Quote

It's all a sham: I have seen, and I know firsthand, indeed from my own pen, how the organized Right has sabotaged not only journalism but also democracy and truth.

People knew that Murdoch's media estate in the UK was too powerful and it was doing very unpleasant things.

News is so often a report of conflict, an account of problems, a thing of the day and even of the minute, that sometimes I think we make the background darker and the shadows deeper than they actually are.

I think that the days when newspaper barons could basically click their fingers and governments would snap to attention have gone.

The advent of the Internet exposed the fact that the old business model for newspapers was broken. The world wide web fundamentally changed the media eco-system, challenging established journalistic practice in what is known as the mainstream media: radio, television, newspapers and magazines.

After 9/11, many of the most important news outlets in America abdicated their role as a check to power - the journalistic responsibility to challenge the excesses of government - for fear of being seen as unpatriotic and punished in the market during a period of heightened nationalism.

Wikipedia has experienced censorship at the hands of industry groups and governments, and we are - increasingly, I think - seeing important decisions made by unaccountable, non-transparent corporate players, a shift from the open web to mobile walled gardens, and a shift from the production-based Internet to one that's consumption-based.

Don't overstate Fox News. It's still much smaller than the least of the network niches.

I guess the issue that I have with all the news organizations that have a political MO, if you will, attached to them is that they sometimes jump to conclusions about what this will mean. Get ahead of themselves.

The vast bulk of Murdoch's news output, including the huge majority of any falsehood and distortion, is simply the spontaneous product of his highly commercialised newsrooms. It sells.