News Corp Supplies Information, Defies Accountability

WHO IS THIS GIT?

If you can't place the face of the shar pei in the photo above, you're not alone. His is not exactly a household name, but it should be. Just as most Americans don't realize that we get almost ALL of our news and information from a grand total of only six companies, most of us don't know who runs those companies, or realize how much their personal, private interests influence our world view. 

So allow me to introduce you to one Rupert Murdoch, octogenarian and media mogul extraordinaire. Murdoch is the Chairman and CEO of News Corporation, a.k.a. News Corp, and he's on our radar this week because one of his British companies, the tabloid paper News of the World, has just been caught hacking into thousands of voicemail accounts in pursuit of tabloid fodder. Had they stuck simply to the voicemails of celebrities, the scandal would likely not have reached across a desk, let alone the pond. But News of the World employees crossed a line of social acceptability when they reportedly also hacked the accounts of high profile crime victims, including the families of victims of terrorist attacks, even going so far as to delete messages that could arguably have affected the outcome of criminal trials.

WHAT DOES THE MEDIA DO WHEN THE MEDIA IS THE NEWS?

The story would be scandalous enough on its own, but taking into account News Corp's massive influence on the media, the repercussions are somewhat overwhelming. To give you an idea of Murdoch's scope of influence, News Corp is the parent company of all FOX tv stations (including FOX News), 20th Century FOX Studios, the New York Post, the Wall Street Journal, National Geographic, TV Guide, Harper Collins Publishers, and MySpace...just to name a few. You can see a list of News Corp's holdings here.

This one man's decisions reach into pretty much every household in the U.S., not to mention the rest of the world, so how he runs his ship is a matter of some importance. Which might lead one to wonder why his is not a household name. The answer, of course, is that when you run one of the six major media conglomerates, you get to decide exactly how much you want, or don't want, your name to appear in the news. But a scandal of this size is hard to squelch, even if you own the companies reporting on it.

Murdoch, of course, has responded by insisting that the hacking was the result of a few rogue reporters, and has refused to criticize or condemn, let alone fire, News Of The World editor Rebekah Brooks.

The move highlights a tendency of the media mogul to protect his own, industry watchers say....

"He will reward loyalty with loyalty," said Steven Barnett... "It's a case of being one of us."

"If she has 100 percent backing from Rupert Murdoch, which is the word coming out of News Corp, then clearly she is untouchable and more importantly it shows that Murdoch himself thinks the company is untouchable," he adds.

Murdoch has long been criticized by insiders for mixing business with both family and politics, and Brooks is a longtime friend of British Prime Minister David Cameron, whose campaign can credit support in Murdoch's press for much of its success. And though his son and presumed heir James Murdoch has announced the closing of News Of The World, much speculation remains that the end of one Murdoch tabloid is simply the beginning of another. 

Shutting News of the World looks like such a grand gesture. In fact, it's another attempt to look like something is being done -- while in fact changing nothing fundamental within News International.

Shutting the 168-year-old paper isn't a great sacrifice (although, since it was Murdoch's first UK paper, he may feel sentimental about it); it's just bowing to the inevitable. No one wanted to advertise, no one wanted to buy and precious few people wanted to appear in the paper: better to shoot it and put it out of its misery.

But the fact that the URLs for SunonSunday.com and SunonSunday.co.uk were reserved fully two days ago suggests that News International may just be planning to switch its employees over to a "new" paper just like the "old" paper -- but with a new name. This rebranding will fool no one. The fact that the teams are still headed by Rebekah Brooks means nothing will have changed....

Indeed, this smacks of the old tactic of one business committing fraud, declaring bankruptcy, and closing - only to re-open under a new name with a free pass to continue the same old business model. This may be a tried and true business tactic, but it leaves one to wonder, should Murdoch's companies really be trusted as the primary source of so very much of our information?

UPDATES: 

7/11/2011:  Melissa Bell of the Washington Post updates us on the rumors surrounding the scandal, including reports that journalists hacked the voicemails of 9/11 victims as well as the Prime Minister.

7/12/2011: Jonathan Schell provides an in-depth analysis of the scandal and its implications, both social and political, via CNN:

The Murdochs call News Corporation a journalistic enterprise. In fact, it is, first, an entertainment company, with the bulk of its revenue coming from its film and television holdings. Second, and more importantly, it is a propaganda machine for right-wing causes and political figures.

 7/13/11: The FBI has reportedly opened an investigation into News Corp in response to employees allegedly hacking into the voicemail accounts of 9/11 victims. 

7/17/11: Despite efforts to stem backlash from the scandal by resigning her position with News Corp, former NOTW editor Rebekah Brooks has now been arrested and is being held on charges related to corruption and conspiracy to intercept communications.

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What The Colbert Super PAC Means To You

Special Interests -WE HATES THEM 

PACS AND SPECIAL INTERESTS 

In a country split politically down the middle there is one thing nearly everyone can agree on; special interests are ruining American government. We may not all agree on exactly what constitutes a "special" interest, but most of us are savvy enough to know that they exist, that they wield political power, and that they don't represent the needs or opinions of the general public.

In American government today, there is only one surefire way to increase political power - spend money. A LOT of money. Special interests (at least the ones we should be concerned about) know this, and they use it to their absolute advantage. They are experts at two things: fundraising and lobbying. They know how to get their hands on money, and they use their considerable financial resources to throw their political weight around in order to influence politicians to establish policies that favor them. The result is the passing of laws that place the desires of a few over the needs of the many.

This is what campaign finance reform is all about. The campaign finance reform movement in America is generally motivated by an attempt to limit the political influence of special interest groups on public elections and public policy. Campaign finance reform uses two primary methods to accomplish this; (1) by limiting the amount of money that individuals and groups can donate to a particular campaign, and (2) by requiring political campaigns to disclose exactly who has donated how much money to them, making that information available to the public. So theoretically, voters can access that information to determine the degree to which a particular political act or candidate has been motivated or supported by special interests.

LIMITING AND DISCLOSING SPECIAL INTEREST MONEY... 

Special interests, of course, are not big fans of campaign finance reform. It is their primary goal in life to find loopholes, ways to contribute massive amounts of money to individual campaigns in order to influence the outcomes of those campaigns. One of the ways they do this is by forming Political Action Committees, or PACs. A PAC is private group of persons, organizations, and/or corporations that work together to influence the outcome of elections. So when you see the word "PAC" in relation to elections, you should think "special interest money." (We have it on good authority that Pac Man is something completely different, so we apologize to those of you who accidentally ended up here because you were procrastinating by googling retro video games.)

The rules for PACs are different from the rules for individuals. An individual may contribute a maximum of only $1000 to a particular campaign. So in order to contribute more, special interest groups form PACs. Technically, any group that either receives contributions or spends over the amount of $1000 in order to influence the result of a federal election is considered a PAC. 

In order to understand what's going on with campaign finance right now, we need a little history on the regulation of PACs. Under the Bipartisan Campaign Finance Reform Act of 2002 (a.k.a. the McCain-Feingold Act):

• The cap on the amount of money any PAC may contribute to any campaign per year was set at $5000.
• The cap on the amount of money any PAC may contribute to any political party was set at $15,000.
• The cap on the amount of money any PAC may contribute to another PAC was set at $5000.
• PACs were required to report all of their financial activities, including donations to specific campaigns, to the Federal Election Committee (FEC), which makes those reports available to the public.
• PACs could spend an unlimited amount of money on "independent expenditures" (think campaign commercials) as long as they did not coordinate the activities of those expenditures directly with the candidate's official campaign (which is why candidates add that annoying "I am ___ and I approved this message" to ads that originate within their own official campaigns)...
• ...However, those "independent expenditures" could only be funded by contributions made to that PAC, which were both limited and reported to the FCC as described above. 

 ...UNTIL NOW 

So those were the rules under which PACs operated...until 2010. Then along came Citizens United v. the FEC in which the Supreme Court voted 5-4 (as divisive as a ruling can be) that corporate funding of independent political broadcasts could not be limited, seeing it as an issue protected under First Amendment freedom of speech.

In theory, that all sounds great. In reality, the bottom dropped out of any effort to limit the political influence of PACs, and therefore of special interests. Several things changed as a result of the Citizens United ruling. Remember those "independent expenditures" that used to be both limited and publicly reported? Well, not any more. Corporations can now pay directly for those activities from their own treasuries, and there's no limit to how much money they can spend doing it. This was the birth of the "super PAC." Super PACs are officially known as "independent-expenditure only committees." They can raise unlimited sums of money from virtually anyone - corporations, organizations, unions, even wealthy individuals. Remember those 6 companies that run pretty much everything? Well, there's no longer any limit to how much money they can throw behind a particular campaign. But at least we the public know who's behind that money...right?

Wrong. Special interests are the kings of loopholes, and their super PACs have found themselves a doozy. Under federal law, non-profit corporations are not required to report the sources of their donations to the super PACs. So let's say you're a big corporation and you want to get one of your board members elected to congress. How do you fund his campaign? Easy. You establish a non-profit corporation (all you have to do is file a few papers with the court), you "donate" a colossal amount of your company's money to that non-profit, and the non-profit turns around and donates all of that money to a super Pac. Quick, easy, anonymous, and best (or worst) of all, anyone can do it. Just ask Stephen Colbert.

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