by The3rdColumn
Tue Feb 26th, 2008 at 10:56:44 PM EST
Mansion 'mistake' piles the pressure on Barack Obama
This news is actually 'buried' somewhere in The Times on line news.
What surprised me was how this once prestigious British newspaper has been going hammer and tongs at Hillary Clinton while something as 'newsy' as, which if you think about it, is something Anglo-American media usually love to dwell on, gets 'buried' and that unless you click away like crazy on your keyboard in search of all available news stuff on line you don't get to read (Sen Obama's picture lifted from The Times.)
The issue I'm raising here is not whether a wrongdoing was committed by Sen Barack Obama when he got involved in a land deal with the wife of his "bagman" Antoine "Tony" Rezko who, by the way, has been linked to Nadhmi Auchi, one of Britain's wealthiest men who was convicted in France for corruption, but whether The Times, owned by Rupert Murdoch, Australian-American media tycoon, has not in fact been playing footsie with its journalism 'privileges' by preferring to downplay a story that might place Mr Obama in a bad light.
What I've been observing these last few weeks is that The Times has clearly joined the Obama bandwagon. I noticed this started when Hillary Clinton won the New Hampshire primary but chose to downplay the former first lady's victory in favour of an all out campaign cover for Barack Obama. From then on, The Times has been doing a non-stop Obama rah-rah-rah while being openly critical of every word and move of his rival, Hillary Clinton.
I'm frankly suspicious and wonder if Mr Murdoch is not behind all this double standard journalism practice in the hope of becoming a kingmaker. After all, he's already tried to do it in the UK -- he once lent his support to Conservative Party's Margaret Thatcher but switched to Labour and supported Tony Blair. The Times and The Sunday Times, which used to enjoy considerable influence in Britain, then rallied support for Blair almost throughout the latter's tenure as UK's PM.
According to Wikipedia,
"The closeness of his relationship with Blair and their secret meetings to
discuss national policies was to become a political issue in Britain."
Mind you, Murdoch, who became a US citizen in 1985, has been known to be a strong supporter of some Republican Party stalwarts that began in earnest with Pres Ronald Reagan, but it is not far fetched to think that just like what he did in Britain, i.e., switched from Tory to Labour, he might be doing the same in the US. It is said that Mr Murdoch owns 175 newspapers, is known to be politically conservative and has never sought to hide the fact that he's always been in favour of the US invasion of and war on Iraq.
In the absolute, one may say there's nothing wrong with switching party allegiance, witness the great switch, i.e., Winston Churchill from Liberal to Tory. It's not unusual for a businessmen, particularly at the level of Murdoch, to switch support either, i.e., from one political party to another -- it has happened before and will happen again but what can be worrisome is if Murdoch is tempted to use (an understatement) his media empire to flex his muscles on an untried, un-tested but potentially future tenant of the White House and under some journalism cover, "fix intelligence around" an unsuspecting US president.
Of course, the thoughts expressed here are mere speculations that can only be confirmed if and when Fox News, which Mr Murdoch owns, starts playing up to the Illinois senator who's now fast becoming the Democrat party's favourite contender for the US presidential election in November.
