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What Murdoch’s media empire did: the big picture

Alternet’s Russ Baker goes beyond the individual sins of the Murdoch media empire — the phone hacking and such — and looks at the big picture: what has the Murdoch empire done to the world? He has undermined liberty: His outlets led the drumbeat...

Alternet’s Russ Baker goes beyond the individual sins of the Murdoch media empire — the phone hacking and such — and looks at the big picture: what has the Murdoch empire done to the world?

He has undermined liberty: His outlets led the drumbeat for restriction or elimination of certain fundamental rights, including those under the US Fourth Amendment, while at the same time supporting unrestrained wiretapping, the harsh treatment of suspects who may have done nothing wrong, and fueling panic justifying the build-up of the national surveillance state.

He has turned the public against the press. By the generally inferior product produced, with a few exceptions, by the majority of the news outlets he controls and the tawdry methods sponsored by many of them, he has eroded the public’s confidence in media in general, tarnishing its belief even in those outfits whose work deserves to be taken seriously. He has also used his outlets to convince the public that other, more conscientious news organizations are ideologically suspect and biased.

What Rupert Murdoch Means For You Personally

(via Making Light)