Murdoch’s Media Lies Again… And Again. Let Me Count the Ways…

Were you “punk’d” by the Screaming Headline, “Democrats to End Union Standoff“ in the Wall Street Journal on Monday March 7th, 2011?  I was, and surely I knew better. I’ve been watching how Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal spins the news for the past two years.

No, I don’t use the New York Times or Huffington Post as a reality check of the Journal. I use the Financial Times from London, England. The Financial Times often covers the same stories as the Wall Street Journal, but it does so quite differently. Let’s look at three cases in point.

WSJ‘s deception through the wording of headlines

For example, today, Tuesday, March 8th, the Screaming Headline in the Wall Street journal is “West Shuns Libyan Crude: Oil Price Spike Continues as Energy Giants, Banks Stop Trading With Gadhafi“. The Financial Times carries the same story. The Financial Times‘ headline is “Members of OPEC join Saudis in oil boost: Cartel divided over need to raise output; Prices soar amid Libyan export shortfall“ [title online is “Opec members rush to raise oil output”]

Now, England has been right by our side when it comes to fighting against  extremists in the Middle East, and no one likes oil cartels, but at least Britain reports on what the Arab countries are doing about Libya. Yesterday, the Screaming Headline at the top of the Murdoch’s WSJ A1 page was “GOP Prods Obama on Libya“.

WSJ headlines leave one feeling that it is US against THEM, in particular, the GOP vs. THEM, whether the THEM is Dems in the US or Gadhafi in Libya. The part about other Arabs helping out the world by releasing more oil, and in the case of the Saudis, even supplying arms to the rebels in Libya, isn’t important in Murdoch media’s eyes.

To be fair, “Opec” countries do get discussed in depth at the end of today’s WSJ story, which on page A15 is has a different Screaming Headline , “Western Energy Giants Shun Libyan Oil,” but the Arabs are made to sound like they don’t really care about the world oil price situation at all, i.e, the typical stereotype of OPEC countries.

No wonder Americans think we the only real power in the world. No wonder we are so ignorant of what other countries feel and do. No wonder we are so self-centered, and we tend to believe we make everything happen in the world all by ourselves.

So what did happen on Monday in the Wisconsin battle between the Democrats and the Republicans? Absolutely nothing! The quotes from Democratic senators, which were only gotten to on page A4, were merely things they’ve been saying since the battle in WI began.

The fact that the Financial Times had not one peep about any story about Wisconsin on Monday should have been the tipoff. FT has covered the WI story a time or two while it has gone on for the past weeks. Surely I should’ve known something wasn’t quite right about the out-of-the-blue “Democrats to End Union Standoff” in the Wall Street Journal yesterday! But I didn’t. What was that someone once said about “telling the BIG LIE”? That a whopper is more believable than a little lie?

Murdoch’s WSJ‘s burying of the real news

The Wall Street Journal usually lies by burying things inside the details of its stories, stories that are full of the WSJ’s own fantasies about what it wishes were happening. Let me give you a couple of more examples of Rupert Murdoch’s newspaper’s techniques for creating its own news rather than reporting on the news.

On December 22, 2010, the Wall Street Journal’s front-page, A1, had an article saying South Gains in Census: Count Dents Political Clout of Snow Belt“. The same story by Stephanie Kitchgaessner in the Financial Times on page 6 on December 23, 2010 read, “Migration rhetoric strips Republicans of key Latino vote“. Quite a difference, no?

The lead in the Financial Times story is this: “Hispanic voters’ apparent disenchantment with Republicans is likely to become a growing problem for the party after US census results showed that population gains in mostly Republican ‘Sun Belt’ states were driven by Latino voters.” This most salient fact about this story, the one uncovered by FT, pops up only on page A4 of WSJ‘s front-page article. After several columns of discussion. The Wall Street Journal covers the Hispanic vote in only one sentence, “[Southern] States that gained seats [in Congress] got them largely because of their minority populations, especially Hispanics.”

In large type on page A4 across the top of this continuation of WSJ‘s front-page article about those census changes is a brand new Screaming Headline: “Republican-Leaning States Gain 11 House Seats in Census.” This fantasy is our reality, says WSJ, because of the new abilities of the Republican Party to redraw Congressional districts to disenfranchise Hispanic Democrats in elections. This supposed GOP triumph was reinforced a day later, on December 24, 2010, when WSJ ran a Screaming Headline on page A4 saying In Southern States, GOP Keeps Gaining” [seats in Congress from Democrats who switch parties].

In my mind, the disservice the WSJ does in failing to mention Hispanics in the Western states is being done to Republicans who are deceived into thinking that Western states: Texas, Arizona, Nevada and Utah will remain Republican. The Financial Times article, on the other hand, conveys the most important fact of the real change of the new census count. It discusses where and why Hispanic voters are disenchanted with Republicans.  Only the FT article offers readers an analysis of how the party’s own anti-immigration opposition to Mexicans in the United States is affecting the Republican Party.

Assassination via bold type

Here’s one more example (of the many comparisons in reporting you can find between these two newspapers.) On January 26, 2011 on page 1 of the Financial Times, the headline reads “Financial crisis probe panel splits as report blames Wall St. excess: Republicans to publish dissenting conclusions.“[online title is “Financial crisis report to blame Wall Street“] On page A7 of the same day, the Wall Street Journal published an article with the Screaming Headline, “Panel Blames All for Meltdown.” In bold type in that article are mentions of three entities: Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and American International Group (better known as AIG.)

The bold type in the article in the Wall Street Journal belies the headline, doesn’t it?.

Make no mistake, WSJ gets in a shot in at The Federal Reserve right at the start too. The Fed is accused of failing to stop toxic mortgages. Then the WSJ qualifies its attack on the Fed with this sentence, “But the report also has harsh words for both ‘captains of industry’ and Main Street lenders.” This “captains of industry” quote is about it regarding Wall Street in the WSJ article. The rest of the WSJ article is about Fannie, Freddie, and AIG.

The Financial Times, on the other hand, focuses on facts of who wrote the report about the financial crisis, and who will be writing the dissenting report. While WSJ focuses solely on on the mortgage industry, the FT mentions that “deregulation in the 1980s” was cited in the “majority’s report” as a a prime cause of the crisis. The FT adds too that “shadow banks” were also mentioned in the report. It mentions “predatory lending,” and “lax risk management” too. All of these causes of the crises are nowhere mentioned in the WSJ article!

In addition, as in the previous example, the truth gets buried in the WSJ’s version of reality. Here, the one-line quote from the report: ‘dramatic failures of corporate government and risk management at many systemically important financial institutions were a key cause of this this crisis.’ is sandwiched in between critiques of Fannie and Freddie and AIG, leading one to conclude these were main entities being blamed by the report.

Look closely, and you will understand that headline of this article, “Panel Blames All for Meltdown” is pure sarcasm on the part of Murdoch’s media. The Wall Street Journal obviously attributes the financial crisis solely to the mortgage crisis. In particular it blames Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and AIG’s insuring of mortgage-backed-securities derivatives. The Wall Street Journal‘s headline is mocking the committee’s report on the financial crisis while the text of the article substitutes WSJ‘s own opinions about the financial crisis in place of providing the details about the report itself. If you’re “in the know” you’ll understand and smile smugly. If not, you’ll simply be misinformed.

Freedom of The Press is being taken for a ride

I’m not against the Wall Street Journal for its opinions about issues, but I do object to its constant injection of its own opinions as facts, and its deceit in the wording of its headlines when it reports on straight news stories. “Democrats to End Union Standoff” was the last straw.

Canada recently shot down Mr. Murdoch’s plans to extend his Fox News TY channel across the border into our northern neighbor’s airwaves. To make Fox TV’s entry into Canada possible, Prime Minister Stephen Harper sought to repeal Canada’s Radio Act. This Act says that news station licensers cannot broadcast “any false or misleading news.”  Harper’s effort failed. Canada is continuing to ban Fox news from its televisions.

Who is Rupert Murdoch? He is the owner of one of the six biggest publishing empires in the world. The following quote is from my report, The State of the Publishing Industry in the 21st Century.”

“NEWS CORP., is a publicly-owned company founded by Australian media mogul, Rupert Murdoch. It is the largest media company in the world. It holds properties all over the world in film, television, cable, magazines, newspapers, publishing, and professional sports, with Fox TV likely its best known property. News Corp owns HARPERCOLLINS, a combination of American publishing companies HARPER & ROW and British COLLINS.”

Who is Rupert Murdoch, really? He is the owner of two of the biggest media liars in the world: Fox TV News and The Wall Street Journal!