am only going to read 30, if that.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011...-phone-hacking

[Prospero]

Stavros wrote: "I have gone from buying a paper every day to buying one once a week, and not the bloated Sunday's -I can't see the point of paying for 100 pages of newsprint if I am only going to read 30, if that."

Lot of people I know re now doing that. The trouble is how do you know which 30 pages you want to read. i get two papers every day and three on a saturday... and skim through to find the material I want to read. old habits die hard.

These days all the talk in the upper echelons of newspaper management is of diverting resources to build the on-line identity or brand in anticipation of the demise of the paper version. The Guardian in the UK plans to a 30-70 split of resources in favour of on-line. As more as more people get tablet computers and when electronic paper finally arrives, the old tree guzzling newspaper will die IMHO. But the e-readers haven't yet killed books. (Even if Amazon says sales of e books now out distance real books.)

[hippifried]

Hippifried your answer reveals an important difference: the dominance of TV in the USA, the enduring role of newspapers in the UK, even though they are facing circulation problems and people under the age of 25 are less likely to have any brand loyalty to a paper. Indeed it goes further as today's Guardian runs an article that claims the kind of tabloid sins we believe Murdoch's papers have committed (belief at the moment not confirmed by a court of law) could not happen in the USA where regulations are more rightly adhered to but, crucially perhaps, where newspapers are no longer on the front line of major breaking news stories -the article is linked below.

It makes me wonder how many Americans here read a newspaper -either online, or through purchase of hard copy -? I have gone from buying a paper every day to buying one once a week, and not the bloated Sunday's -I can't see the point of paying for 100 pages of newsprint if I am only going to read 30, if that.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011...-phone-hacking

US newspapers are local. There was no national newspaper till the '80s. & that was the ever sucky USA Today. Since then, there's been a huge rush to swallow up the locals in large & major markets, & to get the big papers distributed nationally, but all the nationals suck. Same goes for the cable news channels.

Lots of people read newspapers. There's over 300 million people here, in a country that's 3000 by 1500 miles. They just don't read the WSJ or the New York Times. Why should they? Most people in the US don't live in New York & don't give a shit about it. There's a whole lot more going on than you ever hear about on the networks or the internet.

[Prospero]

Hippiefried... "most people in the US don't live in New York and don't give a shit about it." It's not about New York though, is it? But The New York Times, now sold coast to coast, seems to this Brit who is a regular visitor to "obscure" bits of the USA to be the only American daily that even attempts to cover politics and current affairs from a global rather than local perspective. It's not about caring about what happens in NYC - for the met section of the paper isn't sold in Arizona or Nebraska - but the ret of the paper is a good read and widens the perspective of people. I suppose the WSJ used to do that well before it was guzzled down by Murdoch). Yes there are lot and lots of local city papers which may well do a good job in covering local politics. but The Baltimore Sun or Patriot ledger or even such old worthies as the Boston Globe or the Washington Post ...whatever ....certainly have to rely largely on agencies or syndicates for foreign news - in which there seems to be precious little interest among Americans outside of the wast Coast unless American boys are killing and getting killed someplace. When was the last time your local paper in Idaho or Utah carried stories about Burma, Brazil or Bangladesh?

[hippifried]

It's not about New York though, is it?

Yes. The NYT & WSJ are a New York perspective. That's not necessarily an American perspective or a global perspective. It's just what the rest of the world sees from America. Turner was the first to base TV networks outside of New York, & they're still strictly cable. CNN's been bought out since then, & they've been shifting their center from Atlanta to New York. It's a different perspective. & yes, I get national & international news from the local paper because everybody with a web press is subscribed to the same wire services. That's where the NY Times gets most of theirs too. A chunk of the locals use them the same way, along with the other big syndicated newspaper conglomerates. The times & WSJ are actually local papers themselves. Why would anybody else subscribe unless they have some connection to that particular perspective, or they've bought into the hype about the "brand"? The idea that the rest of the country is disinterested in anything outside their own little corner of the world is simply untrue. If the national media drew the maps, you'd see New York & LA, with Chicago sticking out of the vast wasteland in between. The reason nobody really takes the national or international media (both print & electronic) seriously, is because they're so out of touch & snidely haughty at the same time.

[Stavros]

The reason nobody really takes the national or international media (both print & electronic) seriously, is because they're so out of touch & snidely haughty at the same time

Janet Daley -an American ex-pat who lives and writes opinion pieces in London for the Telegraph, writes her usual 'the BBC is left-wing' piece today, her point being that in the UK we have no choice because we are legally obliged to pay a licence fee to receive tv signals into our homes and the fee goes exclusively to the BBC (as a whole, which means the fee is used to fund tv, radio, the web service, orchestras and so on).
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/ukne...t-revenge.html

In the UK the BBC has a sort of 'national' profile as 'the nation's voice', in what is obviously a smaller place than the USA. Murdoch owns Sky which has a small share of the viewing public. All tv in the UK is supposed to be 'politically neutral' which means that Daley gets into a lather because she detects a bias against the centre-right just as elements in the Labour Party think the BBC is soft on the centre and the Tories, and don't even get started on Israel and the Palestinians.

The charter of the BBC obliges it to 'inform, educate and entertain' and I can't think of three more compelling reasons to set up a tv station, but not so difficult if the money for it is effectively an extra tax. Fox News, or MSNBC could not happen here, I googled Olbermann and O'Reilly because I had never heard of them, and was amazed at the vitriolic rhetoric of the former against the latter on the Malmedy issue-unthinkable in the UK and something which I think a lot of British people would actually find offensive.

I am not suggesting that our media is not 'out of touch and snidely haughty at the same time', if we had a referendum in the UK on hanging, a simple majority would probably vote for it, but the issue is not discussed because 'it has been decided' it is not to be discussed, the debate on capital punishment is over -the same kind of editorial decision-making that gives more air time to some parts of the world and not others; and also the effects theory which suggests a broadcaster like the BBC or its main rivals in ITN and SKY (and in effect the whole population here who watches news watches one of these 3) can set the tone and the content of debate -if broadcasting standards have slipped in recent years its because newsreaders can sometimes give an emotional/moral slant to a story about which they are supposed to be neutral -9/11 and our own 7/7 atrocities being a case in point.

The question then becomes, not just about the future of newspapers, but of broadcasting and, crucialy -where will the news come in the next 50 years, how will it be packaged/presented, how will fidelity to the 'truth' be maintained? Is Huffington in effect now, a rival 'news' outlet on the web?

As you and Prospero suggest, news agencies already form the source for a lot of stories, and I am not too worried by the David Icke's of this world or other independent bloggers whose opinions are not news.

I also think it is a bigger problem for the USA because of the size of the country, the diversity of its languages and cultures and interests -OR is this in fact a benefit, meaing that no one corporation can dominate broadcasting and mould the news to its own ideology -and, if Murdoch's imprint on Fox/SKY goes, as he and his family leave the stage; or if the Empire is dissolved into new companies, will this change the landscape of American broadcasting? Does the replacement for FOX become less right wing? More right wing? Speculation, I know, but the world doesn't stand still, not even for Rupert Murdoch.

[hippifried]

The size of the country is only a problem to those who would monopolize control over content. There's been a concerted effort for the last 3 decades to shrink the pool of media ownership, while increasing the number of outlets into niche markets. Personally, I don't like it. I'm not a niche. The cable "news" networks are practically all punditry nowadays. FOX news likes to tell everybody that they lead in the ratings, & that's true within their niche, but all the news networks combined don't add up to the numbers of a lame game show or reruns of even lamer sit-coms. The reality is that hardly anyone pays attention to any of it. Why bother, since almost everything of any news value on any or all of them in the last 24 hr cycle can be summed up during the half hr local news at 10 PM, & you get the local news weather & sports too? I'm sure the NY Times bumped up their subscriber base by going national. But does the rest of the country add up to what they already had locally? Stats are too easily skewed to make something's importance seem more than it really is.

Prospero asked:

When was the last time your local paper in Idaho or Utah carried stories about Burma, Brazil or Bangladesh?

The answer is most likely: Today (if there were any stories about those places on the services). I would turn that around & ask: When was the last time a national or international paper had anything to say about Idaho or Utah? It's not like those places are devoid of activity. They're just not New York. All potatoes & Mormons, right?

[Stavros]

I would turn that around & ask: When was the last time a national or international paper had anything to say about Idaho or Utah?

First, Rupert Murdoch was in Sun Valley when the scandal broke, though what Sun Valley is didn't make it into the coverage...Second, if anything, there are people here who complain we get too much coverage of the US in the British media. The Murdoch press issue in The Guardian has meant that its creepy obsession with Sarah Palin has (mercifully) disappeared; we have had reasonable, if not extensive coverage of the Presidential contenders in the GOP but no, I don't suppose other than lurid crime stories the domestic US gets a fair press here. Also, those of us who are interested in politics surf far and wide for news and information, whereas I doubt most people in this country could name a single Republican contender for President, and I doubt most Americans have heard of Ed Miliband...and I am not sure they should bother to find out...

[Prospero]

Stavros wrote:"I doubt most Americans have heard of Ed Miliband...and I am not sure they should bother to find out..." Ae we letting slip a little of the mask here to reveal a Tory bias lol?

[robertlouis]

Stavros wrote:"I doubt most Americans have heard of Ed Miliband...and I am not sure they should bother to find out..." Ae we letting slip a little of the mask here to reveal a Tory bias lol?

Hmmm. It's easy to dislike/despise both of the major parties.

I've got little time for Cameron and his Eton cronies, but Ed Miliband
leaves me stone cold. He's finally found a voice and an issue with the News International scandal, but otherwise he sounds like a typical new labour apparatchik, no matter how far he tries to protest to the contrary.

And as a lifelong Liberal, I feel horribly disenfranchised these days.