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August 25, 2012
In giving the MacTaggart address at the Media Guardian Edinburgh International Television Festival, Elizabeth Murdoch praised the BBC; argued that the Olympics experience demonstrates that television is a force for storytelling rather than a route to political power; and stated that profit must be our servant, not our master.
Martin Rowson
She argued for the need to "reject the idea that money is the only effective measure of all things or that the free market is the only sorting mechanism" and said that "the absence of purpose" could be "one of the most dangerous own goals for capitalism and for freedom". Profit without purpose is a recipe for disaster.
This is not the dominant Murdoch ethos that governs News Corp, or News Ltd in Australia, judging from the recent conduct of The Australian towards the Prime Minister in its pursuit of Gillard over a story about the Prime Minister showing a lack of judgment 17 years ago.
News Ltd, in ruthlessly defending its dominance in Australia media, acts to resist and undermine the emergence of greater plurality in the media, especially when it is leftist. In doing so it embraces the anti-science camp of those climate change denialists, who appeal to the Oregon petition to back up their claims that the science that supports the hypothesis of human-caused global warming and consequent climate damage is wrong.
The petition is used by Jo Nova as “evidence” that climate change science is not valid because it is only an appeal to authority --ie., to scientific consensus. They reduce the scientific method to belief and so collapse the distinction between between belief and evidence.
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Assange, Rowson... why nothing on Assange?