How Rupert Murdoch Changed the Media

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Media mogul Rupert Murdoch built News Corp from its roots in Australia to become an international multimedia empire. NPR's media correspondent David Folkenflik writes about the billionaire businessman in his new book, "Murdoch's World: The Last of the Old Media Empires." Folkenflik joins us to talk about the magnate's politics and about the trial now underway of alleged bribery and phone hacking by Murdoch's journalists in London.

 Listen to minutes 0 to 15:09 and answer the following questions:

1. What are the links between Murdoch’s and 10 Downing Street?

      2.  What examples of people does the interviewee provide as to the targets of News Corp hacking?

       3.  Although it was well known up to the scandal blowup that News Corp was hacking people, why were the English tolerant of it?

      4.  Why is Rupert Murdoch said to have become a lot more wary of media coverage?

      5. What is said to be peculiar about Fox?

      6. Complete the following sentences with the word(s) you hear:

        a.       This trial’s getting under way, …………………, …………………….., …………………………., we recently saw an article about, well, …………….. being taken away by Rebekah Brooks and others.

b.      Rebekah Brooks used to head the News of the World and then she went on to head The Daily Sun tabloid. She’s been described by others as being a ……………….. daughter. 

      c.       Andrew Coulson, who was her colleague as editor of the News of the World, and who then went on to be ……………………  guy for PM David Cameron.

       d.      We’re looking at …………………….. essentially of the Wall Street Journal reporters on the News of the World hacking scandal. They tried a number of times to kill the story.

      e.       At this ………………………… moment in the summer of 2011 when hacking scandal first blew up in the UK.

      f.       A family that has never …………………………. except in this terribly tragic and painful way

      g.      It was almost as if they we ………………………. feeding on themselves.

       h.      She (Cheri Blair) certainly …………………….. against News Corp and its successor company 21^st Century Fox.

       i.       They wouldn’t talk to you, News Corp weren’t talking to you and they were ……………………. others from talking to you and in a way publicly denigrated your reputation.
  
  

      j.      Roger Ailes and Fox have made Murdoch a ton of money and therefore that wins you some …………………………. .

       7.   What is meant by the words and expressions in bold?

      The media and the political elite were hand in glove.

       Rather than working for public interest they were working to further their own interests.
      
      Tony Blair and some of these other politicians were the poodles of Rupert Murdoch rather than Bush’s as so often they alleged.

       It is a credit to the newspaper and its journalists that that news did appear