Saving the Country Murdoch-style

Media Matters: Saving the country, Murdoch-style

At the annual News Corp. shareholders meeting in
New York this
morning, CEO Rupert Murdoch was forced to answer a battery of questions from frustrated shareholders regarding the
company's controversial contributions of $1 million to both the Republican Governors Association and
the U.S. Chamber of
Commerce.

Asked to explain the reasoning
behind the contributions, Murdoch said they were made "in the interest of the country
and of all the shareholders ... that there be a fair amount of change in
Washington."

According to Murdoch, the donations,
while "unusual," had "nothing to do with the editorial policies" of News Corp.'s
media properties. He also brushed off his widely reported comment that News
Corp.'s donation to the RGA was a result of his friendship with former Fox News
employee and current GOP gubernatorial candidate John Kasich, calling it a
"throwaway line."

However, Sir Rod Eddington, chairman
of the audit committee, did tell a representative from the Nathan Cummings
Foundation -- which sent a letter to the board of directors earlier this week
calling for full disclosure of News Corp.'s political contributions -- that
the foundation's
proposal would be reviewed and that News Corp. would "act
expeditiously."

Whether or not a disclosure policy
is actually implemented, Murdoch made one thing clear: Shareholders will not select recipients of donations. If
shareholders disagreed with directors' decisions, Murdoch said, "you have the
right to vote us off the board."

Fox News: "simply unstoppable"

Murdoch may not agree with everything
that's said on Fox
News or know who exactly is advertising on
Beck these days, but there is one thing he does know: Fox News is "simply
unstoppable."

In his letter to shareholders this
year, Murdoch wrote: "The
Cable Network Programming segment was again our biggest growth driver. In 2010,
operating income increased 37% over the prior year to a record $2.3 billion. All
major networks showed impressive growth and, in the U.S.,
the FOX News Channel is simply unstoppable. FNC led the increase in affiliate
revenue growth and outperformed CNN, MSNBC and CNBC combined in total viewers,
for both prime time and total day categories."

In 2010, Fox News' revenues increased 23
percent from 2009.

Now, admittedly, 2009 was a rough
year for News Corp. Overall, the company's revenues decreased 8
percent, and according to
Murdoch, it was "among the most challenging in our Company's 56-year
history."

Yet there was a bright spot. In
2009, Fox News' revenues increased 26
percent from 2008.

In 2008, Fox News' revenues increased 21
percent from 2007.

In 2007, Fox News' revenues increased 19
percent from 2006.

In 2006, Fox News' revenues increased 13
percent from 2005.

In 2005, Fox News' revenues increased
20
percent from 2004.

You get the picture. Rupert Murdoch is cashing in big on hate and
lies.

Beck's big
Chamber bailout

This week, Fox News host Glenn Beck joined News Corp.
as a major backer of the Chamber of Commerce: Beck's call for donations to the Chamber on
the October 14 edition of his radio show earned him on-air praise from the
group's top brass and drove so much traffic to the Chamber's contribution
website that it crashed.

Apparently an adherent of the view
that "the enemy of my enemy is my friend," so-called populist warrior
Beck implored his audience to fork over their hard-earned cash to corporate
darling Chamber of Commerce, "just because
the Obama administration hates them."

(The White House's request that the
Chamber disclose its anonymous campaign donors evidently qualifies as "hating"
them.)

"I don't agree with everything the
Chamber does," Beck said, citing the Chamber's pro-immigration reform position,
but that hardly hampered his newfound solidarity.

Any reservations anti-TARP,
anti-stimulus Beck may have had about the pro-TARP,
pro-stimulus Chamber were tossed aside. Declaring the Chamber "our
parents, our grandparents -- they are us," Beck ponied up $10,000 and told his listeners, "I
would like to make this the biggest fundraising day in the Chamber's
history."

Bruce Josten, the Chamber's
executive vice president for government affairs, even went on Beck's
show that day to thank Beck personally for his
efforts. "Glenn, just
so you know, as a result of you," Josten said, "[our website
has had] the single
highest contribution we've ever received for an entire day, and that's just for
the first hour."

Indeed, a Chamber official later
told Politico:
"I don't have exact numbers, because money is continuing to pour in. It even
crashed our servers. The phones blew up today -- people were calling all day long. Bottom
line: Today was the single largest day of online fundraising that we have ever
had in the history of the Chamber."

Rupert Murdoch's
other speech

Murdoch gave another speech in
New York this
week. Two days before he spoke to News Corp. shareholders, he stood before the
Anti-Defamation League and
said: "Today it seems that the most virulent strains" of anti-Semitism "come
from the left."

There was no acknowledgment that his
own Fox News personalities have a history of
promoting anti-Semitic sources and mainstreaming people who have associations
with anti-Semitic groups.

Last week, we pointed out that "[o]ver the past few months,
several anti-Semitic authors and theories have popped up in Glenn Beck's TV and
radio monologues, and Beck's audience of millions is, unwittingly or not, being
exposed to some of the most hateful rhetoric of the last
century."

And according to the Anti-Defamation
League, Beck historian and frequent Glenn
Beck guest David Barton has spoken at events hosted
by the Christian
Identity movement, which "asserts that Jews are 'the synagogue of Satan';
that Blacks and other people of color are subhuman; and that northern European
whites and their American descendants are the 'chosen people' of scriptural
prophesy."

That's Murdoch's Fox News: simply unstoppable.