Murdoch the Hypocrite

As reported by Charles Cooper on CNET.com, the wily old media mogul, Rupert Murdoch, in a recent lecture sponsored by the Australian Broadcast Corporation said that with newspapers cutting back, and predictions of even worse times ahead, "the print media may still have a bright future, if it can shake free of reporters and editors who he said have forfeited the trust and loyalty of their readers."

Murdoch, a scion of the established media opined:

My summary of the way some of the established media has responded to the Internet is this: It's not newspapers that might become obsolete. It's some of the editors, reporters, and proprietors who are forgetting a newspaper's most precious asset: the bond with its readers.

The complacency stems from having enjoyed a monopoly -- and now finding they have to compete for an audience they once took for granted. The condescension that many show their readers is an even bigger problem. It takes no special genius to point out that if you are contemptuous of your customers, you are going to have a hard time getting them to buy your product. Newspapers are no exception.

In other words, Murdoch is saying that editors aren't pandering to their "customers" enough; aren't giving them what they want like his newspapers, such as the smarmy NY Post are. The fact that he refers to his readers as customers reveals that he believes he's in the advertising delivery business, not the legitimate news business.

Murdoch is such a hypocrite. He's apparently blaming "complacent" and "contemptuous" newspaper reporters and editors for the decline of newspaper circulation and advertising revenue because of readers switching to the Internet. That's like blaming horses for the decline in the sale of buggy whips because of the invention of the automobile.

And what was Murdoch's response to the decline in newspaper circulation? It was to journalistically whore up a once-decent newspaper, the NY Post. He's blaming "complacent" and "contemptuous" editors for newspaper declines in circulation and revenue, yet his gossip rag, the NY Post, is losing over $40 million a year as a vanity publishing venture because respectable, big-spending advertisers won't touch its noxious content with a ten-foot pole. The Post's editors are not contemptuous of their readers, they give them what they want -- trash -- and it costs Murdoch millions.

Comments

[Village]

Newspapers got a monopoly in most markets, and then took a HARD RIGHT turn, off a cliff it turned out, when an increasingly blue country didn't buy the change.

We have a much better source now, rather sources on the the internet, which lets us get our news, all the news, with clearly marked biases.

I read Red State for laughs, and Daily Kos for content. I was a voracious newspaper buyer all my life, but that ended for me in 2002, and I won't be going back.

[LMPE]

To the people of the Commonwealth of Australia:

On behalf of my country, I would like to say that you all need to view us more positively. And not just because we elected Barack Obama. Whereas Rupert Murdoch could have stayed in Australia and made a complete mess of it, he instead moved hither and established Fixed News. Ergo, we saved you all a major embarrassment.

[CharlesWarner]

We love Australians. Murdoch abandoned his home country like he abandoned journalism ethics.