Thursday, July 29, 2010
Much Ado About Nothing
I got this link from mediabistro, which sends me news from the day. It is a great service. The link hyped another round of sparring between the White House and Rupert Murdoch--sparring which began in Obama's first year over whether Fox News was a mainstream news network or a partisan appendage to the Republican Party. This link was to a Politico piece titled: "Rupert Murdoch to White House: No Free News." The first paragraph reads:
"It looks like Rupert Murdoch has finally figured out a way to make the White House pay--literally. The Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal has jacked up the rate it charges the administration's news clipping service a jaw-dropping $600,000 per year--and is steering the White House towards a direct deal with News Corp., according to an administration official."
You see, the White House--regarding of occupant--has a digest of the daily newspapers delivered to it each day to try to gain a sense of what has happened over night and what sorts of things will be driving the daily news agenda, and whether the White House needs to get on top of it. It used to be that staffers did this for the administration, but paying an executive branch officer to read newspapers ended up being more expensive than simply contracting out to news aggregating service. Currently the White House contracts with a Virginia service known as "Bulletin News." It pays the company around $100,000 (according to the story) for the service. NewsCorp has decided to charge services like Bulletin News more for access to the Wall Street Journal which the Bulletin News will pass off to its subscribers, which includes the White House. Now NewsCorp has its own service known as Factiva, which it is working with the White House to win its business.
So what was billed as an ideological battle between the Democratic White House and the conservative Murdoch is really all about business. And to top it off, the figures cited don't seem to be correct. Further, the White House could still use the Bulletin News sans Wall Street Journal, and instead subscribe to the paper and read it daily on their own.
Much ado about nothing.
"It looks like Rupert Murdoch has finally figured out a way to make the White House pay--literally. The Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal has jacked up the rate it charges the administration's news clipping service a jaw-dropping $600,000 per year--and is steering the White House towards a direct deal with News Corp., according to an administration official."
You see, the White House--regarding of occupant--has a digest of the daily newspapers delivered to it each day to try to gain a sense of what has happened over night and what sorts of things will be driving the daily news agenda, and whether the White House needs to get on top of it. It used to be that staffers did this for the administration, but paying an executive branch officer to read newspapers ended up being more expensive than simply contracting out to news aggregating service. Currently the White House contracts with a Virginia service known as "Bulletin News." It pays the company around $100,000 (according to the story) for the service. NewsCorp has decided to charge services like Bulletin News more for access to the Wall Street Journal which the Bulletin News will pass off to its subscribers, which includes the White House. Now NewsCorp has its own service known as Factiva, which it is working with the White House to win its business.
So what was billed as an ideological battle between the Democratic White House and the conservative Murdoch is really all about business. And to top it off, the figures cited don't seem to be correct. Further, the White House could still use the Bulletin News sans Wall Street Journal, and instead subscribe to the paper and read it daily on their own.
Much ado about nothing.
