We searched Google News in vain Wednesday afternoon for the latest, presumably sordid, developments in the U.S. budget crisis, finding instead only stories about the lethally hot weather that has blanketed much of the U.S., the apparent death of three hikers swept away by a waterfall at Yosemite, and yet one more setback between players and the NFL. Google’s story-of-the-hour concerned an unlikely Internet hero, Rupert Murdoch’s wife, Wendi Deng, who has come to the media baron’s defense with the ferocity of the proverbial house ablaze. Murdoch’s chief offense, as far as we can tell, is not the sleazy tactics his reporters used to ferret out very private information on certain people, but the blatantly political uses to which he has put some of that information. Not that every politician in the U.K. is his sworn enemy. Like any businessman who owns a newspaper, Murdoch has played favorites, and it is presumably only those whom his sensationalized reportage did not favor who have mounted an all-out assault on his publishing empire.
There are rumors that Soros is behind it all, but if this is true, he is even cleverer and more devious, although not more treacherous, than we’d given him credit for. It’s one thing for Soros to plot the destruction of a currency, but quite another for him to surreptitiously attempt to maneuver one’s formidably-armed enemy toward ruin. If Soros has indeed been a prime mover against Murdoch (as he may well have been against Fox network’s fallen matinee idol, Glenn Beck), it is unlikely to be revealed in the explicit manner of accusations that Murdoch brings against him. Rather, we should expect certain details harmful to Soros’ reputation and his far-flung business empire to dribble out over time. Moreover, because Soros keeps such a high-profile, it shouldn’t be much of a challenge for the demons of Fleet Street to find out exactly what he’s been up to.
Watergate Wannabees
And speaking of Fleet Street, one thing that seems to have gone largely unmentioned amidst the scandal is that the reporters who work for British tabloids like News of the World, The Daily Express and The Daily Mail are the very best at what they do. Even the lowliest cub reporters at these papers perform their duties with the kind of diligence and persistence that has been absent from U.S. journalism since the days of Woodward and Bernstein. Ironically, it was Woodward/Bernstein wannabees who killed old-fashioned reporting in America. By 1975, J-schools were churning out graduates by the thousands who were hell-bent on Making the World a Better Place. Crusaders all, they pursued the job as a profession rather than a trade, relegating the sometimes challenging task of getting one’s facts straight to secondary status beneath the Divine mission of elucidating Truth. And that, unfortunately, is what has made American newspapers so dull that tens of millions of us have stopped reading them.
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