Is This Supposed to be a Death Blow?

The Times ran its second "Murdochracy" article today, and again told us stuff we already knew, with a few added details. The upshot seemed to be that Rupert, unlike a grownup news organization, was willing to do favors for the powers that be in return for access to markets. On China, Rupert's hands are dirty. We all knew this already. He has consistently trimmed his news and content to suit the Party, and has gotten some but not all that much in return. In this, he differs from the other media conglomerates only in the degree to which he has succeeded, which also corresponds to the degree to which we know about his dealings. This is not to say that the point of the Times piece is wrong, but that it does not make the larger point: that it is the nature of media conglomerates to pervert journalism. Instead, by framing Rupert as egregious, it makes the opposite point.

Rupert's operatives have sort of swatted back, and the Times piece does the honorable thing:

News Corporation officials in Beijing and Hong Kong declined to comment for this article. After The New York Times began a two-part series on Monday about how Mr. Murdoch operates his company, the News Corporation issued a statement:

“News Corp. has consistently cooperated with The New York Times in its coverage of the company. However, the agenda for this unprecedented series is so blatantly designed to further the Times’s commercial self interests — by undermining a direct competitor poised to become an even more formidable competitor — that it would be reckless of us to participate in their malicious assault. Ironically, The Times, by using its news pages to advance its own corporate business agenda, is doing the precise thing they accuse us of doing without any evidence.”

Of course News Corp is right, in one sense, and wrong in the other. The agenda of the Times is clear--it has invested resources in a rare and highly visible way on a story that will work against News Corp's takeover of Dow Jones. But it's not about the business interests of the NYT Corp. We know it's just News Corp they object to--that the Times doesn't have the same problem with and wouldn't run the same stories on GE or Google or any other player taking over Dow Jones. Rupert doesn't belong because he's a barbarian, not because combining Dow Jones with News Corp would make it too powerful a competitor. In fact, any other suitor would pose a bigger bidness challenge to NYT Corp. Rupert would move WSJ toward a different market niche--less about prestige public affairs journalism and more about simply money, I suspect--turn it more into the IBD.

No, it's ideology, not financial self-interest, that impels coverage like this. Hooray for ideology, when it works. Like a broken clock, the notion of professional autonomy in journalism within the media industries is going to produce the correct time once or twice a day (depending on the type of clock, of course). I was hoping that this series would be one of them. No; but it could have been worse.

What Do Rupert Murdoch and SCOTUS have in common?

Two news items today catch my attention. One is a long article--actually a bundle of pieces--in the NYT about NewsCorp and Murdoch's scheme to buy the WSJ. The other is the Supreme's latest decision cutting back on the McCain Feingold (or Mere Figleaf) restrictions on campaign finance. Both show the current dysfunction of media politics and the inability of the gov-o-mint to deal with it.

Writing for the nineteenth-century faction of SCOTUS, Chief Roberts says “the First Amendment requires us to err on the side of protecting political speech rather than suppressing it.” I agree, though I think the Court gives this a reading that is wildly and willfully ignorant of 21st century facts-on-the-ground. In fact I don't know that I really want to quarrel with the decision of the Supremes on this one, though any 5-4 ruling is going to smell bad. McCain Feingold was always a mere figleaf in any case. If the target was the influence of big money on elections, it missed by a wide margin. The only tangible benefit, in my opinion, was that it got SCOTUS to accept the notion of limits on campaign spending, and to accept it on something like "public sphere" grounds. That is, first-amendment rights include the right to a healthy public sphere, which democracy requires for its proper functioning. [more complicated argument alert--there is one, and I'm not going to make it now.] What's troubling about today's decision is that it retreats from the public sphere argument, and embraces a notion of free expression that takes no notice of the ecology of expression.

This is also the case in Murdoch-land. Again, I don't really have any quarrel with Rupert owning the WSJ. He might as well own it already, as far as I'm concerned. I have friends and colleagues who loathe its editorial page but insist that the WSJ is a model of journalistic integrity--the best news that money can buy, because naturally it is the news medium that the people with the most money DO buy. I'll grant this as a matter of personal taste. I don't trust its news, but if I did, I wouldn't worry about Rupert messing with it. He knows the franchise. What he'd do is undermine the veneer of sanctimony about it. As it is, if what interests you about the news is its class valence, then what you find in the WSJ is news for capitalists about capital. It's good to have news about capital, and the version that's designed for capitalists is likely to be all you're going to get. How will Rupert ruin it? By introducing his own political biases? Yes, but only to the extent that his political biases are congruent with the interests of capitalists as a whole. At least that's how I read his assurances to the Bancroft family, who control the voting stock of Dow Jones.

A few years ago, actually probably more like twenty years ago, there was a hiccup in the operation of the St. Petersburg Times. The Times is one of the few news organizations in the US that is actually independent. The late Nelson Poynter left it to the Poynter Institute in his will, and it is the board of directors of that Institute that runs the newspaper. Family-run newspapers, all in a panic about their independence, should follow his example. Take note, ye Blethens. (Actually, the Blethen family, who run the Seattle Times, seem to be kind of taken with the idea of leaving that newspaper to an Institute at some point of generational fatigue.) The hiccup came when Nelson Poynter's nieces, who held a share in the Institute, considered that they could get a lot of money if they could sell their shares. They asked for a buyout, and the Institute offered them what they thought was a fair price. They then proceeded to sell their share to a guy name of Bass for something more like the going rate. Here's the account from Forbes

In 1988, Texas billionaire Robert M. Bass stunned the paper by purchasing 40% of Times Publishing’s voting stock from Poynter's nieces. Then Bass launched an unsolicited takeover bid for the rest of the company and sued it in an effort to increase his share of its dividend payments. Times Publishing rejected Bass' offer and, after a protracted battle, bought back Bass' stake for $56 million.

At one point in this protracted battle, Bass turned up for the first time at a board meeting of the Poynter Institute. According to a friend who had a first-hand account of this meeting, Bass said nothing, but sat, surrounded by an aura of power and mystery, and shod in elaborate cowboy boots. The regular board members tried to do business as usual, though they were all very self conscious. Finally, someone worked up the nerve to address Bass: "May I ask what your intentions are?" He answered "No. But I will tell you that I care only about maximizing profit." And, in the final analysis, he was as good as his word.

When we get down to it, Rupert Murdoch cares primarily about maximizing profit. WSJ cares primarily about serving news of capital to capitalists. A marriage made in heaven. And for the rest of us, a festivus of clarity, because we need no longer pretend that the WSJ is anything but the tool it used to proudly claim to be.


But to the bigger point. Murdoch's inevitable bedding of the Bancrofts shows why the larger discourse of freedom of expression and democracy has to pay serious attention to the larger media environment. We shouldn't think of this intercourse as occurring among consenting adults and therefore being nobody else's business. He has TOO MUCH POWER. Any fool knows that. And so the NYT report, which worked very hard to come up with the same facts that everyone who cares already knew, framed the whole issue as one of journalistic independence. But Rupert doesn't express his power that way. In the one money quote in the whole long report, an insider puts it very clearly:

A former HarperCollins executive, granted anonymity to speak candidly about the company, said Mr. Murdoch was less hands-on than people assumed. “It’s not done in a direct way where he issues instructions,” the executive said. “It’s a bunch of people running around trying to please him.”

Just what we need in the media--more people running around trying to please Rupert.

But shouldn't he be as free as any other citizen? Yes, but only AS free. He's far more free than you or me. Unless we've turned back the clock to the nineteenth century.

Is it Possible for Congress to End a War?

By this I don't mean to ask whether it's constitutionally possible--of course it is. Congress can vote to undeclare a war and to unfund a war, and although SCOTUS may uphold the Pres-o-dent's commander-in-chiefdom to do whatever, I for one would consider them nutso. They DO do nutso things, but again this isn't the question I'm asking.

THIS is the question I'm asking. Is it politically possible for Congress to end a war?

When I was in Europe for half of 2006, people repeatedly asked me how the Pres-o-dent got himself re-elected. They could see that he'd stolen the first election--no one I met doubted this--but then after 9/11, massive deficits, Enron, Iraq, and all the rest, a kind of unprecedented display of incompetence and crookedness, how did he actually do better the second time around? After fumbling a few times, I settled on a foolproof answer, which was this: The US has never voted a president out during a war. This has the virtue of being true, but moreso of being Historical. When you can come up with a Historical explanation, people will rarely put up much of a fight. The Historical seems so authoritative.

Has Congress ever ended a war? Plenty of em were unpopular with the Congresses of their day. The War of 1812 spawned an actual secessionist movement, and ALL of the nineteenth century wars faced significant Congressional opposition, but none of em actually got ended by anything except the other guy surrendering. Since World War II, though, things have been different. Wars don't get declared anymore, and they seem to last forever. But still Congress hasn't ended one, or not that I know of.

Could this change? I don't think so. First, the sitting Pres-o-dent won't let it happen. He'll hang on to his war til someone pries it from his cold post-presidential hands. He'll veto any legislation that threatens to end it. And the Congress won't impeach him, and if it did the next one would be worse. Now it would be possible for the Congress to draw a line in the sand, and say "We won't appropriate any more money for this war." The Pres-o-dent couldn't make them either. A significant majority of the public wants them to do this. But they won't, anyway. Why not?

No Congress ever has. See the power of the Historical answer? But again, why not? Who would actually not get reelected because of a vote to end the war? Representatives have a 98% reelection rate. No one would not get reelected. So why not? Because at some point the leadership would blink. Or do I think that just because the leadership blinked the last time around?

No, there's something hegemonic at work here. Tough guys don't hang tough for peace. Tough guys hang tough for war. People like me can say over and over again that it's manly to be for peace, but Congress won't buy it. And War Pres-o-dents don't get unreelected. But they should.