Rodney E. Lever — News Corp apocalypse

Scotland Yard has launched a new investigation into News Corporation, which may have disastrous ramifications for Rupert Murdoch and his employees.

Murdoch in trouble? Looks like he may have crossed the line.

British Labor politician Tom Watson, the first MP to speak out against Murdoch, is reported as saying he is not at all surprised that Murdoch is in deeper trouble than ever.

“He is solely responsible for the corporate culture that allowed this scandal to damage his global empire,” Watson said.
“I hope other jurisdictions like Russia will also begin to investigate all the activities of News Corporation around the world. The threat that thousands of people may lose their jobs is ridiculous. The company needs to clean up its act. It will survive without him. The people who work for it understand their social responsibility.”

Independent Australia
News Corp apocalypse
Rodney E. Lever
(h/t Blake Overall via email)

The Assange Affair — Fabius Maximus shows how to do journalism

Just the facts, ma'am.

Summary: The Affair Assange provides a mirror in which we can see ourselves and our institutions. It’s not a pretty picture.

Fabius Maximus.com
The Affair Assange rips off the veil concealing the face of modern journalism
Fabius Maximus

David Sirota — Batman hates the 99 Percent

"The Dark Knight Rises" and the new "Call of Duty" game both demonize Occupy. Has pop culture turned on populism?

Read it at Salon (short)
Batman hates the 99 Percent
by David Sirota

Janet Tavakoli — Financial Journalism: "Sometimes Being Responsible Means Pissing People Off"

Unfortunately, the intimidation was a success. The BBA and Barclays chose their word carefully, because accusing journalists of "scaremongering" suggests they are irresponsible sensationalist hacks. In essence, through lies and intimidation, they threatened to ruin careers 

The Financial Times backed off. As a result, the best coverage of the ongoing scandal came from a controversial blog with mostly anonymous writers called ZeroHedge. It pounded on the story harder than mainstream financial media. Not only are other banks implicated in the scandal, the Bank of England, a bank regulator, is also implicated.

Read it at The Huffington Post
Financial Journalism: "Sometimes Being Responsible Means Pissing People Off"

by Janet Tavakoli | President, Tavakoli Structured Finance

Paul Krugman calls "Soviet"

Today, however, the big threat to our discourse is right-wing political correctness, which — unlike the liberal version — has lots of power and money behind it. And the goal is very much the kind of thing Orwell tried to convey with his notion of Newspeak: to make it impossible to talk, and possibly even think, about ideas that challenge the established order....

Actually, this reminds me of an essay I read a long time ago about Soviet science fiction. The author — if anyone remembers where this came from — noted that most science fiction is about one of two thoughts: “if only”, or “if this goes on”. Both were subversive, from the Soviet point of view: the first implied that things could be better, the second that there was something wrong with the way things are. So stories had to be written about “if only this goes on”, extolling the wonders of being wonderful Soviets.

And now that’s happening in America.

Read it at The New York Times | The Conscience of a Liberal
The New Political Correctness
by Paul Krugman, Professor of Economics and International Affairs Woodrow Wilson School, Princeton University

Getting close to Godwin's Law.

Here's a relevant snippet from Joshua Holland's AlterNet interview of Roseanne Barr, who is now running for the presidential nomination of the Green Party in competition with Jill Stein.

JH: ... it strikes me that "Roseanne" was one of a very small number of shows on TV that had characters who were good people struggling to pay their bills. Maybe "Good Times" was another one. I’m hard pressed to think of any others. In a sense, you offered a class analysis that’s almost entirely absent from any TV entertainment. Why do you think that is?

RB: Well, because that’s what I wanted to do. 

JH: But why don’t we see more of that? I mean, so many families are struggling you would think that our culture would reflect that once in a while. 

*** 

JH: It’s a shame for our culture I think that we don’t see regular people dealing with the issues that regular people actually deal with.

RB: I don’t think that would be in the interest of the people who control what goes on here. It wouldn’t be in their interests. They kind of narrowed the field so they would get approval of all content that was shown over the people’s airwaves. That’s been coming since when the FCC was deregulated. That’s what happened.

JH: That’s the Telecommunications Act of 1996.

RB: Yes, that’s exactly what happened. They took control of all content, all context and all message. They think that the plight of the 99 percent of Americans isn’t worthy of being discussed in any media. 

JH: And we’re probably the only advanced country that doesn’t have really any sense of class. We’re supposed to pretend that class difference don’t exist.