Rupert Murdoch
Harper's meeting with Murdoch -- the real story
Why would big-time global media tycoon Rupert Murdoch meet with Prime Minister Stephen Harper to discuss how miniscule Canadian media tycoon Pierre-Karl Péladeau could set up a Quebecor Media television knock-off of Murdoch's Fox News channel?
The answer is that he wouldn't -- and didn't. Even Kory Teneycke, who was Harper's chief spokesperson at the time and was at the lunch meeting in New York on March 30, 2009, claims the Quebecor venture was not discussed.
Harper's Fox News luncheon
My guess is it's pretty easy to arrange lunch with the Prime Minister. No doubt Stephen Harper often lunches with labour leaders and advocates for the homeless.
So it should be considered no big deal that, among those the PM has lunched with, is U.S. media billionaire Rupert Murdoch, who has probably done more than any single individual in recent years to push American politics sharply to the right.
It's interesting to imagine, however, why our Prime Minister would want to meet with Murdoch, whose Fox News TV channel has poisoned U.S. political debate and nurtured America's extremist right-wing Tea Party movement.
Tracking the financing of U.S. election ads
May Day, Murdoch and the murder of Milly Dowler. What do they have to do with the 2012 U.S. general election? This year's election will undoubtedly be the most expensive in U.S. history, with some projections topping $5 billion. Not only has the amount of spending increased, but its nature has as well, following the 2010 U.S.
2.jpg "David Climenhaga, author of the Alberta Diary blog, is a journalist, author, journalism teacher, poet and trade union communicator who has worked in senior writing and editing positions with the Toronto Globe and Mail and the Calgary Herald. His 1995 book, A Poke in the Public Eye, explores the relationships among Canadian journalists, public relations people and politicians. He left journalism after the strike at the Calgary Herald in 1999 and 2000 to work as Communications Director of the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees, which with more than 73,000 members is Alberta’s largest union and Canada’s 10th largest. Alberta Diary focuses on Alberta politics and social issues. Contact: albertadiary @ gmail.com")
There's no danger of Murdoch style press scandals in Canada! Really! Got that? Now go back to sleep
| August 1, 2011
Political action and real vs. virtual worlds
Discarnate is my fave among the many terms slung by Marshall McLuhan, who'd have turned 100 yesterday. It means, Philip Marchand wrote here, "almost literally bodiless." It originated long ago in occult circles: seances, messages from the dead. McLuhan himself passed on when the Internet was very young, but he sensed what was coming: virtual lives, lived mainly online. Today discarnate pretty much equals virtual.
The threat to democracy posed by Rupert Murdoch's media empire
"People say that Australia has given two people to the world," Julian Assange told me in London recently, "Rupert Murdoch and me." Assange, the founder of the whistle-blowing website Wikileaks, was humbly dismissing my introduction of him, to a crowd of 1,800 at East London's Troxy theater, in which I suggested he had published perhaps more than anyone in the world. He said Murdoch took that publishing prize.
Two days later, the Milly Dowler phone hacking story exploded, and Murdoch would close one of the largest newspapers in the world, his News of the World, within a week.
Canadian journalism and the mote in our own eye
Can we declare a moratorium on Canadian Schadenfreude over Rupert Murdoch and his British tabs? They deserve what they're getting and more. But it tends to conceal the mote in our own eye.