From: Karen Lee Wald
2175 Aborn Road, apt. 164
San Jose, CA 95121
telephone 408-532-6147
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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www.forward.com/issues/2002/02.03.01/oped1.html
Murdoch No Award Winner
By ERIC ALTERMANSo the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York honored Rupert Murdoch at its gala 25th anniversary dinner February 27. Well, well.
It's hard to decide what is more disturbing: the notion that the umbrella group representing New York's organized Jewish community thinks Mr. Murdoch is a worthy choice to be a recipient of a humanitarian award, or the fact that such awards to Mr. Murdoch have become almost commonplace in recent years.
In 1997 I sat through a $1,000-per-person dinner at the Waldorf-Astoria, thrown by the United Jewish Appeal-Federation of New York, at which Mr. Murdoch was given a "Humanitarian of the Year" award by no less a non-humanitarian than Henry Kissinger. It was the first humanitarian awards dinner in history, I imagine, at which the presenter bragged that he had more human rights protesters outside the hall than the awardee.
Perhaps Mr. Murdoch deserved the awards. After all, compared to the man who directed the illegal bombing of Cambodia, effectively gave a green light to massacres by the Indonesians in East Timor and help destabilize and ultimately overthrow the democratically elected government of Chile in favor of a brutal dictatorship, Mr. Murdoch probably is a pretty decent fellow. But compared to just about anyone other than Mr. Kissinger, Mr. Murdoch's humanitarian credentials come up rather short.
When it comes to conflicts between dictators and their victims, Mr. Murdoch, like Mr. Kissinger, is mighty sympathetic to the needs of the guys with the cattle prods in their hands, irrespective of ideology. He has consistently kowtowed to the Communist Chinese, happily censoring his broadcasts, canceling book deals and what many view as paying millions of dollars in ill-disguised bribes (in the form of book advances) to family members of the aging Marxist gerontacracy. In pursuit of a chimerical profit in the Far East, Mr. Murdoch himself has repeatedly spoken out in favor of dictatorship and against media freedom. When he agreed to remove the BBC from Star TV's offering there, he explained, "We're trying to get set up in China. Why should we upset them?" He later added, "The truth is � and we Americans don't like to admit it � that authoritarian societies can work."
Lately Mr. Murdoch has left the defense of Chinese human rights abuses and torture to his young son, James Murdoch, who heads up Star TV. Speaking at a Milken Institute gathering in Los Angeles last year shortly before the Chinese captured a U.S. spy plane and held its crew, the younger Murdoch sang the praises of the Communist oppressors in Beijing in terms that might have made Mao blush. He attacked the global media for its coverage of Chinese human rights abuses, insisting that "destabilizing forces today are very, very dangerous for the Chinese government." James Murdoch instructed Hong Kong's brave champions of democracy to accept the fact of an "absolutist" government. And he all but endorsed the persecution of what he called the "dangerous" and "apocalyptic" Falun Gong religious movement, which "clearly does not have the success of China at heart." (Some 150 adherents of the group have died in police custody and another 10,000 are currently in prison.)
Rupert Murdoch's humanitarian work in the United States has generally been limited to coarsening our culture and twisting the news to fit his right-wing prejudices. His flagship newspaper, The New York Post, can be depended upon to trash any liberal politician who dares to speak up for the poor or disenfranchised. Genuine reporting or accurate information is rarely a requirement. During the Clinton impeachment drama, the Post was willing to splash virtually any sleazy rumor it could find across its pages, trumpeting the lies of the president's enemies as if it were announcing the end of the World War II.
When the Post is not slanting the news, it is trivializing it, with front pages like that of the January 12, 2001 issue, which was devoted to a photo of Dennis Quaid dancing with a woman at Hogs &Heifers, under the title "Hog Wild: Dumped Dennis Forgets Meg in NYC Romp." A few months later, on July 5, 2001, the editors apparently felt compelled to assign 13 reporters to a 672-word story about a 15-year-old television actor getting busted for a $40 theft.
The flagship show on Mr. Murdoch's Fox network for much of the late 1980s and early 1990s was called "A Current Affair." Ethics went out the window as the show's so-called journalists chased down the most tawdry stories imaginable in pursuit of high ratings. Mr. Murdoch's effect on the mores and practices of the media can also be seen in Fox's broadcast in the spring of 2000 of "Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire?" As one critic wrote at the time, "The show proved an amazing combination of bad taste and bad faith. It treated marriage as another form of prostitution and misrepresented the background (and finances) of is alleged 'multi-millionaire' who turned out to have a troubled history involving restraining orders and not much money at all." A year later, the network followed up with a program called "Temptation Island" in which four supposedly committed couples were placed on an island paradise and invited to cheat on each other on camera. This from a man who professes to champion family values.
So what's next, guys? Gary Condit as "Husband of the Year?" John Ashcroft as "Civil Libertarian of the Year?" How about a joint humanitarian award to Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, the guys who blamed the gay rights movement and the ACLU for the September 11 attacks? Just check first if Henry Kissinger's free to the make the speech.
Mr. Alterman is a columnist for The Nation magazine.
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