Murdoch Scum

[Gringo]

This is becoming dispiritingly predictable. Guess who else they hacked? Can't hotlink so just click.

http://twitpic.com/5o9wj1

The Fox Killer? Has hackgate just gone big stateside.

Unfortunately I doubt the mirror journalists have **** all evidence which will end up damaging the case against rupert. This could be rupe's break.

[TheDon]

Apparently the US government couldadd to their misery.

Going to be interesting times for News Corp that's for sure.

[Gringo]

In the saturday grauniad they had an example of a couple in the states jailed under the USA corruption laws and all their assets being seized.

[LondonLax]

The Mirror are claiming this morning that NOTW may have been trying to hack British victims of 9/11.

If any evidence comes out that 9/11 victims had their phones hacked the story will go nuclear in the US.

[Gringo]

NOTW have been hacking everyone, the times is accused of hacking bank details and now the sunday times accused of all sorts:

grauniad again"]Gordon Brown is said to be "shocked" after it was alleged the Sunday Times targeted his personal information when he was Chancellor.

Documents and a phone recording suggest "blagging" was used to obtain private financial and property details.

The Browns also fear medical records relating to their son Fraser, whom the Sun revealed in 2006 had cystic fibrosis, may have been obtained.

News International said it would investigate the claims.

So News Intl is widey infected, but no link to the wider news corp.

Today rupert basically asked for the bskyb bid to be referred to OFCOM, and removed the offer of selling sky news. So either he thinks closing notw removes any threat to media (not news) plurality or he's willing to sell the papers and remove idea of competition consequences. Either way, the plan seems to be to direct the argument to focus on the competition issues instead of the 'fit and proper' dillema. Because if rupert isn't fit and proper, what about dirty desmond or the sullivan enshamble - or the two mad brothers acting as dictators on one of the channel islands.

[Anthony]

I think, if push comes to shove, that financially it's in Rupert's interest to evenshut down his newspapers in order to get control of BSkyB, such is the declining financial clout of printed media. What he will never understand is that print is being replaced by the mobile web, which is more powerful than he can possibly imagine. Mwah hah hah etc.

[leviramsey]

Chris Hitchens weighs in

On a beautiful Sunday morning at Brideshead Castle, Sebastian Flyte breaks off a desultory conversation about religion and morality because he wants to immerse himself in the scandal sheets: "He turned back to the pages of the News of the World and said, 'Another naughty scout-master … oh, don't be a bore, Charles, I want to read about a woman in Hull who's been using an instrument … thirty-eight other cases were taken into consideration in sentencing her to six months—golly!"

As my colleague Anne Applebaum pointed out elsewhere in Slate, in his essay "Decline of the English Murder," George Orwell knew exactly how to set the scene for a pleasurable reverie on human wickedness:

It is Sunday afternoon, preferably before the war. The wife is already asleep in the armchair, and the children have been sent out for a nice long walk. You put your feet up on the sofa, settle your spectacles on your nose, and open the News of the World. … In these blissful circumstances, what is it that you want to read about?

Orwell's answer—"Naturally, about a murder"—differs significantly from Evelyn Waugh's preference for sexual deviance. And you'll perhaps notice that both authors, or their characters, are consciously "slumming" it by picking up a newspaper that was intended for the less-literate elements of the proletariat. But for decades, in fact since well back into the mid-Victorian epoch, the News of the World was the winning formula for the depiction of crime and squalor and vice. The brilliance of the formula lay in its venerable hypocrisy; actually in two distinct kinds of venerable hypocrisy. First, the sad news of human frailty was not bugled with lurid and sensational tactics. It was laid out more in sorrow than in anger, published on a Sabbath day that was still full of legal and moral force, and strove to show how easy was the fall from grace. Second, and in keeping, its reporters and editors took a very high moral tone. They would take the investigation of a brothel, say, only so far. Once a certain point of complicity had been reached, there would appear a phrase that became celebrated both in print and in court. "At this stage," the reporter would solemnly intone, "I made an excuse and left." This degree of detachment was thought essential to the proper conduct of business.

Hand it to Rupert Murdoch and his minions: They got hold of the solid old "News of the Screws" or "Nudes of the World" and made it into a paper where the question was not how low can poor human nature sink, but rather is there anything, however depraved, that a reporter cannot be induced to do? Admittedly, this question is not a new one in the folklore of Fleet Street. Describing the press pack on assignment in his masterpiece Scoop, it was Evelyn Waugh who noticed one of their tightest mutual bonds: "Together they had loitered on many a doorstep and forced an entry into many a stricken home." As a lowly cub, I remember being told always to take along a partner if it was planned to visit the recently violated and bereaved. "They'll always offer a cup of tea, so you go in the kitchen with them, and then your mate'll have nice time to grab the family photographs off the mantelpiece."

Of course, the daily handful of people on whom these heartless intrusions are visited are highly upset and distraught. But the opposite effect is produced on the many millions of people who are not thus violated and who hotly desire to read about those who are. When reporters speak so easily of the great influence exerted on politicians by Murdoch's papers, what they really mean is by Murdoch's readers. His only real knack lies in knowing what they want. And what they want are invasions of privacy—and plenty of them. (In Michael Frayn's Fleet Street novel The Tin Men, which is the only rival to Scoop, focus groups of consumers were set up to answer questions about their tabloid needs. In the case of an air crash, would they prefer to read about children's toys being found in the wreckage? If a woman had been assaulted, should she be best described as having been found with or without her underwear? Yes, dear reader, you are a hypocrite, too.)

The comparative fallout of the scandal on Britain's two main political parties is probably fairly even. Successive Labour governments maintained much the longer and warmer relationship with Murdoch, while Conservative Party leader David Cameron did employ a former News of the World editor who is implicated in the phone-hacking scandal in a senior government media position (and Cameron has, aside from professional politics, himself pursued no career except that of a PR man for TV companies). The most neglected aspect of the entire imbroglio is this. Most of the allegations of shady practice against the Murdoch octopus have come from another newspaper. Under the editorship of Alan Rusbridger, the Guardian has been engaged in breaching an old unspoken code of the British press racket—that "dog does not eat dog." The prime minister's office showed itself incapable of conducting an investigation; the courts and the prosecutors appeared to have no idea of the state of the law, and the police were too busy collecting their tip-off fees. Admittedly, it isn't usually the job of these institutions to keep the press honest. (Indeed, I could swear that I read somewhere that the whole concept was the other way about.) Still, it's encouraging to record that when the press needed a housecleaning, there was a paper ready to take on the job.

Over the same period, Rusbridger and the Guardian formed the London end of the media consortium that tried to impose some element of sorting and priority on the mess that WikiLeaks had become. Now here was serious disclosure—some of it gained by invasion of privacy—on matters of real importance. What strikes the eye about the material in the News of the World is its relentless nullity: when cruel things happen to unimportant people, or when sordid things happen to famous people. Prurience and voyeurism supply the only energy. A sort of Gresham's Law begins to drive the news, or rather to drive out actual information by means of huge waves of mawkishness and populism. In this sense, too, a lot hangs on the outcome of the battle between the Murdochian and Guardian worldviews.

[leviramsey]

So either he thinks closing notw removes any threat to media (not news) plurality or he's willing to sell the papers and remove idea of competition consequences. Either way, the plan seems to be to direct the argument to focus on the competition issues instead of the 'fit and proper' dillema. Because if rupert isn't fit and proper, what about dirty desmond or the sullivan enshamble - or the two mad brothers acting as dictators on one of the channel islands.

BINGO.

(or should I say WINGO?)

wiki"]

In February 1994, Murdoch's News Corporation was forced to sell the paper, in order that its subsidiary Fox Television Stations could legally consummate its purchase of Fox affiliate WFXT. Patrick J. Purcell, who was the publisher of the Boston Herald and a former News Corporation executive, purchased the Herald and established it as an independent newspaper.

Rupert had bought the TV channel a number of years before under a temporary waiver granted by the FCC to the then-rule prohibiting owning a newspaper and television station in the same market. After a couple of years (long allegedly at the request of Ted Kennedy, who long had a somewhat adversarial relationship with the paper), Fox put the station into a trust, then sold it to the Boston Celtics who more or less made a hash of it then sold it back to Rupert at the same time that Rupert sold the paper to one of his top lieutenants.

A similar thing happened in New York, with the Post at around the same time, but in reverse:

wiki"]

Because of the institution of federal regulations limiting media cross-ownership after Murdoch's purchase of WNYW-TV to launch the Fox Broadcasting Company, Murdoch was forced to sell the paper for US$37.6 million in 1988 to Peter S. Kalikow, a real-estate magnate with no news experience. When Kalikow declared bankruptcy in 1993, the paper was temporarily managed by Steven Hoffenberg, a financier who later pleaded guilty to securities fraud; and, for two weeks, by Abe Hirschfeld, who made his fortune building parking garages. After a staff revolt against the Hoffenberg-Hirschfeld partnership — which included publication of an issue whose front page featured the iconic masthead photo of Alexander Hamilton with a single tear drop running down his cheek [considered by many press critics to be the single greatest issue ever published by an American newspaper --LR] —The Post was repurchased in 1993 by Murdoch's News Corporation. This came about after numerous political officials, including Democratic governor of New York Mario Cuomo, persuaded the Federal Communications Commission to grant Murdoch a permanent waiver from the cross-ownership rules that had forced him to sell the paper five years earlier.

[Jezza]

Delicious commentary in Russia's 'Novaya Gazeta' on that scumbag Murdoch's plight:

"With such a scale and tempo of snooping, every person on the British Isles could have been exhibited naked in their moments of love or grief in front of his countrymen. Certainly Murdoch is no more guilty than the two-and-a-half million people who rushed to the trough called the News of the World once a week in order to eat their fill".

Sheer poetry!

[snowychap]

Blimey, these rozzers sound as dodgy as hell.

[PauloBarnesi]

The Mirror are claiming this morning that NOTW may have been trying to hack British victims of 9/11.

If any evidence comes out that 9/11 victims had their phones hacked the story will go nuclear in the US.

Good old Mirror, they just printed fake pictures of soldiers abusing Iraqis.

Of course under the glorious leadership of ex-NoTW editor Piers ‘Morgan’ Moron (he of insider dealing fame, Achtung Surrender!, etc)

[blandy]

More4 stopped showing it on our telly a while back, but the interwebs still has it

Daily Show take on events.

[CarewsEyebrowDesigner]

I can see it now.

Fox News opening titles, cue slightly odd music for a news channel.

Murdoch: Un-American(pedantry aside) 9/11 Hacking Scumbucket!

No? No...

[snowychap]

Schadenfreudegasm.

[Gringo]

Blimey, these rozzers sound as dodgy as hell.

So yates of the yard, who was charged with determining if there was any evidence that the enquiry should be re-opened, asked a few mates in the plod and they said it was all kushtie, so he decided that there was no point in proceeding.

Red Ken (the one before red ed) was on the radio this morning saying how scrupulous yates was and how meticulous he was as he never managed to find any evidence of cash for peerages even though the evidence was all printed in the national press.

The executive, the enforcers and the media all nicely in bed together telling lies to the public.

The referral of the bskyb deal means it is unlikely to proceed before february next year. Hopefully this kerfuffle will all have blown over by then, the deal will go through and rupert can carry on running the country as before.

[Anthony]

The scousers never buy the sun; a new song recorded by Billy Bragg this weekend just gone:

[snowychap]

Blimey, these rozzers sound as dodgy as hell.

So yates of the yard, who was charged with determining if there was any evidence that the enquiry should be re-opened, asked a few mates in the plod and they said it was all kushtie, so he decided that there was no point in proceeding.

He appeared to say that he was charged with finding out whether there was any 'new' evidence to suggest the inquiry ought to be reopened. The implicit claim, it seemed to me, was that he wasn't asked to go over th evidence already acquired. Sounded like a load of old cobblers.

The testimonies given by Yates, Clarke and Hayman (I luckily missed their warm up man the now 'Lord' Blair) sounded like they had all been sat in a room beforehand and had worked out how best each could claim that the important things were the responsibility of each other in a nice old game of pass the parcel.

Worst of the lot was that Hayman bloke. Wouldn't trust him to look after my coat.

Seemed to have walked straight out of the 1970s/80s.

The referral of the bskyb deal means it is unlikely to proceed before february next year. Hopefully this kerfuffle will all have blown over by then, the deal will go through and rupert can carry on running the country as before.

I'm not sure that it will matter whether it has blown over. From what I gathered from Newsnight yesterday, the 'fit and proper' test was removed from the competition commission legislation in 2002 so they can only decide it on the grounds of competition. I wonder whether it might end up becoming an opportunity for Murdoch jnr to strike properly at the BBC.

Should OFCOM decide that Rupe and his lot aren't fit and proper, wouldn't they have to get rid of their 39% and wouldn't James Murdoch have to step down?

[TheDon]

The scousers never buy the sun; a new song recorded by Billy Bragg this weekend just gone:

Awesome, you just knew Billy Bragg would have a lot to say about this and he doesn't disappoint.

[Gringo]

From what I gathered from Newsnight yesterday, the 'fit and proper' test was removed from the competition commission legislation in 2002 so they can only decide it on the grounds of competition.

There is an ongoing 'fit and proper' test for broadcasting licenses. Currently the license is held by bskyb which would be hard to challenge with rupert owning only 38%, but if newscorp were sole owners then the test could be applied to them directly.

[snowychap]

From what I gathered from Newsnight yesterday, the 'fit and proper' test was removed from the competition commission legislation in 2002 so they can only decide it on the grounds of competition.

There is an ongoing 'fit and proper' test for broadcasting licenses. Currently the license is held by bskyb which would be hard to challenge with rupert owning only 38%, but if newscorp were sole owners then the test could be applied to them directly.

That's the OFCOM one, though, isn't it? It wouldn't figure in any decision made by the competition commission if they no longer appear to have a duty to consider whether someone is fit and proper when looking at the competition angle.

I wouldn't be surprised (if it gets that far) to see the competition commission find that there isn't a barrier on grounds of competition and throw it back in to OFCOM's court in terms of being fit and proper with some kind of comment about it not being their fault because their hands were tied, &c.