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Ed Webb

The Wall Street Journal's Trump problem | Media | The Guardian - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...-street-journals-trump-problem

journalism newspaper US USA politics Murdoch Trump

shared by Ed Webb on 11 Sep 17 - No Cached
  • “The Journal has done a lot of good work in covering the Trump administration, but not nearly as much as it should have,” another recent departee said. “I lay almost all of that at Gerry’s doorstep. Political editors and reporters find themselves either directly stymied by Gerry’s interference or shave the edges off their stories in advance to try to please him (and, by extension, Murdoch).”
  • “This is the most access he has had to a sitting president ever – that is something he’s tried to do and has done in other countries particularly with British prime ministers,” Ellison said. “He’s choosing his own personal access over having any journalistic clout.” Murdoch bought the newspaper in 2007, but initially it was thought to be one of the few outlets in his portfolio impervious to his political influence. In the Trump era, some staff fear that seems to be changing fast.
  • Throughout the campaign, Ivanka was a trustee of the $300m fortune allocated to Murdoch’s daughters with Deng, stepping down only after the financial connection became public.
  • ...12 more annotations...
  • By adhering to the conservative worldview – newly supercharged by Trump – that all media skews liberal, Baker just may have helped the Journal straddle the divide between readers who want their information from a trustworthy outlet and those typically skeptical of journalism as an institution.
  • The leaks of Baker’s emails were seen as evidence of rebellion from Journal staffers who felt unduly pressured to go soft on Trump.
  • a concern many Journal staffers have about the conservative exceptionalism of Baker, who still sometimes writes opinion columns – as he did after Brexit and the US election – in addition to his duties as the paper’s top editor. In particular, staffers past and present worry about editorial coverage seeping into the news side – what one ex-staffer described as “mixing church and state.”
  • The Journal is the rare publication of record that has managed to largely (though not entirely) escape that “fake news” slur, while – unlike, say, Trump-friendly outlets like Fox News, Breitbart and Sinclair Media Group – maintaining a strong commitment to journalistic standards and facts.
  • Baker, a British columnist who was promoted from the paper’s deputy role in 2012, came onto Trump’s radar early in the 2016 presidential campaign, when he moderated a Fox Business Network GOP primary debate in November 2015. Trump liked Baker’s handling of the debate, especially compared to that of Fox News’ Megyn Kelly, who had grilled Trump on his treatment of women at an earlier debate in August. During Baker’s debate, the future president largely evaded tough questioning and enjoyed more airtime than anyone else on stage. “He was unbelievably charming afterwards,” Baker said of Trump at the time. “He came up to me and said, ‘That was an extraordinarily elegant debate. You handled it incredibly well.’”
  • many staffers aren’t satisfied to be the best media voice in the Trump echo chamber, given the Journal’s history as one of the top papers in the country, with 16 newsroom Pulitzer prizes under pre-Murdoch editor Paul Steiger between 1991 and 2007 (only one more has been added in the Murdoch era).
  • In November, Poynter reported that 48 Journal employees had accepted buyouts – a trend seen across the media industry. In the months that followed, more staffers opted for the door. The departures include two top White House reporters, well-respected political and policy reporters, veteran foreign correspondents, and virtually the entire national security team, some of whom were poached by the Washington Post. Recently, the Journal has made some effort to regroup after the loss of these stars, hiring a number of reporters in its Washington bureau, but not at a rate high enough to replace the talent they have lost and mainly involving more junior reporters.
  • Some reporters the Guardian spoke with made clear they never felt their stories were compromised and dismissed concerns about Murdoch’s reach and Baker’s meddling, noting that any newsroom includes a healthy back-and-forth between editors and writers. Others said reporters, in the DC bureau especially, have had to fight to get their harder-hitting Trump stories published, if they get published at all. “Almost everyone in the newsroom has a story about their story or a story of a colleague’s getting killed,” said a reporter. “That happens in all newspapers, but the killings run in one direction.”
  • “There are growing indications that Mr Murdoch, a lifelong conservative, doesn’t just want to cover politics, he wants to play them as well,” David Carr, the late media critic, wrote in 2009, two years after Murdoch bought the paper. Carr noted that Baker, as early as 2010, when he was deputy managing editor, was already seen as pushing the WSJ into “adopting a more conservative tone, and editing and headlining articles to reflect a chronic skepticism of the [Obama] administration”. Murdoch has been known to use his publications to influence politics and business alike.
  • last year an ahead-of-the-curve piece on white supremacist Richard Spencer and the rise of the alt-right ran online – and was buzzworthy enough to be cited by Hillary Clinton. But it was spiked from the paper because Baker felt it unfair to make a connection between Trump and white nationalists, according to multiple sources in the newsroom at the time.
  • Recently, a reporter in the Washington bureau was chided by an editor for a tweet regarding Trump’s effects on the stock market, which was deemed to be too sharp on Trump, according to a colleague.
  • “Gerry’s saying ‘just report the facts’, but there’s a difference between journalism and stenography.”
Ed Webb

2,891 Murdoch Media Stories Trashing Islam In A Single Year, Study Reveals - New Matilda - 0 views

newmatilda.com/...slam-single-year-study-reveals

Australia Muslims Islam Murdoch press media propaganda hate Islamophobia

shared by Ed Webb on 16 Mar 19 - Cached
  • it’s not much of a secret that the Murdoch press constantly attacks Islam and Muslims
  • almost 3,000 negative stories relating to Islam in one year
  • almost eight stories a day, every day, for the whole year, somehow relating Muslims to terrorism or violence or whatever.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • 152 front pages relating to Islam or Muslims in a negative way
  • Possibly the most revealing part of the study relates to opinion writers at the Murdoch press. We all know their positions. Yet it is striking to see their obsession with Islam quantified. All of them write about Islam a lot. Miranda Devine, one of the least devoted Islam bashers, made 16 per cent of her 185 op eds about Islam. Janet Albrechtsen weighed in at 27 per cent, a bit less than Greg Sheridan at 29 per cent. Andrew Bolt and Rita Panahi came in at 38 per cent and 37 per cent – particularly impressive for Bolt, who produced 473 opinion pieces in the year (I suspect this counts blog items). Jennifer Oriel wrote 48 op eds, and over half were about Islam.
  • a kind of one-sided cultural war.
  • there is no serious mainstream contestation of this constant drumbeat of anti-Muslim and anti-Islam stories and op eds. These are hundreds of op eds demonising Islam, without any real response. There are apparently no Muslims working at (say) ABC or Fairfax to give a different take on these issues, or complain about what the Murdoch press is doing.
  • 70 per cent of Australians think they know “little to nothing” about Islam and Muslims. Which raises an obvious question about what public opinion might be like if the media in Australia did its job differently
Ed Webb

Murdoch taking stake in Alwaleed biz - Rapid TV News - 0 views

www.rapidtvnews.com/...ing-stake-in-alwaleed-biz.html

Arab TV Murdoch Al-Waleed

shared by Ed Webb on 03 Sep 09 - Cached
  • Rupert Murdoch is reported to be taking an investment position in Prince Alwaleed bin Talal’s music and films business, Rotana Media. The Wall Street Journal is saying that Murdoch is in talks to take a 20% stake in Rotana. The report seems well-founded, but it is not the first time that these two media giants have talked about mutual co-operation.
Ed Webb

Murdoch targets Abu Dhabi as international media hub - Blog Post - 1 views

palestinenote.com/...s-international-media-hub.aspx

UAE AbuDhabi media

shared by Ed Webb on 03 Mar 11 - No Cached
  • Abu Dhabi Media Summit is thought to have set the stage for a major transformation of that United Arab Emirate from a more reclusive presidency of the Gulf federation to an international media player. Although flashy neighboring Dubai has to date been the undisputed leader in the region with its Media City (http://www.dubaimediacity.com) hosting countless news and entertainment organizations, Abu Dhabi's low-key approach is slowly turning it into a news hub for the likes of CNN (www.cnn.com), which began broadcasting from studios there in recent months. An Arab media analyst credits UAE Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdallah bin Zayed Al Nahyan for the beefed up media presence. Sheikh Abdallah, the late ruler's son, was his country's information minister and as a young man interned at the headquarters of an international news agency, where he is thought to have acquired a taste for the industry. Google, represented by CEO Eric Schmidt, is seeing its fastest revenue and user growth in the Middle East/North Africa region, Gulf News quoted the company chief as telling summit participants, although he apparently declined to provide specific numbers. Schmidt also said there was a shortage of Arabic content, and that Arabic websites were slow to be developed. The media summit drew almost 500 global media leaders and delegates, including AOL CEO Tim Armstrong, incoming Ericsson CEO Hans Vestberg, Turkey's Dogan Media Group Vice Chairman Mehmet Ali Yalçindag, and Murdoch partner Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, to name a few. But critics dubbed it a summit for CEOs and geeks that excluded journalists from covering it first-hand.
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