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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Rumors Of The Food Revolution's Demise Are Greatly Exaggerated

Jamie Oliver illustrates his point about the amount of sugar added to school lunches.

Some of you may have tuned in to watch the third episode of Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution only to be faced with a recap of Dancing With Some People. Perhaps your first instinct, like mine, was to think, "Oh $*#!, they finally got him. He's off the air. The Food Revolution is no more. The terrorists have won." No? Just me? Hmm.

Well, fortunately for us cynics, foodies, nutritionally challenged, reality show buffs, or concerned parents, Jamie Oliver is just not that easy to get rid of. Several factors collided to put a break in the contiguous run of the show, but like Arnold Schwarzenegger's bad press, it will be back. ABC executives did pull the show for May sweeps, ostensibly because people would rather watch the Karate Kid get voted off the island than tune in to see which stuffed shirt Oliver can calmly antagonize into near stroke-inducing levels of evasion next. The majority of the press you'll find about the show's "cancellation" seems to be motivated primarily by a counter-movement attempting to discredit the popularity of Oliver's campaign in Los Angeles. Now who could possibly be behind that?

In actuality, show's filming was interrupted not only for viewership reasons, but also by a bit of unanticipated success. In response to pressure following the first two episodes of the season, L.A. Unified School District Superintendent John Deasy publicly agreed to remove flavored milks from the school menus. The rumor mill has it that several episodes are being re-shot to include some of the campaign's recent successes. 

Meanwhile, the Food Revolution has not ceased its public outreach endeavors. During the filming hiatus, Oliver's team is operating a mobile cooking school out of a 70-foot semi (or big rig, or tractor-trailer-truck, depending what part of the country you're from). During all this, the Food Revolution petition to improve the quality and nutritional value of school lunches has gained upwards of 600,000 signatures, well on the way to reaching the goal of 1 million signatures by the end of this season.

Season 2 of Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution will return at the end of the month to ABC, which is re-airing the first two episodes back-to-back on May 27th, with new episodes slated to begin on Friday, June 3. You can also view episodes of season 2 on HULU or ABC.com.  If you missed season 1, we've compiled it here. Happy viewing and healthy eating!

Click here to see all posts on Jamie Oliver

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Feast or Famine - Part 2: Jamie Takes Hollywood

UPDATE (5/25/11): Season 2 of Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution will return to ABC at the end of May. CLICK HERE to see all related posts.

We may have our issues with some of ABC's programming decisions (*cough* Made In America *cough*) but if there's one thing they're getting right, it's Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution, which is currently airing in its second season.

If you missed the first season of the show, then you didn't see the frankly shocking results of Jamie's campaign to examine the quality of the food available to public school children in Huntington, VA - or the unbelievable amount of resistance he skillfully navigated while trying to educate the town's people on the nutritional value (or lack thereof) of highly processed, low quality ingredients.

Now in the second season Jamie has taken the campaign to Los Angeles, and if Huntington was resistant to his message, then Los Angeles is downright hostile. The first thing the L.A. Unified School District did was ban Oliver from every single one of its schools. The critical mistake in their reaction was failure to consider the fact that if Oliver is a good chef, he is a brilliant activist. He moved his family to L.A. for the run of the show, so I expect his next move will be to enroll his kids in L.A. Unified. They can refuse access to a food critic, but they can't keep out a parent. On the other hand, considering what Oliver has seen, he may just want to keep his kids away from L.A.'s public school system altogether. Lord knows I would.

Watch the drama unfold in Season 2 of Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution on ABC, Tuesday nights at 8/7 Central, or anytime on your computer via Hulu.

More links about the Food Revolution:

LAUSD launches new menu, denies Oliver's campaign had anything to do with its creation. 

TIME tv critic shares viewers concerns about the show's structure, and their desire to stay tuned in anyway.

Roughly 80% of L.A. Times readers polled feel that LAUSD made a massive miscalculation in working against Oliver, rather than with him. 

Learn more about the Jamie Oliver Foundation and what it's doing to keep you and your kids healthy.

More than you ever wanted to know about Ryan Seacrest (who produces Oliver's show, along with the entire Kardiashian franchise and several other "reality" shows).

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Feast or Famine - Part 1: Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution

UPDATE (5/25/11): Season 2 of Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution will return to ABC at the end of May. CLICK HERE to see all related posts.


So far on this blog we've dealt with heavy topics like the death of independent media, institutionalized racism in the criminal justice system, and Charlie Sheen. Today I want to take a look at a topic that is slightly more accessible to most of us ... food. Yummy, delicious, slurp it down, gobble it up, eat your heart out food.


Of course, when we say "eat your heart out," we in the U. S. sometimes approach the term just a bit too literally. We are blessed to live in a nation of plenty, but our society seems to approach food with an almost literal "feast or famine" mindset. 1 out of every 8 Americans now rely upon some form of assistance (food bank or "soup kitchen") in order to have enough food to eat. If you're doing the math, that's over 37 million people - 14 million of whom are children.  Yet at the same time, our nation has the highest rate of obesity in the entire world. According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), over 75 million adults (roughly 30%) and an average of 19% of male children and 16% of female children in the U. S. are morbidly obese.


Indeed, the CDC now considers obesity to be a major epidemic and one of the top ten costliest medical conditions we face as a nation:

Over the past decade, obesity has become recognized as a national health threat and a major public health challenge. In 2007--2008, based on measured weights and heights (1), approximately 72.5 million adults in the United States were obese (CDC, unpublished data, 2010). Obese adults are at increased risk for many serious health conditions, including coronary heart disease, hypertension, stroke, type 2 diabetes, certain types of cancer, and premature death (2,3). Adult obesity also is associated with reduced quality of life, social stigmatization, and discrimination (2,3). From 1987 to 2001, diseases associated with obesity accounted for 27% of the increases in U.S. medical costs (4). For 2006, medical costs associated with obesity were estimated at as much as $147 billion (2008 dollars); among all payers, obese persons had estimated medical costs that were $1,429 higher than persons of normal weight (5). 

Eat your heart out indeed.

So what could be behind this feast or famine, all or nothing approach to food we seem to have adopted as a nation? Probably the same kind of large-scale, insidious manipulation that lies behind any subconscious, institutionalized way of thinking; someone, somewhere, is getting something major out of it. In this case, that something is probably boatloads of cash. I'm talking about people you and I will never meet who are making the kind of money you and I will never see. And they're making it off of us. The question is who? Who would actively (if subtly and insidiously) promote this institutionalized, victual feast or famine mindset? Could it be the multi-billion dollar fast food industry? The multi-billion dollar processed food industry? Hmmm... More on that in a future post.


First, we're going to take a look at just how deeply ingrained our food notions really are (and how early in life we are programmed to start making those choices), and internationally renowned chef Jamie Oliver is going to help us. Oliver is a British chef whose approach to using fresh, unprocessed ingredients literally revolutionized the English school cafeteria system. Following his success in England, Oliver decided to take on the American school lunch industry in his reality show Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution, for which he won both an Emmy and a TED prize. Season 1 is posted below, and believe me it's worth every click.


How much resistance would you expect a world renowned chef to meet when he comes into a town in the heart of the U.S. with the message, "Hey, what if we feed our kids less processed chemicals and fat, and more fresh, healthy food?"


See for yourself.

Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution - Episode 1

Part 1

 

Part 2

  

Part 3

Part 4

Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution Episode 2

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Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution Episode 3

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

 Part 4

Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution Episode 4

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution Episode 5

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution Episode 6

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

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Humble As Charlie Sheen

I was at a small party yesterday when one of those awkward silences fell, and, because I am a red-blooded American, I said the only thing I could think of that was certain to reinvigorate the room.

"So, how 'bout that Charlie Sheen?" It worked.

If you have somehow missed the unbelievably entertaining rants actor Charlie Sheen has treated us all to in the past week, what can I say. Catch up.


Now, I would be lying like a dog if I said I hadn't joined in the fontrum, the schadenfreude, the joy at the wrongness of it all. Charlie is having a meltdown, and he's doing it on national, nay - global, television.


And yet, could there be a method to his delightfully public madness? I submit, for your consideration, the following evidence:

• He may have lost a sitcom which he apparently hated as much as the rest of us did, but Sheen has gained over 2 million followers and very, very large endorsement contract on Twitter.
• He has signed a contract for his own show (please God, please let it be a talk show) on Mark Cuban's HD Net channel.
• His name is in the mouth of every meta-show, every network, every studio in and out of Hollywood. Sure, it's followed by expletives, but if it's true that the only bad publicity is no publicity, then on some level the man really is winning.

Did he plan all of this? It seems unlikely, but no more unlikely than anything Sheen has said or done lately. 


But more to the point, what is it about Sheen's outrageous behavior that has captured the interest of, well, practically everyone? Anyone who has spent time with a person diagnosed with bipolar personality disorder (a.k.a. manic depression) will recognize Sheen's grandiose diatribes as par for the course during a manic phase. Delusions, paranoia, a general break from reality and insistence that he is the only one who knows what's really going on are far from unusual.


But what is so intriguing, so inviting, so entertaining is the unique situation Sheen is in due to his celebrity status, which has only increased during his wild episodes. Sheen has the resources and the outlet to literally say anything he thinks, to do anything he wants. And who among us can honestly say we have never wished we could do the same?


It is notoriously difficult to get a person in the middle of a manic episode to take medication, and for good reason. Mania feels good. It is exhilarating. It draws attention, as Sheen could clearly attest. Perhaps most importantly, mania is often characterized by a rise in both creativity and fearless self-expression. Indeed, many scholars have theorized a link between bipolar disorder and the expression of creative genius. Sheen may be in good company here. Without the creativity and bravado of people who suffered from bipolar disorder, we would arguably be deprived of masters like Edgar Allen Poe, Earnest Hemingway, and Vincent Van Gogh. 


That's not necessarily to say that Sheen is a genius. He seems to be rather on the other end of the spectrum for now. But he is far from alone in reacting to the bipolar diagnosis with disdain and mistrust, saying "And then what? What's the cure? Medicine? Make me like them?" Many people taking mood-stabilizing medications express similar frustration. Medication may calm them, but it also dampens their creativity, their expressiveness, their sense of uniqueness. In order to be accepted, society demands that they tone down erratic behavior, increase their concern about how they are perceived by others, and generally pull it together enough to go with the flow. Perhaps it would be worthwhile to ask ourselves, are we medicating them to improve their quality of life, or our own? Do we want them to act more "normal" because it is in their best interest, or because they are making us uncomfortable?


And when it comes right down to it, who are we to insist that Sheen, or anyone else, change to meet our expectations of who and what they should be? Of course we must intervene when people represent a threat to themselves or others. But Sheen is no threat to us. You and I are just an audience. When it comes down to it, we don't really know what's going on behind the curtain. What we do know is that he is outrageous, provocative, controversial, and highly entertaining. And really, what more can we ask of a pop culture icon?

UPDATE: Why Chris Brown's panties are all in a wad over Sheengate

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