Octopus Overlords

Rupert Murdoch has stepped down as the chairman of Fox Corp (FOXA.O) and News Corp (NWSA.O), ending a more than seven-decade career during which he created a media empire spanning from Australia to the United States.

His son, Lachlan Murdoch, will become the sole chairman of News Corp and continue as the chair and CEO of Fox, the companies said on Thursday.

Blackhawk wrote: ↑Thu Sep 21, 2023 9:41 am Out with one, in with another. I have no idea if that is a good thing or not.

Fox Corp. CEO Lachlan Murdoch said Thursday that it is the job of Fox News to serve as the opposition to the Biden administration, clearly stating the political biases of a network that until 2017 billed itself as "fair and balanced."

Speaking at a Morgan Stanley investor conference, Murdoch said Fox News stood to benefit from Biden's presidency because the network would act as "the loyal opposition" to his administration.

Unagi wrote: ↑Thu Sep 21, 2023 9:44 am Yeah, my first thought was just a "Yeah, thanks for all the fucking work you've done." Murdoch did his damage, and the path now is clear and wide for whoever wants to follow in his footsteps.

Carpet_pissr wrote: ↑Thu Sep 21, 2023 10:20 am

Unagi wrote: ↑Thu Sep 21, 2023 9:44 am Yeah, my first thought was just a "Yeah, thanks for all the fucking work you've done." Murdoch did his damage, and the path now is clear and wide for whoever wants to follow in his footsteps.

Or not. As you said, the damage is already done, so doesn’t really matter much whether we get Connor or Roman Roy I think.

Blackhawk wrote: ↑Thu Sep 21, 2023 9:41 am Buh-bye.

Rupert Murdoch steps down as Chairman of Fux News

Rupert Murdoch has stepped down as the chairman of Fox Corp (FOXA.O) and News Corp (NWSA.O), ending a more than seven-decade career during which he created a media empire spanning from Australia to the United States.

His son, Lachlan Murdoch, will become the sole chairman of News Corp and continue as the chair and CEO of Fox, the companies said on Thursday.

Out with one, in with another. I have no idea if that is a good thing or not.

Kraken wrote: ↑Thu Sep 21, 2023 11:10 am I'd like to say that it can't be any worse, but of course it always can.

Kraken wrote: ↑Thu Sep 21, 2023 11:10 am I'd like to say that it can't be any worse, but of course it always can.

Late Friday night, the former president of the United States—and a leading candidate to be the next president—insinuated that America’s top general deserves to be put to death.

That extraordinary sentence would be unthinkable in any other rich democracy. But Donald Trump, on his social-media network, Truth Social, wrote that Mark Milley’s phone call to reassure China in the aftermath of the storming of the Capitol on January 6, 2021, was “an act so egregious that, in times gone by, the punishment would have been DEATH.” (The phone call was, in fact, explicitly authorized by Trump-administration officials.) Trump’s threats against Milley came after The Atlantic’s publication of a profile of Milley, by this magazine’s editor in chief Jeffrey Goldberg, who detailed the ways in which Milley attempted to protect the Constitution from Trump.

And yet, none of the nation’s front pages blared “Trump Suggests That Top General Deserves Execution” or “Former President Accuses General of Treason.” Instead, the post barely made the news. Most Americans who don’t follow Trump on social media probably don’t even know it happened.

Trump’s rhetoric is dangerous, not just because it is the exact sort that incites violence against public officials but also because it shows just how numb the country has grown toward threats more typical of broken, authoritarian regimes. The United States is not just careening toward a significant risk of political violence around the 2024 presidential election. It’s also mostly oblivious to where it’s headed.

Trump loves to hide behind the thin veneer of plausible deniability, but he knows exactly what he’s doing. If a mob boss were to say, “In times gone by, people like you would have had their legs broken,” nobody would mistake that for a historical observation. The suggestion is clear, and it comes from a man who has one of America’s loudest megaphones—one that is directed squarely at millions of extremists who are well armed, who insist that the government is illegitimate, and who believe that people like Milley are part of a “deep state” plot against the country.

Academics have a formal term for exactly this type of incitement: stochastic terrorism.

malchior wrote: ↑Mon Nov 06, 2023 11:05 am By the way, Washington Post fans - if you weren't aware. The Washington Post finally hired a new CEO and it's ... Will Lewis. He ran the WSJ and worked as an executive under Rupert Murdoch for ten years. WTF?

They laid off a 100 people this morning. I'll bet it'll be less aligned with cost and more aligned with ideology. The media has surrendered and nearly every paper is starting to be run by oligarch/authoritarian aligned leaders. The United States has essentially run through the process that Russia ran in the 90s where all the media functions and eventually all industry fell under control of an ever smaller group of individuals.

Edit: Just to be a little softer. The paper is losing money so layoffs aren't out of line but I'm more saying that it also is a convenient excuse to adjust the Post's mix more in the Fox direction over time.

El Guapo wrote: ↑Mon Nov 06, 2023 11:23 am

malchior wrote: ↑Mon Nov 06, 2023 11:05 am By the way, Washington Post fans - if you weren't aware. The Washington Post finally hired a new CEO and it's ... Will Lewis. He ran the WSJ and worked as an executive under Rupert Murdoch for ten years. WTF?

They laid off a 100 people this morning. I'll bet it'll be less aligned with cost and more aligned with ideology. The media has surrendered and nearly every paper is starting to be run by oligarch/authoritarian aligned leaders. The United States has essentially run through the process that Russia ran in the 90s where all the media functions and eventually all industry fell under control of an ever smaller group of individuals.

Edit: Just to be a little softer. The paper is losing money so layoffs aren't out of line but I'm more saying that it also is a convenient excuse to adjust the Post's mix more in the Fox direction over time.

He ran the overall WSJ? I'm only concerned about WSJ association to the extent that it's involvement in the whackadoodle op-ed section.

malchior wrote: ↑Mon Nov 06, 2023 12:43 pm Excellent catch here! Russia gets the active voice. Israel gets the passive voice.

malchior wrote: ↑Mon Nov 06, 2023 1:39 pm Was there a dispute? I didn't really see one there. I guess we can say the Ukrainians are more reliable and that earns them different voicing but...that's the difference in a nutshell.

El Guapo wrote: ↑Mon Nov 06, 2023 1:44 pm

malchior wrote: ↑Mon Nov 06, 2023 1:39 pm Was there a dispute? I didn't really see one there. I guess we can say the Ukrainians are more reliable and that earns them different voicing but...that's the difference in a nutshell.

I don't know - I'd have to see the non-linked articles. But that's an obvious explanation for the difference in the headlines, and the phrasing "Gazans say was airstrike" certainly implies that there are non-Gazans saying that it wasn't, and I feel like that needs to be answered before we know whether there's an issue here or not.

An explosion overnight in a densely populated part of the central Gaza Strip destroyed several buildings and appeared to have killed and wounded many people, photos and videos from the scene on Sunday showed.

The Gazan Health Ministry said an Israeli airstrike had hit Al Maghazi — a community built up from a refugee camp established decades ago — killing at least 47 people and wounding dozens of others. It warned that the toll was expected to rise, saying that many bodies remained buried under the rubble.

Casualties were taken to nearby Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, where a photographer for The New York Times saw the injured crowding the hallways and the lifeless being prepared for burial.

A spokesperson for the Israeli military said it was looking into reports of the strike.

malchior wrote: ↑Mon Nov 06, 2023 1:46 pm

El Guapo wrote: ↑Mon Nov 06, 2023 1:44 pm

malchior wrote: ↑Mon Nov 06, 2023 1:39 pm Was there a dispute? I didn't really see one there. I guess we can say the Ukrainians are more reliable and that earns them different voicing but...that's the difference in a nutshell.

I don't know - I'd have to see the non-linked articles. But that's an obvious explanation for the difference in the headlines, and the phrasing "Gazans say was airstrike" certainly implies that there are non-Gazans saying that it wasn't, and I feel like that needs to be answered before we know whether there's an issue here or not.

The article only says the Israelis were researching it. A non-answer. No dispute really. The only real difference is in the "sourcing" so to speak. Ukraine is firing ordnance too but their word is good enough to earn them the benefit of the active voice. IMO the NY Times had a lot of internal turmoil over the hospital incident and might be overcorrecting.

An explosion overnight in a densely populated part of the central Gaza Strip destroyed several buildings and appeared to have killed and wounded many people, photos and videos from the scene on Sunday showed.

The Gazan Health Ministry said an Israeli airstrike had hit Al Maghazi — a community built up from a refugee camp established decades ago — killing at least 47 people and wounding dozens of others. It warned that the toll was expected to rise, saying that many bodies remained buried under the rubble.

Casualties were taken to nearby Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, where a photographer for The New York Times saw the injured crowding the hallways and the lifeless being prepared for burial.

A spokesperson for the Israeli military said it was looking into reports of the strike.

So what can the press do differently? Here are a few suggestions.

Report more – much more – about what Trump would do, post-election. Ask voters directly whether they are comfortable with those plans, and report on that. Display these stories prominently, and then do it again soon.

Use direct language, not couched in scaredy-cat false equivalence, about the dangers of a second Trump presidency.

Pin down Republicans about whether they support Trump’s lies and autocratic plans, as ABC News’s George Stephanopoulos did in grilling the House majority leader Steve Scalise about whether the 2020 election was stolen. He pushed relentlessly, finally saying: “I just want an answer to the question, yes or no?” When Scalise kept sidestepping, Stephanopoulos soon cut off the interview.

Those ideas are just a start. Newsroom leaders should be getting their staffs together to brainstorm how to do it. Right now.

Former President Donald Trump pledged to eliminate political extremist groups that “lie, steal and cheat on elections,” calling them “vermin” during a speech Saturday and in a Truth Social post commemorating Veterans Day—echoing a term Nazis often used in antisemitic propaganda to dehumanize Jews, equating them to parasites who spread disease.

Blackhawk wrote: ↑Sun Nov 12, 2023 5:13 pm I've never associated the word 'vermin' with the Nazis or the Jews, despite using the term from time to time. Is this one common knowledge? Because it feels like a bit of a stretch.

Blackhawk wrote: ↑Sun Nov 12, 2023 6:09 pm I wasn't trying to justify calling a nation/race/culture by a derogatory term - just trying to figure out if the connection to Nazis/white supremacists was justified (this time.)

malchior wrote: ↑Mon Nov 13, 2023 12:41 pm Yeah Trump isn't focused on Jews. It's more so the general mass of anyone who stands against him. Immigrants. Brown people. The "woke". Etc. He is essentially going to go on a lawless rampage if elected and we need to 1) stop it from happening and 2) be prepared to survive and resist it if he does win.

El Guapo wrote: ↑Mon Nov 13, 2023 12:12 pm I haven't seen anything yet that convinces me that Trump was specifically talking about Jews with his "vermin" comment.

GreenGoo wrote: ↑Mon Nov 13, 2023 12:58 pm

El Guapo wrote: ↑Mon Nov 13, 2023 12:12 pm I haven't seen anything yet that convinces me that Trump was specifically talking about Jews with his "vermin" comment.

And that's fine, regarding vermin. Mostly because it doesn't matter as he has said plenty of other things straight out of Germany circa 1930's. I don't have the article in front of me, but I did see one that listed drumpf quotes followed by Hitler quotes, and some were literally identical, while others were slightly paraphrased.

What's happening in the US is terrifying.