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Showing posts with label Rupert Murdoch. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Rupert Murdoch. Show all posts

Wednesday 27 July 2011

Investigative Journalism and Reporting, Strategies for Its Survival





Preserving investigative journalism

Plain Speaking - By Yap Leng Kuen

THE frenzy to uncover further “journalistic transgressions'' at the Rupert Murdoch news empire is mounting from London to Australia to the United States there are calls to investigate any other unethical moves.

The recent phone hacking scandal in London revealed that over-enthusiastic journalists have either forgotten their limits or become too bold while their supervisors glossed over their news gathering practices.

It is true the media has to look internally at its ethical standards and ask several questions; to what extent it is hurting people rather than helping; how does one balance the duty to produce a story with other human factors at play; what are the boundaries of “responsible journalism''?

In countries where regulators are constantly monitoring the media, journalists tend to play a more cautious game which does, at times, border on self-censorship.

There are constant reminders of the need to report in a “responsible'' manner. Journalists often struggle in the wake of these reminders and public criticism of a “cowed'' press.

A major consolation is that following this cautious attitude, the publication remains ongoing and jobs are still intact.

In the British phone hacking incident, were the regulators caught “napping'' in the sense that certain journalists had been allowed to push stories at all costs, without questions asked?

The Western press prides itself on freedom to information, and throwing in requirements like “ethical practices'' can result in confusion.

If those journalists who had broken important stories had stuck to being “goody two shoes,'' they might not have achieved the level of success in exposing wrongdoings and other kinds of fraud.

This is not to condone illegal tactics by the press but the nature of investigative journalism is such that it needs some amount of freedom for the information to flow in.

In coming down on the media, regulators should therefore be mindful of the role that investigative journalism plays.

They should not get carried away and impose too many restrictions on the media. For one, it will indicate their level of insecurity and desperation.

Owners and supervisors of media companies also have to behave more responsibly. They ought to be conversant with the laws and rules of journalism, check on their writers all the time and not let slip any suspicious looking piece of information.

On hindsight, this would be easier said than done. But these are practices going on in a lot of media organisations.

At the end of the day, we in the media would have to search our conscience on the implications of all our actions as we are answerable to many parties the Almighty, readers, bosses and society at large to name a few.

It is, as the saying goes, mindfulness all the way.



Investigative Reporting: Strategies for Its Survival

New funding mechanisms and newsroom changes are needed if watchdog journalism is to thrive in small and midmarket news organizations.

By Edward Wasserman

The future of investigative reporting is linked inextricably to the general economic crisis affecting U.S. journalism. That should be obvious, and by saying that I’m not suggesting that investigative work doesn’t have unique vulnerabilities: It’s expensive, offers uncertain payback, ties up resources that could be used in more conventionally productive ways, fans staff jealousies, offends powerful constituencies (including touchy readers), invites litigation, and usually comes from the most endangered class in the newsroom, the senior reporters whose ranks are being thinned aggressively through forced retirement.

Still, for all its uniqueness the tottering support for investigative work needs to be understood within the larger collapse of advertising-funded journalism. The marriage between consumer advertising and news, which dates in this country from the advent of the penny press in the 1830’s, is crumbling. The principal reason is less related to circulation declines—daily newspapers, for instance, still dominate their metro markets—than to the exuberant flowering of Internet sites, some devoted to information and entertainment, others simply to sales, that offer advertisers much more efficient ways to find and reach customers than riding alongside news reports into their homes.

Daily newspapers, for all their general interest posturing, had come to rely chiefly on a narrow range of business sectors—automotive, help wanted, home sales, and department stores—and these sectors have either consolidated or are being drawn away by highly effective, narrowly targeted Web sites. (They’re also being pummeled by the current macroeconomic hard times, but those will pass. Those other developments won’t.)

None of this is cheery news for news operations, but the cost to them of hanging onto advertising as they migrate online isn’t cause for cheer, either. Web-borne technologies enable advertisers to know, with unprecedented precision, who is reading what and where else they have been on the Internet. Hence, advertisers are, or soon will be, able to forecast the audience for certain kinds of content and to base their ad placement decisions accordingly. And what advertisers know, news managers will have to learn. That means editors are not far from being able to determine the revenue value of certain kinds of news and calibrate coverage with that in mind. That’s not an appealing prospect in general for those of us who value independence in news decision-making; nor does it bode well for investigative work to be subjected to narrow, profit-and-loss arithmetic.


The Fort Myers News-Press invited readers to help them investigate a story about an expansion of the water, sewer and irrigation system, in a method known as crowdsourcing.

Finding Investigative Resources

So journalism in this country faces a general problem replacing the advertising subsidies on which it has flourished for nearly two centuries. And investigative journalism has a particular canary-in-the-coal-mine problem of being acutely sensitive to thin financial air.

The challenge is to find new mechanisms to provide investigative journalism with the resources it needs, especially in the small and midmarket operations that are being starved of the kind of reporting that has traditionally held local political and business establishments in check.

Before we turn to some of those mechanisms, two points.
  1. These resources aren’t exclusively financial. They include in-kind subsidies, for instance in the form of labor that is donated outright or sold at a fraction of its value to news outlets.
  2. Preserving investigative journalism may not be identical with preserving investigative journalists. The overall concern should be nurturing a communitywide capability to unearth, report and explain so as to hold major institutions accountable, address injustice, and correct wrongs. Full-time professionals will have their place, but they won’t occupy it alone.
Here are some of the more promising dimensions of the emerging regime under which investigative reporting can survive and flourish. Some are more feasible than others; some are already taking shape. Each has its drawbacks, but they have in common an overall direction of marshaling support from a wider array of sources than we’ve seen under the ad-support model.

Mobilize the Public: The 2006 “crowdsourcing” project of The News-Press
in Fort Myers, Florida is frequently cited as an impressive example of a local paper serving as agent provocateur and communitywide reporting manager. The stories concerned excessive impact fees levied on residents in connection with their water utility expansion. Much of the ensuing investigation, which led to a rollback of assessments, was conducted by knowledgeable irregulars who gathered and analyzed evidence of municipal anomalies the paper reported and posted.

There’s no use dwelling on the huge supervisory challenges within a news organization that are raised by such crowdsourcing, nor on the need to make sure that those involved understand basic principles of journalistic professionalism. A larger concern is whether such an approach is self-limiting in ways that aren’t especially desirable.

The Fort Myers case seems to exemplify the kind of work that’s ripest for crowdsourcing: where the main reporting problems are empirical and analytical, not conceptual or political, and where the goals of the amateur newshounds—saving money—are durable. The danger is that assigning priority to projects susceptible to crowdsourcing could mean giving short shrift to highly worthwhile inquiries whose constituencies are less easily mobilized, less mainstream, and less richly skilled. In short, by institutionalizing a commitment to crowdsourcing are news organizations introducing a durable tilt toward reactive, pocketbook projects that appeal to college educated, professional readers?

EDITOR'S NOTE
“Using Expertise From Outside the Newsroom,” by Betty Wells, in the Spring 2008 issue of Nieman Reports, describes other efforts within The News-Press newsroom to build on this model of engaging citizens in investigative efforts. Read the article » 


Moreover, when a newsroom incorporates outsiders into the process, what they have to say has to be listened to, and an appropriate role must be found for them in shaping the coverage they contribute to. What if your amateur sleuths want to expose employers who hire illegal immigrants, or bird-dog suspiciously foreign workers back to their apartments to see who’s renting to them? Do editors allow crowdsourcing to become mobsourcing, or do they roll up the carpet on the empowerment that was promised to these helpers?

That said, those are good problems to have. The potential gains from leveraging in-house investigative and supervisory staff by enlisting communitywide resources on matters that require laborious empirical work are abundant and enormously appealing.

Relax the Full-Time Employee (FTE) Newsroom Model: News operations aren’t sustaining themselves with revenues from their own operations on anything like the scale that communities need to be covered adequately. What follows may sound heretical, but one response is to make greater resources available by encouraging the newsside to incorporate the practice pioneered by op-ed pages, which have long been dominated by outside contributors. They’d do this by creating procedures and mechanisms to promote strong investigative work from nonjournalistic professionals who bring to bear their knowledge within the community at large.

Though similar to crowdsourcing, this takes us in a slightly different direction, toward a more nimble style of newsroom management and a more serious grant of operational autonomy to outsiders. As one source of such outsiders, consider institutions of higher education: One of the paradoxes of the current economic straits of the news business is that while news outlets are suffering, university journalism programs are booming. (Travelers are familiar with a similar paradox: every airport you use is expanding, every airline you fly is near bankruptcy.) Many of the senior journalists who are being chased from their newsroom berths are being welcomed on campuses, which are benefiting from the increasing largesse of wealthy baby boomers who view donations to educate tomorrow’s journalists as highly worthwhile.

Those new academics could continue to produce journalism. A good many lawyers and accountants too have serious investigative training; some can even write. The problem is that news operations—with some exceptions, notably long-form magazines—are neither managerially suited nor culturally disposed to routinely incorporate the work of people who aren’t FTEs.

That incapacity denies them a ready source of subsidy, since the potential contributor’s reporting is essentially paid for by his or her day job. Naturally, that dependence may raise serious conflict of interest problems, much like those that op-ed pages traditionally handle so poorly. It also requires addressing novel quality control issues.

But given that the need now is to perform a thorough inventory of the investigative resources available in a community in order to harness them so as to keep the toughest and most trenchant journalism alive, ignoring the capabilities of knowledgeable, eager and capable professionals of all kinds would be foolish.

RELATED ARTICLE
"Going Online With Watchdog Journalism"
—Paul E. Steiger, ProPublica Editor
 

Endow Chairs: Much has been written about the national nonprofit journalism outfits that either make grants to enable reporters to do major long-term projects or, in the case of ProPublica, use foundation funding to employ top-tier investigative aces and direct them onto stories of national scope. A different approach to using nonprofit money would apply a model familiar to the academic world and be built around endowed investigative positions created on the staffs of small and midmarket news operations, which have been decimated by the declines in classified, home sales, and automotive advertising.

For example, a single national donor, giving only half the $10 million annual stipend that enables ProPublica to employ 20-some investigative reporters in Lower Manhattan, could seed 100 newsrooms with $50,000 apiece to partially fund investigative chairs. (Partial funding would ensure a local buy-in and enable the employer to adjust the reporter’s total compensation to its newsroom pay scale.) In addition to that seed money in the provinces, some modest funding could go into creating a centralized supervisory or advisory capability, perhaps vested in ProPublica or one of the existing investigative shops. The objective would be to supplement the supervision the reporter gets on site from editors who are deeply knowledgeable about local realities with the expertise of seasoned investigative journalists.

What’s important is recognizing that investigative work doesn’t solely mean national stories. Fundamental to the civic role of small and midmarket news organizations has been their work on zoning scams, courthouse favoritism, environmental degradation, political cronyism, and all manner of wrongdoing that may not register on a scale of national significance but that shapes municipal life in powerful ways. The evisceration of local newsrooms risks creating vast free-fire zones for corruption, which no amount of attention to national affairs will restrain.

Tap Into Community Resources: Similarly, nonprofit initiatives need not be exclusively national, either; they could take the form of citywide foundations bankrolled by local donors either to make grants for individual projects or to provide funds for a sustained journalistic operation comprising full- or part-time staff.

That fundraising effort need not be confined to soliciting big contributors. Investigative reporting produces tangible benefits to communities, even if those civic benefits can’t be readily monetized through the private marketplace because they can’t be priced effectively. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t real and valuable. What is chasing a crooked mayor from office “worth?” If asked, one citizen might say that having an independent team of skilled investigators whose mandate is to root out and expose local corruption is worth, perhaps, $100 a year to her; another might put the figure at $50, still another at $1,000. But there is some value that each of us would attach to that benefit. The continuing success of listener-supported public radio suggests that audiences recognize and, under certain circumstances, are willing to pay for similar informational benefits. Some bloggers, too, have also been successful in fundraising of this sort.

The challenge is to create the funding mechanisms and position the appeals to enable community resources to be pooled reliably and effectively. Crowdsourcing should not be confined to research and reporting; the crowd needs to be enlisted as a source of financial support, too, which has already been happening at Minnpost.com, which was launched in November 2007. In a midsummer message, MinnPost CEO and Editor Joel Kramer reported to readers that the online publication has “932 members, people who have decided to support financially the nonprofit journalism that MinnPost.com provides.”

Create Specialized Spinoffs: Intense scrutiny of powerful institutions and important social developments is a difficult undertaking for which some people will indeed pay quite a lot, especially if that audience gets to see the findings while they’re fresh and hot. This inside-baseball model is key to the success of the newsletter business and other premium informational services that continue to flourish in spite of the current wisdom that the subscription model is dead. Might that be a model to enable certain areas of investigative work to continue—sell the reporting as a stand-alone publication to the people who are willing to pay for it?

Many journalists will find it distasteful to propose that a news operation might devote a portion of its resources to reporting that will be denied to readers who don’t specifically subscribe to it. (The objection is ironic in view of the eagerness with which news organizations are dicing their broad-gauged audiences into vertical microslivers of neighborhood, age, profession, hobby and any other social descriptor that seems to hold appeal for advertisers. Such verticality is expressly intended to provide specific audiences with some information and withhold it from others. Perhaps because the information is innocuous, the practice isn’t objectionable.) Still, if this proposal meant that important information would be kept secret, the idea would be ethically problematic.

But that’s not the case. The more typical practice of specialty publications is to keep their subscribers satisfied by ensuring them a first look at important findings; the publications themselves are eager to see their work trumpeted into the public domain, which ratifies their importance and reaffirms their subscribers’ commitment.

Moreover, what’s the choice? If the alternative is that the reporting won’t be conducted at all, submitting to a two-step process—first to subscriber, then to general public—is plainly preferable. Having a pair of investigative sleuths prowling the statehouse and reporting on shadowy legislative maneuverings for 2,000 subscribers who pay $500 a year may not be an ideal response, but it sure beats shutting the capital bureau or assigning a skeletal staff to knee-jerk stenography.

In sum, keeping alive the flame of investigative—or, as others prefer, accountability—journalism has never been easy, and the slow-motion collapse of U.S. journalism’s advertising dependency has made it harder than ever. New sources of support need to be devised, and the community’s reservoirs of skill and energy, as well as money, need to be inventoried and tapped. But this is possible. And the consequence may be a richer and more fully responsive capability for investigation, exposure and reform than was possible under the vanishing old regime.


The New York Times creates newsbooks by reprinting some of the newspaper’s investigative series. The newsbooks are sold through their online store.

Edward Wasserman is Knight Professor of Journalism Ethics at Washington and Lee University. A veteran editor and publisher, he writes a media column for The Miami Herald and Palm Beach Post that is distributed nationally by The McClatchy-Tribune wire.

Tuesday 26 July 2011

The world is run by Tiger Wives, Tiger Moms





The world is run by Tiger Wives

Wendi Deng is not alone in lashing out when her spouse is under fire.

Wendi Deng Murdoch, Cherie Blair and Melania Trump are formidable in defence of their husbands-The world is run by Tiger Wives
Wendi Deng Murdoch, Cherie Blair and Melania Trump are formidable in defence of their husbands Photo: REX FEATURES/GETTY,By Cristina Odone

The hearings were beginning to pall. What had started as the trial of the media’s biggest mogul was settling into the siesta of the patriarch: Rupert Murdoch seemed to be talking in his sleep, while James Murdoch fanned away the MPs’ annoying questions, lest they disturb Dad.

Viewers longing for drama felt short-changed. None of the lawmakers had laid a glove on the media mogul. And then – splat! – the (slapstick) comedian Jonathan May-Bowles threw a “pie” of shaving foam at Murdoch Senior and unleashed the Tiger Wife.

In an instant, Wendi Deng, Murdoch’s Chinese-American spouse, leapt to her feet and sprang past bystanders to pummel her husband’s assailant. MPs, Murdochs and media types could only gape, electrified as proceedings fast-forwarded from Perry Mason to Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.

By the time Rupert Murdoch’s bodyguard had reached his master, the 42-year-old Wendi had landed a sensational right-hook on her opponent.

She then gained her husband’s side, and gently cleaned his face of foam. Within minutes, Deng was the toast of Twitter: hailed as a “smack-down sister” in her native China, and as a heroine and stunning show-stopper everywhere else.

Those who know Wendi well (and they include Tony Blair, Mark Zuckerman and Bono) won’t have batted an eyelid at her jaw-dropping performance. Rupert Murdoch’s third wife has form.

A volleyball player from southern China doesn’t climb to the top (Murdoch’s personal fortune remains a healthy $340 million) without fierce determination. Other people on Wendi’s ascent have already experienced her fury.

The first victim was Joyce Cherry, a pleasant American who, together with husband Jake, befriended Wendi during their trip to China. Impressed by the teenager’s brilliance and thirst for self-improvement, Joyce and Jake sponsored Wendi’s application for a student visa to America. Alas, 19-year-old Wendi soon bewitched Jake, who left poor old Joyce to marry their young protégée.

Victim number two was Jake himself: his usefulness came to an end a few months later when Wendi, now armed with the right papers, won a place to study business at Yale University.



Days from graduation, Wendi had a job at the Murdoch-owned Star TV, where she quickly caught the Big Boss’s eye. Hence the third corpse in the trail to marry Murdoch: Rupert’s second wife, Anna.

Within 17 days of his divorce, Wendi wed Rupert. If the Wendi house conceals a few skeletons, it also offers glimpses of her protective instincts.

Conscious of the 38-year gap between them, Wendi has placed Rupert on a tough regime of 6am weightlifting, washed down by a fruit and soy protein cocktail. She wags her finger at his workaholic schedule and has hired a personal trainer to put him through his paces (even at the price of her husband turning up on front pages in baseball cap and tracksuit).

None of this marital nurturing distracts Wendi from pursuing her own agenda: she has just released a film, Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, that aims to promote a more positive image of China.

She enjoys a glittering social life, attending film premieres and art gallery openings. And she remains her husband’s chief adviser on his business in China.

Yet Wendi the film producer, like Wendi the business consultant or Wendi the mother of Rupert’s young daughters Chloe and Grace, has failed to fire our imagination. But Wendi Deng, invincible Tiger Wife, has transformed Rupert Murdoch’s image around the globe – from dodderer in the dock to prized partner in his wife’s life.

In a culture that mourns marriage as a moribund institution, one spouse leaping passionately to the other’s defence fills us with admiration. Even the most hardened cynics couldn’t help thinking, as the warrior in a pink blazer bounced into the ring: “Wow, she really believes in this union!”

Wendi Deng’s slap didn’t just scotch rumours that hers was a sham marriage: a purely trophy wife would have winked at the assailant for giving the old man a heart-stopping scare. With a quick right hook, she jumped to the head of the queue of the defenders of matrimony. It is a short but colourful roll-call that stretches from Cherie Blair, to Anne Sinclair (aka Mme Strauss Khan), Melania Trump and Carla Bruni-Sarkozy.

From the moment she moved into No 10, Cherie Blair was under constant attack for her (supposed) greed, stinginess, and self-importance. She let the criticisms bounce off her like spring rain. But let anyone touch her Tony, and Mrs Blair roared. She hissed at the ungrateful electorate that did not deserve a paragon of virtue like her husband; she gnashed her teeth at the sleazy media that insinuated Tony was a disappointment.

Her manner resembled the termagant’s fury rather than the bride’s solicitude, but no one could doubt Cherie’s heartfelt loyalty. It won her few fans: among the cheats and cuckolds of Westminster, the sight of a prime minister’s wife defending her husband was unusual; it also reassured voters that despite new Labour’s destruction of cherished institutions from the House of Lords to foxhunting, marriage would remain intact.

Far more testing has been Anne Sinclair’s lot. When her charismatic husband Dominique Strauss-Kahn was arrested on rape charges in New York, the French TV journalist sprang to his defence: “I do not believe for a single second the accusations levelled against my husband.” She flew to stand by her man and stumped up the $1 million bail to move him from prison to his plush Manhattan apartment.

Such wifely devotion may yet save the former IMF chief’s political career: his wife’s total support, as much as the derailing of the case against him, may prove a great boost to DSK’s credibility as a presidential candidate.

Her counterpart in the French presidential contest, Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, also wants to show the world that she looks out for her husband’s interests. The First Lady of France, pregnant but still displaying every sign of focus and competitiveness, has imposed a culture vulture’s menu on her philistine hubby: he is to watch films by Alfred Hitchcock, as well as Russia’s Andrei Tarkovsky; and read the French classics, from Balzac to Hugo.

Driving this self-improvement, say insiders at the Elysée Palace, is Carla’s ambition: she wants her man to be re-elected, and fears his present lowbrow image won’t do.

Nor should we forget Melania Trump, fearlessly vocal in her millionaire husband’s defence: Donald Trump is “brilliant”, everyone is envious of his success, and America should be so lucky to have him as their Republican Party candidate.

But Mrs T also gives us a revealing insight into their marriage when she confides that she has two children: “I have a big boy, Donald, and a little boy, Barron. I take care of both very well.”

Tiger Wife often needs to play Tiger Mother, it would seem.

The Tiger Wives’ Club is small but perfectly informed: these women know that their husbands need their commitment and support. In her eagerness to make her man shine, the Tiger Wife will disarm any assailant. She knows that her spouse is less than he seems; and that she, in fact, is rather more. She’s plucky; he’s lucky.

Source: The Daily Telegraph

Thursday 21 July 2011

Wendi Deng, Murdoch's Tiger wife loyalty and ambition !




Wendi, Rupert Murdoch True to Character, Biographer Says

PHOTO: Wendi and Rupert Murdoch


Rupert and Wendi Murdoch were true to character Tuesday when she went from the statuesque, socialite wife of a media mogul to a protective spouse with a steady right hook, according to Murdoch biographer Michael Wolff.

"I thought, 'That's our Rupert and that's our Wendi,'" Wolff told ABC News of his reaction to the couple's behavior during the otherwise solemn parliamentary hearing.
"She's kind of fearless, actually," he said of Wendi Deng Murdoch.

In an unexpected twist of events at the hearing Tuesday in which Murdoch and son James were peppered with questions about allegations of phone hacking, Murdoch's wife was the first to jump to her husband's side as an attacker threw what looked like a shaving-cream pie in the News Corp. chairman and CEO's face.

Wearing a pink suit jacket, video footage shows Deng, 42 and married to the 80-year-old Murdoch for 12 years, jump up and lunge after the attacker faster than anyone, taking an open-handed swing at the man who was arrested shortly thereafter.



 That doesn't surprise me. She's fairly feisty," said Eric Ellis, who wrote a detailed profile on Deng for the Monthly in June 2007. "I think it was an instinctive reaction that anyone would have … looking after her partner."

But Deng is much more than a protective trophy wife and mother to two of Murdoch's children. She is a Yale University business school graduate and former News Corp. employee who also worked as the head of MySpace China, purchased by Murdoch in 2005.

"She's in there living the life," biographer Wolff said. "This is a woman who came to the U.S. when she was 18 from China, speaking no English, with her first job in a Chinese restaurant.

"She's done it all," he said. "She's had no pretense that she's taking it and grabbing it for herself, and the thing you feel is kind of good for her."

Deng's background is as feisty as the right hook and quick reflexes she displayed to protect her husband as he faced tense questioning by a British parliamentary panel, and now sees his media empire rollicked by scandal and arrests.

Born in the northeastern province of Shandong in China, Deng traveled to California in 1988 at the age of 18 after working as an interpreter in China for a Los Angeles couple, Jake and Joyce Cherry. She stayed in the United States, under a visa sponsored by the Cherrys, to work and to study.

Deng eventually became romantically involved with Jake Cherry and, when the Cherry's marriage ended, Deng and Jake married, only to divorce less than three years later.

"The husband was much more in love with Wendi than Wendi was with the husband," Steve Fishman, contributing editor for New York Magazine told ABC News.
 
Deng's love affair with Murdoch began under a cloud of scandal as well.

The couple met in 1989, when Deng was living in Hong Kong and working for Murdoch's Star TV. They were married in June of 1999, 17 days after his divorce from his second wife of 31 years, Anna Murdoch, was finalized.

"She was interested in his business and he's flattered and says he wants to get to know her," Fishman said of how the couple's relationship grew.

The couple have two young daughters together, Grace and Chloe. Murdoch has four grown children, Prudence from his first marriage and Lachlan, James and Elisabeth from his second marriage to Anna.

Loyal Wife, Family Tensions

"The other thing is nobody really likes Wendi," Wolff said, alluding to family tensions that arose when Deng reportedly battled Murdoch's adult children to secure a voting position for her children in the family trust, giving them access to a stake of News Corp., worth billions of dollars.

"Despite all this, she has persevered ...," Wolff said. "The feeling you come away with is this is a person with incredible faith and vitality."

Rupert Murdoch's Wife Hits Attacker Watch Video

Rupert Murdoch Testimony: Headlines Watch Video

Rupert Murdoch: When Protesters Attack Watch Video
 
As Murdoch's wife, Deng became a red-carpet regular in the United States herself, counting many of the rich and famous among her friends.

Just as the scandal embroiling her husband and her family's fortunes exploded this weekend, Deng was in New York's glitzy Hamptons, attending a screening of the film she produced, the just-released "Snow Flower and the Secret Fan," a story set in 19th century China about the tough cultural norms imposed on women.

She reportedly flew to London Tuesday to be there for her husband's hearing.

"Their relationship has changed over the years, she provided him company and comfort in the early days," the Monthly's Ellis said. "[She's] probably become closer to him and more of an advisor more recently."

The Associated Press contributed to this story.

Murdoch’s wife leaps into global spotlight
(AFP)

Shanghai — Wendi Deng, who has emerged as an unlikely heroine after leaping to defend her 80-year-old husband Rupert Murdoch from a pie-wielding protester, has a reputation for fierce loyalty and ambition.

Her full-blooded swing at her husband’s assailant during a British parliamentary hearing on the News of the World phone hacking scandal has catapulted the former volleyball player into the global spotlight.

But even before that, the Chinese-born American was known as a formidable operator at the heart of one of the world’s most powerful families.
Although she holds no formal role in the company, Deng remains a constant presence at her husband’s side and is said to take an active interest in his business affairs.
The couple’s two young daughters will inherit a large stake in Murdoch’s News Corporation — a huge media conglomerate that owns newspapers and television companies around the world, including Fox and Sky TV.
Deng, who at 42 is 38 years Murdoch’s junior, met her media tycoon husband while working at his Star Television company in Hong Kong, where former colleagues have described her as an expert networker with big ambitions.
Born in the eastern Chinese city of Xuzhou in 1968 — at the height of the Cultural Revolution — she left China aged 19 to study in the United States, where she befriended an American couple, Jake and Joyce Cherry.
Deng initially lived in the couple’s California home, but moved out after Joyce discovered that she and Jake were having an affair.
The pair were married, but divorced after less than three years together, during which time Deng took US citizenship.
After graduating from Yale School of Management in 1996, she took an internship with Star, where she met her future husband — then still married to his second wife, Anna — at a company cocktail party.
In 1999, the pair were married in the United States aboard a private yacht that Murdoch had reportedly bought for his retirement.
The couple now live in New York with daughters Grace and Chloe, who will inherit a huge fortune after their father changed his will in 2005 to give them an equal interest with his adult children in the family’s News Corp. holding.
Under that deal, Deng will become the most powerful player in the family trust when Murdoch dies because she will act as guardian to her two children until they can claim their inheritance at the age of 30.
At the hearing Tuesday — a day her husband called the most humble in his life — she sat directly behind the News Corp. chairman and chief executive, regularly reaching over to give him a reassuring pat on the shoulder.
Pictures of Deng in an eye-catching bright pink jacket and pencil skirt dominated the front pages of British newspapers on Wednesday, along with praise for her lightning reactions.
The Daily Mail tabloid called her the ‘hero of the hour’ for springing into action, clouting Murdoch’s attacker on the head and managing to push the plate of gunk he was carrying back into his face.
Opposition parliamentarian Tom Watson, who played a key role in bringing revelations about phone hacking by the News of the World to light, finished the session with the words: ‘Mr Murdoch, your wife has a very good left hook.’

Related post: 

The world is run by Tiger Wives, Tiger Moms

News of the World, Murdoch hacking scandals: 'Shocked, appalled and ashamed', attacked!  

Wednesday 20 July 2011

News of the World, Murdoch hacking scandals: 'Shocked, appalled and ashamed', attacked!




'Shocked, appalled and ashamed': quotes from Murdoch hacking hearing 

Rupert Murdoch ... the most humble day of his life. Rupert Murdoch ... the most humble day of his life. Photo: Reuters


Selected quotes from the Murdochs' appearance at the parliamentary inquiry into media phone hacking, which produced reactions ranging from table-banging, to abject apology, to staunch denial of any knowledge of wrongdoing.

- "I just want to say one sentence. This is the most humble day of my life." - Rupert Murdoch's opening remarks.

- "No." - Rupert Murdoch's remark when asked by Labour MP Jim Sheridan if he accepted that "ultimately you are responsible for this whole fiasco".



- "The people that I trusted to run it [his media empire] and then maybe the people they trusted." - Rupert Murdoch when asked who he blamed.

- "We felt ashamed at what happened. We had broken our trust with our readers." - Rupert Murdoch explains why the News of the World tabloid was shut down after 168 years.

- "We have seen no evidence of that at all and as far as we know the FBI haven't either." - Murdoch on allegations the paper hacked 9/11 victims.

- "I would like to say just how sorry I am and how sorry we are, to particularly the victims of illegal voicemail interceptions, and to their families." - James Murdoch's opening statement.

- "The News of the World is less than 1 per cent of our company. I employ 53,000 people around the world who are proud and great and ethical and distinguished people, professionals in their work. I'm spread watching and appointing people whom I trust to run those divisions." - Rupert Murdoch on his empire.

- "Endemic is a very hard, a very wide ranging word. I also have to be very careful not to prejudice the course of justice that is taking place now." - Rupert Murdoch in answer to Labour Party lawmaker Tom Watson, who asked Murdoch when he became aware that criminality was "endemic" at the News of the World.

- "I was absolutely shocked, appalled and ashamed when I heard about the Milly Dowler case only two weeks ago." - Rupert Murdoch on allegations that the News of the World hacked into the murdered teenager's phone.

"I was invited within days [of the general election in May last year] to have a cup of tea to be thanked for the support by Mr Cameron. No other conversation took place." - Rupert Murdoch revealing that he had been invited to have a cup of tea with Prime Minister David Cameron within days of the election that brought Cameron to power at the head of a coalition government.

- "There are no immediate plans for that." - James Murdoch, saying no plans were afoot for News International, the British newspaper wing of News Corp, to launch a new Sunday tabloid to replace the News of the World.

- "Because I believed her and I trusted her and I do trust her. In the event she just insisted. She was at a point of extreme anguish." - Rupert Murdoch when asked why he did not accept former News International chief executive Rebekah Brooks's original offer to resign before she finally quit last Friday.

- "They caught us with dirty hands." - Rupert Murdoch on opposition within the media industry to his abandoned BSkyB bid.

- "Your wife has a very good left hook [sic]." - British Labour MP Tom Watson after protester and comedian Jonnie Marbles pelted Rupert Murdoch with foam and his wife Wendi hit back.



- "You naughty billionaire." - Jonnie Marbles after the attack.

Rupert Murdoch was attacked with what appears to be a pie during a hearing before members of Parliament. The videotape appears to show a protester heading toward Rupert Murdoch. Murdoch's wife, Wendi Deng, then lunged at the protester.

  - "As Mr Murdoch himself said, I'm afraid I cannot comment on an ongoing police investigation." - Jonnie Marbles to reporters later.

- "Once that trust was broken, we felt that that was the right decision. Of course, it wasn't the right decision for the hundreds of journalists who worked on there, had done nothing wrong, were in no way responsible. Every single one of them [the journalists] will be offered a job." - Rebekah Brooks on the decision to close the News of the World.

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