relationship reflected in countless flicks to come out of tinsel town king kong a lot of racist stereotyping about africa and it covers up the us well the new vision is simple i think saving private ryan now which hughes helicopters were being used to put down and say american insurgents hotel rwanda there's the last king of scotland which is if those who are your dad uganda there's black hawk down that somalia and vilest goes on and on and on compelling film such as rambo to end up even shaping war history here's a monologue in that movie in which the sylvester stallone starts talking about how he and other troops came back from vietnam and were literally spat upon by right anti-war protesters no factual evidence of such an act was ever found by historians locked up here or be able to keep people started remembering that it happened to them while america's enemies come and go the regularity with which politics get

reflected in hollywood productions is impressive we all have relationships are like they're complicated they're not all good or all bad and yet when it comes to relationships with other countries when it comes to relationships of policies we see the world in very black and white terms come to think about it if you go to the movies that they're the pronounce and hear for more news. bringing you the latest in science and six months from the realms. of the future are covered.

today violence is once again flared up. these are the images the world seeing from the streets of canada. for asians are. some. can. we welcome across our computer all about taming the murdoch empire as the phone

hacking scandal in the u.k. involves more victims and politicians look for cover all eyes are on the future of news corp and its assets in the u.s. and beyond as the murdoch family finally outfoxed itself. can. crossed out the implications of the phone hacking scandal i'm joined by kevin zeese in baltimore he's a spokesperson and lawyer for the government accountability group protect our elections and author of an open letter to the f.b.i. and s.c.c. urging them to investigate murdoch's news corporation in the us in washington we have dave south danae he is communications director for free press and in london we cross a toby young he's a journalist and author of how to lose friends and alienate people all right gentlemen cross talk rules and in fact i mean you can jump in anytime you want kevin if i can go to you first because of your open letter here i took a look at some of the what was in bylaws of the f.c.c.

and they basically their job is to make sure how the airwaves are used and they have to ensure that they're used by people of quote good character who serve the public interest and speak with candor so as murdoch's television empire at least have any place in the united states today in light of what we've heard coming out of the u.k. . but we're here you know the u.k. and also we're hearing some to the united states of phone hacking where you know the u.k. would make murdoch and his news corp violator of the foreign corrupt practices act which has criminal and civil penalties and basically doesn't allow u.s. corporations to bribe foreign officials if murdoch is bribing foreign officials as seems to be the case they're talking about one hundred hundred thousand pounds or one hundred thousand dollars worth of bribes to the london police if that happened while the law and the f.c.c. should look at that and say that the twenty four stations the own that cover forty

percent of united states he should not be allowed a license of the news corp's license it should be revoked and new new new station are sure to come into play so i don't think he has any place united states and that's very important for. ok to be i'd like to go to you in london what do you think about what kevin had to say because we all know on this panel that these kind of practice is have been going on for a long time ok why the moral play now. well i think i. would ask kevin to define what he means by bribe a little more carefully because that sounds slightly overstating it what some of rupert murdoch's british newspapers have been accused of doing is paying the police the story for stories giving them tips in return for tip offs and i think that is absolutely. within any tabloid newspaper culture it's actually any country in the

world it's not a case i don't think anyone at this stage is accused news international the british subsidiary of news corp that actually bribing police officers to drop charges against them or anything like that it's simply paying for information to pull off ok is that is that is that can still fall foul of the corrupt practices act when you want to jump in there before we go today i think. yeah i think i would i think those two would fall as a problem to the federal foreign corrupt practices act is essentially giving money to a foreign official in order to benefit their corporation. probably and that's what a bribe is because they're not not drug charges that kind of thing although it's pretty interesting how those those in this investigation started years and five didn't really proceed very far so you will find more about about their later but i do think that what the british were probably described would be considered a bribe ok dave it sounds to me we were played to go ahead and i'm going to head.

suppose wood or bernstein. paid deep throat for the information which led to the watergate exposure do you think that that means that katharine graham should go to jail well that's not that's not a foreign corrupt practices act but there does raise questions and in fact it's become too common you know states media paying for stories ok to be so this is what i want to get you and i want to go to dave right now again you know these kind of practices are in demick in media in the english speaking world the western world ok so again you know why is this kind of moral outrage out there because you could make the claim and i'm not making it they did murdoch is being turned into a scapegoat for what everybody else does including his organisation. well i would i would say that singling out news corp and singling out murdoch in particular is shortsighted. yeah i'm not going to speak to you know how many other news organizations and gauging outright bribery and what

kevin described it as a matter of law under the former foreign corrupt practices act is bribery and it's giving money to officials in order for it to entice them to do something or not do something within within there are thore and certainly giving over private information would fall under that. whether other organizations are engaged in that same same precise activity i think i think is you know it's i wouldn't be surprised at all if it were happening i can't i can't confirm or deny that it is but looking at news corp as an isolated incident or an isolated company that does this sort of thing i think is naive ok tobi i mean one of the things that we in the twenty first century with the internet and everything journalism told it's all very very competitive it's very very expensive and if we look at. this is simply a business then we should expect something like this to happen i mean we're you

just have to get cut throat and you got to go cut cut corners go around the law maybe even break the law but everybody seems to be doing it and i think that it's because journalism has become just a purely business model and that's how we've gotten to the point where we are now. well there may be something in that i think certainly the fact that there is so much competition in the british newspaper market particularly now that readers are declining on an almost daily basis that is going to lead to a lot of corner cutting but i think. one of the misnomers about this particular scandal is that it represents a failure of regulation now for many years the british political class her. wanted to regulate the press much more heavily mainly because the press are constantly delving into their own wrongdoing they want to tame the press and my worry is that this scandal will be used as an excuse to regulate much more heavily the british

press and it's actually not a failure of the existing self regulating the mechanism that we have in place at present it's really a failure of the police to enforce the law because bribing officials in this country is illegal and phone hacking is also illegal the problem is because of the collusion between some of news international newspapers and the metropolitan police force and that's part of the police have an enforced the law as rigorously as they should have done but it's not a failure of regulation it's a failure of law enforcement well kevin it seems to me at least in the u.k. and we can talk about the us really as events develop there it you know the political class the media class and law enforcement it was just a kind of nice cozy relationship among all three of them ok all of them quote unquote benefited. no question and they all are benefiting i think told me point is exactly right that really was a failure of and couldn't force one of the current laws the acts of bribery in beijing people's privacy through hacking phones are illegal here as well and i

think that's a that's a really good point you know in the united states we have seen some cutting of corners you could call it maybe desperation as as revenue sink as readers say because viewers think the media seems to be going the wrong direction with more anonymous sources more paying people to speak. things that were in the past really of limited use now are going to be commonplace i think we're in a transition period of our media we've gone from this we have this concentrated corporate media that has no credibility among american public only twenty percent of the public believe the media tells the whole story and we're going to transition into a new form of democratized media and this will help get us there and dave this program is broadcast all around the world so can you tell my viewers outside of the united states how this candle is being covered in the united states. not particularly well is the short answer there's been been very little in television coverage c.n.n. has done has done a bit of fox and fox news channel has done almost nothing frankly and in fact

c.n.n. reported. on the fox news channel's. media criticism program called fox news watch during a commercial break the the people on the on the program were discussing how they weren't going to discuss this story. so kevin makes a very very strong and powerful point that concentration of media power in very few hands will lead to this sort of thing it's it's natural that a corporation is going to protect its own interests and news corp is an enormous company so no other no other news corp property is going to go to too terribly far out on a limb to to investigate this story. the wall street journal the bible of the wall street. is now owned by news corp or news corp and

it is is not going to give shareholders in news corp a real story on on this and when what it could mean to their to their bottom line and that's that's a real problem you don't get real news when when so much power is concentrated if you want to jump in there go ahead i just wanted to say case you with the optimistic note kevin struck he imagined. this the fallout from the scandal would ultimately be good for democracy my worry is that if the fallout from this scandal is great regulation of the press and a much more rigorous enforcement of the existing rules as they affect the press is the you'll end up with a very regulated print media which will then be unable to. it's with a completely unregulated internet media and i'm not sure that if people become less reliant on the print media even on television news and more reliance on what

they're gaining from the internet that would be good for democracy can anyone reply to that it's an interesting point well of course where we're actually seeing much less reliance on the print media the court the corporate media and the corporate television news people just don't trust any longer i'm sure it's true you mention in britain it's happening it's happening here dramatic drop some confidence dramatic drops in viewership and readership will receive the same time is an increase in more democratic forms of media and it's not just the murdoch scandal that's going to add to this it's a whole series of events almost a perfect storm of events i was ok with the let you release that point out are a short break and after a short break we'll continue our discussion on murdoch and his empire state with our. education system.

ok tom foreman here broadcasting live from washington d.c. coming up today on the big picture.

and you can see. the snow. welcome back across town i think you're a little too mind you were talking about murdoch under siege the sun taking the sun the sun. ok kevin i'd like to go back to you and maybe start with the question a question and we look at how competitive corporate media is today in this

scandalous demonstrating it is corruption a necessary ingredient to be competitive. well it will become even more. if the department of justice is not working aggressively to enforce the laws against iraq and investigate and i'm a big fan of freedom of press and don't want to see the government you know investigating the time of the free press does not give a license to break the law to tap phones to bribe officials those are illegal and they should be investigated as crimes and not be blocked right through the press and my saying earlier i see a greater democratization in the media are occurring not just because of murdoch but the lack of credibility of the media murdoch giving a million dollars plus the republican party and its n.b.c. and fox news to going to parties and news outlets people just don't trust anymore people want to see more democratized media things like wiki leaks for example are also pushing in that direction by making it easy for people to anonymously provide information to the media through wiki leaks and then we can establish is it and

then all of us can become media outlets the social networks the blogs the websites and we all become media reporters and we can all interpret the news based on documents that are anonymously leaks that's a democratisation immediate i think is a positive step i agree with toby i don't want to see media more regulated but i do want to see media you know of is forced to obey basic criminal and laws against invasion of privacy ok kilby do you think media is held to a lower bar when it comes to obeying the law because you know we we we have woodward and bernstein you know looking for the bad guys you know interested in journalism we don't like that and we like seen journalists going after the bad guys and that's part of this story here but our journalists are held to a lower bar and doing their job. i think that. there's been a certain journalists being granted a degree of latitude particularly tabloid journalists because mainly the people that they are breaking the law to find out about are celebrities sportsman and so

forth and there is a huge amount of public sympathy when a celebrity gets caught with his pants down so they think well if you have to have his phone to get that story so be it it doesn't cause public outrage there isn't a political outcry i think where where there are two to two distinguishing characteristics about this scandal i mean it really exploded when it was discovered that when anyway some news of the world reporters were accused of having listened into the voice mails of a missing girl who turned out to be dead and then deleted those voice mails after listening to them thereby destroying potential evidence in an ongoing criminal investigation that caused public outrage and that that that that triggered this this murder complex as we call it here the other reason i think is that the reason murdoch in particular is being targeted not just because it's journalists at his newspapers were accused of wrongdoing it's also fueled by political analysts he's generally thought to be a conservative and in the liberal left media in particular the guardian or most liberal newspapers really doggedly pursuing this story now everyone knew that these

kinds of things were going on not just on murdoch's papers were on all the tabloids and no one did at the last government didn't do anything about it i think that's partly because rupert murdoch threw his weight behind the last two labor prime ministers it was only when he switched support to the conservative party that the labor party and the liberal left media became up on their high horse about these wrong doing ok if i go to you dave i mean if it's all of our politics in the u.k. and i accept oh is it all about fear in the united states because if you put those guys have pointed out to me it's not covered very much in the united states i mean you know shareholders are afraid every people are afraid of getting on murdoch's houses they don't know which way it's going to blow in the us. yeah i would i would agree with toby the there is quite a bit of far too cozy relationship between the media in general and and politicians and in news corp's case in particular fox news channel is widely

regarded fairly or unfairly as a as the organ of the republican party and i mean if you just look at look at who there are on air personalities personalities have been it's loaded with either current or potential presidential candidates from the republican party so it's no secret that fox news channel tends to favor a conservative point of view and if you are a politician on the right you certainly want to curry favor and if you're a politician on the on the left you have to be afraid of that attack machine coming after you and they've claimed a number of scalps in the pl in the political establishment here and nobody wants to put his or her neck too far out on that line. campaign if i go to you he has been murdoch been successful because of corrupt business practices because we did a program on this subject last week and we had a gentleman that was from the left but actually praised murdoch for his business model but maybe that business model was successful because of these practices. oh

yeah before this scandal broke you say it was aggressive business practices we know yet how aggressive they are united states do they as they're doing the u.k. cross the line of criminal behavior and if they are then i think his business model will not be seen as one that's worth worth copying and i gree with david that we do have this kind of cozy relationship between politicians and media united states in fact politicians need the media to get elected they need appear on the air to get elected they pay the media tens of millions of dollars in advertising revenue they raise money from billionaires or do their it's a symbiotic relationship between big business big media and the two point two two big corporate ease and for she was led to as a total corruption of us to mock recy we know long our politics is the reason the people's interests we are part of the reason and big business interests whether they're democrats or republicans we are politicians that kowtow to the media and play the twenty four hour media cycle we really don't care and i think that's one

reason why you're seeing readership in viewership dropping people see this corrupt symbiotic relationship as undermining really any kind of any any functional government we have a dysfunctional government that can't be all health care can't deal with energy can't deal with climate we can't do all the any is issues it's a it's a disgrace. go ahead joe i was going to ask you go first go ahead. i wouldn't ask you that you currently have a dysfunctional government in the united states we're still waiting for you to result the debt ceiling if i worried about that at the moment in europe i think one thing i would say in favor of one aspect of rupert murdoch's business model is that quite often cross subsidy goes on so he uses the profits from a more profitable possible business to subsidize the less profitable parts in the u.k. for instance the news of the world and the some the two best selling tabloids owned by news international he the profits from those papers are used to keep afloat and use paper called the times which is one of the oldest and most respected newspapers

in this country. rupert murdoch does that i think partly because of the political influence that having a respectable serious global newspaper gives him but also i think because it is a lot of newspapers you can see that in new york i mean he keeps the new york post afloat tens of millions of dollars a year i don't get that much political clout but he just clearly loves he's played as he has in for blood it's in his family and i think my worry is that if murdoch pulled out of the u.k. the times for one is going to close gave way why can't we go back to the issue of regulation why can't there be regulations in separate countries where you can own one newspaper or a new or a television station or a television station what a magazine way why can't the industry regulate it from an ownership point of view where you don't have someone like murdoch that is so powerful particularly in the u.k. and the united states we could avoid something like this from you know if you want to be in t.v. good be in t.v. but don't be in print. right well that's to be theoretically that is the case there

that is the case and that's how that's how it was before rupert murdoch decided that he wanted to own t.v. stations and newspapers in the same in the same cities and through a very aggressive lobbying campaign was able to get an exception for that but now it's become the rule television stations and newspapers owned in the same own by the same company in the same cities lead to very troubling situations because. american democracy is founded on the principle that the marketplace of ideas will lead to better come ocracy and if you have a newspaper and now with with. several shared service agreements you can have the same company operating to television stations in the same city where it owns a newspaper and in a smaller town there might be no competing newspaper there might be no competing television stations so in that sort of situation you've got one company. dominating

and monopolizing the entire tape you're not going to get opposing points of view free press is an organization that is founded on the idea that loosening media consolidation and in the corporate grip on media democratizing it through very various means including internet as kevin discussed and through better public media and through more diverse ownership will lead to better democracy because people will will get opposing sides and you know just but as i think you'll see she's able to as you're telling me will start talking about the good the public good and that's almost never mentioned or see in media today because it's just one big business and it's very competitive and very lucrative kevin what about that i mean is journalism really just detached itself from its roots of serving the public good . you know it has and i think that's also partly because your leisure very free media and politicians and used to be that we consider the year waves radio and t.v. the public airwaves and public as you read early in the first question of the

f.c.c. these mission include a public interest that's almost disappeared even as the f.c.c. has mission you don't really hear much about anymore we don't even call the public areas that we know we call the commercial media and that's been a major mistake and i hope that this scandal and the declining revenues and viewers and readers of commercial media. are starting to happen that we start to move back toward a public interest perspective that these are public airwaves and start to require me to do much more for the public good including giving everyone every kelly who gets to tell you the last word job you've got the last word of the program go ahead i think the problem with. the state effectively playing a greater role in the media whether it's from subsidy or through regulation through requiring the media to be more balanced and so forth and so the public good is that just becomes another mechanism for the state to control what's printed in the media and maybe they just cut out the middleman they don't have to curry favor with

rupert murdoch anymore they can just do it directly and i'm not sure that's a credible system ok dave i'll give you the last last word go ahead where you think . ok well you know i have i have i am a former journalist i feel better now but what i have what i have seen too much of when i was in the business and since i got out of the business is that too much of it depends on access you're not going to to a. point we're nearly completely out of time many thanks so my guess is in london baltimore and in washington and thanks to our viewers for watching us here are to see you next time and remember across parts. of. say.

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