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A topic about how much of a shithead Rupert Murdoch is. Todays piece of evidence from the Guardian:-

Quote

Missing Milly Dowler's voicemail was hacked by News of the World

• Deleted voicemails gave family false hope

• Hacking interfered with police hunt

• Family lawyer: actions 'heinous and despicable'

Nick Davies and Amelia Hill

Monday 4 July 2011 16.29 BST

The News of the World illegally targeted the missing schoolgirl Milly Dowler and her family in March 2002, interfering with police inquiries into her disappearance, an investigation by the Guardian has established.

Scotland Yard is investigating the episode, which is likely to put new pressure on the then editor of the paper, Rebekah Brooks, now Rupert Murdoch's chief executive in the UK; and the then deputy editor, Andy Coulson, who resigned in January as the prime minister's media adviser.

Milly's family lawyer this afternoon issued a statement in which he described the News of the World's activities as "heinous" and "despicable". Milly Dowler, then aged 13, disappeared on her way home in Walton-on-Thames, Surrey on 21 March 2002.

Detectives from Scotland Yard's new inquiry into the phone hacking, Operation Weeting, are believed to have found evidence of the targeting of the Dowlers in a collection of 11,000 pages of notes kept by Glenn Mulcaire, the private investigator jailed for phone hacking on behalf of the News of the World.

In the last four weeks the Met officers have approached Surrey police and taken formal statements from some of those involved in the original inquiry, who were concerned about how News of the World journalists intercepted – and deleted – the voicemail messages of Milly Dowler.

The messages were deleted by journalists in the first few days after Milly's disappearance so as to free up space for more messages. As a result friends and relatives of Milly concluded wrongly that she might still be alive. Police feared evidence may have been destroyed.

The Guardian investigation has shown that, within a very short time of Milly vanishing, News of the World journalists reacted by engaging in what was then standard practice in their newsroom: they hired private investigators to get them a story.

Their first step was simple, albeit illegal. Paperwork seen by the Guardian reveals that they paid a Hampshire private investigator, Steve Whittamore, to obtain home addresses and, where necessary, ex-directory phone numbers for any families called Dowler in the Walton area. The three addresses that Whittamore found could be obtained lawfully, using the electoral register. The two ex-directory numbers, however, were "blagged" illegally from British Telecom's confidential records by one of Whittamore's associates, John Gunning, who works from a base in Wiltshire. One of the ex-directory numbers was attributed by Whittamore to Milly's family home.

Then, with the help of its own full-time private investigator, Glenn Mulcaire, the News of the World started illegally intercepting mobile phone messages. Scotland Yard is now investigating evidence that the paper hacked directly into the voicemail of the missing girl's own phone. As her friends and parents called and left messages imploring Milly to get in touch with them, the News of the World was listening and recording their every private word.

But the journalists at the News of the World then encountered a problem. Milly's voicemail box filled up and would accept no more messages. Apparently thirsty for more information from more voicemails, the News of the World intervened – and deleted the messages that had been left in the first few days after her disappearance.

According to one source, this had a devastating effect: when her friends and family called again and discovered that her voicemail had been cleared, they concluded that this must have been done by Milly herself and, therefore, that she must still be alive. But she was not. The interference created false hope and extra agony for those who were misled by it.

The Dowler family then granted an exclusive interview to the News of the World in which they talked about their hope, quite unaware that it had been falsely kindled by the newspaper's own intervention. Sally Dowler told the paper: "If Milly walked through the door, I don't think we'd be able to speak. We'd just weep tears of joy and give her a great big hug."

The deletion of the messages also caused difficulties for the police. It confused the picture at a time when they had few real leads to pursue. It also potentially destroyed valuable evidence. According to one senior source familiar with the Surrey police investigation: "It can happen with abduction murders that the perpetrator will leave messages, asking the missing person to get in touch, as part of their efforts at concealment. We need those messages as evidence. Anybody who destroys that evidence is seriously interfering with the course of a police investigation."

The newspaper made little effort to conceal the hacking from its readers. On 14 April 2002, it published a story about a woman who was allegedly pretending to be Milly Dowler and who had applied for a job with a recruitment agency: "It is thought the hoaxer even gave the agency Milly's real mobile phone number … The agency used the number to contact Milly when a job vacancy arose and left a message on her voicemail … It was on March 27, six days after Milly went missing, that the employment agency appears to have phoned her mobile."

The newspaper also made no effort to conceal its activity from Surrey police. After it had hacked the message from the recruitment agency on Milly's phone, the paper informed police about it. It was Surrey detectives who established that the call was not intended for Milly Dowler. At the time, Surrey police suspected that phones belonging to detectives and to Milly's parents also were being targeted.

One of those who was involved in the original inquiry said: "We'd arrange landline calls. We didn't trust our mobiles."

However, they took no action against the News of the World, partly because their main focus was to find the missing schoolgirl and partly because this was only one example of tabloid misbehaviour. As one source close to the inquiry put it: "There was a hell of a lot of dirty stuff going on."

Two earlier Yard inquiries had failed to investigate the relevant notes in Mulcaire's logs.

In a statement today, the family's lawyer, Mark Lewis of Taylor Hampton, said the Dowlers were distressed at the revelation. "It is distress heaped upon tragedy to learn that the News of the World had no humanity at such a terrible time. The fact that they were prepared to act in such a heinous way that could have jeopardised the police investigation and give them false hope is despicable," he said.

The News of the World's investigation was part of a long-running campaign against paedophiles championed by the then editor, Rebekah Brooks. The Labour MP Tom Watson last week told the House of Commons that four months after Milly Dowler's disappearance the News of the World had targeted one of the parents of the two 10-year-old Soham girls, Jessica Chapman and Holly Wells, who were abducted and murdered on 4 August 2002.

The behaviour of tabloid newspapers became an issue in the trial of Levi Bellfield, who last month was jailed for life for murdering Milly Dowler. A second charge, that he had attempted to abduct another Surrey schoolgirl, Rachel Cowles, had to be left on file after premature publicity by tabloids was held to have made it impossible for the jury to reach a fair verdict. The tabloids, however, focused their anger on Bellfield's defence lawyer, complaining that the questioning had caused unnecessary pain to Milly Dowler's parents.

Surrey police referred all questions on the subject to Scotland Yard, who said they could not discuss it.

Clicky

I'm sure this topic will fill with plenty more examples of Rupe's minions doing his bidding in such a marvelous manner in the days, weeks and months to come.

Discuss...

 

Celebrities can sue for having their phones hacked but this one really is lower than low.

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Hearing this on the radio this morning I actually gave a sardonic laugh. Not because I find the act itself funny - the Dowlers lawyer is correct that it is a heinous act (as an aside, thats probably the first big public statement to come from the Dowlers in recent weeks that was bang on the money, given their comments inferring that a defendant shouldn't be able to er... defend... themselves... by the by anyway).

I laughed because of just how despicable it was - it's cartoonishly vile. How they thought that that was permissable, acceptable, hell... just morally right (not that they give a shit about that) is beyond me. It's a clear a sign of a powerful entity just not giving a **** as it comes. More worrisome - it's a clear indication that Murdoch's evil empire doesn't give a **** about things that are comparatively trivial (on the grand scale of things, Dowler's death while a heinous crime and tragedy doesn't really matter), imagine what it's like for things that are much more wide reaching, especially given the influence this man and his empire has.

All the more worrying that this bastard is only getting more powerful. And if anything hoping he pops his clogs won't help - his son is arguably worse, just doesn't have the power to wield. Yet.

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I just don't understand Murdoch's loyalty to (Dave's pal) Rebekah.

Her handling of this issue has been abysmal and has exposed her inexperience as a Chief Executive.

The scandal was always going to come back on her at some point as long as the trickle of stories kept coming.

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To me, its par for the course.

But given he controls such a large part of the press, the phone hacking has not been very prominent in much of the big circulation papers. I would bet that Sky News has run less on it than, er those evil swine at the BBC, who's manoopoly must be broken, according to the dirty digger. Seriously, theres not a week goes by, when some small outfit like Private Eye are embarassing this man, but like a dog taking a shit in the childrens playgroumd, he just cannot be embarassed.

The real scandal is that the rags he flogs, sell millions, tens of, every day, and the man has become very very very rich. Yet Newscorp pay vittually no tax in this country, whilst supporting tax raising dave the tory. Its madness. And no one listens, and no one cares. And in a few months, the C2, D''s and E's of this forum will like everyone else still buy his shitrags. Now, people buy the sun, and everyone I "challenge" about it, seems to tell me its a bit of fun. They don't realise that its just pornograpic poison, with a few gossipy articles, whilst real events like justice, and politics that affect all of us remain un noted. To be blunt, the issue is people who choose to buy the sun, are just Beano readers 20 years on.

To be honest, you pay for a murdoch paper, then you deserve the country you live in. Period. You take no interest in politics, don't be surprised when dodgy dave the tory f**ks you over, as he;s more frightened of this man than he is of you, and bizarrely, you all get the same number of votes, 1 each, don't you? (And substitute dodgy dave for any elected politician - they are all terrified of his ability to manipulate).

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/special_report/1999/02/99/e-cyclopedia/302366.stm is easy, just to get you started. but think of all those cuts that might not be being made, if murdoch had paid some fairly earned taxes over the last decade or two..... enough for nurses for hospitals, teachers for schools, doughnuts for police officers ......

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Id happily dedicate my life to train up to become an assassin of people like this. Modern society is fast becoming a place that I want nothing to do with.

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(as an aside, thats probably the first big public statement to come from the Dowlers in recent weeks that was bang on the money, given their comments inferring that a defendant shouldn't be able to er... defend... themselves... by the by anyway).

Different topic, but what a load of bollocks. You should be ashamed.

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Here's a view on how Fox News operates in the US:

14 Propaganda Techniques Fox "News" Uses to Brainwash Americans

There is nothing more sacred to the maintenance of democracy than a free press. Access to comprehensive, accurate and quality information is essential to the manifestation of Socratic citizenship - the society characterized by a civically engaged, well-informed and socially invested populace. Thus, to the degree that access to quality information is willfully or unintentionally obstructed, democracy itself is degraded.

It is ironic that in the era of 24-hour cable news networks and "reality" programming, the news-to-fluff ratio and overall veracity of information has declined precipitously. Take the fact Americans now spend on average about 50 hours a week using various forms of media, while at the same time cultural literacy levels hover just above the gutter. Not only does mainstream media now tolerate gross misrepresentations of fact and history by public figures (highlighted most recently by Sarah Palin's ludicrous depiction of Paul Revere's ride), but many media actually legitimize these displays. Pause for a moment and ask yourself what it means that the world's largest, most profitable and most popular news channel passes off as fact every whim, impulse and outrageously incompetent analysis of its so-called reporters. How did we get here? Take the enormous amount of misinformation that is taken for truth by Fox audiences: the belief that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and that he was in on 9/11, the belief that climate change isn't real and/or man-made, the belief that Barack Obama is Muslim and wasn't born in the United States, the insistence that all Arabs are Muslim and all Muslims are terrorists, the inexplicable perceptions that immigrants are both too lazy to work and are about to steal your job. All of these claims are demonstrably false, yet Fox News viewers will maintain their veracity with incredible zeal. Why? Is it simply that we have lost our respect for knowledge?

My curiosity about this question compelled me to sit down and document the most oft-used methods by which willful ignorance has been turned into dogma by Fox News and other propagandists disguised as media. The techniques I identify here also help to explain the simultaneously powerful identification the Fox media audience has with the network, as well as their ardent, reflexive defenses of it.

The good news is that the more conscious you are of these techniques, the less likely they are to work on you. The bad news is that those reading this article are probably the least in need in of it.

1. Panic Mongering. This goes one step beyond simple fear mongering. With panic mongering, there is never a break from the fear. The idea is to terrify and terrorize the audience during every waking moment. From Muslims to swine flu to recession to homosexuals to immigrants to the rapture itself, the belief over at Fox seems to be that if your fight-or-flight reflexes aren't activated, you aren't alive. This of course raises the question: why terrorize your own audience? Because it is the fastest way to bypasses the rational brain. In other words, when people are afraid, they don't think rationally. And when they can't think rationally, they'll believe anything.

2. Character Assassination/Ad Hominem. Fox does not like to waste time debating the idea. Instead, they prefer a quicker route to dispensing with their opponents: go after the person's credibility, motives, intelligence, character, or, if necessary, sanity. No category of character assassination is off the table and no offense is beneath them. Fox and like-minded media figures also use ad hominem attacks not just against individuals, but entire categories of people in an effort to discredit the ideas of every person who is seen to fall into that category, e.g. "liberals," "hippies," "progressives" etc. This form of argument - if it can be called that - leaves no room for genuine debate over ideas, so by definition, it is undemocratic. Not to mention just plain crass.

3. Projection/Flipping. This one is frustrating for the viewer who is trying to actually follow the argument. It involves taking whatever underhanded tactic you're using and then accusing your opponent of doing it to you first. We see this frequently in the immigration discussion, where anti-racists are accused of racism, or in the climate change debate, where those who argue for human causes of the phenomenon are accused of not having science or facts on their side. It's often called upon when the media host finds themselves on the ropes in the debate.

4. Rewriting History. This is another way of saying that propagandists make the facts fit their worldview. The Downing Street Memos on the Iraq war were a classic example of this on a massive scale, but it happens daily and over smaller issues as well. A recent case in point is Palin's mangling of the Paul Revere ride, which Fox reporters have bent over backward to validate. Why lie about the historical facts, even when they can be demonstrated to be false? Well, because dogmatic minds actually find it easier to reject reality than to update their viewpoints. They will literally rewrite history if it serves their interests. And they'll often speak with such authority that the casual viewer will be tempted to question what they knew as fact.

5. Scapegoating/Othering. This works best when people feel insecure or scared. It's technically a form of both fear mongering and diversion, but it is so pervasive that it deserves its own category. The simple idea is that if you can find a group to blame for social or economic problems, you can then go on to a) justify violence/dehumanization of them, and B) subvert responsibility for any harm that may befall them as a result.

6. Conflating Violence With Power and Opposition to Violence With Weakness. This is more of what I'd call a "meta-frame" (a deeply held belief) than a media technique, but it is manifested in the ways news is reported constantly. For example, terms like "show of strength" are often used to describe acts of repression, such as those by the Iranian regime against the protesters in the summer of 2009. There are several concerning consequences of this form of conflation. First, it has the potential to make people feel falsely emboldened by shows of force - it can turn wars into sporting events. Secondly, especially in the context of American politics, displays of violence - whether manifested in war or debates about the Second Amendment - are seen as noble and (in an especially surreal irony) moral. Violence become synonymous with power, patriotism and piety.

7. Bullying. This is a favorite technique of several Fox commentators. That it continues to be employed demonstrates that it seems to have some efficacy. Bullying and yelling works best on people who come to the conversation with a lack of confidence, either in themselves or their grasp of the subject being discussed. The bully exploits this lack of confidence by berating the guest into submission or compliance. Often, less self-possessed people will feel shame and anxiety when being berated and the quickest way to end the immediate discomfort is to cede authority to the bully. The bully is then able to interpret that as a "win."

8. Confusion. As with the preceding technique, this one works best on an audience that is less confident and self-possessed. The idea is to deliberately confuse the argument, but insist that the logic is airtight and imply that anyone who disagrees is either too dumb or too fanatical to follow along. Less independent minds will interpret the confusion technique as a form of sophisticated thinking, thereby giving the user's claims veracity in the viewer's mind.

9. Populism. This is especially popular in election years. The speakers identifies themselves as one of "the people" and the target of their ire as an enemy of the people. The opponent is always "elitist" or a "bureaucrat" or a "government insider" or some other category that is not the people. The idea is to make the opponent harder to relate to and harder to empathize with. It often goes hand in hand with scapegoating. A common logical fallacy with populism bias when used by the right is that accused "elitists" are almost always liberals - a category of political actors who, by definition, advocate for non-elite groups.

10. Invoking the Christian God. This is similar to othering and populism. With morality politics, the idea is to declare yourself and your allies as patriots, Christians and "real Americans" (those are inseparable categories in this line of thinking) and anyone who challenges them as not. Basically, God loves Fox and Republicans and America. And hates taxes and anyone who doesn't love those other three things. Because the speaker has been benedicted by God to speak on behalf of all Americans, any challenge is perceived as immoral. It's a cheap and easy technique used by all totalitarian entities from states to cults.

11. Saturation. There are three components to effective saturation: being repetitive, being ubiquitous and being consistent. The message must be repeated cover and over, it must be everywhere and it must be shared across commentators: e.g. "Saddam has WMD." Veracity and hard data have no relationship to the efficacy of saturation. There is a psychological effect of being exposed to the same message over and over, regardless of whether it's true or if it even makes sense, e.g., "Barack Obama wasn't born in the United States." If something is said enough times, by enough people, many will come to accept it as truth. Another example is Fox's own slogan of "Fair and Balanced."

12. Disparaging Education. There is an emerging and disturbing lack of reverence for education and intellectualism in many mainstream media discourses. In fact, in some circles (e.g. Fox), higher education is often disparaged as elitist. Having a university credential is perceived by these folks as not a sign of credibility, but of a lack of it. In fact, among some commentators, evidence of intellectual prowess is treated snidely and as anti-American. Education and other evidence of being trained in critical thinking are direct threats to a hive-mind mentality, which is why they are so viscerally demeaned.

13. Guilt by Association. This is a favorite of Glenn Beck and Andrew Breitbart, both of whom have used it to decimate the careers and lives of many good people. Here's how it works: if your cousin's college roommate's uncle's ex-wife attended a dinner party back in 1984 with Gorbachev's niece's ex-boyfriend's sister, then you, by extension are a communist set on destroying America. Period.

14. Diversion. This is where, when on the ropes, the media commentator suddenly takes the debate in a weird but predictable direction to avoid accountability. This is the point in the discussion where most Fox anchors start comparing the opponent to Saul Alinsky or invoking ACORN or Media Matters, in a desperate attempt to win through guilt by association. Or they'll talk about wanting to focus on "moving forward," as though by analyzing the current state of things or God forbid, how we got to this state of things, you have no regard for the future. Any attempt to bring the discussion back to the issue at hand will likely be called deflection, an ironic use of the technique of projection/flipping.

In debating some of these tactics with colleagues and friends, I have also noticed that the Fox viewership seems to be marked by a sort of collective personality disorder whereby the viewer feels almost as though they've been let into a secret society. Something about their affiliation with the network makes them feel privileged and this affinity is likely what drives the viewers to defend the network so vehemently. They seem to identify with it at a core level, because it tells them they are special and privy to something the rest of us don't have. It's akin to the loyalty one feels by being let into a private club or a gang. That effect is also likely to make the propaganda more powerful, because it goes mostly unquestioned.

In considering these tactics and their possible effects on American public discourse, it is important to note that historically, those who've genuinely accessed truth have never berated those who did not. You don't get honored by history when you beat up your opponent: look at Martin Luther King Jr., Robert Kennedy, Abraham Lincoln. These men did not find the need to engage in othering, ad homeinum attacks, guilt by association or bullying. This is because when a person has accessed a truth, they are not threatened by the opposing views of others. This reality reveals the righteous indignation of people like Glenn Beck, Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity as a symptom of untruth. These individuals are hostile and angry precisely because they don't feel confident in their own veracity. And in general, the more someone is losing their temper in a debate and the more intolerant they are of listening to others, the more you can be certain they do not know what they're talking about.

One final observation. Fox audiences, birthers and Tea Partiers often defend their arguments by pointing to the fact that a lot of people share the same perceptions. This is a reasonable point to the extent that Murdoch's News Corporation reaches a far larger audience than any other single media outlet. But, the fact that a lot of people believe something is not necessarily a sign that it's true; it's just a sign that it's been effectively marketed.

As honest, fair and truly intellectual debate degrades before the eyes of the global media audience, the quality of American democracy degrades along with it.

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as the title is Murdoch Scum , could someone point me to the link for the evidence that Murdoch gave the order for this vile act or even had any awareness that it was going on ...

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Different topic, but what a load of bollocks. You should be ashamed.

They inferred quite heavily that Bellfield should have not have been able to defend himself in the traditions of our legal system. He is a vile man, and clearly guilty, and sadly he chose to defend himself on cruel and degrading matters that often had only fleeting relevance to the case, and had only initially arisen in the police investigation after her disappearance and were quickly dropped by the authorities - however they remained in the case file and thus could be called on to defend himself. Had he not used that line of defence, it would always remain in the case file and would always be ready for him to call on for an appeal in the future. Now, barring the discovery of new evidence, his defence is spent.

It isn't the fault of the law that he chose to use particularly nasty and humiliating lines of defence, it is a fault of judge who let him continue that line of defence when it became clear it was becoming too much of a vindictive and cynical attack, or that the judge did not order the court cleared so that, as far as possible, such sensitive lines of 'inquiry' were kept out of the public eye.

I don't agree with what he did in court. I don't like it. But demanding that the accused has the balance of law turned against them and preventing aspects of defence that are in some way (however small) relevant to the case, thus undermining the idea of a fair trail, is not something I'm ever going to agree with, no matter how it may be abused by some particularly detestable individuals.

I won't be ashamed of that either.

Anywho, back to another vile topic...

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sad fact is, these lowlifes will think it's o.k. to do sick stuff like this because they know there are plenty more unthinking scum out there that are more likely to buy a newspaper if it has this type of shit in it. Just another low in an impressive history of lows.

News of the World, 2.6 million a week

The Sun, 2.8 million a week

total of guardian and independent combined, 450,000

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But The Sun has tits on page 3!

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Searching for Rebekah Brooks related tweets is interesting at the moment. Apparently (well, according to the latest issue of Private Eye) the only reason that Murdoch didnt bin her earlier this year is because David Cameron asked him not to. I guess that leaves everything open to speculation. Did Murdoch want to sack her because he knew? What does Cameron have to gain out of keeping her in such a powerful position?

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as the title is Murdoch Scum , could someone point me to the link for the evidence that Murdoch gave the order for this vile act or even had any awareness that it was going on ...

The people responsible for this have been rewarded with promotions.

And come on Tony, get a grip mate, if you think he had no knowledge you are possibly the most gullible person I know and as I do know you, I know thats not true

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And come on Tony, get a grip mate, if you think he had no knowledge you are possibly the most gullible person I know and as I do know you, I know thats not true

my point in raising it was more on the lines that we couldn't comment on say Ashley Youngs postponed wedding and yet we can comment without any evidence whatsoever that Murdoch is on the act with the phone taping.... I thought for something as big as this that there would be a lot more of the word "allegedly" being used ....

Interestingly , Hugh Grant ( yes that Hugh Grant) actually bugged an Ex NOTW reporter ( Paul McMullan) and amongst other things this "opinion" was offered

As for whether Brooks's boss Rupert Murdoch knew about phone hacking, McMullan thinks not. "He's a funny bloke given that he owns the Sun and the Screws [the nickname for the NoW]... quite puritanical," he says.

More here

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