A few months ago, John Edwards helped spearhead a Democratic boycott of two presidential debates set to be broadcast by Fox News. He also criticized News Corp. owner Rupert Murdoch's effort to buy the Wall Street Journal. Later he criticized rival Hillary Clinton for accepting $20,000 in contributions from News Corp. executives.
But like other huge companies with multiple subsidiaries, the Murdoch empire isn't easily denied.
Last month, Edwards caught flak after news leaked that he'd signed a $900,000 contract with Murdoch's publishing company, HarperCollins, for his book, "Home: The Blueprints of Our Lives." The news was leaked to the Murdoch-owned New York Post, which reported it under the headline: "EDWARDS IN A BIZ HATE & $WITCH."
On Wednesday, MTV and MySpace announced that its first "Presidential Candidate Dialogue" will feature Edwards. On Sept. 27, from the campus of Dartmouth University in New Hampshire, he'll answer questions submitted through MySpaceIM and MTV.com. During the hour-long program, people can electronically register their opinion of Edwards' answers in real time.
The Murdoch connection? MySpace is part of Fox Interactive Media.
Says Edwards' spokeswoman Colleen Murray: “Like most Americans, Edwards opposes media consolidation and the biased and unfair manner of Fox News, not social networking sites like MySpace.”
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
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If Edwards should ever address a meeting of newspaper publishers, he can adapt a line used by Vice President Spiro Agnew when he spoke at an American Society of Newspaper Editors convention luncheon in Washington in April 1972, where I happened to be in attendance.
Agnew, taking considerable heat from reporters and editorial writers alike for his strident criticisms of the press "at that point in time," sought to break the ice by opening his speech with this greeting:
"Fellow Editors..."
So if John Edwards wants to show conservative or tycoon publishers that he is really just trying to get them to be fair and accurate in their campaign reporting, he can just greet them by saying:
"Fellow Publishers..."
Incidentally, at that spring 1972 ASNE convention in Washington, President and Mrs. Nixon invited all the editors in for a White House reception during the newspaper convention. This was a couple of months before the infamous Watergate break-in of June 17, 1972, leaving this former Raleigh News & Observer staffer to wonder if the portrayals of Nixon as being only hostile to the press were really accurate and, for that matter, whether the former Duke law student would have wanted anything to do a Washington political break-in, which naturally stirred up a hornet's nest of critical commentary by UNC-educated journalists from Miami to the Golden Gate Bridge.
County Commissioner meeting yesterday:
"I was undecided six months ago. I'm now very much for repeal," Bishop said. Bishop said government leaders are using the transit plan to push people into high-rises instead of "houses with lawns."
"The government wants to control how you live,"
Commissioner Dan Bishop
"My constituents won't ride the buses or trains they've been paying for.
"The only rail they're going to ride is the one that goes around Disney World,"
Commissioner Bill James (AKA - Jesus)
"The light rail planners want to get away from cul-de-sacs."
Commissioner Karen Bentley
By the way, all Republicans.
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