Rupert Murdoch

One good thing you can say about 2011 is that it is a year in which lots of wrong-headed undertakings finally came to their ignominious conclusions -- including, among others, the Iraq War, the Gadhafi regime, the presidential candidacy of Donald Trump, and "The Oprah Winfrey Show".

Also among the train-wrecks is undoubtedly our failed national education policy, No Child Left Behind. more »

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The Bush administration told taxpayers to hand over hundreds of billions of their hard-earned dollars to bail out Wall Street banks because the financial institutions were too big to fail. Now, Rupert Murdoch, owner of politically powerful publications and broadcast stations, claims his News Corp. more »

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History books record an empire's fall as a series of dates and events. Battles are fought, people resist, elections are called, arrest warrants are issued. But those are just details. An empire really falls in that moment when people stop believing that it's invulnerable. Whenever the spell is broken, whether it's by anger or just by awareness, the end becomes inevitable. It doesn't matter what happens to Rupert or James Murdoch now. They may return to positions of relative wealth and privilege or their lives may take unpleasant turns. Either way, the Murdoch empire has already fallen.

There's a lesson here for anyone who thinks the safest and surest path to success is by serving the seemingly invincible. Sure, it may lead to riches and power, at least for a while. But you may also wind up like those powerful people in Great Britain who now find themselves struggling with scandal, hiding in fear, or facing terrible legal consequences - all because they believed in Murdoch's invincibility and served him accordingly. As Martin Luther King often said (and we've often quoted), "The moral arc of the Universe is long, but it bends toward justice."

And since the Universe is our home, the Murdoch scandal reminds us of another principle too: "Never bet against the house." more »

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In the UK the News-Of-The-World/News Corp/Murdoch scandal seems to be reawakening democracy. A big, powerful corporation has been found to be engaged in criminal activity, manipulating news, paying off police and politicians, and generally getting its way. more »

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Rupert Murdoch's got problems. His employees are being arrested, he's losing his latest acquisition, and he's just been called to testify before Parliament. But there's an easy way for Mr. Murdoch to protect himself from these inquiries and save his company at the same time: Turn the News Corporation into a Wall Street bank. There won't be any prosecutions, and the government will even sweeten the deal with billions of dollars in easy money. And if Murdoch follows the trail blazed by bankers like Jamie Dimon at JPMorgan Chase, soon they'll be begging him to acquire more companies.

Murdoch and Dimon. One runs an organization that, as we now know, broke the law so many times it could be called a criminal syndicate. And the other is Rupert Murdoch. Yet Murdoch's fighting for his corporation's future while Dimon's name is being floated as a possible Treasury Secretary. Murdoch's losing his chance to expand market share, while our government helped Dimon's bank become more too-big-to-fail than ever by grabbing up Morgan Stanley.

Now that's juice. Murdoch's been a power broker on three continents and his Fox empire has reshaped this country's political landscape, but Dimon's taken the power game to a whole 'nother level. more »

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I am in the UK this week. You can barely turn on the TV here without hearing about the “phone-hacking” scandal from outraged voices across the spectrum. It is a full-blown, 24/7 scandal. The thing that might be most astonishing to Americans, though, is that people are hearing about it at all. more »

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