Reviewing the Powers of Intimidation & Mainstream Media Sources

A growing scandal-expose highlights how corruption within public institutions of society can more easily arise with large media consolidations and the intimidating powers wielded by news press conglomerates over government actors.

Courtesy: judiciaryreport.com

(SALEM, Ore.) - The following two ongoing cases, 1) the Rupert Murdoch news empire scandal in Britain & 2) a New York Times expose story exemplify how “unnamed sources” within government (be it a police organization in Britain or a source [ likely ] from inside U.S. national intelligence) both raise a question about mainstream media and government institutions: “Is the tail wagging the dog, the dog wagging the tail, or do they actually wag each other?”

1. Case of the New York Times & James Risen:

Columbia Journalism Review [ http://www.cjr.org/the_kicker/index.php#26760] reports that in June 2011, “James Risen, one of The New York Times’s top national security reporters, filed an affidavit in a federal district court explaining why he refuses to comply with a subpoena demanding he give testimony that would identify his source (or sources) for a chapter in his 2006 book State of War….. Risen’s 22-page affidavit is a stirring defense of the value of his reporting, and of the need for journalists covering national security to be able to protect the confidentiality of their sources so that they may bring matters of public interest to light.” Read Risen’s slightly redacted 22 page affidavit (posted by Steven Aftergood, the Federation of American Scientists secrecy expert) here  http://www.fas.org/sgp/jud/sterling/062111-risen115.pdf

On the relentless U.S. government pursuit, Risen said: “I cannot help but think that the fact that I had written earlier, both in the Times and State of War, about the administration's legally questionable domestic eavesdropping program, had something to do with the selective attention that was being focused on the Times and me.”

2. Case of the Murdoch “News of the World” scandal in Britain:

“Rupert Murdoch’s media empire is being shaken at a time when he is attempting to pull off a $12 billion takeover of the TV network British Sky Broadcasting. Earlier today, Britain’s Culture Secretary announced that the decision on the Sky deal will be delayed because of the ongoing scandal. It’s unclear what impact the British scandal will have on Murdoch’s U.S. media holdings, which include the Fox TV network, the New York Post, The Wall Street Journal, Dow Jones and Company, HarperCollins, and the 20th Century Fox film studio.” http://www.cjr.org/author/ryan-chittum-1/

Paraphrasing from a recent interview transcript hosted by Amy Goodman at Democracy Now: http://www.democracynow.org/2011/7/8/media_mogul_rupert_murdoch_shuts_down

A long-brewing Murdoch news-media scandal in Britain eventually revealed the behind the scenes police involvement with a Murdoch news-empire newspaper, in that the newspaper was outed for paying police for internal documents or records. The “cozy relationship — of actually getting paid bribes to release documents to a particular newspaper” was exposed through a convoluted series of developments that took years to expose, and received little mainstream media coverage until recently.

This growing scandal-expose highlights how corruption within public institutions of society can more easily arise with large media consolidations and the intimidating powers wielded by news press conglomerates over government actors.  According to Amy Goodman’s interview with Ryan Chittum and Juan Gonsalez, the police not only had “people on the take” from Murdoch’s News Corp., but they were actually “afraid of Murdoch”.

The police had “a symbiotic relationship with the News of the World where they would leak things to it and the News of the World would drum up sympathy for police cases and against alleged criminals. They did not want to damage that relationship.”