Murdoch Scum

[Gringo]

internet bandwagons are well and good but can't people be outraged enough for themselves without having to be coerced into joining something ..it's shades of Stephen Fry or Jon Woss all over again and everything that is wrong with twitter (and to a small degree society today , )

Coerced? Been offered the opportunity to organise. Would 1 million separate twitts or 1 million signatures in one place be more effective.

and if you really must do it , well I'd rather this much effort and energy was going into twitters around the Uk to stop the killing in Syria to be honest ....

support of murdoch dressed up as faux support of the syrians - or just a wind up

[tonyh29]

and if you really must do it , well I'd rather this much effort and energy was going into twitters around the Uk to stop the killing in Syria to be honest ....

support of murdoch dressed up as faux support of the syrians - or just a wind up

you'd know from my posts on here that I am very fond of Syria so it's neither .... you seem to have missed the point of what I was trying to say or are just on a wind up :winkold:

[Richard]

Utter disgrace does not do this justice

[snowychap]

Not defending the currant bun but it would appear that none of the red tops ran this as a headline story, did they?

If that's the case then I'd suggest it implies they're rather worried about putting the boot in as it may come back to them, too.

Coverage in other newspapers over the original NI apology for telephone hacking

Thanks, mate.

[bickster]

Top Tip: why not tell Rebekah Brook how disgusted you are by leaving a message on your own voicemail

Stolen for Facebook.

Retweetd by none other than Lord Putnam today (pround twitter moment for me )

[bickster]

Ford have pulled ads from the NOTW, NPower and Halifax considering their position, surely more will follow.

[CarewsEyebrowDesigner]

Turns out they've been up to more...here

[JulieB]

I can't beleive Milly's parents and family are going through more anxiety because of all this. I was driving home listening to their statement's after the trial finished and every word they said condeming the so-called British justice system and what it had put them as a family, through during her killer's trial a couple of weeks ago was heartfelt and difficult to listen to.

You just can't beleive that people can behave like some of these journo's ... they have no heart some of them!

[Chindie]

they said condeming the so-called British justice system

Could you elaborate on that?

[bickster]

Seems they hacked Sara Payne's phone whilst backing her campaign for Sarah's Law. (not that I particularly liked Sarah's law) but just shows how low they are. (it'll be on CH4 news in a bit)

[Ryan.]

I haven't bought a newspaper in over 2 years, and will never do so ever again. **** up our world cup bid was bad enough but this is another level, words can't describe what a vile act this is.

Could there ever be a case to put these lying criminals out of buisiness or is Murdock just too powerful?

[snowychap]

C4 News are saying that a senior Met detective on a murder inquiry (a murder of a private investigator) was under surveillance by the NOTW and some of the suspects in the murder inquiry were also private investigators working with the NOTW. Also, apparently, Brooks was spoken to about this by Scotland Yard.

Murkier and murkier.

[Chindie]

Murky indeed.

That sounds like something that requires rather more to be said about I feel.

[snowychap]

Like the pistol idea, btw.

[wiganvillain]

Murky indeed.

That sounds like something that requires rather more to be said about I feel.

Say it now Chindie,

I suspect it'll be sub judice rather soon

[peterms]

Like the pistol idea, btw.

But it was traditionally associated with "honourable chaps" taking responsibility and atoning for their actions, which hardly fits the bill here.

What about pump action shotguns, and assisted suicide? No shortage of volunteers to assist, I should think. Could go pay-per-view.

[Chindie]

Murky indeed.

That sounds like something that requires rather more to be said about I feel.

Say it now Chindie,

I suspect it'll be sub judice rather soon

I meant from the people involved/slash people investigating it - just what Snowy has put here needs to be elaborated on by those who know more.

All I could say on it from that snippet would probably best be summed up by 'What the ****...?!'.

[chrisp65]

According to Radio 4 earlier this Brooks woman that won't resign was head of the paper when they ran an editorial in 2002 stating that if something bad happened in a minister's department that minister should resign. The 'buck stops here' principle was quoted whereby as you were in charge you either knew about it and so should resign. Or, you didn't know, and thus you were incompetent, and so should resign.

[R.I.C.O.]

She is a truly odious wench. I hope she hangs herself on her own noose!

[Gringo]

Lazy repeat of excerpts from last year's gruaniad article

Evil Murdoch is Evil

Murdoch has become one of the political issues of our time, as menacing in his own special way to democracy and conduct of politics as many other threats our society faces, only we do not see it, because his power is used behind the scenes to extend his commercial influence and so his grip on the flow of so much of the information in Britain. He and his equally unappealing son, James, (probable salary £1.3m) may bellyache about the BBC, but when you set the advertising spend and income of BSkyB alongside those of ITV and the BBC and add his newspapers and websites into the equation, you realise that Murdoch is by far the greatest force.

His overriding concern is that the government remains covertly in step with his plans for expansion and that the flow of profits to News Corp remains uninterrupted. It is as though we had handed over a huge chunk of British agricultural land or given up our food distribution networks to a relentless foreign corporation.

Anyway, the good in his enterprises must surely be set against the detriment to British society, laid bare in the phone-hacking scandal. These are as follows. First, he has been responsible for a distortion of politics in the last four decades. In an unguarded moment at Davos three years ago, he replied to a question about shaping the agenda on the Iraq war: "We basically supported the Bush policy." And so he did. In the nine days before the invasion, freedom of information requests reveal that he had three conversations with Tony Blair.

No British political party has succeeded at an election in the last 30 years without Murdoch's blessing and the drumbeat of his papers can make life extremely difficult for a government when he withdraws his support, as he did from Labour last year.

Second, News International regards itself as above the law of the land. As well as paying out large sums to several victims of the phone hacking, who might otherwise have brought cases against NI in open court, it is suspected of subverting the police.

The Metropolitan Police's investigations by Andy Hayman into Glenn Mulcaire's operation to tap phones on behalf of the News of the World is thought by MPs such as Paul Farrelly to be inadequate. Mr Hayman is now employed by the Times as a columnist. Further, Rebekah Brooks admitted to a House of Commons committee, then denied it, that as editor she authorised payments to the police for stories.

Unseen political influence, paying the police for stories and the hobbling of due process are the standard procedures followed by crime families and though I do not say that Murdoch is a criminal, there is a case for placing the influence of the media magnate, his clannish associates and family on the spectrum of undesirable behaviour in a democracy.

Three days into the coalition government's life, Rupert Murdoch was seen leaving Number 10 by a back door. Nobody knows the substance of his conversation with the prime minister. However, it would be astonishing if during the course of the unminuted exchanges he did not foreshadow the view of Chase Carey, Sky's chief operating officer, in a telephone call with City analysts later in June, that News International's bid for the some 60% of the shares it does not own in BskyB should not warrant a "plurality review". Rupert Murdoch wants as little opposition as possible to this tipping point for News International – its desire to have 100% ownership of BSkyB. Not to have raised this with the new prime minister would have been a dereliction of duty.

The review is the last line of defence in preventing News International (NI) from controlling half of Britain's television revenues – and half its newspaper revenues – by the middle of the next decade. The company would then represent the single largest concentration of media power in any large democracy, a practice outlawed in Australia and the US, with huge implications not just for British politics and culture, but also for the structure of the media and the information industry.

Everybody from BT to the Daily Mail group, along with individual citizens, should be profoundly concerned. It is obvious that the conclusion of any worthwhile plurality review is almost foregone, one of the reasons NI is so adamantly opposed to the referral.

NI made its bid on 15 June and Richard Desmond's Northern & Shell bid for Channel 5 – which raises exactly the same issues – followed. The same argument applies and if Vince Cable refers the NI bid for a plurality review he could hardly fail to do the same for Northern & Shell.

The plurality review has only happened once before – when NI took a 17.9% stake in ITV. OfCom registered its concern, but the Competition Commission set it to one side, believing the size of the stake and NI's editorial record did not warrant the acquisition being blocked. It could hardly take the same stance over the current bids, in particular NI's.

Evil Murdoch teaches Evil

Rupert Murdoch's News International (NI) is drawing up plans to sponsor an academy school in a move that is likely to trigger anxiety about the media mogul's influence.

The Observer understands that executives at NI, which owns the Times, the Sun, the Sunday Times and the News of the World (NoW), are actively discussing sponsoring a school in east London, close to the company's headquarters in Wapping.

The idea, which is being spearheaded by Rebekah Brooks, the former editor of the Sun, who is now chief executive of NI, has been under discussion for several months but is still at an early stage, according to sources.

The plan will alarm Murdoch's critics who claim the tycoon's media empire, which spans broadcasting, publishing and internet interests around the world, already wields formidable influence over the UK's political system and society.