Murdoch Media Empire Scandal, Capitalism, and White Supremacy

July 19, 2011

A major “media scandal” is rocking the global capitalist-imperialist world. Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, one of the six corporations that control ninety-five percent of the world’s media, was exposed for illegally spying (telephone hacking) on hundreds of people and of corrupting/bribing politicians and police in England.

As a result, Murdoch has been forced to close its most profitable tabloid in England (News of the World), laying off hundreds of workers. Key executives of News Corporation and police agents have been arrested or forced to resign –the (Scottland Yard) police commissioner and his assistant have been forced to give up their posts.

The “sparked” that brought about the current capitalist crisis was an article published in a rival newspaper (The Guardian) which detailed how, in their drive to produce attention grabbing headlines and gossip, the Murdoch-owned tabloid engaged in the mass hacking of phone messages of a 13-year-old kidnap and murder victim, as well of those of families of 9/11 victims and British soldiers killed in Afghanistan.

In addition, “mysteriously” the News of The World reporter who blew the whistle on the phone hacking, Sean Hoare, was found dead on July 18th –only days after the scandal was made public to the masses.

The “exposé” has outraged thousands and forced the government –after years of knowing about the criminal activities of Rupert Murdoch’s media outlets–– to press charges against Murdoch’s employees and associates.

ATTEMPTING TO HIDE THE CRIMES
In an effort to “save his media empire”, Murdoch has begun damage control. Besides shutting down the News of The World, he is attempting to hide his crimes from public view by running full-page apologies in all of his newspapers and meeting with the family of the murdered schoolgirl whose phone was hacked.

Rupert Murdoch has been reported to be 13th most powerful person in the world. He began to construct his media empire in Australia (where he was born) upon the extensive media assets left to him by his rich father. During 1960s, with help from the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency), he extended his media holdings to Europe, Asia, and the Americas. His fortune includes hundreds media outlets such as book publishing (book), magazine, newspaper, film/movie production and distribution, radio, internet, television/cable stations, and satellite services, etc. In the United States alone, his $33 billion media empire includes U.S. Fox TV/News, The Wall Street Journal, New York Post, 20th Century Fox, and HarperCollins publishing company.

CAPITALISM IS THE PROBLEM
The current scandal is nothing less than another indictment of the capitalist and imperialist system. It is part of the general crisis of imperialism and like all recent developments (bank bailouts, home foreclosure, unemployment, etc.) it is tearing apart the legitimacy of institutions of the state that are used by the ruling class to control society.

Like any corporate newspaper, the News of The World existed to serve three purposes: (1) to bring profits and power to its owners (rich capitalists); (2) keep the masses asleep and confused, and thus out of “struggle”; and (3) to attack and neutralize anyone considered to be a danger to fascism (corporate control of the world’s natural and human resources).

As the Raza Press and Media Association (RPMA) and other organizations have said in the past, the media is an important weapon in the arsenal of the capitalist-colonialist system. It is a means by which the ruling class imposes its ideology upon the world’s masses: the workers and the poor.

What the scandal has done is to once again reveal the capitalist media’s use of corruption and crime to control the politics and resources of as much of planet earth as they can. History informs us that the media’s use of spying, blackmail, bribery, murder, and false propaganda to influence the political economy of the world is the norm and not the exception.

To the extent the current scandal terrifies the “bourgeoisie” (ruling class) is made obvious by The London Evening Standard editorial (July 7, 2011) where it states: “...what is most troubling is the way that the scandal is affecting public faith in the police, the press and politicians, all of whose basic honesty is central to democracy.” What the Standard means by democracy is not what the masses of the people understand it to be. For the bourgeoisie “democracy” does not mean democratic or human rights, but its ability to exert power over the wealth and control of society.

RUPERT MURDOCH AND THE CORPORATE-ELITE’S SOCIAL AND POLITICAL PERSPECTIVES
The following briefly sums up the ideological perspectives of Rupert Murdoch as expressed in the media empire, which he controls:
• The support for student tuition hikes and the demand for workers to work for less pay, receive less benefits, and retire at an older age.
• Justifies the use of police force against students, workers, and poor, who dare to protest or go on strike.
• Advances an educational “reform” that seeks to destroy public education, teachers unions, and critical thought. Murdoch is a backer of former Washington D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee, urged everyone to see the anti-teacher film “Waiting For Superman”, and praised the L.A. Times for posting a listing of student test scores to embarrass and attack teachers.
• A reactionary warmonger, Murdoch used Fox News and his worldwide network of cable and satellites and 175 newspapers, to promote the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, and to defend Bush and Blair for embarking upon a war of empire building and genocide. Hence, Murdoch is responsible for murdering hundreds of thousands of innocent men, women, and children.
• Rupert Murdoch has Glen Beck, Bill O’Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich, on his payroll (directly and indirectly) and helps with the publishing of their books. These are racists who have been leading the attacks against Raza and Africans under the guise of the war against drugs and terror, and so-called “illegal immigration”. Murdoch provides them with a platform from which to attack innocent Mexicans-Raza, which has led to settler-vigilante and police violence (murder, raids, etc.) against men, women, and children.

MURDOCH’S SUPPORT OF SETTLER COLONIALISM AND GENOCIDE
Of critical importance to those Raza who are fighting for self-determination and national liberation, is Murdoch’s support of the genocide and occupation of native peoples lands by settler colonialism in the “Americas” and in the continent of “Australia”.

Murdoch, through his media empire, has engaged in a campaign against the Aboriginal (indigenous) people of Australia who were massacred and dispossessed of their lands by the British settler-colonialists –a practice that began in the late 18th century and continues to this day. He has down played the government sanction of the theft of children from Aboriginal families, just it was done in the United States to Native American/Indigenous peoples. This historic kidnapping of children, known as the “Stolen Generation” has been justified by the racist theories of native inferiority and white supremacy.

Today, the real and only Australians, the Aboriginal peoples, have the shortest life expectancy of any of the world’s indigenous peoples. The racist government of Australia imprisons Aborigines at five times the rate than did white settlers in South Africa to African people during the apartheid years.

Murdoch’s media has denied and hidden the genocide and suffering of the Aboriginal peoples and has encouraged and promoted the views of white supremacists, who claimed that there was no genocide, no Stolen Generation, and no racism in the history of the foreign white-settlers who currently control Australia.

MOVEMENT JOURNALISTS HAVE FOR YEARS EXPOSED THE GENOCIDE AND OPPRESSION OF CAPITALISM-IMPERIALISM
The movement press/journalists have for years exposed and criticized the capitalist press for its role in the oppression of the masses and for covering up imperialists wars and the crimes of the Bourgeoisie. The RPMA, which was reestablished in 1990 (known as the Chicano Press Association/CPA in the late 1960s and early 1970s), has relentlessly struggled against the capitalist media.

During the sixties, progressive and revolutionary media exposed the fact that most mainstream media collaborated with the CIA and thousands of journalists throughout the world (including in the US.) were on the payroll of the CIA and other imperialist spy agencies.

For example, the implementation of the CIA’s “Project Mockingbird” led to the infiltration of the corporate media, a process that included the takeover of news outlets. “By the early 1950’s,” writes Deborah Davis in her book Katherine the Great, “the CIA owned respected members of the New York Times, Newsweek, CBS and other communication vehicles, plus stringers, four to six hundred in all.” In 1982, the CIA admitted that reporters on the CIA payroll had acted as agents in the field. Pro-labor activists and independent journalists have long ago connected Murdoch to the CIA.

THE ROLE OF MEDIA IS KEEP THE CAPITALISTS IN POWER
Getting the masses –the workers and oppressed Nations (Raza, Africans, Asian, Pacific Islanders, etc.) –to accept oppression and colonization without putting up a fight, necessitates the control of ideas and information, and convincing them that it is to their interests to support imperialism.

This was summed up by the RPMA in 2006:
“The ‘mainstream’ media is controlled by a corporate elite who are a rich and racist class of people that also rule this country [and most of the countries around the world]. They use the media to stay in power. Therefore, the role of the mainstream media is to confuse us, to make us stupid, and to make us do foolish things. So instead of trying to end the oppression and power that the corporate system has over the great majority of us, we end up accepting our oppression, or are so confused that we don’t know what to do” (Chicano Journalism: Its History and Its Use As a Weapon For Liberation).

The current media crisis demonstrates the weakness of capitalism-imperialism. The crimes exposed in the scandal have been raised before, but rarely have government officials followed-up. The reality is that there is an internal struggle among the capitalists (for profits and power) and Murdoch is locked into this struggle. Their goal is to resolve this struggle without exposing themselves too much to the masses –who knowing the truth, will demand the end of capitalist oppression and will call for a revolutionary transformation of society.

IT IS OUR RESPONSIBILITY TO BURY THE CAPITALIST CRIMINALS
It is the task and responsibility of the RPMA –and other progressive and revolutionary media workers– to vigorously continue to expose, with whatever means at our disposal, the criminality and the necessity to destroy the capitalist dictatorship which currently exist worldwide. We have to produce and write articles, essays, photos, images, flyers, brochures, radio shows, films/movies, murals, songs, theatrical plays, etc. –and use them to bury the capitalist criminals and place them where they belong: in prisons, and the cesspools of history.

Today, we find that only a “small number” (relatively speaking) of progressive and revolutionary Raza media workers exist to engage in struggle against the oppressors. Most of us suffer from the bourgeois diseases called “individualism” and “parochialism”. These are diseases that keep us from uniting into an effective force that can lead all oppressed people towards liberation.

The RPMA calls for us to cure ourselves of these diseases and work together for the liberation of all.

¡VENCEREMOS!

Partial List of References:
• NECN.com July 17, 2011 (website).
• USA Today, 7/11/2011.
MediaMatters For America Nov. 21, 2011 (website)
• The Politics of Heroin at Fox News - Rupert Murdoch, the CIA, Shackley, Nugan Hand Bank & Crimes of Patriots (article from the internet).
• Chicano Journalism: Its History and Its Use As a Weapon For Liberation, (2nd Edition) by Ernesto Bustillos.
• Weapons of Mass Deception: The Uses of Propaganda in Bush’s War on Iraq, by S. Rampton and J. Stauber.
• The Man Who Owns the News: Inside the Secret World of Rupert Murdoch, by Michael Wolff.
• Infantile Disorder (website)
• The Ugly Face of Capitalism, from In Defense of Marxism (website)
• Media Mogul Murdoch “Warmonger”, Reuters, 4/23/2003
• Rupert Murdoch Champions Rhee, Washington Post, 10/1/2010.
• How the Murdoch press keeps Australia’s dirty secret, by John Pilger, johnpilger.com, 12 May 2011.