By Dr. sipmacIt is inevitable the fact that everybody hates Rupert Murdoch; it’s in every person’s blood in this planet. What’s to hate about him, anyway? That he is a media mogul gazillionaire ironically self-described as a genocidal tyrant? That although News of the World was closed, he still owns a bunch of newspapers reeking of sleaze? That he’s continually lambasted in his own TV network sitcom “The Sipmsons” as an evil genius?
The list could go on, but the fact is that he’s in deep trouble by the News of the World hacking scandal. The day he spoke before the Parliament was considered by him “the most humble day of his life”. Additionally and in a lighter mood, he was attacked by a baker without borders sympathizer but the perpetrator promptly suffered the retaliation of Murdoch’s wife. Boy, she smacked hard that unsuspecting fool!
But I digress. Murdoch is nothing less than the boogeyman for the “respectable” media, that like to tell their customers how the free press is going to end if the dirty old man isn’t stopped on time. That’s what they say.
What they don’t say is that the very ones that demonize Murdoch (rubbing their hands with delight), obtain and print the news the same way Dear Leader does: The New York Times, the Washington Post and the Guardian (not to mention the BBC) use illegally obtained information to make a fortune by selling it. What, you don’t believe me? Doesn’t Wikileaks ring any bells for you? You seem to forget that the whole Wikileaks affair started with illegally obtained US diplomatic cables. Like it or not, the Pentagon Papers were illegally leaked, too. And so on.
The most hypocritical spin of all this should-be-not-such-a-big-scandal is that righteous indignation the media owners and reporters feel, forgetting that they use the same practices they are condemning now, but only when they see it fit. The BBC sat an entire month on the Climategate e-mails, knowing that a thorough investigation could have destroyed that house of cards that is Anthropogenic Global Warming, but they didn’t, because revealing the whole fiasco did not serve their agenda.Yes, the Grey Lady, the WaPo, the Guardian and Auntie Beeb have their own agenda and it leans left. Most Murdoch media lean right and that’s something they can not accept nor forgive. The aborted SKY buyout was an attempt to create a strong competition that up to this moment the BBC does not have. Most people in the UK know the Quango as a natural part of the environment and don't know any better.
Julian Assange was treated as a martyr because of the perceivedly “bogus” legal charges filed against him, all while his leaker (Bradley Manning) faces serious prison-time. It is very likely that Assange will not serve any time and it wouldn’t be a surprise if he ever wins the Peace Nobel Price. And Murdoch, that really offers diversity and different points of view in the before-him homogenous media world, even if he walks scot-free from this News of the World Fiasco, he will always be the villain.
Surprisingly, the Britons are missing the deceased newspaper. Remember to give people what they want!
