Can Murdoch Hold It Together?
The concept brings us back to Sloan and Thompson’s Epic 2014 where EPIC — the bastard child of the Google Grid — has consumed the globe’s media presence, allowing everyone to “tailor” their news consumption to suit their own needs. The authors describe it as follows:
At its best, edited for the savviest readers, EPIC is a new view of the world, deeper, broader and more nuanced than anything ever available before. But at its worst, and for too many, EPIC is merely a collection of trivia, much of it untrue, all of it narrow, shallow and sensationalized. But EPIC is what we wanted. It is what we chose.
Some have already drawn parallels between Murdoch’s vision and Fox News Channel, which he already owns. Pundits such as Allahpundit at Hot Air have frequently described Fox as a “much needed counterbalance” to the infectious liberalism running rampant through much of the rest of the old guard. But to be fully honest with ourselves, to accept that rationale is tantamount to saying that we really don’t mind media bias in journalism, providing it’s the flavor of bias we prefer with our morning coffee.
Newspapers may well be on their way out, and television news — beyond the increasingly prevalent “opinion journalism” — might not be far behind. And if they go, no matter what you may think of the biased nature of the product, the world we political news junkies inhabit will be a poorer place for it.
As much as we may not want to admit it, every Tom, Dick, and Harriet with a blog or a decent quality digital camera is not actually a journalist. And we should not be deceived by the success of young entrepreneurs such as the two who recently broke the ACORN story wide open. They produced a fine product and did the nation a service, but they went into it with an agenda. They were there to bust that organization out of the game.
The fact that the “victims” at ACORN fully deserved their fate (in the form of lost credibility and government funding) does not detract from the fact that the journalists in question were not playing by the rules of any even, journalistic playing field.
Will Murdoch succeed where all those around him seem to be failing? It’s certainly possible, and his track record would indicate that he can do it if anyone can. But pass or fail, the sphere of traditional journalism is fading away as we watch. It may be “what we chose” after all. But one of the oldest bits of wisdom on the planet deals with having a care in what we wish for.
His Pressbaronship has been wearin’ out the world’s patience lately with the continual yimmer-yammer about how he’s gonnta start chargin’ real money for his porn and agitprop.
What’s the hold-up? Why not just DO it, O Rupert?
Healthy days.
Thing is, news media historically has been biased. Look back to the newspapers of Ben Franklin’s day – they didn’t try to hide it at all.
I think the lie is to think it was ever unbiased. Humans are involved – of course, media was involved in the spin. Some will want to consume only that which confirms their biases… same as it ever was. Some will look for a variety of perspectives.
As it is, most people don’t even pay attention to this stuff. And never have. The “news” is just background noise to them, along with the fluff of People magazine, US Weekly, etc.
What’s really nice with the destruction of the gatekeepers is that there isn’t much in the way of “conventional wisdom” on anything, and it becomes harder to control the hoi polloi. We’re not all getting the same feed, and I think that’s a good thing.
“But to be fully honest with ourselves, to accept that rationale is tantamount to saying that we really don’t mind media bias in journalism, providing it’s the flavor of bias we prefer with our morning coffee.”
Fox News does not deserve to be treated in such a slanderous manner. The news organization goes out of its way to air differing points of view. No other media outlet whatsoever comes close in achieving this goal. Moreover, sometimes it seems to go to ridiculous lengths to do so. The regular guest appearance of the banal Marc Lamont Hill is a quintessential example of this phenomenon.
3. David Thomson:
“The news organization goes out of its way to air differing points of view.”
Yeah . . .
http://mediamatters.org/blog/200912080051
Wake. The. F. Up.
#1, aside from your immature comment I think all people really want is unbiased reporting, if that’s possible. Give us the unwashed facts and let us decide. It’s pretty hard to walk up the slant when it’s greased with bias, no wonder the media, TV included, is in deep financial trouble, your trust is gone.
Jazz Shaw must be the most oblivious fool to write on PJ, well right behind that LaRaza guy in CA. Jazzazz manages to slander the most open and balanced of both the web and FOX of the lame-media. Jazz you are absolutely not worthy of being involved in any way with the Freedom of Speech for us citizens of this great country. Jazz is the beta male version of Peggy Noonan only more feminine.
If anyone at all can, it will be Mr. Murdoch. For one thing, news has to be honest and not afraid to look into dark corners. The televsion news is very guilty of giving one point of view, lying by omission and doing absolutely no investigative reporting whatsoever. How all of this will finally shake out is anyone’s guess, at this point, but I will bet that somehow, taking possibly a new form, newspapers will survive.
And I agree about Fox News. They do try to give more than one side and Marc Lamont Hill a pathetic example.
Unfortunately, we’ve all been so dumbed-down and subjected to political slants (usually of the “correct” kind) by our public education system and universities that we don’t question what’s put in front of us. Add to that the tabloidization of the news (I’m sorry, but who but his family CARES if Tiger Woods has mistresses – all he does is whack a little white ball for a living) and the fact that journalism schools don’t teach reporting facts, but “changing the world”, and we have the media we have now.
#2 — You’re right, the news wasn’t biased; and this is more-or-less a resurgence of Yellow Journalism.
#5 – Seriously? You’re going to quote Soros-funded Media Matters as objective? Fox News definitely has a conservative bent, and Hannity gets on my nerves, but I think it’s far more fair to “the other side” than any other media outlet.
Oops — my bad — my response to #2 should read “You’re right, the news was biased”.
“The fact that the “victims” at ACORN fully deserved their fate (in the form of lost credibility and government funding) does not detract from the fact that the journalists in question were not playing by the rules of any even, journalistic playing field.”
You must be joking right? In many respects the ACORN sting is the very text book definition of what journalism use to be…. alas old school fair and true journalism is no more so maybe your count that the ACORN is the new aged definition of journalism where the writers support left or far left ideology…
Fox News cleans up right now because they have no one with whom they have to split the righty demographic. The have a great niche right now, but given the free market, how long can that last?
Another pointless article. Murdoch is doing just fine, I think his track record speaks for itself. What have you accomplished Mr. Shaw, other than making a fool of yourself on a regular basis?
“As it is, most people don’t even pay attention to this stuff. And never have. The “news” is just background noise to them, along with the fluff of People magazine, US Weekly, etc.”
This is a ‘rosy’ interpretation of the situation but it is almost 100% in error. Background noise is STILL an influence on actions, it’s just not recognized as such. Knowledge by osmosis.
Many of ‘us’ really “don’t even pay attention to this stuff” —-NOW. But many still do and the prevailing culture and attitudinal baseline has been set by decades of agit-prop ‘journalism’. This ‘stuff’ sets the tone and boundaries of ALL social ‘discussion’. And that is a very bad thing indeed.
Frankly at this point I could hardly care less about the pending demise of the ‘media’ as we know it. And that includes Murdoch’s efforts as well. He is making the same mistake as his fellows — he believes that Print can survive AND he has this delusional idea that his ‘product’ will be gratefully paid for by the ‘masses’.
Wrong on both counts I fear. ‘Media’ has made its ‘ideological’ bed over the past 40 years and NOW it must perforce lie in it. Death is now a certainty —- the only question remaining is the time frame.
….I believe it was Charles Krauthammer who made the observation that FOX had found itself a niche market — Half the country.
I doubt that Murdoch has problems. Fox News has half the budget of CNN. Yet Fox News has 5 times as many viewers.
The point that people like Jazz Shaw doesn’t seem to get is that if you are conservative, you don’t want to read or watch news that is based on a left wing perspective. That is why people are reading blogs and watching Fox News like never before. Fox News is the only TV station that is not left wing. Not just in the US but in the world. And why is that? I don’t know. But it’s a fact. If it wasn’t for Fox News I wouldn’t know that the Tea Party movement even existed. And 23% of the voters in the US now say that they will choose a generic candidate from the Tea Party movement over a generic Democratic or Republican candidate.
Why does “Now and then” watch Fox News? He literally has 1000′s of left leaning TV stations world wide to choose between.
“the world we political news junkies inhabit will be a poorer place for it.”
Give me a break! The truth is that political news junkies have never pigged out so much before. Even in the days of yellow journalism as the norm there was never so much able to be read by so many. The fact you can write this article at Pajama Media and not publish it in one of those “dinosaur” legacy papers is the lie to your argument. Did you notice comment number 4 where it ended up somewhere outside this small space?
If news has become opinion over facts (and I believe it has more than ever), then the blogs allow everyone to be a newsmaker and the rest to decide if it is news. We have become free from the constraints of gatekeepers who treat us all like children. We no longer can be spoon-fed the proper diet of their choosing while shutting out other voices. That is the quintessential definition of freedom of the press.
“15. Terry Hughes:
….I believe it was Charles Krauthammer who made the observation that FOX had found itself a niche market — Half the country.”
So Fox News is the mainstream media?
Does this writer think Rupert just tripped and fell head first into this empire ? His waste paper disposal is a larger undertaking than most business enterprises . He will be fine . Your helpful advice and concern are needed elsewhere .
Where would climategate be if not for citizen journalism? It would not exist.
Where would rathergate have been if not for citizen journalism? Again, it would not exist.
Our media, by far has become 95% lopsided to one end of the political discourse, wanting to be Pravda. The only thing protecting America from the fate of dictatorship is the internet, because the dinosaur media is in bed with the would be dictators.
Every last old media could die and America would be a better place for it. The reason is simple, right now Americans chose to get their news from biased in the extreme reporting that is easy to get. Many never venture out looking for truth, instead allowing the fake to be news. When the old media finally collapses, it will be for the good. Then Americans, longing for news will venture forth and search for the truth.
The critical point Murdoch is making, which this and other blogs ignore, is: Print and TV journalism pay to create content, if they die, most of the content used by the web sphere also dies. The intelligent parasite does not kill its host, but most do anyway, evolution is such a bitch? PJTV is exceptional in that it does some of its own paid reporting. If it can generate an income stream, it can grow and survive without MSM content. Unless the web starts to regularly charge for content (wash your mouth out with soap Charlie!) it is in a far more vulnerable position than its host, conventional media. I expect Murdoch to charge me, so he has an easier sales position than you lot. I will pay for his content just as I have always bought his newspapers. ( once daily, now only weekly)
Fox News has lots of liberals on. They feed them to O’Reilly who eats them alive. It’s fun to watch.
Murdoch has a great product – news for the 75% of the population that isn’t a brain damaged liberal – but just needs to fix his business model for the Internet era. I think Fox Business News could be a huge moneymaker once it’s firing on all cylinders.
I don’t watch a lot of cable news but it is a fact, quite unpalatable for the left, that Fox News seems to air a wider range of views than CNN or BBC. And thank God Fox givesconservative point of view given an airing.
What is really unedifying about Fox News is its relentless vulgarity and its cynical trivialization of even mildly complex issues. Nothing is seemingly allowed to go to air that might bore Joe Sixpack, and just to make sure that he doesn’t lapse into even a mildly contemplative state, he is bombarded with breathless graphics and idiotic musical grabs. From this criticism you can largely exclude the ever thoughtful and engaging Neil Cavuto. The worst offender is Bill O’Reilly who rapidly closes down any disscusion that might make people think and consider an issue, in case they switch channels, and turns every interview with someone he doesn’t agree with into a shouting match – at the same time uttering the smarmy and mendacious line “we’re lookin’ out for you”.
lefroy
Joe six pack is your average, and in the majority, hard working American, usually paying taxes that support some government teat sucker, like yourself? Academia can look down its condescending nose at Joe Six Pack but I hope one day lowly Joe will cut your arrogant balls off. Tell me lefroy, are you a school teacher?
If for no other reason, I am grateful to Rupert Murdoch for having purchased and breathed new life into that magnificent rag, The New York Post!
Monckton Says Secretive Copenhagen Treaty Creates Global Government Tax
“We’re looking at a grab for absolute power and absolute financial control worldwide by the UN and its associated bureaucracies and 700 new bureaucratic bodies,” said Monckton.
Speaking about how such draconian measures were being forced through despite the recent scandal surrounding how key IPCC-affiliated scientists conspired to “hide the decline in global warming, Monckton emphasized how the climate change establishment were still ludicrously attempting to downplay the significance of the climategate emails by merely repeating their already discredited propaganda about global warming.
“What has happened is that the mainstream media has done themselves terrible damage by signing up to this climate nonsense and then by servilely refusing to admit that climategate was happening, admit how serious it was and simply inform their readers of what was actually in these emails,” said Monckton, “Admissions that while they’re telling us, as the Met Office did just today, that today is the warmest decade since records began 150 years ago, privately what they’re saying in the climategate emails is ‘hey look we’ve got a temperature which has been falling and we can’t explain why and it’s a travesty that we can’t explain why’ – so they’re saying one thing to us publicly to maintain the scare that’s making them rich, and that’s what’s called fraud, it’s criminal fraud, and on the other hand they’re saying privately ‘oh dear oh dear we can’t account for the fact that there’s been no warming for the last 15 years’”.Monckton said that the Copenhagen treaty meant America was in “immediate peril” of losing its freedom to a “sinister dictatorship” being formed under the contrived pretext of global warming. infowars.com
NEW! NEW! NEW!
Check out the Copenhagen Document Leaks : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_W7vrgW8GTQ and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94KH-WMZuw0 – Tells how they will get rid of UN and use IMF to tax you!
Protest the False Climate Measurments being used in the Copenhagen Treaty: http://www.gopetition.com/online/32485.html
#24
GLASS.
Wow. No, I am not a teacher. I am self employed, employ others, and pay a mountain of tax. My point is that Joe Sixpack is just the kind of person who should be respected, not patronized, by the likes of Bill O’Reilly.
If you seriously think that Bill O’Reilly is “looking out” for Joe Sixpack, who I agree is the backbone of the nation, rather than looking out for Bill O’Reilly, then . .
As I said, thank God for Fox News. But it can be done intelligently – Cavuto, Beck, Smith.
Spot on, 27. lefroy!
Mister O’Reilly (along with the execrable Geraldildo Rivera and that other sewer sifter, the shrilly-screaming scar-faced Scientologist/socialist) is but evidence of Mr Murdoch’s commercial genius. The bait with which Fox attracts Mister O’Reilly’s core, TV-Watcher, crowd. The mob, that is, that followed the three of them to Fox from the yellow-press Inside Edition and whatever other Jerry Springer out-takes the other two were ever on.
Meanwhile, poor old Mister O’Reilly is too damned dumb to know how dumb he is and too damned narcissistic to allow a “conversation” with him to go a millisecond past the point at which it passes beyond his comprehension. He is at his core and in what passes for his mindset, an anti-Capitalist blue-collar unionist who, although he plays one, badly, on TV — wouldn’t know a conservative if one bit him on the arse.
Brian Richard Allen
Lost Angels – Califobambicated 90028
And the Very Far Abroad
I suppose Fox News must be the new Main Stream Media, since they now have higher ratings than all the liberal networks combined, and have for a few years now. I wonder how long it will be before News Corp makes a bid to buy Pajamas Media.
We watch FOX…will continue to watch FOX.
Beck’s our favorite, he should be in a better time slot.
We need to hear more about the Copenhagen mess!!! Half the public doesn’t know there is anything amiss.
…. 28,.source of your statement? fact or just your opinion?
I totally understand the problem liberals have with FOX. I think we all do.
26, thanks I sincerely doubt even half the public knows what is going on, and we all should be better informed. We walk around in a fantsy world, and the poop is about to hit the preverbial fan.