Conrad and His Media Comrades

[Guest Gandalf Grey]

Conrad and His Media Comrades: The Real Issue is Stealing BY Media

Companies, Not FROM Them

 

By Danny Schechter

Created Jul 16 2007 - 8:22am

 

Even among the ravenous pack of moguls and mediacrats that dominate and

control our mediaocracy, Conrad Black was in a class of his own when it came

to arrogance, chutzpah and criminal activity. He was, in effect, a media

gangster.

 

The former owner or a company that once had the third largest newspaper

company in the world by circulation was convicted Friday by a jury not of

his peers but working class people who found hum guilty of fraud and

obstruction of justice. In the Chicago tradition that saw mobster Al Capone

sent to prison for tax violations rater than the many murders he ordered,

Black got off on the $60 million in looting that his colleagues accused him

of siphoning from his company to fund his and his wife's lavish "lifestyle."

He, of course, will appeal, protesting his innocence to the grave and anyone

who will listen before then.

 

The New York Times spoke of "his grandiose style characterized by sweeping

pronouncements and Latinate diction," charging that he and his wife

"appeared to live in the mesosphere, the place above the stratosphere where

the air is thin and meteors burn up." The paper mentioned but did not

explain the relevance of his attracting fellow criminals like Henry

Kissinger and Margaret Thatcher to sit on his boards.

 

The case was prosecuted by none other than Patrick Fitzgerald who convicted

Scooter Liddy in a proceeding where more serious charges against the likes

of Karl Rove were never adjudicated. In this trial, a report accusing Black

and Co of operating a "corporate kleptocracy" was ruled inadmissible so he

was actually found guilty of lesser charges too.

 

Among his associates on the board of his holding company Hollinger were

Henry Kissinger, Richard Perle and former Illinois Governor Jim Thompson who

was also a Commissioner on the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon

the United States [1], the people who issued the 911 cover-up. What was

their take?

 

Black himself was to the right of Attila The Hun and Rupert Murdoch. Years

ago, I watched him preach stridently to a UN conference in defense of the

Vietnam War which had nothing to do with what was being discussed. He

blustered in his own world of moral certainties in defense of wealth and

power. He has now been tossed out of the Conservative Party in the UK and

may not be able to reenter Canada, the scene of many of his crimes. The Feds

even seized his wife's $3 million ring. An editor at the Telegraph in

London, once one of "his papers," said he was "addicted to money."

 

On that charge, he is not alone and that's why in the end this media crime

story points to a bigger crime that none of those covering the case

mentioned.

 

If he had not been facing an imminent verdict, Conrad might have joined his

media "comrades in alms" cavorting on a mountain top in Sun Valley this past

weekend with other members of the media cabal who attend the annual VIP

CEO-only private gathering sponsored by investment banker Herb Allen. It

increasingly feels like those mafia getaways in the Adirondacks back in the

l950s where the mob families gathered to target new opportunities, divide

the nation into turfs to coordinate their predatory practices.

 

AP Reports: "As conveniently, many of the power players who control major

internet and technology companies will also be on hand at Sun Valley to

discuss strategies for the future of distributing video, music, text and

other content through the internet, web-enabled cellphones and other digital

means."

 

In the old days, anti-trust regulators would scrutinize gatherings of

competitors on business policy. Concerns over price-fixing seemed to have

disappeared in an age of media concentration and "strategic alliances." The

courts are more worried about the cheating of shareholders than the

expropriation of the earnings of consumers. They protect stealing from the

greedy, not the needy.

 

Notice that the price of media and many entertainment products has quietly

gone up, up and away. My cable bill has soared. The Sunday Times is now

$4.00, and a ticket at the neighborhood movie theater is $11. In any other

country, this would be seen as a form of pocket picking even as media CEO

salaries rise. Barry Diller made a reported $437 million last year to cite

but one example. That's obscenity by media, not in it.

 

The sleaze and manipulation is everywhere and it is much worse than an

alcoholic HBO executive beating up his girlfriend, as bad as that is. A new

study argues that $206 billion dollars in excess profits and tax deductions

subsidized Telecom companies in a "National Infrastructure Initiative"

starting in the early 90's to do what has yet to be done. The authors [2]

call this "the largest fraud in American history."

 

It gets worse. Read Eric Klinenberg's "Fighting for Air: The Battle to

Control America's Media" (Metropolitan Books) and you will get all the dirty

details of how news and public interest programming has been cut back by big

Media in a systematic way. It didn't just happen because that's what the

public wanted. It happened by plan to extract more money that can be

transferred from the masses to the classes.

 

Also let's examine how the TV stations illegally avoid lowest unit price

obligations to candidates by steering campaigns to higher price ads. This

has driven up the cost of politics and forced politicians to spend more and

more time raising more and more money to finance what is called "The Air

War" which is what most of our campaigns have become. In some cases, the

stations group the ads together into a block to make them unwatchable. These

ads of course are riddled with inaccuracies and negative sloganeering and

yet dominate the electoral discourse. This is form of media collusion

enriches TV companies while they reduce local campaign coverage.

 

Meanwhile other even more deadly media crimes of deception and distortion

continued unchecked as Michael Moore noted in his informed rant at CNN. He

raised the issue of media coverage of the war as a prime exhibit. In my book

"When News Lies" (Select Books) I argue in more detail that all the blatant

patriotically correct shilling for an illegal war of aggression in Iraq

constituted a war crime by media, not just some "mistake."

 

So, by all means, let's applaud the conviction of the odious Conrad Black

even if he did slither out of the more serious charges. Now it's time to

investigate Conrad's "comrades" to root out an even blacker plague on our

culture: not the rip off of media by avaricious executives but the criminal

sabotage and dumbing down of the media itself.

 

This is the real crime against democracy.

_______

 

 

 

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"A little patience and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their

spells dissolve, and the people recovering their true sight, restore their

government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are

suffering deeply in spirit,

and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public

debt. But if the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have

patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning

back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at

stake."

-Thomas Jefferson