Turner Calls Rival Media Mogul Murdoch 'Warmonger'

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Turner Calls Rival Media Mogul Murdoch ‘Warmonger’
Fri Apr 25, 2:49 AM ET Add Entertainment - Reuters Industry to My Yahoo!

By Duncan Martell

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Ted Turner said on Thursday too few people owned too many media organizations and called rival media baron Rupert Murdoch a warmonger for what he said was Murdoch’s promotion of the U.S. war in Iraq (news - web sites).

“He’s a warmonger,” Turner said in an evening speech to the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco of Murdoch, whose News Corp. Ltd. owns the fast-growing Fox News Channel. “He promoted it.”

Fox News Channel has been the most popular U.S. cable news network during the conflict, trumping AOL Time Warner Inc.'s CNN, which Turner started more than two decades ago and came to prominence with its blanket coverage of the 1991 Gulf War (news - web sites).

Asked by an audience member for his thoughts on Fox’s larger ratings share than CNN’s, Turner said, “Just because your ratings are bigger doesn’t mean you’re better.”

“It’s not how big you are, it’s how good you are that really counts,” Turner said, drawing hoots from the audience.

Turner, who has pledged to give $1 billion to the United Nations (news - web sites) and is a vocal proponent of population control and nuclear-arms elimination, criticized the concentration of ownership of the vast majority of U.S. television networks, radio and TV stations and newspapers in a few corporations.

“The media is too concentrated, too few people own too much,” Turner said.

Asked whether he would again try to launch a new network, Turner, who is the vice chairman of AOL Time Warner and has been critical of the merger of AOL and TimeWarner, said: "No. I think the space is filled with the people already there.

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“There’s really five companies that control 90 percent of what we read, see and hear. It’s not healthy.”

Earlier on Thursday, BBC Director General Greg Dyke said U.S. broadcasters’ coverage of the Iraq war was so unquestioningly patriotic and so lacking in impartiality that it threatened the credibility of America’s electronic media.

Dyke singled out for criticism Fox News Channel and Clear Channel Communications Inc., the largest operator of radio stations in the United States.

“Personally, I was shocked while in the United States by how unquestioning the broadcast news media was during this war,” Dyke said in a speech at a University of London conference.

After Turner’s initial remarks, the moderator for the question and answer session noted that Turner would not be able to comment on the ongoing federal investigations into AOL Time Warner.

The moderator had scarcely finished her statement when he leaned into the microphone and said: “I can say one thing. As the largest shareholder and the biggest shareholder (of the company), it’s been brutal.”

Turner said he also liked bison.

“I got 35,000 of them,” Turner said in response to a question about bison. “I do eat them. You’ve got to eat.”

The final question of the evening to Turner: What will be his epitaph.

“I have nothing more to say,” Turner said. “And that’s what it is.”

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:slight_smile:

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Poor Ted. Things were OK when he could use his media power on CNN to vent (unchallenged) his left wing, liberal agenda under the guise of news. He and his little left wing media friends at ABC, CBS and NBC were quite content with media concentration then. So Fox News and Murdoch come along and find a way to vent their right wing, conservative agenda under the guise of news and the Internet and radio allows conservatives multiple forums to expose the liberals for what they are and now he is concerned.

It's not concentration that bugs him. It's that people who disagree with him have succesfully forced their way into the game and are playing it a lot better than he and his friends. That, and the fact that ratings demonstrate that the majority of Americans like the conservative message one heck of a lot better than his tripe.

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It will be unnatural to assume that any news reporting organization will be completely free from all kinds of bias. However, they should atleast maintain some semblance of impartiality and investigative journalism rather then just re-broadcasting anything fed to them by folks in uniform. Otherwise there is little difference between an independent news media and a state-run television chanel. American journalism did itself a huge disservice by taking the patriotism mantra too far. As a result, the fourth pillar in USA is seriously damaged now.

I agree with the BBC bloke quoted there, who said American media was totally unquestioning, and resultantly lost a lot of credibility in the current invasion of Iraq.

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[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by myvoice: *
It's not concentration that bugs him. It's that people who disagree with him have succesfully forced their way into the game and are playing it a lot better than he and his friends. That, and the fact that ratings demonstrate that the majority of Americans like the conservative message one heck of a lot better than his tripe.
[/QUOTE]

Fox news is quite popular, so is mindless reality TV dribble, coincidence...maybe.

The point of news is to tell (shocking) the news. It's become an entertainment war between the news channels partly because the attention of Americans has dwindled down the spiral unless there's catchy music, hot "news babes", and graphics that look to belong to an action movie. I think another problem is that those who run the news channels don't respect the intellect of its audience (perhaps they see the ratings of reality TV shows and came up with this conclusion). Dramatics have taken over the newsrooms and while fox is not alone in doing this, they do it the best. Entertainment News is two things that shouldn't go together.

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Just to bring some perspective into this discussion, Fox may be leading the pack in war-coverage ratings, but it does not seem as if majority of people who are watching the war coverage are tuning into Fox. Infact CNN and NBC combined have much more viewers.

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[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Faisal: *American journalism did itself a huge disservice by taking the patriotism mantra too far. As a result, the fourth pillar in USA is seriously damaged now.

I agree with the BBC bloke quoted there, who said American media was totally unquestioning, and resultantly lost a lot of credibility in the current invasion of Iraq.
[/QUOTE]

What fascinates me about all the bashing of US media INCLUDING CNN for being too patriotic is that, for the most part, perceptions at home are quite different. CNN withheld for years stories about Kidnapping of its reporters by the Iraqi regime, torture in Iraq, and plans of Saddam and his sons to kill family members and the King of Jordan. They withheld these stories to curry favor with the Iraqi regime and get their exclusive interviews where these same regime leaders disavowed the types of atrocities that CNN knew were occuring. As to their war coverage, most Americans viewed CNN's bias as very liberal, anti-Bush, unpatriotic coverage. Many Americans were entirely turned off when they watched Dan Rather cowtow to Saddam for the pre-war interview and fail to ask the tough questions and/or challenge Saddam with the same degree of verve as Rather routinely challenges Bush. Many of us perceived the same anti-Bush bias in CBS' war coverage.

The Arab media (particularly Al Jazeera) are the ones who clearly and miserably failed to present "fair and balanced" coverage of the war to the Arab masses. The Arab street was absolutely stunned to find out that Baghdad was taken by US forces when throughout all the previous days they were basically led to believe the US was being defeated and repelled throughout Iraq.