Predictably, some critics have decried the current efforts by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. to buy the Dow Jones company, which publishes The Wall Street Journal. But let’s imagine the dynamics that might emerge if Murdoch gains control of that newspaper. Like viewers of his Fox News Channel, readers of The Wall Street Journal under Murdoch could look forward to jaw-dropping claims along the lines of “We invest, you decide.”

The Wall Street Journal would need to make some changes in order to be in sync with Murdoch-brand journalism. The Journal’s recent design make-over could provide a tidy framework for spreading the content of the editorial page to the rest of the newsprint pages.

But executives at News Corp. would swiftly face a dilemma. Investors and money managers — prime demographic targets of The Wall Street Journal — are apt to be intolerant of financial news reporting that’s unduly screened through an ideological mesh.

Slanted journalism may be fine for big commercial enterprises when news consumers largely base their outlooks on prevailing media biases. But investors and others who move large amounts of money are apt to be less forgiving when political agendas behind news reports might impede the quest to maximize profits.

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Several days after the mass killings at Virginia Tech, grisly
stories about the tragedy still dominate front pages and cable
television. News of carnage on a vastly larger scale — the war in Iraq
— ebbs and flows. The overall coverage of lethal violence, at home and
far away, reflects the chronic evasions of the American media
establishment.

In the world of U.S. mainline journalism, the boilerplate legitimacy
of official American violence overseas is a routine assumption.

“The first task of the occupation remains the first task of government: to establish a monopoly on violence,” George Will wrote
three years ago in the Washington Post. But now, his latest Newsweek
column laments: “Vietnam produced an antiwar movement in America; Iraq
has produced an antiwar America.”

Current polls and public discourse — in spite of media inclinations
to tamp down authentic anger at the war — do reflect an “antiwar
America” of sorts. So, why is the ghastly war effort continuing
unabated? A big factor is the undue respect that’s reserved for
American warriors in American society.

When a mentally unstable person goes on a shooting rampage in the
United States, no one questions that such actions are intrinsically,
fundamentally and absolutely wrong. The media condemnation is 100
percent…

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The Pentagon’s most likely next target is Iran. Hillary Clinton says “no option can be taken off the table.”

Barack Obama says that the Iranian government is “a threat to all of us” and “we should take no option, including military action, off the table.”

John Edwards says, “Under no circumstances can Iran be allowed to have nuclear weapons.” And: “We need to keep all options on the table.”

A year ago, writing in The New Yorker, journalist Seymour Hersh reported…
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by Jeff Cohen and Norman Solomon

It’s become a TV ritual: Every year on April 4, as Americans commemorate Martin Luther King’s death, we get perfunctory network news reports about “the slain civil rights leader.”

The remarkable thing about these reviews of King’s life is that several years – his last years – are totally missing, as if flushed down a memory hole.

What TV viewers see is a closed loop of familiar file footage: King battling desegregation in Birmingham (1963); reciting his dream of racial harmony at the rally in Washington (1963); marching for voting rights in Selma, Alabama (1965); and finally, lying dead on the motel balcony in Memphis (1968).

An alert viewer might notice that the chronology jumps from 1965 to 1968. Yet King didn’t take a sabbatical near the end of his life. In fact, he was speaking and organizing as diligently as ever.

Almost all of those speeches were filmed or taped. But they’re not shown today on TV.

Why?
It’s because national news media have never come to terms with what Martin Luther King Jr. stood for during his final years…

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