What Bill Moyers Really Thinks of Rupert Murdoch

British riots and the Ames straw poll have shoved both the economic disaster that is American finances and the Murdoch Empire out of the news. Things happen so fast any more, we don’t have time to digest them. We barely scratched the Murdoch Muck when it was blasted out of view.

[Rupert Murdoch] is to propriety what the Marquis de Sade was to chastity. When it comes to money and power he's carnivorous: all appetite and no taste. He'll eat anything in his path. Politicians become little clay pigeons to be picked off with flattering headlines, generous air time, a book contract or the old-fashioned black jack that never misses: campaign cash. He hires lobbyists the way Imelda Marcos bought shoes.

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The ambitious can't resist his blandishments, Nor his power to get or keep them in office where they can return his favors. Mae West would be green with envy at his little black book of conquests. Tory Margaret Thatcher. Labor's Tony Blair. George Bush. Even Jimmy Carter couldn't say no. Now Bill and Hillary Clinton, who know which side of their bread is buttered, like having it slathered by their new buddy Rupert. Our media and political system has turned into a mutual protection racket.

  Bill Moyers

Actually, I think it has been for some time. Remember Hearst and the Spanish-American war.

You will not be surprised to learn that Murdoch's company paid little or no federal income tax over the past four years.

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[He’s] accustomed to using journalism as a personal spittoon.

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His worst offense with Fox news is not even its baldly partisan agenda. Far worse is the travesty he's made of its journalism. Fox news huffs and puffs, pontificates and proclaims, but does little serious original reporting. His tabloids sell babes and breasts, gossip and celebrities. Now he's about to bring under the same thumb one of the few national newsrooms remaining in the country. ..[the Wall Street Journal].

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Instead of checking the excesses of private and public power, these 21st century barons of the first amendment revel in them; the public be damned.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.