Boycotting Murdoch Could Be Harder Than You Think

When troubled media mogul Rupert Murdoch shuttered his News of the World tabloid in the wake of the U.K. phone-hacking scandal, he might have hoped it would help end the crisis quickly. But the move only stirred anger in the online world. Facebook users organized a handful of groups aimed at exacting revenge by boycotting Murdoch and his British newspaper publishing company, News International, a subsidiary of Murdoch's behemoth News Corp.

One page, called "Boycott News International," issued a clarion call: "Don't buy the News of the World, The Sun, The Times, The Sunday Times, cancel Sky = A clear message to Murdoch." On Twitter, a BoycottMurdoch account launched before the hacking scandal is drawing more followers. (The effort is still small — it has fewer than 800 followers and 125 tweets so far.) And on Wednesday, after Murdoch withdrew his bid for BSkyB, hashtags for #Murdochout and #boycottsun revealed a stream of jubilant comments. But Murdoch's vast holdings, especially in the United States, make it challenging to carry out a boycott in a way that truly hurts his bottom line.

Here are a few things you couldn't do if you were engaging in a complete boycott of all things News Corp.:

• You couldn't go see Brad Pitt and Terence Malick's new, critically acclaimed art house film The Tree of Life. It's distributed by Fox Searchlight Pictures, a subsidiary of Fox Filmed Entertainment and NewsCorp. (That means you couldn't watch Natalie Portman in Black Swan either.)
• You couldn't watch any of your favorite sitcoms on the online video site Hulu.com, which is a NewsCorp joint venture with NBC Universal and Disney.
• You couldn't watch Dog Whisperer on the National Geographic Channel. (Fox owns a majority share of the network.)
• You couldn't read the Wall Street Journal or the New York Post.
• You couldn't track the Dow Jones industrial average.
• You couldn't attend a Los Angeles Lakers or New York Rangers game, since Murdoch has partial ownership in both of those major league sports teams. (He also owns parts of the Staples Center and Madison Square Garden; so no Lady Gaga concerts in the Big Apple either.)
• You couldn't watch American Idol on Fox or buy any albums or singles by the winners and contestants of the show. That means you, Crystal Bowersox fans.
• You couldn't buy any book published by HarperCollins since NewsCorp owns that company as well. So forget picking up an extra copy of a J.R.R. Tolkien book.