Free Republic

A rebirth for Rupert Murdoch? By having his children baptised in the River Jordan, perhaps the head of News Corp is signalling his own conversion This week's Hello Magazine has a cover so Hello-ishly Hello-esque that one ought to wear sunglasses before picking it up. Royalty, in the shape of Queen Rania of Jordan, rubs shoulders with celebrity (Nicole Kidman), in a composition of flowing white robes and surrounded by decoratively angelic children. But wait, who is the outsize leprechaun in the corner? Surely not Rupert Murdoch, looking like he has wandered into a Broadway revival of Hair! The photographs...

Murdoch has decided to block the 20m online readers of The Times from accessing the paper free of charge on the internet. From June, anyone wanting to read The Times or The Sunday Times online will have to pay £1 a day or £2 a week for the privilege. Those who subscribe to the printed edition will be able to access the paper’s planned thetimes.co.uk and thesundaytimes.co.uk websites as part of their subscription. Analysts warned that The Times risks losing “almost all” of its online readers when it erects the so-called “pay walls”. Rebekah Brooks, a former editor of The...

It’s official now. This explains a lot of what’s happened recently. Rupert Murdoch is moving his NewsCorp headquarters to Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. You can kiss fair and balanced FoxNews good-bye. Breitbart has the story here: “News Corp chief Rupert Murdoch announced on Tuesday that the Gulf emirate of Abu Dhabi is to become the headquarters of his global media empire in the Middle East. Addressing some 400 delegates at the opening of the Abu Dhabi Media Summit, Murdoch said his corporation had started out as a small Australian firm to become a US-based international company that employs 64,000...

Rep Issa said: I am most concerned about ownership of companies including broadcast companies by countries that may have another agenda.

Unfortunately I am an MSNBC (particularly Rachel Maddow) fan so I haven’t devoted much time to watching Fox Cable for at least three years, therefore my comments are definitely my opinion as opposed to scientific fact. I have watched Rupert Murdoch turn the media upside down for the last thirty years. He has transformed what were recognized under previous ownerships as venerable trustworthy newspapers into nothing but sleazy tabloids and over the past twenty years the same approach has been applied to his television networks. What a guy. It may be harsh, but I won’t be reading his obituary when...

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...