The Problem With Murdoch

TomPaine.com: By Bill Moyers

Of course he wasn’t the only media mogul to clamor for war. And he’s not the first to use journalism to promote his own interests. His worst offense with FOX News is not even its baldly partisan agenda. Far worse is the travesty he’s made of its journalism. FOX News huffs and puffs, pontificates and proclaims, but does little serious original reporting. His tabloids sell babes and breasts, gossip and celebrities. Now he’s about to bring under the same thumb one of the few national newsrooms remaining in the country.

But the problem isn’t just Rupert Murdoch. His pursuit of The Wall Street Journal is the latest in a cascading series of mergers, buy-outs and other financial legerdemain that are making a shipwreck of journalism. Public-minded newspapers are being dumped by their owners for wads of cash or crippled by cost-cutting while their broadcasting cousins race to the bottom. Murdoch is just the predator of the hour, the modern maestro of a financial marketplace ruled by money and moguls. Instead of checking the excesses of private and public power, these 21st-century barons of the First Amendment revel in them; the public be damned.