thewayne: (Default)
Since the article is at WSJ and probably paywalled, I'm quoting the Slashdot summary:

"Rupert Murdoch is stepping down as chair of Fox and News Corp, after building a media empire over seven decades that revolutionized news and entertainment and made him one of the world's most influential and controversial tycoons. WSJ:
Murdoch, 92 years old, will exit his roles atop each company as of November, when they hold annual meetings, the companies said. He will be appointed chairman emeritus of each company. His eldest son, Lachlan Murdoch, who has served as co-chair of News Corp, will become sole chair of that company and will continue as Fox Corp executive chair and CEO. "For my entire professional life, I have been engaged daily with news and ideas, and that will not change. But the time is right for me to take on different roles," Rupert Murdoch wrote in a memo to staff.

His decision to step back solidifies Lachlan Murdoch as his successor. He called Lachlan a "passionate, principled leader" who can take the companies into the future. Murdoch is one of a handful of media barons, along with the likes of John Malone, Ted Turner and Sumner Redstone, who shaped the modern era of media. He has wielded influence in political and financial capitals, earning credit from his boosters and blame from his critics. Murdoch has remained active in his later years, pursuing big deals to reshape his companies. Murdoch is stepping back at an important moment for both wings of his media empire, as they confront fundamental challenges in the media landscape. Fox, a relatively small player in an entertainment industry now dominated by titans, is wrestling with the profound implications of cable cord-cutting and the growth of streaming. News Corp, owner of The Wall Street Journal, Times of London and other publications, is trying to find the right formula for digital growth amid a fierce battle for subscribers and online-ad dollars."


https://news.slashdot.org/story/23/09/21/1337231/rupert-murdoch-to-step-down-as-chair-of-fox-and-news-corp-after-seven-decade-career

Now, he may genuinely be stepping down. My feeling is that this is much like when Trump put his businesses "in escrow" with his sons when he became President and was forced to. Everyone knows he didn't and still called the shots. He may still be calling all the shots and just trying to insulate himself from the numerous other lawsuits still in motion against Fox, but I don't see how this will prevent him from being subpoenaed as he was absolutely the CEO when the "alleged" defamation took place.

I think he won't truly be gone until he's six feet under, preferably with a wooden stake in his heart and buried at a crossroad. He's been a pox on this world for pretty much all of those seventy years.
thewayne: (Default)
Oh, the irony!

Fox perpetuated and spread the lies to increase viewership, and now stockholders representing pension plans for New York City and the State of Oregon are suing Fox Corp., saying that their lies and forced settlement - not to mention the additional lawsuits that they're facing - is diminishing shareholder value!

Pass the popcorn, extra butter please!

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2023/sep/13/new-york-city-pension-funds-oregon-sue-fox-2020-election
thewayne: (Default)
So much fun stuff!

Normally TV station license renewals are pretty much pro forma, rubber stamp exercises. And about the only time they don't get renewed is if the license holder has been convicted of a crime.

Well, for WTXF in Philadelphia, things are different this time around. Their renewal is being VERY publicly challenged by an advocacy group called Media and Democracy Project (MAD) for Fox's disinformation campaign in the previous election cycle, and on-going, a lot based on what was discovered in the Dominion law suit against Fox.

Normally renewals are not public matter, but MAD filed with the FCC to make the renewal project public. Fox, of course, objected, but the FCC said that in this case the reasons expressed by MAD showed a pretty clear public interest and allowed them. MAD says that Fox has shown "...that Fox lacks the character required to maintain a license and hopes other Fox stations will lose their licenses, too. No other Fox stations are up for license renewal until 2028, according to a Bloomberg article.

"Fox's intentional news distortion, sanctioned at the highest levels of its corporate structure and fabricated by management and news hosts, amounts to misconduct that violates the FCC's policy on the character required of broadcast licensees, and was so egregious as to shock the conscience," the petition said, asking for "an evidentiary hearing into FOX's misdeeds."


This could be a very interesting chink in the wall of Fox's broadcast empire, especially if one renewal can be successfully challenged - and possibly lead to a revocation! - then the next renewal in '28 will definitely be challenged. Perhaps not by MAD, but I'm sure someone else will be happy to step up to bat.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/08/petition-to-deny-fox-tv-license-over-false-election-info-gains-steam-at-fcc/
thewayne: (Cyranose)
"We'd be Cuba if there were no Fox News."
—Ben Carson on the U.S.

Fascinating the things you learn these days.
thewayne: (Cyranose)
"Europe is finished...In Britain...there are actual cities, like Birmingham, that are totally Muslim, where non-Muslims just simply don't go in. And in parts of London there are actually Muslim religious police that actually beat and actually wound seriously anyone who doesn't dress according to religious Muslim attire."
-- Steven Emerson of the Investigative Project on Terrorism on Fox News

"I checked whether this was some kind of early April Fool spoof, and then I thought he was talking about Birmingham, Alabama, but then I realized he was just utterly and completely wrong."
-- Birmingham's Member of Parliament Gisela Stuart

"A complete idiot."
-- British Prime Minister David Cameron

#foxnews tweets:
"The city is now called Birming because Ham is not halal...The local death squads go by the name of Quran Quran...Birmingham has a chain of fast food restaurants called 'Burqa King'...Viewed from above, the M26 spells out 'Death to the West' in Arabic...Nottingham is 99% Jedi..."

It'll be interesting to see if The Daily Show does anything on this. But as this seems to be pretty much the gold standard for Fox News, maybe they won't.

But I do like the Quran Quran, I wonder if they're going to do an Islamic remake of Barbarella?
thewayne: (Cyranose)
"The United States of America is awesome. We are awesome. We've closed the book on [torture], and we've stopped doing it...This administration wants to have this discussion to show us how we're not awesome. They apologized for this country, they don't like this country. They want us to look bad."
—Fox News co-host Andrea Tantaros on Senate torture report

I wonder if the Senate hadn't made the disclosure and talked about it, and then have it happen again, that we'd still be awesome.

Personally, I think it'd be awesome to not torture and to actively discourage its use throughout the world. But I'm just a silly little voter, so what do I know.
thewayne: (Cyranose)
Fox News co-hosts on The Five after report on Maj. Mariam Mansouri, the UAE's first female fighter pilot, who was a team leader in airstrikes against ISIS targets in Syria:

Greg Gutfeld: "The problem is, after she bombed it she couldn't park it."

Eric Bolling: "Would that be considered boobs on the ground, or no?"

The Russians had women in fighters in World War II, the Arabs have it now. And us? Not quite so much. Yet we're the Shining Beacon on the Hill?
thewayne: (Cyranose)
"The right to celebrate Christmas is under attack."
—Fox Nation

What a bunch of maroons. Yes, I saw numerous news reports of government troops breaking down doors and dumping Christmas dinners on the floor and shooting up presents. The number of news reports of atheists storming Christmas tree lots and burning them to the ground were uncountable, and don't get me started on Jews napalming nativity scenes.

Keep Saturn in Saturnalia!
thewayne: (Cyranose)
"Sharia law is now changing everything."
—Fox News anchor Heather Nauert, on a St. Paul YMCA swimming class for five-to-fifteen-year-old Somali-American girls, during which men are not allowed in the pool area

Clearly Sharia Law infiltrated the USA hundreds of years ago, heck, it probably infiltrated England because of their boarding schools. I don't see any other reasonable explanation, except to maybe keeping the girls from being preyed upon by sleazy men, or perhaps to avoid language issues, or to save them embarrassment if they are beginning swimmers, or if there's a history of men being disruptive to the class.
thewayne: (Cyranose)
Jon Stewart talking about Fox News: "Its modus operandi is to foment dissent in the form of a relentless, irrational contrarianism to Barack Obama and all things Democratic to advance its ultimate objective of creating a deliberately misinformed body politic whose fear, anger, mistrust and discontent is the manna upon which it sustains its parasitic, succubus-like existence."
thewayne: (Cyranose)
"You're a Muslim, so why did you write a book about the founder of Christianity?"
-- Fox News' Lauren Green to religious scholar Reza Aslan

"Well, to be clear, I am a scholar of religions with four degrees, including one in the New Testament, and fluency in biblical Greek, who has been studying the origins of Christianity for two decades, who also just happens to be a Muslim. It's not that I'm just some Muslim writing about Jesus. I am an expert with a Ph.D. in the history of religions."
-- Aslan

"It still begs the question. Why would you be interested in the founder of Christianity?"
-- Green

Ignoring the fact that it's Fox News, I guess a lot of people don't know that Islam is built upon both the Old and New Testament and believe that Jesus was a prophet, culminating in Mohammed being the last prophet. Or at least the last until The Last, it gets a little weird with some guy living in a cave for 1400 years.
thewayne: (Cyranose)
"Cheap student loans keep people out of the labor market. This is a dangerous spiral."
—Tucker Carlson

Out of the 'cheap labor market' since they'd be without degrees and couldn't get anything except jobs that paid really poorly, perhaps? And what kind of an interest rate did Carlson get on his loans? I understand that interest rates should be competitive, but they're trying to gouge people preparing to enter the job market.

There is a need for highly educated people, also for highly trained tradespeople. Both need post-high school education.

This is ridiculous.
thewayne: (Cyranose)
"He's a traitor."
-- House Speaker John Boehner on Edward Snowden

"Hero of the Year."
-- Michael Moore

"Treason...Bring back the death penalty."
-- Fox News analyst Ralph Peters

"The man for which I have waited. Earmarks of a real hero."
-- Glenn Beck

"An act of treason."
-- Sen. Dianne Feinstein

"When you have a dictatorship or an authoritarian government, truth becomes treasonous...For somebody to tell the American people the truth is a heroic effort."
-- Ron Paul

I really, REALLY, hate agreeing with Glenn Beck about something! At least it's over something worthwhile.
thewayne: (Cyranose)
"They held her up as a victim. What was she the victim of? Rashes on the bottom of her feet?"
—Fox News host Bill Hemmer, mocking Desiline Victor, the 102-year-old woman who was applauded at the State of the Union for making two trips and waiting for three hours in order to vote

I watched the SOTU speech Tuesday. She wasn't portrayed as a victim IMO, she was shown as a driven person illustrating a broken system. It is inexcusable that the Republican-controlled state should game the election system by producing massive ballots then cutting early voting days in order to reduce non-Republican voter turnout. They disenfranchised 250,000 people, and it's guaranteed that some of that number were their own voters.

But they were probably poor people, so they don't matter.

Just keep it up, Republicans, and I'm sure you'll win next time. Meanwhile, people need to get anyone except them in to public office to try and undo the damage they have done.
thewayne: (Cyranose)
"No. I only know what I hear on Fox News and what I hear on radio... Muslims are killing Americans and trying to blow stuff up... Most Muslims are terrorists and don't believe in Jesus Christ."
—Indiana man convicted of setting fire to a mosque, when asked by the judge if he knew any Muslims or knew what Islam is

Once again proving that ignorance is bliss, or at least surety of action.
thewayne: (Cyranose)
"I think what this fellow is tapping into...is the fact that people don't want any meaning right now. It is just sort of like a drug and that seems to be what most people seem to want right now. Not reality, not feeling, not meaning. The meaning is that it means nothing."
—Fox News psychiatrist Keith Ablow on PSY's 'Gangnam Style'

First, Gangnam Style came out over four months before the election. Second, Gangnam is a district in Seoul that is considered trendy, so at a basic level Gangnam Style means being trendy. It's a song about a girlfriend, and PSY spent a month working with his choreographer coming up with a dance that had an animal style that PSY thought would meet the high expectations of a cool dance that his fans had for him.

The U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, '... hailed the song as a "force for world peace."' Psy said in interviews that Gangnam is a lot like Beverly Hills, and that the people from there who are cool and trendy don't announce that they're from Gangnam, the people who do say they are from there are posers and wannabees.

So when Keith stares in to the void, the void looks back and says, "WTF? Get a life, dude! It's a song and a dance, nothing more!"

Wow

May. 30th, 2012 08:13 am
thewayne: (Default)
"A bunch of lying scum."
—Fox News president Roger Ailes on New York Times reporters

I think he might have been looking in a mirror rather than at a copy of the NYT. But then again, apparently anyone who doesn't hew to the RNC party line is lying scum and liberal trash.
thewayne: (Default)
"Hard to follow sometimes."
— Fox News host Gretchen Carlson on Spongebob Squarepants

Now, I know that most Foxies are hired for their ability to toe the party line and not for their stunning intellect, and I could accept someone saying that they have problems following Proust or Kierkegaard, but Spongebob? I guess someone is not smarter than a 5th grader.
thewayne: (Cyranose)
"GWU officials tells Fox that police were notified about the incident about 2pm, which happens to be at the same time that President Obama was speaking...As of this writing, Fox has not been able to obtain reaction from the White House."
— FoxNews.com story on suicide of a George Washington University student

In a related story, Department of Transportation officials tell me that somewhere in the country a car had an accident and people were injured when the story of the GWU student's suicide was posted on FoxNews.com...As of this writing, I have not been able to obtain reaction from Rupert Murdoch.

Coincidence? I don't think so.

[/sarcasm]
thewayne: (Default)
"Global Warming? Did you catch our debate at 6:15 ET? There are smart people on both sides who cite evidence of their positions, yet come up with wildly different conclusions. So which is it -- is the Earth getting warmer or not? Please try to offer some evidence of your theory, rather than just your 'hunch.' K?"
— Fox & Friends blog

I think the big mistake that Al Gore made was referring to it as global warming rather than global climate change. I think seeing the arctic shrinking, the northwest passage reopen, the frequent calving of icebergs from the antarctic, that it's pretty much a fact. I've heard that it's only about 5% of climate scientists who don't believe in this, so I guess if you cherry-pick your audience carefully enough that you can appear to have a balanced discussion.

And on that note, I offer this web comic: http://www.calamitiesofnature.com/archive/?c=479

In the movie Man of the Hour, one of President Robin Williams' speech writers (Lewis Black) says: "TV scares me. It makes everything seem credible. ... If everything seems credible then nothing seems credible. You know, TV puts everybody in those boxes, side-by-side. On one side, there's this certifiable lunatic who says the Holocaust never happened. And next to him is this noted, honored historian who knows all about the Holocaust. And now, there they sit, side-by-side, they look like equals! Everything they say seems to be credible. And so, as it goes on, nothing seems credible anymore! We just stopped listening!

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