| Birth date | April 17, 1978 |
|---|---|
| Birth place | Dumfries, Scotland| |
David Murdoch (born April 17, 1978 in Dumfries) is a Scottish curler from Lockerbie. Murdoch and his team of Ewan MacDonald, Warwick Smith, Euan Byers and Peter Smith were the 2006 and 2009 World Curling Champions.
Murdoch and his team represented Scotland again at the 2008 World Men's Curling Championship, where he lost to Canada in the final.
In 2009, Murdoch once again won a gold medal for Scotland at the World Mens Curling Championship, which was held in Moncton, NB.
On January 17, 2010, Murdoch's rink became the first non-Canadian team to win the TSN Skins Game. His team won $70,500 (₤43,000) for the win.
After the 2009-10 season, Murdoch's Olympic team broke up.
Ewan MacDonald, Third
Peter Smith, Second
Euan Byers, Lead
Graeme Connal, Alternate
Ewan MacDonald, Third
Warwick Smith, Second
Euan Byers, Lead
Craig Wilson, Alternate
*Ewan MacDonald (third)
Key
Category:1978 births Category:Living people Category:People from Dumfries Category:Scottish curlers Category:Curlers at the 2006 Winter Olympics Category:World curling champions Category:Olympic curlers of Great Britain Category:Curlers at the 2010 Winter Olympics
This text is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA License. This text was originally published on Wikipedia and was developed by the Wikipedia community.
| Name | Keith Rupert Murdoch |
|---|---|
| Caption | Rupert Murdoch – World Economic Forum Annual Meeting Davos 2007 |
| Birth date | March 11, 1931 |
| Birth place | Melbourne, Australia |
| Religion | Christian |
| Occupation | Chairman and CEO of News Corporation |
| Networth | US$6.2 billion (2010) |
| Spouse | |
| Children | Prudence Murdoch (b.1958) Elisabeth Murdoch (b.1968) Lachlan Murdoch (b.1971) James Murdoch (b.1972) Grace Murdoch (b.2001) Chloe Murdoch (b.2003) |
| Parents | Keith Murdoch (1885–1952) Elisabeth Joy Greene (b. 1909) |
| Awards | Companion of the Order of Australia (1984) |
Keith Rupert Murdoch, AC, KSG (; born 11 March 1931) is an Australian-born American media magnate and the founder, Chairman, and CEO of .
Beginning with one newspaper in Adelaide, Murdoch acquired and started other publications in his native Australia before expanding News Corp. into the United Kingdom, United States and Asian media markets. Although it was in Australia in the late 1950s that he first dabbled in television, he later sold these assets, and News Corp.'s Australian current media interests (still mainly in print) are restricted by cross-media ownership rules. Murdoch's first permanent foray into TV was in the USA, where he created Fox Broadcasting Company in 1986. In the 2000s, he became a leading investor in satellite television, the film industry and the Internet, and purchased a leading American newspaper, The Wall Street Journal.
Rupert Murdoch was listed three times in the Time 100 as one among the most influential people in the world. He is ranked 13th most powerful person in the world in the 2010 Forbes's The World's Most Powerful People list. With a net worth of US$6.3 billion, he is ranked 117the wealthiest person in the world.
Over the next few years, Murdoch established himself in Australia as a dynamic business operator, expanding his holdings by acquiring suburban and provincial newspapers in New South Wales, Queensland, Victoria and the Northern Territory, including the Sydney afternoon tabloid, The Daily Mirror, as well as a small Sydney-based recording company, Festival Records.
His first foray outside Australia involved the purchase of a controlling interest in the New Zealand daily The Dominion. In January 1964, while touring New Zealand with friends in a rented Morris Minor after sailing across the Tasman, Murdoch read of a takeover bid for the Wellington paper by the British-based Canadian newspaper magnate, Lord Thomson of Fleet. On the spur of the moment, he launched a counter-bid. A four-way battle for control ensued in which the 32-year-old Murdoch outwitted his rivals.
Later in 1964, Murdoch launched The Australian, Australia's first national daily newspaper, which was based first in Canberra and later in Sydney. The Australian, a broadsheet, was intended to give Murdoch new respectability as a 'quality' newspaper publisher, as well as greater political influence.
In 1972, Murdoch acquired the Sydney morning tabloid The Daily Telegraph from Australian media mogul Sir Frank Packer, who later admitted regretting selling it to him. In that year's election, Murdoch threw his growing power behind the Australian Labor Party under the leadership of Gough Whitlam and duly saw it elected.
In 1981 Murdoch acquired The Times and The Sunday Times, (the papers which Lord Northcliffe had once owned) from Canadian newspaper publisher, Lord Thomson of Fleet. The distinction of owning The Times came to him through his careful cultivation of its owner, who had grown tired of losing money on it as a result of much industrial action and limited ability to publish for several months.
During the 1980s and early 1990s, Murdoch's publications were generally supportive of the UK's Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. At the end of the Thatcher/Major era, Murdoch switched his support to the Labour Party and its leader, Tony Blair. The closeness of his relationship with Blair and their secret meetings to discuss national policies was to become a political issue in Britain. Though this later started to change, with The Sun publicly renouncing the ruling Labour government and lending its support to David Cameron's Conservative Party, which soon after came to form a coalition government. Former Prime Minister Gordon Brown's official spokesman said in November 2009 that Brown and Murdoch "were in regular communication" and that "there is nothing unusual in the prime minister talking to Rupert Murdoch".
In 1986, Murdoch introduced electronic production processes to his newspapers in Australia, Britain and the United States. The greater degree of automation led to significant reductions in the number of employees involved in the printing process. In England, the move roused the anger of the print unions, resulting in a long and often violent dispute that played out in Wapping, one of London's docklands areas, where Murdoch had installed the very latest electronic newspaper publishing facility in an old warehouse.
The bitter dispute at Fortress Wapping started with the dismissal of 6000 employees who had gone on strike and resulted in street battles, demonstrations and a great deal of bad publicity for Murdoch. Many suspected that the Conservative government of Margaret Thatcher had colluded in the Wapping affair as a way of damaging the British trade union movement.
Murdoch's British-based satellite network Sky Television incurred massive losses in its early years of operation. As with many of his other business interests, Sky was heavily subsidised by the profits generated by his other holdings, but eventually he was able to convince rival satellite operator British Satellite Broadcasting to accept a merger on his terms in 1990. The merged company, BSkyB, has dominated the British pay-TV market ever since.
In response to print media's decline and the increasing influence of on-line journalism during the 2000s Murdoch proclaimed his support of the micropayments model for obtaining revenue from on-line news, although this has been criticised by some.
News Corporation has subsidiaries in the Bahamas, the Cayman Islands, the Channel Islands and the Virgin Islands. From 1986, News Corporation's annual tax bill averaged around seven per cent of its profits.
In 1995, Murdoch's Fox Network became the object of scrutiny from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), when it was alleged that News Ltd.'s Australian base made Murdoch's ownership of Fox illegal. However, the FCC ruled in Murdoch's favor, stating that his ownership of Fox was in the best interests of the public. That same year, Murdoch announced a deal with MCI Communications to develop a major news website and magazine, The Weekly Standard. Also that year, News Corp. launched the Foxtel pay television network in Australia in partnership with Telstra.
In 1996, Murdoch decided to enter the cable news market with the Fox News Channel, a 24-hour cable news station. Following its launch, the heavily-funded Fox News consistently eroded CNN's market share and eventually proclaimed itself as "the most-watched cable news channel". Ratings studies released in the fourth quarter of 2004 showed that the network was responsible for nine of the top ten programs in the "Cable News" category at that time. Rupert Murdoch and Ted Turner (owner of CNN) are long-standing rivals.
In late 2003, Murdoch acquired a 34 percent stake in Hughes Electronics, the operator of the largest American satellite TV system, DirecTV, from General Motors for $6 billion (USD).
In 2004, Murdoch announced that he was moving News Corp.'s headquarters from Adelaide, Australia to the United States. Choosing a US domicile was designed to ensure that American fund managers could purchase shares in the company, since many were deciding not to buy shares in non-US companies. Some analysts believed that News Corp.'s Australian domicile was leading to the company being undervalued compared with its peers.
On 20 July 2005, News Corp. bought Intermix Media Inc., which held MySpace.com and other popular social networking-themed websites, for $580 million USD. On 11 September 2005, News Corp. announced that it would buy IGN Entertainment for $650 million (USD).
In May 2007, Murdoch made a $5 billion offer to purchase Dow Jones, owner of the Wall Street Journal. At the time, the Bancroft family, which controlled 64% of the shares, firmly declined the offer, opposing Murdoch's much-used strategy of slashing employee numbers and "gutting" existing systems. Later, the Bancroft family confirmed a willingness to consider a sale – besides Murdoch, the Associated Press reported that supermarket magnate Ron Burkle and Internet entrepreneur Brad Greenspan were among the interested parties. On 1 August 2007, the BBC's "News and World Report" and NPR's Marketplace radio programs reported that Murdoch had acquired Dow Jones; this news was received with mixed reactions.
Seven complained that News Corporation had abused its market power which derived from its half-ownership of the National Rugby League, half-ownership of C7's direct competitor, Fox Sports, and 25 per cent ownership of the Foxtel pay TV service. Seven wanted Justice Ronald Sackville to order News and Publishing and Broadcasting Ltd to divest their combined 50% stake in Foxtel or to sell their wholly owned Fox Sports. They argued that this would be justified because of the way in which Foxtel gave preferential treatment to Fox Sports and declined to take any rival sports channel provider on "reasonable commercial terms".
In evidence given to the court on 26 September 2005, Stokes alleged that PBL executive James Packer came to his home in December 2000 and warned him that PBL and News Limited were "getting together" to prevent the AFL rights being granted to C7.
However, Justice Sackville dismissed Seven's case on all grounds, saying that there was "more than a hint of hypocrisy" in many of Seven's claims.
Recently, Murdoch has bought out the Turkish TV channel, TGRT, which had been previously confiscated by the Turkish Board of Banking Regulations, TMSF. Newspapers report that Murdoch has bought TGRT in a partnership with the Turkish recording mogul Ahmet Ertegün.
Murdoch has recently won a media dispute with Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. A judge ruled the Italian Prime Minister's media arm Mediaset had prevented News Corp.'s Italian unit, Sky Italia, from buying ads on its television networks.
Murdoch found a political ally in John McEwen, leader of the Australian Country Party (now known as the National Party of Australia), who was governing in coalition with the larger Menzies-Holt Liberal Party. From the very first issue of The Australian Murdoch began taking McEwen's side in every issue that divided the long-serving coalition partners. (The Australian, 15 July 1964, first edition, front page: "Strain in Cabinet, Liberal-CP row flares.") It was an issue that threatened to split the coalition government and open the way for the stronger Australian Labor Party to dominate Australian politics. It was the beginning of a long campaign that served McEwen well.
After McEwen and Menzies retired, Murdoch transferred his support to the newly elected Leader of the Australian Labor Party, Gough Whitlam, who was elected in 1972 on a social platform that included universal free health care, free education for all Australians to tertiary level, recognition of the People's Republic of China, and public ownership of Australia's oil, gas and mineral resources.
Rupert Murdoch's flirtation with Whitlam turned out to be brief. He had already started his short-lived National Star
Asked about the Australian federal election, 2007 at News Corporation's annual general meeting in New York on 19 October 2007, its chairman Rupert Murdoch said, "I am not commenting on anything to do with Australian politics. I'm sorry. I always get into trouble when I do that." Pressed as to whether he believed Prime Minister John Howard should be re-elected, he said: "I have nothing further to say. I'm sorry. Read our editorials in the papers. It'll be the journalists who decide that – the editors."
On 8 May 2006, the Financial Times reported that Murdoch would be hosting a fund-raiser for Senator Hillary Clinton's (D-New York) Senate re-election campaign.
In a 2008 interview with Walt Mossberg, Murdoch was asked whether he had "anything to do with the New York Post's endorsement of Barack Obama in the democratic primaries." Without hesitating, Murdoch replied, "Yeah. He is a rock star. It's fantastic. I love what he is saying about education. I don't think he will win Florida... but he will win in Ohio and the election. I am anxious to meet him. I want to see if he will walk the walk."
In 2010 News Corporation gave $1M to the Republican Governors Association and $1M to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which is largely working to elect Republicans this year. This drew condemnations from Democrats and non-partisan watchdog groups, who claimed that it represented a conflict of interest for the owner of a major publishing empire to contribute directly to political campaigns in this way. A spokesman for the Wall Street Journal would not comment.
Murdoch also served on the board of directors of the libertarian Cato Institute.
In a speech delivered in New York, Rupert Murdoch said that the UK Prime Minister Tony Blair described the BBC coverage of the Hurricane Katrina disaster as being full of hatred of America.
In 1998, Rupert Murdoch failed in his attempt to buy the football powerhouse Manchester United F.C. with an offer of £625 million. It was the largest amount anyone had yet offered for a sports club. It was blocked by the United Kingdom's Competition Commission, which stated that the acquisition would have "hurt competition in the broadcast industry and the quality of British football".
On 28 June 2006 the BBC reported that Murdoch and News Corporation were flirting with the idea of backing Conservative leader David Cameron at the next General Election. However, in a later interview in July 2006, when he was asked what he thought of the Conservative leader, Murdoch replied "Not much". In a 2009 blog, it was suggested that in the aftermath of the News of the World phone hacking affair, Murdoch and News Corporation might have decided to back Cameron, although there had already been a converging of interests between the two men over muting of the UK's communications regulator Ofcom.
In 2006, the UK's Independent newspaper reported that Murdoch would offer Tony Blair a senior role in his global media company News Corp. when the UK prime minister stood down from office.
He is also accused by former Solidarity MSP Tommy Sheridan of having a personal vendetta against him and of conspiring with MI5 to produce a video of him confessing to having affairs – allegations over which Sheridan had previously sued News International and won. On being arrested for perjury following the case, Sheridan claimed that the charges were "orchestrated and influenced by the powerful reach of the Murdoch empire".
News Limited's resources involvement and coverage, in Australia, on the 2009 OzCar affair controversy caused antagonism by Rudd. Rudd responded to a press conference question from The Australian journalist Matthew Franklin, questioning "what sort of journalistic checks were put in place" for publishing a story claiming he was corrupt without "having cited any original document in terms of this email." Although such newspapers Daily Telegraph, the Courier-Mail and the Adelaide Advertiser are owned by News Limited, it has been viewed that Murdoch's personal involvement is unlikely and "the anti-Rudd push, if it is coordinated at all, is almost certainly locally driven."
Murdoch once said that Rudd is "...oversensitive and too sensitive for his own good..." regarding Rudd's response to criticism made of him by News Corporation's Australian newspapers. Murdoch also described Rudd as "...more ambitious to lead the world than to lead Australia..." and criticised Rudd's expansionary fiscal policies as unnecessary: "We were not about to collapse...I thought we were trying to copy the rest of the world a little unnecessarily."
In 1967 Murdoch married Anna Torv, a Scottish-born cadet journalist working for his Sydney newspaper The Daily Telegraph (not be mistaken for the actress Anna Torv of Fringe with the same name; the actress happens to be the elder Torv's niece). During his marriage to Anna Torv, a Roman Catholic, Murdoch was awarded the KSG, a papal honour.
Torv and Murdoch had three children: Elisabeth Murdoch (born in Sydney, Australia on 22 August 1968), Lachlan Murdoch (born in London, UK on 8 September 1971), and James Murdoch, (born in Wimbledon, UK on 13 December 1972). Murdoch's companies published two novels by his then wife: Family Business (1988) and Coming to Terms (1991); both are widely regarded as vanity publications. Anna and Rupert divorced in June 1999.
Anna Murdoch received a settlement of US$ 1.2 billion in assets. Seventeen days after the divorce, on 25 June 1999, Murdoch, then aged 68, married Chinese-born Deng Wendi (Wendi Deng in Western style). She was 30, a recent Yale School of Management graduate, and a newly appointed vice-president of STAR TV.
Rupert Murdoch has two children with Deng: Grace Helen (born in New York 19 November 2001) and Chloe (born in New York 17 July 2003).
After graduating from Vassar College and marrying classmate Elkin Kwesi Pianim (the son of Ghanaian financial and political mogul Kwame Pianim) in 1993, Murdoch's daughter Elisabeth, along with her husband, purchased a pair of NBC-affiliate television stations KSBW and KSBY in California with a $35 million loan provided by her father. By quickly re-organising and re-selling them at a $12 million profit, in 1995 Elisabeth emerged as an unexpected rival to her brothers for the eventual leadership of the publishing dynasty's empire. But after quarrelling publicly with her assigned mentor Sam Chisholm at BSkyB, she struck out on her own as a television and film producer in London, where she has enjoyed independent success in conjunction with her second husband, Matthew Freud.
It is not known whether Murdoch will remain as News Corp.'s CEO indefinitely. For a while the American cable television entrepreneur John Malone was the second-largest voting shareholder in News Corporation after Murdoch himself, potentially undermining the family's control. In 2007, the company announced that it would sell certain assets and give cash to Malone's company in exchange for its stock. In 2007 Murdoch issued his older children with equal voting stock, perhaps to test their individual levels of interest and ability to run the company according to the standards he has set.
Rupert Murdoch has been portrayed by Barry Humphries in the 1991 mini-series Selling Hitler, Hugh Laurie in a parody of It's a Wonderful Life in the television show A Bit of Fry & Laurie, Ben Mendelsohn in the film Black and White, Paul Elder in The Late Shift and by himself on The Simpsons first in "Sunday, Cruddy Sunday" and most recently in "Judge Me Tender".
It has been speculated that Elliot Carver, the villain in the James Bond movie Tomorrow Never Dies is a parody of Rupert Murdoch. The writer of the film, Bruce Feirstein, has stated that Carver was actually a portrayal of Rupert Murdoch's arch rival, British press magnate Robert Maxwell.
In 1999, the Ted Turner owned TBS aired an original sitcom, The Chimp Channel. This featured an all-simian cast and the role of an Australian TV veteran named Harry Waller. The character is described as "a self-made gazillionaire with business interests in all sorts of fields. He owns newspapers, hotel chains, sports franchises and genetic technologies, as well as everyone's favorite cable TV channel, The Chimp Channel." Waller is thought to be a parody of Murdoch, a long-time rival of Turner's.
In 2006, the movie Outfoxed included many interviews accusing Fox News of pressuring reporters to report only one side of news stories, in order to influence viewers' political opinions. The movie did a quick inventory of Rupert Murdoch's media holdings, indicating that his media reached approximately 3/4 of the world's population.
Category:1931 births Category:Alumni of Worcester College, Oxford Category:American billionaires Category:American libertarians Category:American publishers (people) Category:American mass media owners Category:American people of Australian descent Category:Australian billionaires Category:Australian businesspeople Category:Australian immigrants to the United States Category:Australian libertarians Category:Australian mass media owners Category:Australian people of Irish descent Category:Australian people of Scottish descent Category:Businesspeople from Melbourne Category:Companions of the Order of Australia Category:Critics of the European Union Category:Fox Broadcasting Company executives Category:Living people Category:Los Angeles Dodgers owners Category:Major League Baseball executives Category:Murdoch family Category:Naturalized citizens of the United States Category:New York Post people Category:News Corporation Category:Newspaper publishers (people) Category:Old Geelong Grammarians Category:People from Adelaide
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| Name | Keith Olbermann |
|---|---|
| Caption | Keith Olbermann, 2009 |
| Birthname | Keith Theodore Olbermann |
| Birth date | January 27, 1959 |
| Birth place | New York City, New York, US |
| Education | B.S., Cornell University |
| Occupation | Political commentator |
| Years active | 1980s-present |
| Gender | Male |
| Credits | Countdown with Keith Olbermann (2003–present) SportsCenter (1992–1997) Football Night in America (2007–2010) |
| Url | http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036677/ |
Olbermann spent the first twenty years of his career in sports journalism. He was a sports correspondent for CNN and for local TV and radio stations in the 1980s, winning the Best Sportscaster award from the California Associated Press three times. He later co-hosted ESPN's SportsCenter from 1992 to 1997. After leaving ESPN amid controversy, Olbermann became a sports anchor and producer for Fox Sports Net from 1998 to 2001, during which time he hosted Fox's studio coverage of baseball.
After leaving Fox, Olbermann re-joined MSNBC after a hiatus, hosting Countdown with Keith Olbermann in 2003. Olbermann has established a niche in cable news commentary, gaining note for his pointed criticism of major politicians and public figures, directed particularly at the political right. strongly criticized the George W. Bush administration; and John McCain's unsuccessful 2008 Presidential candidacy. Although he has said on at least one occasion "I'm not a liberal; I'm an American", many describe Olbermann as a liberal.
Olbermann became a devoted fan of baseball at a young age, a love he inherited from his mother who was a lifelong New York Yankees fan.
While at Hackley, Olbermann began his broadcasting career as a play-by-play announcer for WHTR. After graduating from Hackley in 1975, Olbermann enrolled at Cornell University at the age of 16. Olbermann graduated from Cornell in 1979 with a B.S. in communications arts.
Early in 1997, Olbermann was suspended for two weeks after he made an unauthorized appearance on The Daily Show on Comedy Central with then-host and former ESPN colleague Craig Kilborn. At one point in the show, he referred to Bristol, Connecticut (ESPN's headquarters), as a "'Godforsaken place." this began a long and drawn-out feud between Olbermann and ESPN. Between 1997 and 2007, incidents between the two sides included Olbermann's publishing an essay on Salon.com in November 2002, titled "Mea Culpa", in which he stated: "I couldn't handle the pressure of working in daily long-form television, and what was worse, I didn't know I couldn't handle it." The essay told of an instance when his former bosses remarked he had "too much backbone," a claim that is literally true, as Olbermann has six lumbar vertebrae instead of the normal five.
According to Olbermann, he was fired from Fox in 2001 after reporting on rumors that Rupert Murdoch, whose News Corporation owns Fox, was planning on selling the Los Angeles Dodgers. When asked about Olbermann, Murdoch said: "I fired him...He's crazy." News Corp. went on to sell the Dodgers to Frank McCourt in 2004. That year, Olbermann remarked, "Fox Sports was an infant trying to stand [in comparison to ESPN], but on the broadcast side there was no comparison--ESPN was the bush leagues."
In 2005, Olbermann made a return to ESPN on the radio when he began co-hosting an hour of the syndicated Dan Patrick Show on ESPN radio, a tenure that lasted until Patrick left ESPN on August 17, 2007. Olbermann and Patrick referred to this segment as "The Big Show," just as their book was known. Patrick often introduced Olbermann with the tagline "saving the democracy," a nod to his work on Countdown.
On April 16, 2007, Olbermann was named co-host of Football Night in America, NBC's NFL pre-game show that precedes their Sunday Night NFL game, a position which reunited him in 2008 with his former SportsCenter co-anchor Dan Patrick. Olbermann left the show prior to the start of the 2010 season.
After leaving Fox Sports in 2001, Olbermann returned once more to news journalism. In 2003, his network won an Edward R. Murrow Award for writing on the "Keith Olbermann Speaking of Everything" show. In addition, Olbermann wrote a weekly column for Salon.com from July 2002 until early 2003., worked for CNN as a freelance reporter,
Olbermann returned to MSNBC in 2003 briefly as a substitute host on Nachman and as an anchor for the network's coverage of the war in Iraq. Prior to his return, Olbermann was a contributor to CNN and provided twice-daily commentary, "Speaking of Sports," for ABC Radio Network. Along with Hannah Storm, Olbermann also co-hosted NBC Sports' pre-game coverage of the MLB 1997 World Series.
Countdown's format, per its name, involves Olbermann ranking the five biggest news stories of the day or sometimes "stories my producers force me to cover," as Olbermann puts it. This is done in numerically reverse order, counting down with the first story shown being ranked fifth but apparently the most important. The segments ranked numbers two and one typically are of a lighter fare than segments ranked five through three. The first few stories shown are typically oriented toward government, politics, and world events. His stories usually involve celebrities, sports, and, regularly and somewhere in the middle, the bizarre, in a segment he calls "Oddball." Opinions on each are offered by Olbermann and interviewed guests. Olbermann has been criticized for only having guests that agree with his perspective. Former Los Angeles Times television critic Howard Rosenberg stated that "Countdown is more or less an echo chamber in which Olbermann and like-minded bobbleheads nod at each other."
In a technique similar to that of former CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite in connection to the Iran Hostage Crisis, Olbermann for many years closed the program by counting the days since May 1, 2003, the day that President George W. Bush declared the end of "major combat operations" in Iraq under a banner that read "Mission Accomplished", and then crumpling up his notes, throwing them at the camera and saying "Good night and good luck" in the mode of another former CBS newsman, Edward Murrow. Olbermann discounts this gesture to his hero as "presumptuous" and a "feeble tribute."
On February 16, 2007, MSNBC reported that Olbermann had signed a four-year extension on his contract with MSNBC for Countdown which also provided for his hosting of two Countdown specials a year to be aired on NBC as well as for his occasional contribution of essays on NBC's Nightly News with Brian Williams.
Olbermann co-anchored, with Chris Matthews, MSNBC's coverage of the death of fellow NBC News employee Tim Russert on June 13, 2008. He presented a tribute, along with several fellow journalists, in honor of Russert.
During the 2008 U.S. presidential election, Olbermann co-anchored MSNBC's coverage with Chris Matthews until September 7, 2008, when they were replaced by David Gregory after complaints from both outside and inside of NBC that they were making partisan statements. Despite this, Countdown was broadcast both before and after each of the presidential and vice-presidential debates, and Olbermann and Matthews joined Gregory on MSNBC's Election Day coverage. Olbermann and Matthews also led MSNBC's coverage of the inauguration of President Barack Obama.
In November 2008, it was announced that Olbermann had signed a four-year contract extension worth an estimated $30 million.
Since beginning Countdown
In an article on "perhaps the fiercest media feud of the decade", the New York Times's Brian Stelter noted that as of early June 2009 the "combat" between the two hosts seems to have abruptly ended due to instructions filtered down to Olbermann and O'Reilly from the chief executives of their respective networks. On the August 3, 2009 edition of Countdown, Olbermann asserted that he had made statements to Stelter before the article was published denying that he was a party to such a deal, or that there was such a deal between NBC and Fox News, or that any NBC executive had asked him to change Countdown's content. Olbermann maintained that he had stopped joking about O'Reilly because of O'Reilly's alleged attacks of George Tiller, and soon resumed his criticism of O'Reilly.
During the 2008 Democratic Party primaries Olbermann frequently chastised presidential aspirant Hillary Clinton for her campaign tactics against her principal opponent, Senator Barack Obama, and made her the subject of two of his "special comments". Olbermann has also posted on the liberal blog Daily Kos.
In November 2007, British newspaper The Daily Telegraph placed Olbermann at #67 on their Top 100 list of most influential US liberals. It said that he uses his MSNBC show to promote "an increasingly strident liberal agenda." It added that he would be "a force on the Left for some time to come." Avoiding ideological self-labeling, Olbermann once told the on-line magazine Salon.com, "I'm not a liberal, I'm an American." This was criticized by his colleague Joe Scarborough, who called the comments "reckless" and "sad". Yael T. Abouhalkah of the Kansas City Star said that Olbermann "crossed the line in a major way with his comments". Jon Stewart criticized him about this attack in his show by noting that it was "the harshest description of anyone I've ever heard uttered on MSNBC", following which Olbermann apologized by noting, "I have been a little over the top lately. Point taken. Sorry."
He has accused the Tea Party movement of being racist due to what he views as a lack of racial diversity at the events, using photos that show overwhelmingly Caucasian crowds attending the rallies. In response, the Dallas Tea Party invited Olbermann to attend one of their events and also criticized his network for a lack of racial diversity, pointing out that an online banner of MSNBC personalities that appears on the website shows only white personalities. Olbermann declined the invitation, citing his father's prolonged ill health and hospitalization and noted that the network has minority anchors, contributors and guests.
On his February 14, 2008 "Special Comments" segment, Olbermann castigated Bush for threatening to veto an extension of the Protect America Act unless it provided full immunity from lawsuits to telecom companies. During the same commentary, Olbermann called Bush a fascist. In 1973, Card Memorabilia Associates published his book The Major League Coaches: 1921-1973. The September issue of Beckett Sports Collectibles Vintage included a T206 card that depicted Olbermann in a 1905-era New York Giants uniform. He argues that New York Giants baseball player Fred Merkle should not be denied inclusion into the Baseball Hall of Fame because of a baserunning mistake. He contributed the foreword to More Than Merkle (ISBN 0-8032-1056-6), a book requesting amnesty for Merkle's error, also known as the "Merkle Boner". Olbermann was also one of the founders of the first experts' fantasy baseball league. He was one of the founders of the USA Today Baseball Weekly LABR league, giving the league its nickname (LABR stands for League of Alternative Baseball Reality). Olbermann wrote the foreword to the 2009 Baseball Prospectus Annual.
In March 2009, Olbermann began a baseball-related blog entitled Baseball Nerd. He has also written a series of articles on baseball cards for the Sports Collectors Digest.
Olbermann suffers from a mild case of celiac disease, as well as restless legs syndrome. This head injury permanently upset his equilibrium, resulting in his avoidance of driving.
During a period in the mid-1990s, Olbermann appeared in a series of Boston Market advertisements, in which he would instruct a group of underweight models to "Eat something!" Olbermann had cited the need to spend time with his father for taking a leave of absence shortly before his father's death; occasionally recording segments to air at the beginning of the shows which Lawrence O'Donnell guest hosted in his absence, giving his views on the state of the American health care system and updating viewers on his father's condition.
Category:1959 births Category:American broadcast news analysts Category:American political pundits Category:American television news anchors Category:American television talk show hosts Category:Boston, Massachusetts television anchors Category:Cornell University alumni Category:American writers of German descent Category:Living people Category:Television news anchors in Los Angeles, California Category:Major League Baseball announcers Category:MSNBC Category:NBC News Category:People from New York City Category:People from Westchester County, New York Category:National Football League announcers
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| Name | Kay Burley |
|---|---|
| Birthname | Kay Burley |
| Birth date | December 17, 1960 |
| Birth place | Wigan, Lancashire, England |
| Occupation | Journalist, Television Presenter |
| Ethnicity | English |
| Credits | TV-am, Sky News |
| Url | http://www.skypressoffice.co.uk/SkyNews/AboutUs/biography.asp?id=2 |
Among many noteworthy assignments, she fronted Sky News coverage from Sri Lanka following the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and subsequent tsunami. In 2005, she was prominent in Sky News' coverage of both the General Election and the royal wedding of Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles.
Burley is also known for presenting news coverage on Christmas morning on Sky News, a tradition that, as of 2010, she has upheld for the last 20 years.
Burley is also an occasional contributor to the tabloid Sunday Mirror, and in the summer of 2006 appeared occasionally on Five's news bulletins.
She also received considerable criticism for trivialising a serious story after an interview in February 2008 in which she asked the wife of Suffolk serial killer Steve Wright: "Do you think if you'd had a better sex life he wouldn't have done this?".
It was alleged that Burley was involved in a "small incident" outside Uxbridge Magistrates Court during a media scrum surrounding a court appearance by Naomi Campbell in 2008. There is some video footage of the alleged altercation showing a hand around the neck of Associated Press photographer Kirsty Wigglesworth, pinning her to the wall. There is also a photograph showing Burley's hand around Wriggleworth's neck. Burley refused to apologize.
On February 3, 2010, Burley interviewed Peter Andre less than 24 hours after Katie Price and Alex Reid were married in Las Vegas. Andre was booked in advance to promote his new album, when Burley questioned him about Price, Reid and his children. He was also asked to comment on an interview Dwight Yorke, the father of Price's first child Harvey, had given to Sky News in October 2009. When the questions advanced to asking whether Andre feared losing custody of his children to Reid, he became visibly upset, declared "I was not prepared for this", and asked to end the interview. Burley's treatment of Andre garnered over 900 complaints to Ofcom.
Later in February 2010, Burley was forced to apologise on-air for offending Catholics when she joked that US Vice President Joe Biden, who had ashes on his forehead to mark Ash Wednesday, had a "large bruise" that he had picked up from "walking into a door" or from slipping on ice during his recent trip to Canada for the 2010 Winter Olympics.
On 8 May 2010, Burley was heckled during an interview outside the Houses of Parliament by a protester who chanted "Sack Kay Burley. Watch the BBC. Sky News is shit!" Burley, who was talking to a representative from 38 Degrees, commented that "they don't like The Sun, they don't like us, they don't like Rupert" before the interview was abruptly terminated, with the broadcast cutting to a silent, animated Sky News logo for over a minute. Burley was also criticised for an interview with David Babbs, Executive Director of 38 Degrees in which she repeatedly interrupted him as he talked about the possible consequences of a coalition between the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats, saying, "your views are not going to sway the people that are talking behind closed doors. [...] The public have voted for a hung parliament. We have got exactly what we voted for... so you marching down past Westminster today will make no difference whatsoever. [...] Why don't you just go home? Why don't you go home and watch it on Sky News?" The Guardian commented "Paxman, it ain't."
On 9 September 2010 Burley interrupted Labour MP Chris Bryant during an interview regarding developments in the News of the World phone hacking affair with the words, "No, no, no, you can't say that, sir... No, no, no, no, I have to interrupt you, do you have evidence for that?... Pretty strong claim if you don't!" When Bryant responded that the evidence for his statement was clearly included in the parliamentary debate that Burley was actually covering in that section of the programme, she replied, "So you are in a position to have listened to the debate and read the report and as a result you are content to say that on telly.?" Bryant responded, "I have just said that. You seem to be a bit dim, if you don't mind me saying so."
On 7 October 2010, Burley interviewed a nonagenarian Conservative Party activist named Harry Beckough for Sky News. Mr. Beckough had been referenced positively by David Cameron, the Conservative Party leader in a speech to the 2010 Conservative Party conference. In addition to apparently mistaking Beckough's date of joining the Conservative Party (1929) for his birth-year (1914), she asked, "And you fought for the Stafford Cripps? Is that right?" Stafford Cripps was, in fact, an early 20th Century British Labour Party Parliamentarian who had sat in Winston Churchill's war-time cabinet, opposition to whom had inspired Mr. Beckough to join the Conservative Party in 1929.
On 9 December 2010, Burley called students protesting a rise in tuition fees "insurgents".
Burley is a fan of Arsenal, as she revealed in an interview in the London Lite newspaper (April 30, 2009).
Burley was voted What Satellite TV magazine's "Most Desirable Woman on TV" for three consecutive years.
Category:1960 births Category:Living people Category:People from Wigan Category:English journalists Category:English Roman Catholics Category:Sky newsreaders and journalists Category:Dancing on Ice participants
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| Name | David Brock |
|---|---|
| Birth date | November 02, 1962 |
| Birth place | Washington, D.C., United States |
| Education | University of California, Berkeley |
| Occupation | journalist, Pundit, author |
David Brock (born November 2, 1962) is an American journalist and author and the founder of Media Matters for America. He was a conservative journalist during the 1990s gaining notoriety for his book The Real Anita Hill and authoring the Troopergate story, which led to Paula Jones filing a lawsuit against Bill Clinton. At the start of the Presidency of George W. Bush his views shifted significantly towards the left. He founded Media Matters for America, a non-profit organization that describes itself as a "progressive research and information center dedicated to comprehensively monitoring, analyzing and correcting conservative misinformation in the U.S. media."
Brock graduated from Paramus High School in Paramus, New Jersey, and then attended the University of California, Berkeley. There he worked as a reporter and editor for The Daily Californian, the campus newspaper, sometimes expressing conservative views. He was an intern at The Wall Street Journal. He graduated from Berkeley with a B.A. in history in 1985.
In 1986 he joined the staff of the weekly conservative news magazine Insight on the News, a sister publication of The Washington Times. After a stint as a research fellow at The Heritage Foundation, in March 1992 Brock authored a sharply critical story about Clarence Thomas's accuser, Anita Hill, in The American Spectator magazine. A little over a year later, in April 1993, Brock published a book titled The Real Anita Hill, which expanded upon previous assertions that had cast doubt on the veracity of Anita Hill's claims of sexual harassment.
The book became a best-seller. It was later attacked in a book review in The New Yorker by Jane Mayer, a reporter for The New Yorker, and Jill Abramson, a reporter for The Wall Street Journal. The two later expanded their article into the book Strange Justice, which cast Anita Hill in a much more sympathetic light. It, too, was a best-seller. Brock replied to their book with a book review of his own in The American Spectator.
In the January 1994, issue of The American Spectator, Brock, by then on staff at the magazine, published a story about Bill Clinton's time as governor of Arkansas that made accusations that bred Troopergate.
In July 1997, Brock published a confessional piece in Esquire magazine titled "Confessions of a Right-Wing Hit Man," in which he recanted much of what he said in his two best-known American Spectator articles and criticized his own reporting methods. Discouraged at the reaction his Hillary Clinton biography received, he said, "I . . . want out. David Brock the Road Warrior of the Right is dead." Four months later, The American Spectator declined to renew his employment contract, under which he was being paid over $300,000 per year.
Writing again for Esquire in April 1998, Brock apologized to Clinton for his contributions to Troopergate, calling it simply part of an anti-Clinton crusade.
Brock directly addressed the right-wing "machine" in his 2004 book, The Republican Noise Machine, in which he detailed an alleged interconnected, concerted effort to raise the profile of conservative opinions in the press through false accusations of liberal media bias, dishonest and highly partisan columnists, partisan news organizations and academic studies, and other methods. Also in 2004, he featured briefly in the BBC series The Power of Nightmares, where he stated that the Arkansas Project engaged in political terrorism.
About the same time he founded Media Matters for America, an Internet-based progressive media watchdog group "dedicated to comprehensively monitoring, analyzing, and correcting conservative misinformation in the U.S. media."
Category:1962 births Category:American adoptees Category:American media critics Category:American political writers Category:American Spectator people Category:Heritage Foundation Category:LGBT writers from the United States Category:Living people Category:People from Paramus, New Jersey Category:University of California, Berkeley alumni
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| Name | Chris Bryant |
|---|---|
| Honorific-suffix | MP |
| Office1 | Shadow Minister for Political and Constitutional Reform |
| Leader1 | Ed Miliband |
| Term start1 | 8 October 2010 |
| Office2 | Minister for Europe and Asia |
| Primeminister2 | Gordon Brown |
| Term start2 | 13 October 2009 |
| Term end2 | 11 May 2010 |
| Predecessor2 | The Baroness Kinnock of Holyhead (Europe) The Lord Malloch-Brown (Asia) |
| Successor2 | Alistair Burt |
| Office3 | Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Foreign Office |
| Primeminister3 | Gordon Brown |
| Term start3 | 9 June 2009 |
| Term end3 | 13 October 2009 |
| Predecessor3 | Gillian Merron |
| Successor3 | Vacant |
| Office4 | Parliamentary Secretary to the Commons |
| Primeminister4 | Gordon Brown |
| Term start4 | 5 October 2008 |
| Term end4 | 9 June 2009 |
| Predecessor4 | Helen Goodman |
| Successor4 | Barbara Keeley |
| Constituency mp5 | Rhondda |
| Predecessor5 | Allan Rogers |
| Term start5 | 7 June 2001 |
| Majority5 | 11,553 (55.3%) |
| Birth date | |
| Birth place | Cardiff, Glamorgan, Wales |
| Party | Conservative (Before 1986) Labour (1986–present) |
| Alma mater | Mansfield College, Oxford Ripon College Cuddesdon |
| Profession | Author |
| Religion | Anglican |
In 1996 he became a full time author, writing biographies of Stafford Cripps and Glenda Jackson. He was Labour candidate for Wycombe in the 1997 general election (where he lost by 2,370 votes), and Head of European Affairs for the BBC from 1998.
Bryant was the Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs Charlie Falconer. In Gordon Brown's autumn 2008 reshuffle, Bryant was promoted from his role as Parliamentary Private Secretary to Harriet Harman to the ministerial position of Deputy Leader of the House of Commons otherwise known as Parliamentary Secretary to the House of Commons. This was followed by another move in the June 2009 reshuffle, when he moved to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office as the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. On 13 October 2009, he was also appointed Minister of State for Europe. Following the defeat of the Labour government at the General Election of 2010, Bryant returned to the back benches. He stood as one of 49 candidates for election to the 19 places in the Shadow Cabinet in the internal Labour Party poll of October 2010. He polled 77 votes, reaching 29th position on the list. He is currently a shadow Justice Minister, with responsibility for political and constitutional reform.
Bryant later reflected upon his photograph scandal, saying "It was a wound but it's a rather charming scar now. I had a period when I barely slept and it was horrible, but I'm very lucky in having a supportive set of friends – MP friends and others – and they looked after me." At the time, the media predicted that he would not survive, and there was much talk of his possible deselection.
On 9 September 2010 Bryant was interviewed by Kay Burley of Sky News, regarding developments in the News of the World phone hacking affair, when she interrupted him with the words, "No, no, no, you can't say that, sir... No, no, no, no, I have to interrupt you, do you have evidence for that?... Pretty strong claim if you don't!" When Bryant responded that the evidence for his statement was clearly included in the parliamentary debate that Burley was actually covering in that section of the programme, she replied, "So you are in a position to have listened to the debate and read the report and as a result you are content to say that on telly?" Bryant responded, "I have just said that. You seem to be a bit dim, if you don't mind me saying so."
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Category:1962 births Category:Living people Category:Old Cheltonians Category:Alumni of Ripon College Cuddesdon Category:Alumni of Mansfield College, Oxford Category:Welsh Anglicans Category:Welsh Christian socialists Category:LGBT people from England Category:LGBT Christians Category:Gay politicians from the United Kingdom Category:Councillors in Hackney Category:Members of the United Kingdom Parliament for Welsh constituencies Category:Labour Party (UK) MPs Category:UK MPs 2001–2005 Category:UK MPs 2005–2010 Category:UK MPs 2010–
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