• NYTimes.com, Monday, December 12, 2005 10 AM

Following Carl Icahn's demands that Time Warner be broken up and Steve Case's Washington Post column of a similar nature, The New York Times takes stock of the situation, noting that despite the media attention, the campaign against the media giant still doesn't hold much weight. To say the least, the sniping between Time Warner Chief Dick Parsons and Carl Icahn, the proxy battle specialist, has become unsavory, and the mud slinging may not help Icahn, who owns 3 percent of the company. Icahn's mission is to get the Time Warner board to support his cause at the company's next annual meeting, but News Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch, for one, doesn't think Icahn stands a chance. He's made a career of boosting share value by ousting the boards of other companies, including R.J. Reynolds and US Steel, but never at a company as big as Time Warner. While it's true Time Warner's stock has been flat for several years--other media stocks have fared worse--company executives point out that this is a ship that has been steadied after a heavy free fall. In fact, Time Warner argues that AOL, the chief property under dispute between the parties, has cost the media giant millions in legal troubles and is only now looking as though it could reach its potential through an alliance with either Microsoft or Google.    

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