John Frontczak

Senior Seminar

Period 8, Clover

Possibly, Unintentional, the most Dangerous Man,

A brief look with Reason, and fallacies

When asked who the most dangerous person in the world is, the first answer that comes to

mind is Kim Jong-il. After all, North Korea does have the resources to become a threat to many (if not

all) countries and its closed borders and apparent inhuman treatment and brainwashing of its citizens

which are hardly positive attributes. However, not that much is directly known about Kim Jong-il's direct

involvement with these actions, and while it can be assumed that it is a large amount, that is an

assumption with the exception of a few reports. So instead I turn to a potentially dangerous man in a

different sense, the slightly more original (but not by much) the founder, chairman, and chief executive

officer of News Corporation, Rupert Murdoch.

News Corp. is currently the third largest media conglomerate, and includes The Weekly Times,

The Sunday Times, the New York Post, The Wall Street Journal, Fox entertainment and its splinter

corporations, to name a few, with Keith Rupert Murdoch owning the majority of it. In and of its self that

is not a problem, however Rupert Murdoch as admitted that he had a lot to do with The New York Post's

endorsement of Obama, and is the leading backer of many conservative causes (a bit contradicting, but

he is human). Again, this is not necessarily a problem, but appears to cause a lot of issues. When one

person that essentially controls many large international media corporations and has admitted to

influencing the media to color a political view a certain way, this adds a large amount of bias in a huge

portion of the information available to quite a great quantity of people. This causes conflict his close

minded opinions or at least people that argue a certain opinion in a closed mind manner, due to their

job under a cooperation owned by Murdoch. I'm almost sure that Murdoch doesn't have any ill

intentions when he does it (the fact that he admits to it strengthens the validity of this statement),

however whether you agree with his opinion or not, it is dangerous and can partially brainwash people

unknowingly due the large amount of information that the subconscious gathers every day.

Fox News was even described by President Obama as having “a point of view that I think is

ultimately destructive for the long-term growth of a country that has a vibrant middle class and is

competitive in the world”, despite its earlier endorsement of Obama [knowledge by authority], which

also add to the validity of his statement since it most likely shows that he is not saying that simply to

please a beneficial party. Additionally, the Democratic National Committee as well as other Democratic

and liberal groups said that "What these contributions make clear is that the Republican Party is a

division of News Corp., just as Fox News is a division of News Corp.," in response to News Corp.'s

donation of one million dollars to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Now both of these opinions might be

one sided in order to achieve a goal since all parties mentioned are associated with one another, but

regardless an argument that only knows one side and rejects other ideas is a poor and dangerous one.

Despite whatever information is presented by News Corp. if it only presents a single side, this leads to

people operation on limited knowledge of the subject presented if only information from News Corp.'s

daughter companies are used, which is not unlikely due to the large number of popular and dominate

media corporations it owns.

Sources:

"Hilary Rosen: Rupert Murdoch Says Obama Will Win". Huffingtonpost.com. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/hilary-rosen/rupert-murdoch-says-obama_b_104018.html.

Lagemaat, Richard van de. "Theory of Knowledge for the IB Diploma." Cambridge, 2006. Print.

"Murdoch says Kasich friendship influenced $1 million donation". Yahoo News. 07 Oct 2010.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_upshot/20101007/el_yblog_upshot/murdoch-says-kasich-

friendship-influenced-1-mil-donation.

Rutenberg, Jim (01 Oct 2010). "News Corp. Donates $1 Million to U.S. Chamber of Commerce". New York Times. http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/01/news-corp-donates-1-million-to- anti-democrat-group. "Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. donates $1M to U.S. Chamber of Commerce". cleveland.com. 2 Oct 2010. http://www.cleveland.com/nation/index.ssf/2010/10/rupert_murdochs_news_corp_ dona.html. " US & Canada – Murdoch to host fundraiser for Hillary Clinton". Financial Times. 8 May 2006.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/61faabde-deb8-11da-acee-0000779e2340.html.