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posted by martyb on Sunday January 28 2018, @02:49AM   Printer-friendly
from the nobody-else-"liked"-that-idea dept.

There's no denying that Rupert Murdoch built up quite a media empire over the decades -- but that was almost all entirely focused on newspaper and pay TV. While he's spent the past few decades trying to do stuff on the internet, he has an impressively long list of failures over the years. There are many stories of him buying internet properties (Delphi, MySpace, Photobucket) or starting them himself (iGuide, Fox Interactive, The Daily) and driving them into the ground (or just flopping right out of the gate). While his willingness to embrace the internet early and to try things is to be commended, his regular failures to make his internet ventures successful has pretty clearly soured him on the internet entirely over the years.

Indeed, over the past few years, Murdoch or Murdoch surrogates (frequently News Corp's CEO Robert Thomson) have bashed the internet at every opportunity, no matter how ridiculous. Almost all of these complaints can be summed up simply: big internet companies are making money and News Corp. isn't -- and therefore the problem is with those other companies which should be forced to give News Corp. money.

[...] Rupert is thinking along similar lines, and earlier this week released a bizarre and silly statement saying Facebook should start paying news sites "carriage fees" a la cable companies:

The time has come to consider a different route. If Facebook wants to recognize 'trusted' publishers then it should pay those publishers a carriage fee similar to the model adopted by cable companies. The publishers are obviously enhancing the value and integrity of Facebook through their news and content but are not being adequately rewarded for those services. Carriage payments would have a minor impact on Facebook's profits but a major impact on the prospects for publishers and journalists.

We've seen this kind of thinking many times before. First the argument was used against Craigslist. Then Google. And now, apparently, Facebook. The short version is "these internet companies are making money, we news companies aren't -- ergo, the successful internet companies should be paying the failing news companies."


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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Entropy on Sunday January 28 2018, @04:31AM (2 children)

    by Entropy (4228) on Sunday January 28 2018, @04:31AM (#629328)

    The bar for being more truthful than mainstream media isn't particularly high.

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  • (Score: 5, Informative) by captain normal on Sunday January 28 2018, @04:45AM (1 child)

    by captain normal (2205) on Sunday January 28 2018, @04:45AM (#629334)

    Yes, but it is still way higher than Faux News.

    --
    When life isn't going right, go left.
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 29 2018, @04:35AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 29 2018, @04:35AM (#629700)

      Don't just leave it a Fox. CNN's idea of news, posted on their main page earlier today with a great big picture, was the CNN EXCLUSIVE that Trump's DC hotel was more expensive and more vacant than similar DC hotels. WOW. CNN is digging pretty deep in the barrel for today's two minute hate.

      https://www.cnn.com/2018/01/27/politics/trump-hotel-occupancy-rates-data/index.html [cnn.com]

      Pulitzer Prize for investigative journalism material. Ted Turner must be one proud man.