Investor Revolt at News Corp: Will the Murdoch Dynasty be Dethroned?

by Nomad

After NewsCorp investors staged a revolt at the annual shareholders meeting last week, CEO and founder Rupert Murdoch barely managed to retain control over his company.
The source of the dissatisfaction revolves around the structure of the company, and the Murdoch family's ability to lead the company.

If reports are accurate, things apparently got hot and heavy at a recent News Corp shareholders meeting last week. According to an article in  The Sidney Morning Herald, Rupert Murdoch just barely survived a  revolt at the annual meeting of investors. At issue, was the Murdoch family control of the company, which sparked widespread displeasure among a large number of stockholders.

The company structure allows the Murdoch family to control around 40 per cent of the company's vote while actually owning 14 per cent of News Corp. In this way, they have been able to keep an iron grip on the company. That has,  as the article notes, lead "to accusations it is run more like a family fiefdom than a conventional public company." 

Furthermore, some investors charge that such a structure provides Murdoch family with significant control of News Corp while passing the risks onto the other investors. 
One investors at the meeting called it "“fundamentally undemocratic."

"This kind of governing structure may be exactly what we'd expect in Cuba or North Korea, but it is at odds with good governance practices here," Bill Dempsey, chief financial officer of the New York-based Nathan Cummings Foundation, told Mr Murdoch at Friday's meeting

Shareholders proposed that the company's controversial dual-class voting structure be reformed. They proposed scrapping the present structure and replacing it with a one share, one vote system. Although the motion was narrowly defeated, it was a sign that all is not well behind the ramparts of the News Corp fortress.

Notably, even one of the companies key investor, the Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, (worth an estimated $27 billion) also voted in favor of restructuring the company. It marked the first time in 17 years that Al-Waleed, News Corp's second largest single investor, has voted in opposition of Murdoch. 

Outback Outrage: How Rupert Murdoch's News Corp Helped Destroy Australian Budget

by Nomad

Through a special tax arrangement with the Australian government,  Rupert Murdoch's New Corporation- parent company of Fox News- became  the largest single factor in the shortfalls in the Australian budget.

The Australian Financial Review is reporting a story which will probably never appear on Fox News.

The single largest factor in the underlying deterioration of the federal budget announced by Treasurer Joe Hockey in December was a cash payout of almost $900 million to Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation.

Despite Fox News and News Corp newspaper's near-constant drumbeat against government spending, it came right down to it, News Corp was just another corporation expecting special treatment. Documents last week revealed the company claimed a massive tax deduction- one of the largest cash payments- from the Australian Tax Office. 

When the Australian budget went south, it was not due to wild spending on foolish projects or due to the military appropriations but, if these reports are true, one main factor was a record-breaking tax deduction that the Tax Office allowed the media giant. 

The Guardian fills us in with other particulars:

The payment by a “foreign tax authority” was revealed in accounts published by News Corporation in the US earlier this month and related to a $2bn claim by News Corp for historic losses on currency transactions by its Australian subsidiaries.

The payment was estimated to be worth $600m to News Corp but the final figure grew to $882m after interest charges.

Liar: UK Prime Minister Exposes Rupert Murdoch in Leveson Inquiry

by Nomad
Rupert Murdoch, head of the media empire News Corporation, has come under fire in the UK. His newspapers are accused of hacking into private phones in the name of journalism. Questions are now being asked about how much influence did Murdoch actually have in the political process and what was the effect.

The UK media ethics investigation and phone-hacking scandal which threatens to bring down Rupert Murdoch’s vast media empire, News International, has taken a dramatic turn.

A former prime minister has charged that Rupert Murdoch  lied under oath to the Parliamentary inquiry committee investigating allegations of excessive media influence in the political process. 

The Leveson Inquiry

Prime Minister David Cameron took the courageous step of creating a Parliamentary investigatory panel, led by Lord Justice Leveson. The Leveson Inquiry was charged with looking into the claims of illegal phone hacking at Murdoch-owned newspapers, with illicit pay-offs to the police for inside information. Additionally, the inquiry was to look into the wider of issue of British media ethics. (What they could scavenge anyway).

On the Environment: Romney and Hannity Share a Dirty Joke 2/2

by Nomad

In Part One, we examined Mitt Romney and Fox News' Sean Hannity sharing a few laughs at President Obama's expense. 

In the friendly chat, they mentioned Obama's remark that he stood for progress while Romney represented only "dirty air and dirty water." 

Hannity snidely asked Romney,"Do you want dirty air, Governor? I didn't hear you in the course of the campaign talk about dirty air and dirty water. Is that your plan?" 

What none of us heard in the campaign was Romney's relatively-recent alliance with the Koch brothers (and all the pollution that they create). That topic was something that Fox News conscientiously avoided. 

Surprisingly, there's still a little more mining to be done on this story. It requires us to shift direction.

Jake and Rupert

The private joke between Hannity and Romney about the environment works both directions. When it comes to the environment, if Mitt Romney's chummy relationship with major polluter (and all around toxic) Koch Brothers brings the candidate a giggle, then the owner of News Corporation must have a few reasons to cackle, chortle and guffaw as well.

As everybody knows, Fox News is a part of that Argus-eyed monster, News Corporation which is owned by Rupert Murdoch. Most people mistakenly think of Rupert Murdoch as a media mogul and this is not strictly true. Murdoch is also an oil man.

Rupert Murdoch, Ratings and The Yellow Journalism of Fox News 1/2

(Originally posted at PoliticalGates earlier this year.)

by Nomad

At the turn of the century, writers searching for the soul of America looked at the country through the new lenses and found much to criticize. While the nation had become a world power with a great navy and mounting wealth, the journalists sought to prove that much of the wealth was gained through cheap labor that kept the laboring class subservient, poor and unhealthy.

Millionaires... had developed a powerful economy enjoyed by the few. What rights should workers have? What education should be afforded child laborers? What quality and safety were afforded the working class in their homes, their food? Through the lens of these news ideologies, early twentieth century journalists re-examined the relationships among politicians, business tycoons, and laborers.

The Public Press, 1900-1945: The History of American Journalism, by Leonard Ray Teel

That quote refers to a time over a hundred years ago - fondly called the Progressive Era- and yet what has changed since that golden age of journalism? 

In some ways, America as a nation is stuck in the right-turn lane.  

A full century has passed and the battle between the wealthy- now super-wealthy- and the middle laboring class- now called the 99%- has re-commenced. Or has it ever really ended? 
One essential difference is, of course, the state of American journalism- the once disinterested crusader for the people’s interests. The press- along with the promise of reform it once represented- has been absorbed into the system and what's left when the capitalists got through with it is, well,  Fox News and CNN.

Little Foxes: News Corps' Silent Partner - Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal - Part 1

Royal Shadow

Following the World Trade Center attacks, when Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal offered Mayor Rudy Giuliani a check for $10 million as a donation towards disaster relief, the mayor initially accepted and then refused it.

According to reports, the reason for the mayor’s declining the donation was that the prince had suggested that the United States "must address some of the issues that led to such a criminal attack," and "re-examine its policies in the Middle East." 

With some indignation, Giuliani stated that "There is no moral equivalent for this [terrorist] act. There is no justification for it. The people who did it lost any right to ask for justification for it when they slaughtered 4,000 or 5,000 innocent people."

Perhaps it was predictable that Fox News should have supported the mayor's decision. On October 11, 2001 the Fox News' Special Report, Fox News contributor Mara Liasson said that Al-Waleed's statement was "completely false," "outrageous," and that "the mayor did the right thing and refused the money."