A criminal media enterprise.

[seafan]

Les Hinton, former News International executive chairman; currently, CEO of the Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones. He has worked with Rupert Murdoch for more than 50 years.



Adele M. Stan at Alternet describes the work ethic of the Rupert Murdoch media empire, as it applies on this side of the pond.



1. Targeting Murdoch's political enemies.

.....

Here in the U.S., the Wall Street Journal, under (Les) Hinton's watch, apparently sanctioned the involvement of an editorial board member in a political crusade to unseat Democrats in Wisconsin and elsewhere, via a program designed to indoctrinate employees of privately held businesses to vote against Democrats in the 2010 elections. As AlterNet reported in partnership with the Investigative Fund at the Nation Institute, the Wall Street Journal's Stephen Moore made numerous appearances on behalf of employers at workplaces in Wisconsin and elsewhere to persuade workers that Democratic policies would ultimately cost them their jobs.

(I am adding here that today in Wisconsin, voters are heading to the polls to recall rogue Republicans, who are doing everything in their power to restrict and dismantle people's rights.)


Also mentioned in this piece here is how Fox News host Bill O'Reilly targeted Amanda Terkel of Think Progress in 2009, after she pointed out O'Reilly's "blame the rape victim" comments as hypocritical. O'Reilly subsequently sent his producers out to stalk Ms. Terkel while she was on vacation.



2. Lying to public officials.

..... advice allegedly given by Fox News chief Roger Ailes to Judith Regan, then an editor at Murdoch's book-publishing company, HarperCollins.

At the time, Bernard Kerik, who had served as New York City police commissioner under former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, had been nominated to the post of Homeland Security secretary by President George W. Bush. In the vetting process, investigators planned to interview Judith Regan, who had had an affair with Kerik. Revelation of the affair would have spoiled the nomination for Kerik and cast Ailes' friend Giuliani, who was floating a presidential bid, in a bad light. In a lawsuit against her employer, Regan alleged that a News Corp executive told her to lie to investigators. An investigation by the New York Times concluded that Roger Ailes was that executive.

.....

3. Paying off troublesome employees to buy their silence.

.....

When Judith Regan was canned from HarperCollins for her relationship with Bernard Kerik, she, too, prepared to take the matter to court -- which would have exposed Fox News chief Roger Ailes as the guy who told her to lie to the feds. Court documents as prepared asserted that Regan had a recording of the phone call in which Ailes told her to fib about her affair with Kerik. Regan's threats of a lawsuit earned her a cool $10.75 million, according to the New York Times, in exchange for her silence. That took place in 2007, right around the time that Goodman (UK reporter) received his own gag money.

.....

4. Lack of full disclosure.

.....

it took the Wall Street Journal until today to report that its very own CEO played a role in the Murdoch scandal. In the AlterNet/Investigative Fund investigation of Wall Street Journal editorial board member Stephen Moore, we found that Moore received at least $180,000 in speaking fees from the Americans for Prosperity Foundation, which is chaired by David Koch, without making full disclosure when he quoted Americans for Prosperity officials in his columns, or when he was asked to discuss the group's political activities in his guise as a pundit. When we asked Wall Street Journal editorial page editor Paul Gigot for comment, he referred our query to the director of communications for Dow Jones, who reports to Les Hinton.

.....

Rupert Murdoch (via BusinessWeek)



The wholesale destruction of this metastatic, criminal media enterprise would be a fine development toward the restoration of justice, the rule of law and the revival of our democracy.

[damntexdem]

1. A more-criminal-than-usual media enterprise.

Surely not the only criminal one.

[Quantess]

2. time for a kick