That's better,
Now, what the fuck are you rattling on about, Philbin?
Well, obviously, the Newscorp International business and News Of The World r.i.p.; you know (allegedly) paying off the police, (allegedly) wining and dining future political parties, (allegedly) wangling privileged information from government aids re: BskyB etc... is that really what happened with Murdoch's support of New Labour?
Cos it goes all the way back, right?
All the way back to Reagan and Thtacher, those two love birds, and the The Sun newspaper. Remember when The Sun used to be staunchly Conservative? It was. But something changed in 1996/7 when the centre-left New Labour manifesto was born.
The Sun won Labour the 1997 election, for sure, by (they'd say) 'riding the wave of public opinion'. Right? But what back room deals were done to sponsor such mainstream media support for a sworn enemy, such blatant editorial ship-jumping? What of the 'war of terror'? What of other things that seem to have happened, the outing of Mandelson? Yet still taking Labour through to a second victory in 2001, erm just before MadCow and 9/11 happened. And during whatever the 7/7 attacks were. And Iraq, Afghanistan et al.
I know, I know, but ... here's the question I'm hesitant to ask (because it's too fucking scary), "James Murdoch was in the Leveson Inquiry into news practices today and said something along the lines of 'we changed from conservative to labor to ride the wave of public opinion' or words to that effect."
But the question, Mike?
"Oh, yeah. I don't wanna ask it. I don't wanna think about the chicken-egg quandary." which came first?
It's like with the RAP question, "Are rappers 'seriously' just singing about injustices or are they really the people who control who gets whacked as dictated by the structure and content of their songs and album covers, their 'stance'? Is such a tiny organisation like Republic of New Afrika really holding the governments of the world hostage?" utter insanity, right?
Are the NEWSPAPERS really dictating selective political policy in exchange for their full-spectrum support through associated news companies in conglomerated organisation like Fox News and the Hollywood media machine 20th Century Fox and such?
"How much influential control does the media have on our mainstream beliefs and elective expectations, and most importantly, do media moguls really tell prime ministers when to jump, and how high?"