The Breakfast Meeting: Mother Jones Drives the Debate, and BSkyB Found \'Fit and Proper\'

September 20, 2012, 9:17 am

By NOAM COHEN

With its release of a secretly recorded tape of Mitt Romney's description of the 47 percent who are “dependent” on government, the magazine Mother Jones this week has been driving the political debate. That's particularly good thing, Christine Haughney writes, for the 36-year-old left-leaning magazine, which has a circulation of just over 200,000 and a business model that is partly dependent on its readers' contributions. One reader visited the magazine's Washington bureau and dropped off a check.

• In trying to move the debate beyond Mr. Romney's comments, the Republican National Committee on Wednesday released a videotape from 1998 of Barack Obama, an Illinois State Senator at the time, discussing “redistribution” of income, getting big promotion at the Drudge Report Web site. Yet the timing for this discussion is odd, writes Richard A. Oppel Jr. on The Caucus blog, because data “demonstrates that the nation has seen a significant redistribution of incomes over the past generation â€" from the poor and middle class to the rich, and especially to the very rich â€" all while government policies have also become less redistributive over the same period.”

• Despite out-raising the Obama campaign over the summer, the Romney campaign hasn't been able to dominate in TV advertising, particularly now when it needs a push, Jeremy W. Peters and Nicholas Confessore reported. They explain that much of the more than $300 million the campaign reported raising this summer wasn't directly for the campaign: that total included donations to the Republican National Committee, state Republican organizations and Congressional races.

British regulators on Thursday concluded that the satellite-TV provider BSkyB was “fit and proper” to hold a broadcast license, an important endorsement for its biggest shareholder, Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, Ravi Somaiya and Alan Cowell reported. The report from the Office of Communications, known as Ofcom, appeared to exonerate Mr. Murdoch in the hacking scandal that has engulfed News Corporation's British newspaper unit in concluding that BSkyB could retain its license to broadcast. The report did, however, raise questions about the competence of his son, James, who stepped down as nonexecutive chairman of BSkyB in April.

Fox is close to completing a deal with Major League Baseball that would add more playoff and regular-season games, in part to add content to Fox Sports One, a retooled version of its Speed channel, Richard Sandomir reported. By contrast, another cable broadcaster, TBS, will carry fewer games. Fox, which is hoping to build up a rival to ESPN, is expected to pay substantially more than $257 million a year it pays under its current contract, which ends after next season.

The dissident Chinese artist Ai Weiwei was producing journalism this week from Beijing, The Lede blog reported, posting video to YouTube and photographs to Instagram of a protest at the United States Embassy that included pelting the ambassador's car with objects. The protesters appeared to have spilled off from larger protests about the dispute between China and Japan over the control several tiny islands. In April, Mr. Ai was stopped from operating a webcam to stream video from his home and studio, apparently a commentary on the government's decision to put him under surveillance after releasing him from 81 days in detention.