Free Republic

The New York Times has put several journalists on producing acres of newsprint detailing the impact of the story on British politics, on News Corp's stock price, on London police... No doubt the NYT is motivated by its ever-earnest search for “all the news that’s fit to print”. But there are other things going on here, too. Murdoch is more than just another proprietor: he’s a bitter enemy. He owns the Wall Street Journal, the NYT’s main upmarket rival. He owns the New York Post, its main downmarket rival. More to the point, Murdoch owns Fox News, the enormously profitable...

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has opened a probe into whether employees of News Corp. might have hacked or attempted to hack into the private calls and phone records of Sept. 11 victims and their families, according to people familiar with the matter. The investigation was opened Thursday morning, following a request a day earlier by Rep. Peter King (R., N.Y.) who heads the House Homeland Security Committee and whose Long Island district was home to many victims of the 2001 terrorist attacks. The investigation will try to determine whether employees of News Corp. illegally accessed the private calls, voice-mail...

Rupert Murdoch's News Corp could face probes by U.S. authorities for possibly violating bribery laws, compounding the media mogul's problems after a phone-hacking scandal in Britain. The Obama administration has significantly stepped up enforcement of anti-bribery laws in the last two years, winning big settlements from the likes of Daimler AG and BAE Systems Plc by focusing on bribes they paid to foreign officials to win lucrative contracts. Bribes for business have represented the bulk of these anti-bribery cases brought by the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission. It is unclear whether U.S. authorities would use scarce resources...

New allegations have emerged of payments to the police as the row around the News of the World escalates. The paper's owners have passed to the police e-mails which appear to show that payments were authorised by the then editor, Andy Coulson. It comes as a solicitor representing some of the relatives of people who died in the 7/7 bombings says families may have been victims of hacking. MP's will hold an emergency debate in the House of Commons later. BBC business editor Robert Preston says the e-mail disclosure was "a significant development." He said it had an important political...

SNIPPET: "There are some good reasons for allowing at least a few jihadi forums to operate." SNIPPET: "However, there are limits to our ability to exploit all the intelligence opportunities a forum may present. To put it another way, jihadi forums contribute to future terrorism in ways that are unpredictable and/or beyond our ability to control. This would be the view held by those other government agencies who prefer to seek out and destroy forums and to take down forum activists. For my part, I can live with keeping online those forums we have sufficient access to monitor and resources...

Last night on my radio program, I read an open letter to Fox News president Roger Ailes written by Sharon Rondeau of The Post & Email, taking him to task for not reporting on and investigating Barack Obama's background and Constitutional presidential eligibility.It reminded me of another letter written nearly two years ago by John Hemenway, Esq. to Rupert Murdoch, CEO of NewsCorp., parent company of Fox News...May 14, 2009Dear Rupert,

NEWS CORP ISSUES WEAK STATEMENT ON ROGER AILES: Judith Regan's New Story Is That Roger Ailes Did Not Tell Her To Lie Henry Blodget Feb. 27, 2011, 11:32 AM Now that there's a rumor going around that FOX boss Roger Ailes is going to be indicted for telling underling Judith Regan to lie to federal investigators, it makes sense to take a closer look at what News Corp. has said about the matter. When the New York Times broke the story last week that Judith Regan had accused Ailes of this--and had a recording of the telephone call to prove...

Joining other media companies in reaping the benefits of a rebounding advertising market, the News Corporation said Wednesday that it had more than doubled its net income in the quarter that ended Dec. 31. The News Corporation reported net income of $642 million, or 24 cents a share, compared with $254 million, or 10 cents a share, in the period a year earlier. The company registered a $275 million charge related to the layoffs and changes at MySpace, the beleaguered social networking site that it is trying to sell. As in previous quarters, cable networks like Fox News Channel and...

FORT LEWIS, Wa. — Mark Zuckerberg is a name I grew quite familiar with even through my year in Kandahar. Facebook was the novelty through which I interacted with most of the world back home. Though it was accessible only on our trips to the forward operating base — no connectivity on our stranded outpost in the Zhari District. Despite all that Facebook meant to me while at war, I was less than thrilled to find that Mr. Zuckerberg had been named Time Magazine’s Person of the Year. The distinguished title goes to the man or woman deemed to have...

Comedian Jon Stewart on Wednesday bashed Fox News for parent company News Corporation's $1 million donation to the Republican Governors Association. Unfortunately, Stewart failed to inform his viewers that Viacom, the parent company of Comedy Central, has so far given disproportionately to Democrats this year. Also missing in the "Daily Show" host's attack of FNC and Glenn Beck was that News Corp. prior to this contribution had historically given more to Democrats than Republicans. Such facts were unimportant Wednesday evening, for Stewart was on another in a long line of Fox News is the devil incarnate rants (video follows with...

News Corp., owner of the Fox network, Fox News and newspapers including the New York Post and The Wall Street Journal, gave $1 million in late June to the Republican Governors Association, making it one of the largest corporate donors to the GOP group this election season. The donation, disclosed in Internal Revenue Service filings, marks a shift for the media giant, which traditionally has given smaller sums to candidates and committees and spread them relatively evenly between the two parties. News Corp. spokesman Jack Horner said the contribution was intended to promote the company's core beliefs. "News Corporation has...

News Corp. Chief Executive Rupert Murdoch is embarking on an ambitious plan for a new national digital newspaper to be distributed exclusively as paid content for tablet computers such as Apple Inc.'s iPad and mobile phones. The initiative, which would directly compete with the New York Times, USA Today and other national publications, is the latest attempt by a major media organization to harness sexy new devices to reach readers who increasingly consume their news on the go. The development underscores how the iPad is transforming the reading habits of consumers much like the iPod changed how people listen to...

CHICAGO (MarketWatch) -- News Corp. is considering an acquisition of the Texas Rangers baseball franchise, according to a published report, in a move that would allow it to reap rewards from the team's resurgence in the standings. The company is "learning toward" entering a bid at the Rangers' bankruptcy auction Wednesday, the New York Post reported in its Monday editions, citing unnamed sources familiar with the situation. (The Post is also a News Corp. publication.) A News Corp. spokeswoman did not immediately respond to a MarketWatch request for comment. The media conglomerate's broadcast holdings include a number of regional Fox...

Winds howl over the deserted moonscape behind Rupert Murdoch's UK newspaper paywallsCory Doctorow at 7:45 AM Friday, Jul 16, 2010 Newser's Michael Wolff has a report from behind Rupert Murdoch's notorious UK paywalls which went up this month around The Times and Sunday Times's sites, which are apparently ghost-towns, unpeopled even by the print subscribers who get free access but can't be arsed to log in (and never follow links to Times stories, since chances are anyone in a position to make such a link doesn't have an account for the site). The wider implications of this emptiness are only...

Rupert Murdoch has gone on the offensive to justify his plan to put his newspaper’s websites behind a paywall. He told a National Press Club event at George Washington University: “We are going to stop people like Google or Microsoft or whoever from taking stories for nothing … there is a law of copyright and they recognise it.” In an interview with Martin Kalb for The Kalb Report, Murdoch set out what the search engines would be permitted to do: “We’ll be very happy if they just publish our headline or a sentence or two and that’s followed by a...

A handful of advertisers, such as Apple, have abandoned Fox altogether. Network executives say they believe they could charge higher rates if the host were more widely acceptable to advertisers.

It’s official now. This explains a lot of what’s happened recently. Rupert Murdoch is moving his NewsCorp headquarters to Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. You can kiss fair and balanced FoxNews good-bye. Breitbart has the story here: “News Corp chief Rupert Murdoch announced on Tuesday that the Gulf emirate of Abu Dhabi is to become the headquarters of his global media empire in the Middle East. Addressing some 400 delegates at the opening of the Abu Dhabi Media Summit, Murdoch said his corporation had started out as a small Australian firm to become a US-based international company that employs 64,000...

This is part eleventy-three of the media’s nonstop push for a boring, water-soaked, milquetoast, cucumbers and mayonnaise sandwich of a dull, uninspiring white man to be the GOP’s 2012 nominee against Dr. Utopia and the razzle dazzle the media will muster for his re-election. Today, oddly, it’s the Daily Telegraph in the UK doing the Mitt Romney cheerleading…with cheers designed to lead the GOP off a cliff that looks suspiciously like the face of Bob Dole that’s not carved on Mt. Rushmore…because Bob Dole was never elected president…because Bob Dole, as nice of a man as he is, and as...

"Abu Dhabi is future base for News Corp: Murdoch News Corp chief Rupert Murdoch announced on Tuesday that the Gulf emirate of Abu Dhabi is to become the headquarters of his global media empire in the Middle East. Addressing some 400 delegates at the opening of the Abu Dhabi Media Summit, Murdoch said his corporation had started out as a small Australian firm to become a US-based international company that employs 64,000 people. "I have every confidence that Arab companies can do the same and more. I also believe that Abu Dhabi can lead the way." Murdoch said News Corp...

ABU DHABI—News Corp.'s Fox International Channels said Monday it is basing the Middle East operations of its global online advertising network in Abu Dhabi and setting up an office here for its documentary-production arm. Fox International said it would also move some broadcasting operations related to its Mideast channels from Hong Kong and other locations to Abu Dhabi. The moves are the latest by a handful of large, international media outlets to establish footholds in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates. The city-state, in an effort to diversify away from oil, has set out to lure a...