Know your enemy--good advice which my partner Doug follows by perusing the WALL STREET JOURNAL somewhat regularly. Media denison Rupert Murdoch is trying to buy out this reliable capitalist organ and this has caused its own reporting staff to hit the streets in protest. I was intrigued to hear Bill Moyers refer to Jimmy Carter's caving in to Murdoch's well-document political blandishments, without specifically saying what Carter's sin was. Below is an account of the Murdoch-Carter connection from Joe Conason in the NYPost. Read the whole column here: http://www.observer.com/2007/beware-promises-murdoch
"The usual Murdoch promises of editorial independence are not believable because he has misused his executive authority throughout his career—and because he has repeatedly sworn that he would not do those things again, just before he does them again. This pattern has persisted for three decades, ever since he first landed in New York from Australia.
"One of the most amusing examples was his brief political romance with Jimmy Carter during the spring of 1980, when the struggling President needed Mr. Murdoch’s help in the New York primary against the insurgent liberal candidacy of Senator Edward Kennedy. What Mr. Murdoch needed was a low-interest, government-backed loan to buy Boeing jets for an Australian airline he then owned. Three days after they met at the White House, the New York Post published a rousing front-page editorial endorsement of Mr. Carter—and the following week, Mr. Murdoch’s airline received a $300 million corporate-welfare check from the U.S. Export-Import Bank.
"In the Congressional investigation that ensued, Mr. Murdoch promised never again to do anything that could be so easily “misconstrued.” Yet from London to New York to Washington to Beijing, his companies have consistently coddled friendly politicians with admiring coverage and generous book advances, which have been reciprocated with regulatory and tax favors. The beneficiaries have spanned the ideological spectrum, from the right-wing Margaret Thatcher to the Marxist-Leninist daughter of Deng Xiaoping. All they had in common was their capacity to advance the interests of News Corp.
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