Murdoch Scum

[leviramsey]

So this Christmas all his constituents should invite themselves there for dinner, and no doubt they'll all be let in to chat about the drains behind Lidl over a glass of port.

No problem at all there, IMO. It stands just as well as "So this Christmas all his constituents should invite themselves there for dinner. No doubt they'll all be let in to chat about the drains behind Lidl over a glass of port" (arguably that construction reads better: the longer pause gives you a bit more time to imagine things), so the ", and" is justified. The next sentence is shit, though...

I do see a couple of cases though where the ", and" probably shouldn't be used:

Even Brooks herself is astonished, and is eager to investigate.

Instead of costly trials the accused will be told to hold an inquiry into themselves, and come back in three years and let us know if they did anything wrong or not.

[snowychap]

Ah, I just saw your complaint and figured it was about the Oxford comma... I took the "excepted circumstances" as referring to the cases where even anti-Oxford comma style guides often allow its use.

As for sentence joining, I've always been taught to use a comma there, and I blindly assumed, against all better judgment, that British English was similar.

I wondered about crossed wires. Ne'er mind.

English english is always correct but I forgive you for your instruction. ;-)

For the first example above,: how is it okay?

It's unnecessary, isn't it?

The comma is superfluous at best.

[leviramsey]

English english is always correct

If we're being democratic about it...

about 400 million people speak English as their first language

215 million of those are in the US (and there's another 18 million in Canada, which, as far as I can tell, agrees with US usage on this)

For the first example above,: how is it okay?

It's unnecessary, isn't it?

The comma is superfluous at best.

If you have a compound sentence (i.e. multiple independent clauses) and you're joining them with a conjunction (as opposed to a colon, semi-colon, or [em-]dash) you prepend a comma to the conjunction

I would suspect that it's because:

* it makes it easier to separate the independent clauses into separate sentences if one decides to make that edit (drop the ", $CONJUNCTION")

* it reflects the tendency to put a small pause between the two clauses

EDIT: I argue that this is on-topic because Murdoch is a Yank now, isn't he?

[leviramsey]

The two million-ish Americans who watch Craig Ferguson saw this last night on Murdoch (both of his guests, of course, were on to plug shows on Fox networks)

[snowychap]

English english is always correct

If we're being democratic about it...

Democratic? Why on earth would that be the case?.

If you have a compound sentence (i.e. multiple independent clauses) and you're joining them with a conjunction (as opposed to a colon, semi-colon, or [em-]dash) you prepend a comma to the conjunction

Sorry, that seems codswallop to me.

I have to say I couldn't watch any more beyond his 'justification' for the comma in his 'example 1'. There wasn't any justification other than that he shoved a comma in there. Conjunctions are conjunctions - they don't need any help.

[MrDuck]

Not nearly enough bitching about Murdoch on this page. Disappointing.

[PauloBarnesi]

Is someone willing to bend their own morals (or one whose morals sanction the things typically necessary to gain power, for that matter) to gain power someone we should trust with any power at all?

I suspect we wouldn’t have a single one of our political leaders in power then...

[Gringo]

And that is what some have been saying is required for a long time.

BIAD

[PauloBarnesi]

The actions of Rupert Murdoch's newspaper group have drawn the wrath of Westminster, but this is not the first time that politicians have done battle with mighty press barons.

When the Times flexed its considerable muscle at the ruling classes of the mid-19th century, it was enough to turn the politicians' faces the shade of a modern-day red-top.

Known as the Thunderer, it was arguably the most influential daily in the world, of which Abraham Lincoln said: "I don't know of anything which has more power, except perhaps the Mississippi."

When press titans have tried to push their own political agenda, power struggles have occasionally erupted, sometimes in spectacular fashion.

Stanley Baldwin v Lords Rothermere and Beaverbrook

Baldwin disliked the insolence of the press barons

Historian Dr Piers Brendon has described UK press magnates as "mad, bad, dangerous-to-know beasts in the newspaper jungle who did what they wanted". He may well have had Lords Rothermere and Beaverbrook in mind.

The respective owners of the Daily Mail and Daily Express arguably held a tighter grip on the news agenda than modern-day magnates. These tycoons were free from the diluting influence of TV, radio and other media.

The Express covered the entire spectrum of classes and in the 1930s was the first paper to have a circulation of two million - a huge total at the time.

In 1930 the barons almost ousted former Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin as leader of the Conservative party by running two separate campaigns against him on the issue of empire free trade.

Baldwin favoured protectionism whilst the two Lords wanted the British Empire to become a free trade bloc, setting them on a political collision course.

Continue reading the main story

Hearst: The definitive baron

The model for press barons is William Randolph Hearst. He owned almost 30 papers throughout America and was satirised in the movie Citizen Kane.

He's credited with the invention of tabloid journalism in the 1890s when his New York Journal began a bitter circulation war with Joseph Pulitzer's New York World. He also had a reputation as a warmonger.

"You furnish the pictures and I'll furnish the war," goes an apocryphal instruction he was supposed to have sent in a telegram to an illustrator in Havana.

Hearst's papers pioneered big headlines, lots of pictures, cartoons, crime and xenophobia.

Nothing's really changed, says Chris Horrie, author of Tabloid Nation, the barons still follow his lead. "They all want to be Hearst. You start wars, select presidents and in the end go mad."

When Beaverbrook formed the Empire Free Trade Crusade, a campaigning political party, and started running by-election candidates alongside Rothermere, Baldwin snapped.

On 17 March 1931 he delivered his now famous speech at the Queens Hall in London, some of which was supplied by his cousin Rudyard Kipling.

"Their newspapers are not newspapers in the ordinary acceptance of the term, they are engines of propaganda for the constantly changing policies, desires, personal wishes, personal likes and personal dislikes of two men," he thundered.

"What the proprietorship of these papers is aiming at is power, but power without responsibility, the prerogative of the harlot throughout the ages."

Dr Brendon, author of The Life and Death of the Press Baron, says the use of Kipling's phrase "harlot" was genuinely shocking at the time, and enough to shut the barons up.

He says Beaverbrook had openly admitted running his newspapers to promote his own political agenda, and was unapologetic.

A year earlier, Rothermere refused to support Baldwin unless he provided him with the names of at least eight out of 10 of his future cabinet should he be elected.

Baldwin replied: "A more preposterous and insolent demand was never made on a leader of any political party. I repudiate it with contempt and I will fight that attempt at domination to the end."

Harold Wilson v Cecil King

King was the nephew of Northcliffe and Rothermere

Cecil King is notorious for trying to bring down the government of Harold Wilson with a front page.

He was chairman of the Daily Mirror's parent group during the 1960s when the paper sold over five million copies. By 1968 he had become disillusioned with Wilson's government and moved to topple the prime minister.

On 10 May, he went over the head of Mirror editor Hugh Cudlipp and ran a front page with the headline "Enough is enough."

Geoffrey Goodman, a former assistant editor of the Daily Mirror, described it in the Guardian as a "sensational piece written and signed by King demanding Wilson's dismissal by his own government and removal from 10 Downing Street".

Mr Wilson has lost all credibility: all authority, Cecil King wrote

But the move backfired. When King called a meeting of those he hoped to recruit for his national government, they reacted to his plan by calling him a traitor and storming out.

And the Mirror Group board responded by sacking King and replacing him with Cudlipp. "It was a mad idea," says Roy Greenslade, who wrote about the episode in his book Press Gang.

The genesis of King's anger with Wilson was a sense of injustice, Greenslade believes. He had wanted a cabinet post when Wilson's government was elected in 1964.

He also viewed Wilson's policies as too left wing. In the end, his behaviour was continuing a venerable family tradition. King's mother was the daughter of Lord Northcliffe.

"There was something in the genes," Greenslade says. "It all goes back to Northcliffe."

Herbert Asquith v Lord Northcliffe

Northcliffe was the first of the great buccaneering press barons of the 20th century

"In terms of the press baronetcy, Northcliffe is number one," says Roy Greenslade.

Born Alfred Harmsworth in Ireland, he was a pioneer of tabloid newspapers. With younger brother Harold - later the first Lord Rothermere - he launched the mass market Daily Mail and later bought the Times.

The former became the highest selling newspaper in the land, while the latter gave him a direct line to the British establishment.

Continue reading the main story

'Mad, bad and dangerous to know'

Northcliffe became obsessed with Perrier water and Bolsheviks, Cecil King believed he could foresee the future, and ex-Daily Mirror owner Robert Maxwell reportedly once holed up in a penthouse suite organising world peace via phone calls to Mother Teresa.

Indeed the telephone is the weapon of choice for press barons, says Piers Brendon.

Beaverbrook would ring up editors in the middle of the night, while entwined with a giggling lover.

Maxwell was a "great brute who liked to act as God on five telephones".

Source: Ian Jack, Chris Horrie, Piers Brendon

Before World War I his papers demanded a strongly anti-German line, prompting the Daily Star to declare: "Next to the Kaiser, Lord Northcliffe has done more than any living man to bring about the war".

By this point, his newspapers accounted for half of those sold in London. In 1915 the Times seriously undermined PM Herbert Asquith, paving the way for Northcliffe favourite David Lloyd George to replace him in Downing Street the following year.

Lloyd George responded by offering him a seat in cabinet. Northcliffe declined and instead took up the post of director of propaganda.

"He had the masses with the Daily Mail and the ruling classes with the Times," Greenslade says.

For a time the vast circulation of his papers gave him unrivalled power for a time.

For sheer political influence, he was surpassed by Lord Beaverbrook, Greenslade believes. But Northcliffe remains a towering figure in the history of newspaper proprietors.

He is credited with the line: "News is what somebody somewhere wants to suppress, everything else is advertising". (A variant of this is also attributed to US newspaper baron William Randolph Hearst.)

The cartoonist Max Beerbohm portrayed him struggling to restrain his tabloid instincts, with the line: "'Help! Again I feel the demons of sensationalism rising within me! Hold me fast!'" His legacy lives on today in the form of Northcliffe House in Kensington, home to the Daily Mail.

Clement Attlee v Lord Beaverbrook

Beaverbrook was born in Canada and published his first newspaper as a teenager

In the austere years following World War II, Labour Prime Minister Clement Attlee used a different method to tackle a hostile press - flatly ignoring them.

It was a tactic that proved highly successful, according to Dr Brendon, as it allowed him to focus on policies such as establishing the welfare state and nationalising major industries.

By now, Express owner Lord Beaverbrook - the first baron of Fleet Street - presided over the world's largest selling newspaper with a circulation approaching four million.

He had a reputation to be able to make or break almost anyone.

Historian and author Richard Heller says Attlee was so removed from the media that he had to be persuaded by his press secretary, Francis Williams, to install a tape machine at Number 10 to monitor breaking news.

Williams only sold the idea to cricket fanatic Attlee on the basis that it would give him access to the latest scores, Heller says.

One day when Attlee was checking the scores he was horrified to notice that the machine was also clattering out political news, the historian adds.

"Francis," Attlee said, "My cricket machine's gone wrong. It's putting out stuff about the government."

Williams replied: "I know, prime minister, I put it there."

Clash of the Press titians

[maqroll]

US Congress is beginning to set up a committee to investigate News Corp., and the possibility of phone hacking of 9/11 victims families. Imagine how Fox News is going to spin that story....And today the FBI announced they are proceeding with an investigation of their own. This could be massive as long as they keep on it and not let him weasel out of it. I would LOVE to see Murdoch in handcuffs in a years time.

[peterms]

Is it the Indie or Mark Steel who puts commas before the conjunction 'and' (other than excepted circumstances)? I can't believe it's the latter.

I hope it's both, since the usage is correct. If either or both of them thought it wrong, I would be...discommoded, shall we say. That is to say, upturned from my commode.

[leviramsey]

tubpeterms? (though I recognize that the photograph I allude to was slightly different in terms of what pieces of bathroom furniture were included...)

(tubpms brings to mind an image so depraved that I'm sure there's a site featuring such a photograph...)

[leviramsey]

Is it the Indie or Mark Steel who puts commas before the conjunction 'and' (other than excepted circumstances)? I can't believe it's the latter.

I hope it's both, since the usage is correct. If either or both of them thought it wrong, I would be...discommoded, shall we say. That is to say, upturned from my commode.

So is this another case of Malvern against the world?

[Juju]

I would be...discommoded, shall we say. That is to say, upturned from my commode.

But the original meaning of commode was simply an upstairs room? Ie If you find my house commodious, that means comfortable. Commode only became selectively used as initially an upstairs room, noted not to be a bedroom, and from then, a modest room for the use of a morning toilet, finally ending with a cabinet of which we are now familiar, with the evolution of an upstairs to a traditional home, followed by its compartmentalisation.

I could be wrong, but that was what I have always believed. If Peterms has been discommoded, that implies to me in modern parlance that someones stolen his en suite........

Isn't english a fantastic language?

[tonyh29]

maybe we could have a new thread on who is the ultimate internet warrior and leave this thread to it's original intent which was to slag off Cameron ?

[snowychap]

So is this another case of Malvern against the world?

Another?

Now sober, I can see an argument for it but I still couldn't watch any more of that bod on youtube. I still maintain it's generally unnecessary unless really required for clarity and, as I wasn't taught to do it, have always laboured under the assumption that it's wrong.

I did reach out for my copy of Fowler but it isn't on my bookcase - I shall go in search of it on the 'net.

Looking back at your post above, the other two examples (with which you were uncomfortable) wouldn't even qualify for the independent clause defence, would they?

[leviramsey]

Looking back at your post above, the other two examples (with which you were uncomfortable) wouldn't even qualify for the independent clause defence, would they?

Correct... looking back on them they wouldn't. The commas do not belong in those two.

Did I ever mention that I had a multi-year run as a champion sentence-diagrammer in school? I thought that my talent would get me girls, but, alas, I was mistaken.

[bickster]

So Brookes falls on her sword, when she was told to obviously, now her role as lightning rod is over, no doubt she'll be paid off handsomely.

[Gringo]

rupert won't be happy at being forced into this - I can see her as the chief exec of sky news before a year has passed.

[RunRickyRun]

Nope can't see it. She's been a total disaster as an executive, a role she was totally unsuitable for. I think there's more chance of her being reinvented as a celebrity once she has been (wrongly) exonerated from the whole affair.

She made the mistake of thinking this scandal could be sorted out by sneering at politicians and bribing policemen.

Now to bring down James Murdoch...