Perniciously Pervasive: Rupert Murdoch

Pernicious, adj: causing insidious harm or ruin; ruinous; injurious; hurtful.

Pervasive, adj: having the tendency to spread throughout or permeate

Rupert Murdoch, the ambitious and avaricious Aussie is at it again, and I’m scared. If one filthy rich conservative can buy whatever media he wants, pretty soon it will be even more challenging to get the truth out than it already is.

This is where he started, from a NYTimes quickie bio:

Rupert Murdoch, the chairman and controlling shareholder of the News Corp., is perhaps the preeminent global media magnate in an era of global media empires. After building a chain of newspaper and magazine properties in Australia in the 1950s and ’60s, Mr. Murdoch expanded first to the United Kingdom and then the United States, where The New York Post has been the embodiment of his hard-charging tabloid style and his conservative views.

Worldwide, News Corps. is worth $60 BILLION. Here are just SOME of his U.S. holdings (Australia, UK, et al, NOT included):

• The New York Post
• The Wall Street Journal
• The Weekly Standard
• Fox cable stations (about a dozen)
• Fox movie companies (about a dozen)
• The National Geographic Channel
• HarperCollins Books
• MySpace

With the Post and the WSJ he already owns two conservative newspapers in the New York market. Now, he’s got a preliminary deal going to buy Newsday, which would be his third NY paper. Ultimately his aim is to take on (take down?) the New York Times.

Will the FCC allow this takeover of so many papers in one market??? One would hope not, but George Bush’s FCC has done worse.

Oh – and he’s also hot on the tail of Yahoo…