OUTFOXED
This was an interesting documentary that someone on Facebook referred me to. It really does say a lot about Murdoch's control over the media in the US. It appears to me to be much stronger than the one he has over the UK or any where else, and it seems odd that no one in the US has stood up and stopped the clear lack of balance at FOX news.
Now, to us in the UK FOX news is a joke. You can get it through your Sky subscription should you desire it but most people in this country take the piss out of it because it is unbias republican propaganda. In the UK, while the Conservatives are right-wing and more right-wing than most people in the UK are, they are not like the republican party. Of course, in the States there isn't really a true left-wing. There's a far right (The Republicans) and the centuralists (The Democrats) whereas here in the UK you have the the centuralist-to-mid-right (The Conservatives), the centuralist-liberal-right (The LibDems) and the centuralist-to-mid-left (The Labour Party). You can get some serious radicals in all three of the parties but it is generally accepted that the Tories are on the political right, Labour are on the political left and the LibDems are a mixture of the two... although they like to think they are more left-wing than right-wing.
So our political ideologies are very different. In a way I think the US are where the UK were 100-150 years ago and they need to catch up really. Typically the longer a conservative ideology goes on, the more people desire a liberal or left-wing alternative. With the US power diminishing in favour of China, this trend will probably over the next 100 years.
But that's not my point. My point is that Murdoch owns FOX news, which is one of the four main broadcasters in the US. That's like Murdoch owning Channel 4 in the UK. One thing we should be grateful for in the UK is that it would be against the law for a channel such as FOX to broadcast most of its material on a main channel in the UK. Every channel that reports the news is required by law to remain unbias and in political situations all three of the main parties are required to receive the same amount of coverage. Apparently in the US that rule was removed in the 1980s. I don't know if it's been put back in the mean time but apparently in the US channels are not required to be unbias, which is why FOX gets away with what it does.
You learn something new everyday.
Obviously if you don't like FOX news you can always just not watch it. The thing that is distrubing however is the fact that they have broadcast lies and half-truths in the past, and people have believed them and stated them as fact. Given that people are a group can be unbelievably stupid, it is cause for concern that Murdoch can influence people though his power in the US media.
Here in the UK his power is somewhat more minimal. He is still bound by the broadcasting law which means he is forbidden from treating Sky news the same way. Moreover if you ask most people which news channel they watch, most will tell you they watch the BBC, some will say ITN and the odd person will say Channel 4 News. Sky has got to be everyone's least favourite channel, not least because you need cabel or satelite to see it. Even then hardly anyone watches it because they aren't the most reliable news channel. It is a good argument to stop Murdoch getting full control of BSkyB.
Ed Miliband is going to call for a vote in parliament, something which Cameron won't be able to deny him under public pressure. The nerd has finally found his feet it seems.
No, Murrdoch's grip on the UK media lives in the papers and one thing he clearly hates is how little influence the papers have now. Most people get their news from the BBC or Twitter. News is becoming more unbias because people can now have news beamed to their phones from their favourite news channel instead of reading it in the papers. Moreover the general public seems to know that certain papers are a joke. We all know "The Scum" (AKA The Sun) is a thick working-class-traitor's paper that people read with a sense of irony, rather than taking it seriously. We know "The Daily Wail" (AKA The Daily Mail) is traditionalist Tory-hugging trash created for the wives of rich men. The Daily "Rich Man's Sun" Telegraph is the untimate Tory paper and my middle section says it all. The "Waving the Red Banner" Mirror is the left-wing-man's Sun, only slightly more intelligent (**slightly**). The Independant is what is says on the tin... but it tittering towards the left, as too is The Gurdian (who broke the phone hacking scandal in the first place), who are unashamedly left-wing and proud.
As for the Express, well, they're more of a joke than any of them. Diana-huggers and so on.
People know what the British papers are like and they have lost their impact as a result. I'm sure plenty of my UK friends saw the front of the British Sun on election day last year. It was one of the most horrible propaganda pieces of BS every to grace the front of a British Tabloid. It tried to compare David "The Pig-Faced" Cameron to Obama! It was embarressing to look at! Once more it didn't work - Cameron didn't actually win the election. He had a minority. Murdoch failed.
Nonetheless we shouldn't let him have any more power than he already has. It's ethically wrong that so many media outlets reflect the views of one man.
