NewsCorp may buy Simon & Schuster

[Daddy Todd]

Christopher wrote:

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I don't think one can worry too much about which multigajillionaire owns a piece of any given thing, since you'd pretty much have to live on a desert island to avoid using something that was connected to them in some way. For instance, the Star Wars films are distributed by 20th Century Fox, which is a subsidiary of Murdoch's NewsCorp. Would you boycott Star Wars for the rest of your life because of that?

Well, Disney now owns the SW franchise, so I assume any new films will be released under one of Disney's banners, not Fox. Anyway, after the prequels, my interest in seeing any more Star Wars is now dipping into negative numbers.

Christopher wrote:

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Or Planet of the Apes or Die Hard or X-Men or the Alien franchise?

Rise of the Planet of the Apes was pretty good, and I wouldn't mind seeing a sequel, but it's easier for me to justify one movie a year from Fox than it is to justify a steady stream of books from Murdoch's Evil Empire. I seriously avoid HarperCollins, unless it's a new Tim Powers. The other properties are long-since played out, and if Prometheus is any indicator, are as deep into the crap well as Star Wars at this point.

Christopher wrote:

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What about The Shield or Burn Notice or White Collar?

Are those TV shows? I don't watch TV.

Christopher wrote:

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Do you boycott Hulu and Photobucket because NewsCorp owns them?

Don't think I've ever used Photobucket; Tumblr is lots more fun. Hulu re-runs TV shows, and, as noted above, I don't watch TV.

Christopher wrote:

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What about its 5% share in MySpace?

MyWhat? I don't think anyone has used MySpace -- apart from no-name indie bands -- since Facebook killed it dead dead dead. No great loss there.

Christopher wrote:

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The thing to remember is that there are countless layers of hierarchy between the things you actually watch or read or use and the moguls who ultimately profit from them. For instance, there was all that furor recently over the homophobic statements of the guy who owned the Chick-Fil-A corporation, but that wasn't the fault of the people who owned the individual restaurant franchises or the people they employed (many of whom are gay themselves). Boycotting their restaurants probably hurt those people lower on the totem pole a lot more than it hurt the owner.

Nice attempt to make the protesters worse than Cathy. Sorry, not buying it. I've worked for deeply homophobic companies; they eventually learned they must change or die. Chik-Fil-A needs some kind of wake-up call to prompt them to move on from the '50's. If we don't work every angle (including boycotts and protests) they will have no incentive to leave their hatefulness behind.

Christopher wrote:

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At that level, these moguls don't have much contact with the actual businesses they own. They just see the money that comes in from them, and it's all kind of interchangeable to them.

So, is it wrong of me to decide not to contribute even one penny of my hard-earned money to people who hate me? It's pretty much the only leverage we have against their kind of evil, so I'm going to leverage it for all its worth.

[Daddy Todd]

Ian Keldon wrote:

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Hey Todd, as an aside: where did you get your avatar? I LIKE it!

Ian, it comes from the Frank R. Paul-painted cover of the October, 1953 issue of Science-Fiction Plus, edited by Hugo Gernsback (the guy the Hugo Award is named after.)

I turned the image upside down, to make it all the more obvious that Roddenberry & Jefferies took inspiration from that illustration when designing the Starship Enterprise.

I like knowing there's a link between Gernsback & Paul (editor & cover artist, respectively) of the first-ever science fiction (or "scientifiction") magazine -- Amazing Stories -- and StarTrek.

[bbailey861]

It used to be - then the shares tanked. Now he's just a multi-millionaire.

[BillJ]

Daddy Todd wrote:

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So, is it wrong of me to decide not to contribute even one penny of my hard-earned money to people who hate me? It's pretty much the only leverage we have against their kind of evil, so I'm going to leverage it for all its worth.

Except for when its something you really want to read or see. Seems a bit hypocritical.

[Christopher]

Daddy Todd wrote:

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Nice attempt to make the protesters worse than Cathy. Sorry, not buying it. I've worked for deeply homophobic companies; they eventually learned they must change or die. Chik-Fil-A needs some kind of wake-up call to prompt them to move on from the '50's. If we don't work every angle (including boycotts and protests) they will have no incentive to leave their hatefulness behind.

You completely missed my point. Of course I agree with you about homophobes; I'd be an idiot not to. But the kind of extremism you're engaging in is no more realistic or constructive than the extremism of people like Murdoch or that Chik-Fil-A owner. You're spreading your net of hostility so wide that it encompasses a lot of people who aren't to blame for the attitudes or choices of a few people a dozen steps higher on the corporate ladder. Hell, now you're even attacking me, even though I agree with your basic morals, just because I question your methods. That's not constructive in any way. Extremism in any direction is just part of the problem, not part of the solution.

So, is it wrong of me to decide not to contribute even one penny of my hard-earned money to people who hate me?

See, that's just the kind of blind, unfair generalization I'm talking about. There are probably millions of people working for companies that happen to be owned by moguls like Murdoch, and those people come from all stripes, all walks of life, all ideologies and ethnic groups and social classes and lifestyles.

And come on, you know how the moguls work. They give themselves raises and bonuses even when their corporations are tanking. The only people who ever feel any financial sting if their businesses do badly are the employees lower down, the people who are not to blame for what the moguls believe or do.

[Ian Keldon]

Daddy Todd wrote:

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Ian, it comes from the Frank R. Paul-painted cover of the October, 1953 issue of Science-Fiction Plus, edited by Hugo Gernsback (the guy the Hugo Award is named after.)

I turned the image upside down, to make it all the more obvious that Roddenberry & Jefferies took inspiration from that illustration when designing the Starship Enterprise.

I like knowing there's a link between Gernsback & Paul (editor & cover artist, respectively) of the first-ever science fiction (or "scientifiction") magazine -- Amazing Stories -- and StarTrek.

Cool!

[Gotham Central]

Christopher wrote:

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You completely missed my point. Of course I agree with you about homophobes; I'd be an idiot not to. But the kind of extremism you're engaging in is no more realistic or constructive than the extremism of people like Murdoch or that Chik-Fil-A owner. You're spreading your net of hostility so wide that it encompasses a lot of people who aren't to blame for the attitudes or choices of a few people a dozen steps higher on the corporate ladder. Hell, now you're even attacking me, even though I agree with your basic morals, just because I question your methods. That's not constructive in any way. Extremism in any direction is just part of the problem, not part of the solution.

See, that's just the kind of blind, unfair generalization I'm talking about. There are probably millions of people working for companies that happen to be owned by moguls like Murdoch, and those people come from all stripes, all walks of life, all ideologies and ethnic groups and social classes and lifestyles.

And come on, you know how the moguls work. They give themselves raises and bonuses even when their corporations are tanking. The only people who ever feel any financial sting if their businesses do badly are the employees lower down, the people who are not to blame for what the moguls believe or do.

I don't know...in terms of NewsCorp, its not just Murdoch the person that's evil...its the company as well that I have serious problems with. Chik-Fil-A might be run by homophobes, but its official policies have not been all that stomach churning. NewsCorp itself if problematic. I refuse to watch Fox entertainment because I'm horrifically appalled by Fox News. What that company has done to media across the board has been awful. I might not want to have a beer with Michael Eisner at Disney, but Disney does not regularly antagonize me with its behavior in the same way that NewsCorp does.

As a side note, I always found it amusing that DC Comics in the 80s modeled the revamped Lex Luthor and his company LexCorp off of Rupert Murdoch. It makes perfect sense that they guy has become the symbol of corporate evil. Also amusing that DC Comics would eventually be gobbled up by Time Warner, owner of CNN who's biggest competitor is NewsCorp and Fox News.

[Christopher]

^Well, Simon & Schuster has published many books by right-wing authors such as Glenn Beck over the years. So it's not as if Star Trek books have never been corporately linked to anything right-wing before. I think any large corporation is going to encompass a wide range of viewpoints in its products -- because, let's face it, the bottom line is always going to be how much money they can make from it, regardless of where it falls on the political spectrum. NewsCorp may own FOX "News," but it also owns the FOX Network, whose shows like The Simpsons and Married... With Children have spent decades lampooning and undermining the very same traditional values that FOX "News" purports to defend.

I once considered whether to give up buying Kraft cheese products when I learned that Kraft was owned by Philip Morris, the tobacco company. But I ultimately decided not to. Corporations are just too interlinked today; with so few megacorporations with their fingers in so many pies, there probably isn't a single one that doesn't touch our lives constantly in ways we don't even realize. Money, physical and otherwise, flows through all sectors of the economy -- that's what it's for. The idea that we can somehow avoid doing any kind of business that connects to someone or something we don't care for is probably a fantasy.

[JD]

I've heard for a while now that if you trace down every single company to who owns the company that owns that company, ect. you'd eventually end up with only about a half dozen major corporations.

[MacLeod]

So does not having anything to do with News Corp extned as far as any film whuch uses say Fox Studios Australia to film some of it's scenes. No matter which company actually releases the film.

[Daddy Todd]

BillJ wrote:

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Except for when its something you really want to read or see. Seems a bit hypocritical.

Yep, it is. I don't pretend to be politically or morally perfect, but at least I can try.

Look, it's about choices. I have a limited number of dollars to spend, so I have to choose where to spend them. So, I make an attempt to reward corporations that I think are good citizens, and avoid rewarding corporations that are bad citizens. ExxonMobil is one example of a company I avoid patronizing; even while I recognize that some of the gasoline I buy from Citgo or Sinclair may have been refined at an EM refinery or moved on an EM tanker. So, I do what I can do and call it good -- I don't buy gas from EM-branded gas stations (even though I know that they're probably owned by some small company that licenses the name.)

It's an imperfect world, as Christopher so aptly points out above, where big corporations are so intertwined and interrelated it's impossible to avoid doing business with any particular egregious corporate citizen.

But what alternative do I have? I simply can't force myself to walk into a Chik-Fil-A without losing all self-respect, so I go around the corner to KFC when I have a hankering for greasy chicken.

[Christopher]

I thought the Chik-Fil-A situation was resolved. Back in September, it was announced that they'd ceased donating money to "organizations that promote discrimination, specifically against LGBT civil rights." They've already caved to public opinion. If anything, it might be better if people did support their business now in order to express approval for that new policy. If they lost business while they supported discrimination and gained business back again after ending that policy, it would give them an incentive to continue on the right path. Well, hopefully. I think that as a rule, positive reinforcement does more good than negative. You can be more successful at changing people's behavior by giving them rewards for changing than by punishing them for not changing.

[Fer]

Christopher wrote:

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I thought the Chik-Fil-A situation was resolved. Back in September, it was announced that they'd ceased donating money to "organizations that promote discrimination, specifically against LGBT civil rights." They've already caved to public opinion. If anything, it might be better if people did support their business now in order to express approval for that new policy. If they lost business while they supported discrimination and gained business back again after ending that policy, it would give them an incentive to continue on the right path. Well, hopefully. I think that as a rule, positive reinforcement does more good than negative. You can be more successful at changing people's behavior by giving them rewards for changing than by punishing them for not changing.

I can't believe I didn't hear about the policy change before now. Thanks for sharing this.

ETA: After discussing this with some of my family, it was brought to my attention that Chick-Fil-A has said they've "made no such concessions" and are being very ambiguous about whether they are or are not still donating to those groups. They say they continue to support family-centric groups, but don't specify which family-centric groups.

Which could mean that either nothing's changed and they're just trying to keep quiet about it now so it casts reasonable doubt, or they may not want to admit they stopped donating to Focus on the Family because they don't want to bring about a boycott from the anti-gay groups as well. (Check out Josh Hutchison's reply at http://www.mikehuckabee.com/mike-huc...e-63cb9145e01a for an example.)

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/03/chick-fil-a-president-dan-cathy-biblical-families-_n_1935786.html

[Patrick O'Brien]

Christopher wrote:

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I think that as a rule, positive reinforcement does more good than negative. You can be more successful at changing people's behavior by giving them rewards for changing than by punishing them for not changing.

Well said Chris! Only problem is management techniques are slow to adapt to this type of thinking. I know where I work (like many others) it's all stick and no carrot.

[RPJOB]

I'd rather support people and companies that are already doing the right thing rather than those that I hope will change their ways.

I'll shop at Costco because of the way they treat their employees and won't shop at Wal-Mart/Sam's club for the same reason. Read this story for the deeper reasons why.

http://www.iveybusinessjournal.com/t...-at-the-bottom