Is this the beginning of the end of Rupert Murdoch's media empire?

But, I asked you, hawkeye, how does the extreme right wing bias of Fox News suit furthering Murdoch's financial interests, which we both agree is what he is actually on about?

Or, to put it bluntly, how would replacing a Democrat government with a Republican government better suit his financial interests?
How would that make a difference to Murdoch?

Well it certainly didn't do Halliburton any harm.

He wants to sell ad time at top dollar so that he can make money, which requires max eyeballs, and he can get a lot of them by running programming that has a conservative bias because a lot of conservatives dont like the other choices. I am mystified as to what part of this confuses you...

So, you are saying something about "eyeballs" & selling advertising time to conservative/Republican interests?
But couldn't he do the same by targeting Democrat/liberal interests?
Does this mean, since he's chosen the right wing line on Fox News, that the conservative interests have considerably more cash to splash, in furthering their own political agenda, via the likes of Fox News, than liberal interests can cough up?

Or could it mean that a Republican government might well be more sympathetic to his plans to further his economic interests?

Does this seem reasonable & fair to you?

I am mystified as to why you are mystified by what I've been saying.
And I am not remotely confused.

Murdoch does not care who he sells to, he only wants to sell. He makes a lot more of his money in Hollywood which makes almost exclusively a liberal bias product than he does at Fox News, using your logic you should be bashing Murdoch for leaning left.

But we were talking about Fox News & its political bias towards the right of US politics & why.

You can talk about Hollywood & politics later, if you'd like. But that's a different issue to what we were talking about.

You have just changed the subject to evade the issue.
Don't accuse me of not using "logic" when you have been so evasive on the issue that we were actually discussing.

I'll have to leave it here for now, so if you post more I'll have to respond later.

I have already explained what you claim as the issue....Murdoch found an under served market and catered to it, making boatloads of money in the process. But he is a businessman not an ideologue, which seems to be where you make your wrong turn.

We were talking specifically about Murdoch & politics & Fox News.
You jumped from there to Hollywood, which we hadn't discussed before
I have agreed with you that he's primarily out to make money. I am not disputing that now & I didn't dispute it earlier on. I have never disputed that on this thread or on any other thread here.

My concern, if you failed to notice was his willingness to allow Fox News to use/abuse political influence on to further his financial interests.

Would you like to talk more about Murdoch & Hollywood & the entertainment industry now?
We haven't discussed that yet.

I disagree; Murdoch is an ideologue of the worst kind. One needs watch FOX News and opinion bloggers to understand this.

Beyond this, conservative posters on a2k parrot what they hear on FOX, and repeat them here - with all the lies, mistakes, and innuendos.

He's like Citizen Kane without the decency. I agree exactly with what you say about some posters. I once really upset someone when I dared to criticise 'O Reilly.

Of course. Profit is his bottom line and most likely the FEC filings to see to whom his corporations thought should be the beneficiaries of his largesse would bear this out.

Barbara Boxer (D-CA) received almost $60K in campaign donations in the 2010 election, so it makes me wonder if she's isn't on some type of oversight committee dealing with media regulation matters. I don't think he cared about the 'D' after her name...just what she could do to benefit him. A Republican in a similar situation would, of course, have been treated the same.

Thanks for explaining, Izzy.

Surprisingly - or not so - Murdoch's Sky-news website published this:
Source: Sky-news report Ministers' Links With Media Execs Revealed

If the news has to come out they may as well get the scoop. One of the things that lead to a falling out between NOTW and the Met was that NOTW wanted to let the public know about the email disclosure, but the Met wanted kept quiet for a bit. NOTW didn't like this so they started a drip drip of leaks.

From Robert Peston's blog on the BBC website:

One relatively small shareholder, Christian Brothers Investment Services Global Funds, which has just under 31,000 of the voting shares, is planning to put a resolution to News Corp's annual meeting, calling for the end of Mr Murdoch holding the two most important roles at News Corp, chairman and chief executive.

To state the obvious, it is unusual in a public company for an 80 year-old to continue to be the senior executive. But Mr Murdoch said yesterday he had no intention of standing down. He insisted he was the "best person to clean this up".

On a human level, given that he created the global empire that is News Corporation, anyone can see why he would not wish to bow out, at this moment of greatest humiliation for his business.

But many investors take precisely the contrary view - which is that the disaster at the News of the World proves that too much responsibility has been concentrated in a single individual's hands.

Rupert Murdoch believes that News Corp is - in essence - a family business. But if his son James Murdoch were appointed chief executive at this juncture, there would be a storm of protest from shareholders - because James Murdoch is himself under the News of the World's cloud, having been in charge of UK operations during the long years between the malpractices at the Sunday tabloid and the transmission to the police of evidence of alleged widespread criminality.

Like his father, James Murdoch's defence is that he was kept in the dark by colleagues of the extent of alleged phone hacking and bribing of police.

Ignorance may well be a defence in law. But few investors would see it as the ideal top line in an application to be head of one of the world's largest media groups.

All of which means that the non-executive directors of News Corporation - who include the former BA chief executive Rod Eddington, and the erstwhile Goldman Sachs banker John Thornton - face a formidably difficult job reconciling the interests of the Murdoch family and the interests of other News Corp shareholders.

This is the moment of maximum danger for the Murdoch dynasty in relation to whether it can keep control of the house that Rupert built.

Damned right . . . in a case like this, saying "I didn't know" is the equivalent of saying "I'm not competent."

But during the televised hearing, James Murdoch prevaricated when asked why he was paying such large sums out in compensation, and STILL paying for the hacker's legal fees. (The hacker Mulcaire has already been convicted of the crime. Murdoch is paying a convicted criminal)

It's hush money, and he's signing the cheques.

Sure, it's hilarious in a grim sort of way. Either he's incompetent, or he's a liar and a knowing criminal conspirator. I suspect the latter, but even giving him the benefit of the doubt, he has shown he is not competent to hold the job.

That's what money does; they believe they can get away with anything - even through the legal system.