Inevitable: LulzSec Boat crashes into Murdoch debacle

19.07.2011
Combine the friskiest group of mutant script-kiddies with the ongoing car-crash pile-up of media control-freak Rupert Murdoch's media empire and what do you get? According to dangerousminds.net, a front-page on Rupe's newspaper The Sun website claimed the jowly octogenarian was "hacked by a group claiming to be LulzSec, who uploaded a fake front page story that 'Murdoch's cold, lifeless body had been found in his private glasshouse, after overdosing on palladium'." The text bears the hallmarks of LulzSec: various in-jokes and a style that screams "FAKE!"...which is good as no matter what Murdoch's managed in his decades of media-manipulation, inventing stories about the death of an elderly man has a built-in not-funny-factor. But while Rupert was said to have been breathing his last, he was receiving crash-courses in PR charm prior to his scheduled appearance before Britain's Parliament.

If you're a regular reader of the Wall Street Journal, you may be confused by all the fuss (could it be because Murdoch OWNS the WSJ?). To follow the breakneck pace of the Murdoch-empire-unraveling, read . If you haven't been following this stuff, prepare for a bit of a shock.

I have little sympathy for the Murdoch mob. They helped dumb-down the US media by creating absurd-entertainment-networks like Fox "News" where the news presenters speak "folksy" incorrect English, providing role models for subliterates. Freedom of expression--whether one agrees or not--is a good thing, but the Fox on-air presenters are sloppy at best and at worst, throw out a largely incoherent stew of straw-man arguments and other wrongheaded twaddle.