Free Republic

Here's the second part of our look back at cable news ratings over the last decade. We've charted the total day numbers, and here are the numbers for primetime. Again, Fox News' rise is most noticeable, as is the bump the election gave CNN and MSNBC. The charts track each network's Nielsen primetime ratings average for each of the last 10 years, from Dec. 27, 1999 - Dec. 23, 2009. After the jump, the A25-54 demo.

... [U]nder Mr. Murdoch’s leadership, the [WSJ] is no longer anchored by those deep dives into the boardrooms of American business with quaint stippled portraits, opting instead for a much broader template of breaking general interest news articles with a particular interest in politics and big splashy photos. [...] But there are growing indications that Mr. Murdoch, a lifelong conservative, doesn’t just want to cover politics, he wants to play them as well. A little over a year ago, Robert Thomson, The Journal’s top editor, picked Gerard Baker, a columnist for The Times of London, as his deputy managing editor....

VIDEO: Rupert Murdoch, the Australian born media mogul, whose News Corp., is the parent company for successful media properties such as FOX News and The Wall Street Journal, says that Glenn Beck was right when he called President Obama a "racist" with a "deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture."

Here is video of Rupert Murdoch - chairman of News Corp, which owns Fox News - saying that Glenn Beck's comments about President Obama and racism were "right" if you actually "assess what he was talking about." Murdoch made the statement in Sky News interview. Glenn Beck said he believed Obama is a "racist" based on Obama's attack on Cambridge, Massachusetts police in July after they arrested Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., and based on his radical association with people like Jeremiah Wright. . . . (VIDEO)

President Chávez congratulates Obama for criticizing Fox News Western Hemisphere President Hugo Chávez praised his US counterpart Barack Obama for criticizing the hard-line editorial position of Fox News against Obama's government and made a comparison between the case of the US network and the "attack" by some private media against his socialist revolution. ... More at this link.

Let's face it folks, we have the liberal media on the ropes. Drive by newspapers are dying. liberal broadcasts are setting record lows. Liberal cable outlets are always claiming 2nd, 3rd, etc best to Fox. So what's the next step?

Exclusive: A Letter to Rupert Murdoch on the Obama Birth Certificate Question John D. Hemenway, Esq. Editor’s note: The following is a letter written by John D. Hemenway, Esq. that was sent to NewsCorp CEO Rupert Murdoch via certified mail. May 14, 2009 Dear Rupert, You will likely not have retained a clear memory of me from Worcester College in the early fifties. Much time has elapsed from when we both read “P.P.E.” under Asa Briggs and the others. I had looked forward to cementing our friendship when the death of your father caused you simply to “disappear” from those...

Poll upert Murdoch expects to start charging for access to News Corporation's newspaper websites within a year. 'The current days of the internet will soon be over,' he said, as the media strived to fix a 'malfunctioning' business model. Would you pay to read papers online?

Current days of free internet will soon be over, says media mogul

This was a few short months ago... MURDOCH WARNS: NATIONS WILL BE REDEFINED, FUTURES ALTERED Tue Feb 24 2009 08:36:39 ET Media baron Rupert Murdoch issued an urgent internal communication late Monday, warning his staff: "We are in the midst of a phase of history in which nations will be redefined and their futures fundamentally altered." MORE The dramatic call comes as markets continue their plunge and the future of media becomes increasingly muddled. "Many people will be under extreme pressure and many companies mortally wounded," Murdoch declared. "Our competitors will be sorely tempted to take the easy beat, to...

Thanks to Rupert Murdoch, Bill Ayers’ “comrade” and Weather Underground terrorist Mark Rudd is on a book tour, trying to cash in on his bloody record. Murdoch’s Harper Collins published Rudd’s book, Underground: My Life With SDS and the Weathermen. This week he is in the San Francisco/Oakland, California area. According to Rudd’s website, he has other speeches and lectures scheduled around the country. [snip] On Thursday [today, April 23, 2009!], we are holding a news conference in San Francisco to demand justice in the case of the bombing murder of Sgt. McDonnell. If you are in the San Francisco...

"Let's be very honest about what this is about. It's not about bashing democrats, it's not about taxes, they have no idea what the Boston Tea Party was about. They don't know their history at all. This is about hating a black man in the White House. This is racism straight up. That is nothing but a bunch of tea-bagging rednecks. And there is no way around that... They are now dependent upon immigrant bashing, and hating the black guy in the White House. Will people act on that? It's not new, but Fox doesn't mind fomenting it. Michelle Bachman...

News Corp. chairman Rupert Murdoch on Tuesday announced the creation of a new unit to share content and resources across his vast media empire. John Moody, executive vice president at the FOX News television channel, will head the operation, News Corp. said in a statement. "In this new role, Moody will collaborate with news chiefs across all News Corporation properties to improve news gathering efficiencies and identify areas of cost savings," the statement said. It said Moody "will also investigate the company's worldwide contracts and reliance on global news services." "The creation of a new unit designed to share valuable...

No one can accuse News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch of being an economic cheerleader, despite his net worth of $4 billion according to Forbes magazine. In an interview with Fox News Channel and Fox Business Network anchor Neil Cavuto on April 2, Murdoch was not hopeful the financial markets would recover their value within the next 12 months. "Look, I'm not a market expert," Murdoch said. "I would say this is a bear market rally still. We're not going back to the old levels in any hurry at all. That's two or three years away." ..more (w/video)..

Over the years, some of my wildest critics seem to have assumed I am Jewish. At the same time, some of my closest friends wish I were. So let me set the record straight: I live in New York. I have a wife who craves Chinese food. And people I trust tell me I practically invented the word "chutzpah." Ladies and gentleman, I am humbled by the honor you have given me - because this award speaks more to your good work than it does to mine. The American Jewish Committee started in response to the persecution of Jews in...

MSNBC’s mad dog host Keith Olbermann has wiped the foam from his mouth long enough to issue a “correction” in regard to recent comments he incorrectly attributed to News Corp chairman Rupert Murdoch. “Incidentally, a correction on Murdoch,” Olbermann said. “We have quoted several times the transcript of a News Corp conference call provided by the usually reliable financial website called SeakingAlpha.com, in which the News Corp boss was quoted as saying, ‘we have never been a company that tolerates facts.’ It turns out SeekingAlpha.com got it wrong. Murdoch, in fact, said ‘we have never been a company that tolerates...

Uncorrected transcript provided by Morningside Partners. C-SPAN uses its best efforts to provide accurate transcripts of its programs, but it can not be held liable for mistakes such as omitted words, punctuation, spelling, mistakes that change meaning, etc. ### C-SPAN/Q&A Host: Brian Lamb Guest: Brit Hume July 9, 2008 . . BRIAN LAMB, HOST: Brit Hume, if you had to go in front of a journalism class and define the term ”journalism” today, what would you say? BRIT HUME, FOX NEWS ANCHOR: That’s a big subject today. But I think journalism is in new forms, pretty much what it’s always...

How about Sean Hannity as editor of the New York Times op-ed page? Maybe O'Reilly and Cavuto in place of Dowd and Krugman as Times columnists? It might not be as far-fetched as it sounds. At least, not if Michael Wolff is right. The Vanity Fair media maven, appearing on CNBC this afternoon, not only said that Rupert Murdoch wants the Gray Lady, but predicted he would get her. [H/t Gat.] View video here [via CNBC]. MICHAEL WOLFF: I think that everybody is looking at [the NYT] and waiting for it to kind of go over a brink, to run...

How'd you like Sean Hannity as editor of the New York Times op-ed page? Maybe O'Reilly and Cavuto in place of Dowd and Krugman as Times columnists? It might not be as far-fetched as it sounds. At least, not if Michael Wolff is right. The Vanity Fair media maven, appearing on CNBC this afternoon, said that Rupert Murdoch not only wants the Gray Lady, but would get her. [H/t Gat.] View video here [via CNBC]. MICHAEL WOLFF: I think that everybody is looking at [the NYT] and waiting for it to kind of go over a brink, to run out...

ABC has Gotcha Gibson. NBC has Williams. CBS has Couric. Fox has............ Nothing. There is no national broadcast coming from Fox news. This needs to change.

Here is the article from Bloomberg.

NEWS Corporation chairman Rupert Murdoch has warned that Barack Obama could worsen the world financial crisis if he is elected US president next week and implements protectionist policies. In an interview with The Weekend Australian before delivering the first of six Boyer lectures on ABC radio tomorrow afternoon, Murdoch said the Democrats' policies would result in "a real setback for globalisation" if implemented. ...he did not know whether Senator Obama would implement all of the protectionist measures espoused by the party... With the US election five days away, Murdoch criticised Senator Obama's tax policies as "crazy", particularly his plan to...

On the financial rescue plan On Politics + Obama ~~~ He seems extremely savvy, as one would expect. His opinions of Obama are definitely music to our ears.

Keith Olbermann is again being an embarrassment to MSNBC. The cable channel and MySpace have teamed up to choose two "citizen journalist" correspondents to cover the upcoming national political conventions. The "journalists" will be featured both on MySpace and MSNBC's campaign coverage. A spy said, "Every anchor is onboard and willing to play along, except Keith. He refuses to participate because MySpace is owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp." - which also owns Fox News and The Post. A rep for Olbermann said, "There are no plans for the contest winners to be on any programs other than 'Morning Joe.'...

GLOBAL media group News Corp (parent company of the publisher of NEWS.com.au) has completed the sale of eight Fox network affiliated television stations for $US1.1 billion ($1.14 billion). The stations were sold to Oak Hill Capital Partners and include WJW in Cleveland, KDVR in Denver, KTVI in St Louis, WDAF in Kansas City, WITI in Milwaukee,KSTU in Salt Lake City, WBRC in Birmingham and WGHP in Greensboro. "News Corporation continues to be one of the country's strongest and most successful station groups,'' the company said.

Rupert Murdoch, chief executive of News Corporation and publisher of the Wall Street Journal, warned that financial pressures on US newspapers would see them "deteriorate tremendously". Speaking at the D: All Things Digital conference in California, he said newspapers will have to lower their profit margins from 30pc to 10pc, and publish stories people "want to read" rather than articles designed to win Pulitzer Prizes. Rupert Murdoch: 'huge opportunity'He said the Wall Street Journal, acquired by News Corp last year, would begin taking market share from its rival, the New York Times within months by increasing its coverage of general...

To riff off a famous Alice Roosevelt Longworth line: if you don't have anything nice to say about Rupert Murdoch, go sit next to David Shuster. The MSNBCer and former Fox Newser has no love lost for his old employer. Shuster's latest is that Hillary, she of long memory, will be holding a grudge against Murdoch, whose NewsCorp owns the New York Post and Fox News, for the unflattering coverage the Post gave Clinton in the closing days of the New Hampshire primary campaign. View video here.

Okay, so I have some pretty left wing nut friends. Check that, I have some REALLY far left moonbatters that hit me out of the ball park with some of their emails to me. I generally laugh, file it under "idiots" and save the Code Pinko" cr*p or whatever for the day the scales are removed from their eyes and they see the light then I'll extort money from them until the end of days like a true Republican oil,WOT monger that I am I was going to post this under political humor" but figured what the heck, let's get...

Sean Hannity, the conservative Republican commentator who takes on such controversial issues as Hillary Clinton's legal work in a communist law firm, could be on his way out of the Fox News Channel as a result of Rupert Murdoch's decision to turn the company over to his liberal son James. James Murdoch, 34, who buys into global warming hysteria, has in recent days been labeled the "News Corporation Heir" and "Son King" because of changes in the company that have dramatically increased his power. The Fox News Channel is one part of Murdoch's News Corporation. While James Murdoch is based...

Hillary Clinton's campaign team are furious that an unsubstantiated rumour of a lesbian affair with her exotic aide de camp Huma Abedin, which has been doing the rounds of 'underground' blogs and websites in recent weeks, appears to have gone mainstream after reports in foreign papers addressed the subject of dirty tricks on the US presidential campaign trail. The problem started with a report in the London Times on Thursday. 'Hillary Clinton has been accused of having an affair with Huma Abedin,' read the caption under a photograph of the two trouser-suited women (above left) striding across the tarmac to...

The curious relationship between Hillary Rodham Clinton, presidential candidate, and Rupert Murdoch, media baron, flashed briefly before the eyes of Iowans on Saturday night during a Clinton campaign event. A woman in the audience rose to ask Mrs. Clinton about Mr. Murdoch’s ownership of multiple media outlets (Fox News, the New York Post, soon the Wall Street Journal, and various other organs), and also whether Americans would “lose out democracy” if one person is in control of the media.' And Mrs. Clinton played both sides in her answer, responding sympathetically to the woman’s concern about media consolidation, but also making...

Francois de La Rochefoucauld had a point when he said, in his frequently quoted formulation, that hypocrisy is the tribute that vice pays to virtue. In the case of John Edwards, however, hypocrisy is simply a way of life. The infamous $400 haircut — actually, some of his hairstyling sessions ran as much as $1,200 all told — wasn’t a freak embarrassment for a candidate so self-righteously devoted to the poor. It was part of a pattern so pervasive that it has become the defining aspect of Edwards’s candidacy. When he lambasted hedge funds for incorporating offshore to avoid or...

Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards recently defended taking a lucrative book contract from a publisher controlled by Rupert Murdoch -- whose News Corp. empire Edwards has sharply criticized -- by insisting that “every dime” of his $500,000 advance went to charity. Left unmentioned by Edwards, however, was that Murdoch’s HarperCollins paid portions of a $300,000 expense budget for the book to Edwards’s daughter and to a senior political aide, Jonathan Prince. The sums paid to Cate Edwards and Prince, who are listed as co-authors on the little-noticed 2006 coffee table book, "Home: The Blueprints of Our Lives," have not been...

In reference to the liberal New York Times' publisher, the new owner of the Wall Street Journal, Rupert Murdoch, said in a recent interview reported by Editor and Publisher, "I won’t meddle any more than Arthur Sulzberger does…. I just think The Journal needs a little more urgency.� According to the report, there may be some changes at the venerable newspaper under its pending new leadership. "We have lots of decisions to make,� Murdoch said. "How much should we really spend developing the Saturday paper? What should we do digitally? Should we remain subscription-based on the Web, or should we...

Rupert Murdoch is the best boss I ever had. The first time I met the guy was right before he bought this paper [Boston Herald] in 1982, when I was brought into his suite at the Long Wharf Marriott with two other TV reporters covering the story of the sale. Murdoch’s aide introduced me by telling Rupert I had been a columnist for the dying Herald American, but I’d just made the jump to the CBS affiliate in Boston. Murdoch nodded. “You made the right move,” he told me. No BS about the roar of the presses or defending the...

The sale of the Wall Street Journal isn’t the end of the world.Help, the sky is falling! So say the pro-regulation media agitators at Free Press, which fired off what is sure to be the first of many hysteria-ridden press releases about Rupert Murdoch’s successful acquisition of the Wall Street Journal and its parent company, Dow Jones & Co. “This takeover is bad news for anyone who cares about quality journalism and a healthy democracy,” argued Robert W. McChesney, president of Free Press. “Giving any single company—let alone one controlled by Rupert Murdoch—this much media power is unconscionable.” The argument...

Many on the left regard Rupert Murdoch, architect of the rise of Fox News Channel, as the anti-Christ. More accurately, Murdoch deserves the title of the anti-Pinch. Murdoch's successful bid to take over Dow Jones & Company, publisher of Wall Street Journal, is a nightmare-come-true for Pinch Sulzberger, the hereditary occupant of the chairman of the board's and publisher's office at the New York Times. Poor Pinch. Murdoch is everything that he is not. Conservative, smart, and wildly successful in the media business. As a result, Pinch faces serious challenges as a family member, business leader and corporate strategist....

Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation was tonight set to seize control of Dow Jones and its flagship title, The Wall Street Journal, after securing sufficient votes from the controlling Bancroft family to win its three-month bid battle. News Corporation, the media group run by Rupert Murdoch and parent company of The Times, is understood to have secured close to 40 per cent of votes from the Bancrofts. That would give it a clear majority when coupled with institutional shareholder votes, who control about 29 per cent of the stock. Institutions are believed to be broadly in favour of the offer. A...

NEW YORK (Thomson Financial) - Rupert Murdoch's News Corp will launch a new business channel for US cable subscribers on October 15, in a direct challenge to market leader CNBC, operated by General Electric Co's NBC Universal. In a statement, News Corp said the Fox Business Network will be headed by Neil Cavuto, a Fox News senior vice president. The financial channel will be available to some 30 mln subscribers under contract after securing distribution agreements with major cable operators in top markets around the US. The new channel will form another element in Murdoch's media empire, which includes the...

PBS’s Moyers Disgracefully Rips Fox Owner Rupert Murdoch Posted by Noel Sheppard on June 30, 2007 - 12:06. I’m not sure what derangement syndrome Bill Moyers is currently suffering from, but on Friday’s “Bill Moyers Journal” broadcast on PBS, the outspoken host went into an invective-filled tirade about media tycoon Rupert Murdoch that frankly was one of the most disgraceful exhibitions of liberal bias so far this year.In his closing monologue, Moyers compared Murdoch to the Marquis de Sade, Imelda Marcos, and Satan himself.I kid you not.For those that can stomach it, what follows is a full transcript of this...

The union that represents Wall Street Journal employees is working urgently to undercut Rupert Murdoch's bid for the paper by trying to drum up interest from other potential buyers. So far, the union's most hopeful prospect is a Southern California billionaire who is a two-time loser in bidding for newspaper companies over the past two years. Steven Yount, president of the Independent Association of Publishers' Employees, said his union has written letters to supermarket magnate and billionaire Ronald W. Burkle, Berkshire Hathaway chief executive Warren E. Buffett and several other rich people, hoping to entice them to bid on the...

Rupert Murdoch joins climate crusade"Last week, the media mogul pledged not only to make his News Corp. empire carbon neutral, but to persuade the hundreds of millions of people who watch his TV channels and read his newspapers to join the cause. Messages about climate change will be woven throughout News Corp.'s entertainment content, he said, from movies to books to TV sitcoms, and the issue will have an increasing presence in the company's news coverage, be it in the New York Post or on Hannity & Colmes. Yes, as Murdoch told Grist in an exclusive interview on his climate...

Early coverage of Al Gore's new book, The Assault on Reason, has focused on the fact that the book is largely an assault on the Bush administration. But they have glossed over the most significant and alarming theme that Al Gore has taken up: his alleged defense of "reason" includes a justification for government controls over political speech. Judging from the excerpts of Gore's book published in TIME, his not-so-subtle theme is that reason is being "assaulted" by a free and unfettered debate in the media--and particularly by the fact that Gore has to contend with opposition from the right-leaning...

Media mogul Rupert Murdoch ordered his U.S. editors to kill any negative stories about President Clinton and his wife Hillary, according to claims in a lawsuit. Murdoch, whose News Corp. of America owns the Fox News Channel and the New York Post, is being sued by former Post gossip writer Jared Paul Stern, who contends he was fired illegally, reports the UK's Press Gazette. The Post dismissed Stern last year after he allegedly demanded $100,000 and a $10,000 monthly stipend from California businessman Ron Burkle to keep negative stories about him out of the paper. Charges about how Murdoch...

The most instructive part of the anti-Rupert Murdoch rant in today's Boston Globe is the byline: "Mitchell Zuckoff is a professor of journalism at Boston University." Yes, the author of this tirade against Fox News and its owner spends his daytime hours grooming the next generation of journalists. The essence of Zuckoff's A robber baron in Barron's house is an invidious comparison of Clarence, the good Barron, who made the Dow Jones company great, and Rupert, the "robber baron," who has made a $5 billion offer to acquire the parent corporation of the Wall Street Journal, among other operations. Thus...

Rupert Murdoch, founder of the Fox network and Fox News Channel and CEO of media giant News Corp has the ability to make grown journalists cry. A quick survey of liberal media blogger Jim Romenesko's Media News page shows an industry in a panic over Murdoch's $5 billion offer to purchase Wall Street Journal parent company Dow Jones.Why all the fear and loathing?To put it simply, Rupert Murdoch is one of the few powerful individuals on the right who realizes the importance of the mainstream. Over the years, the right has had success building up an alternative infrastructure of think...

The online social networking site MySpace and reality TV producer Mark Burnett are teaming to launch the search for an independent presidential candidate. The political reality show ''Independent'' comes with a $1 million cash prize and a catch: the winner can't keep the money. The prize can be used to finance a run for the White House or can be given to a political action committee or political cause. Contestants in the show, set to launch in early 2008, will meet the public and interact with supporters, protesters and others. An interactive ''town hall'' will give MySpace users and TV...

RUPERT Murdoch held little back today, on US President George W Bush's lack of media skills, the rise of militant Islam and the spread of nuclear weapons... He pinpointed the rise of militant Islam and nuclear proliferation, particularly in Iran, as the biggest threats. “The two (challenges) that none of us have any answer for that I know of is the rise of militant Islam and the proliferation of nuclear weapons,” Murdoch said. ... “If Iran gets away with it, there will be another half a dozen countries going hell for leather to get in the same race. “It can...

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Controversial publisher Judith Regan, whose plan to publish a book by O.J. Simpson called "If I Did It" ignited a firestorm of criticism, was fired for making anti-Semitic remarks in an argument with a colleague, a publishing source said on Monday. The source confirmed a report in The New York Times that said Regan's sudden departure on Friday came after she made the comments in an argument with a Jewish lawyer for HarperCollins, a division of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. empire and the publisher of the Regan Books imprint. The Times said shortly after the remarks...

Excerpt - Rupert Murdoch and John C. Malone, who have wrangled for two years over Mr. Malone’s challenge to Mr. Murdoch’s control of the News Corporation, have made peace. It was almost two years ago that Mr. Murdoch was stunned to learn that Mr. Malone, his friend and sometimes business partner, had bought a big voting stake in the News Corporation, a stake that could threaten Mr. Murdoch’s grip on the colossus he built over five decades. The two men privately struck a deal this week that would have Mr. Malone take one of Mr. Murdoch’s once-prized assets — the...