Murdoch's Mafia - A Criminal Enterprise

A Criminal Enterprise

Murdoch's Mafia

By SUSIL GUPTA
CounterPunch
Weekend Edition
July 15 - 17, 2011

So far the News International scandal, which is only just unravelling, has focused almost exclusively on 'phone-hacking' and the invasion of privacy by Murdoch's print media. Although this has considerable celebrity and 'human interest' value, it entirely misses the main game.

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Therefore any media giant keen to be involved in broadcast in any country must have considerable influence over the political elite that ultimately takes the decision to grant or withhold licences and concessions.

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In every broadcast industry in the world, TV and entertainment conglomerates own not-very-profitable newspapers and radio interests because they provide a parallel source of influence. That is the real relationship between commercial TV and the printed press across all nations where broadcasting is not dominated by a state monopoly. Today my papers do a favour for you by keeping a bad story out or saying something nice about you, tomorrow I may call on you to a favour for me.

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Murdoch's strategy has been less flamboyant but just as insidious. At the heart of News International's current problems is not the undue influence its newspapers have exerted, but the fact that it took matters one step further - into the realm of mafia-style blackmail and extortion. The story yet to emerge is that News International, like the Mafia, operates a vast information-gathering network collecting compromising information which provides Murdoch with the 'dirt' to undermine, intimidate, threaten, hound, and if necessary destroy, any politician, public official or investigative journalist who darers to get in his way. It is the same system that allowed Edgar J. Hoover to remain head of the FBI for 52 years, even though president after president, and large sections of America's political class, wanted rid of him.

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http://counterpunch.org/gupta07152011.html