Rejoice, rejoice rejoice!

If anyone thought that it was just NOTW, he or she was wrong.

German media is reporting that journalists of The Sunday Times wire-tapped Cameron and tried to get into his bank accounts. It's the Sunday Times, not The Times itself, but this is close enough to notify the public that all News Corp. media is not to be trusted.

You don't have to be a "all politicians, businessman and journalists are liars"-type like No Need For A Chest Wig to have guessed that NOTW was just the tip of the iceberg and at least the British branch of News Corp, more likely the whole operation is rotten to the core.
 
This whole thing is huge, people believe that anything is possible. Great times!
There were some reports out on today on Bloomberg (who are very rarely wrong), that News Corp is withdrawing its bid for BSkyB, the share price dropped by a further 2.5-3% to -8.5 or -9%, then Bloomberg issued a correction and it went back to -6 - 6.5%. I don't think a week ago someone would have believed that News Corp would withdraw its bid for BSkyB, yet today it happened. Are we seeing the end of the Murdoch empire?

[edit] I haven't read anything about Cameron being a target, but there was plenty about Brown, including getting hold of medical records of his child.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/phone-hacking/8631321/News-International-my-sons-medical-records-were-hacked-says-Gordon-Brown.html
 
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Another watershed day for Murdoch & NewsCorp:


"The Shit Hits the Fan"​

After a series of shocks over the last week all to do with the NotW, today the shit hit the fan when reports of two other Murdoch titles which may also have been illegally obtaining personal information.

The Sunday Times and The Sun.

BBC News - Gordon Brown 'targeted by Sunday Times'

BBC News said:
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.

more via link
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For years the "phone hacking" investigations only concerned the NotW, two guys even went to prison for it during the original investigation.

Last week's "phone hacking" revelations against families of fallen Servicemen, the parents of three murdered children and families of terrorist victims still ONLY concerned the News of the World.

Today broke new ground and the myth of this being "only one title" and just one "rouge reporter" has put paid to that.

Murdoch must be apoplectic with rage, I'm so glad he was in London when the shit hit the fan.

The question will now be asked, which other newspaper titles were also illegally obtaining personal information via phone hacking and other illegal activities?

Or even, a shorter list may be which ones were not involved in illegal information gathering?
 
hajj said:
This whole thing is huge, people believe that anything is possible. Great times!
There were some reports out on today on Bloomberg (who are very rarely wrong), that News Corp is withdrawing its bid for BSkyB, the share price dropped by a further 2.5-3% to -8.5 or -9%, then Bloomberg issued a correction and it went back to -6 - 6.5%. I don't think a week ago someone would have believed that News Corp would withdraw its bid for BSkyB, yet today it happened. Are we seeing the end of the Murdoch empire?

[edit] I haven't read anything about Cameron being a target, but there was plenty about Brown, including getting hold of medical records of his child.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/phone-hacking/8631321/News-International-my-sons-medical-records-were-hacked-says-Gordon-Brown.html
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With the falling share prices, perhaps it's time the Norwegian Pertrol Fund baught the whole shabang and fired Rupert the bear.

I for one think it's time the UK gets a media conglomorate ready to support the Norwegian party at the next GE.

 
GerFix said:
Yes they were. It was their war after all. Australians and New Zealanders (both my grandfathers amongst them) were there in support, because they thought it was the right and proper thing to do. They didn't need to be there. They weren't protecting their countries sovereign interests.

Think of Murdoch as the British military hierarchy; using, abusing, and not thinking or caring.
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I could not agree with you more, one of the reasons that stabbing our true friends in the back by joining the EU was such a shameful business.

R. Murdoch is now an American he gave up his Australian citizinship to buy US media. Not very loyal then (to Australia).

In 1915 we had not actually figured out how to fight a war. Battle of the Somme 45,000 casualties on the first day, but lessons were learnt eventually.
 
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hajj said:
This whole thing is huge, people believe that anything is possible. Great times!
There were some reports out on today on Bloomberg (who are very rarely wrong), that News Corp is withdrawing its bid for BSkyB, the share price dropped by a further 2.5-3% to -8.5 or -9%, then Bloomberg issued a correction and it went back to -6 - 6.5%. ]
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I think Reuters is reporting that the bid is being referred to a competition inquiry.

Brown a hacking target as Murdoch delays BSkyB bid

(Reuters) - Allegations that former prime minister Gordon Brown was a target of illegal data gathering by Rupert Murdoch's newspapers have piled pressure on the media baron as he tries to prevent investors pulling out of his News Corp empire.

Murdoch and the government tried to draw the financial and political sting from a newspaper phone-hacking scandal by referring his $14-billion (8 billion pounds) bid for the profitable pay-tv operator BSkyB to a lengthy commission inquiry.

Nevertheless, News Corp shares closed down about 7.58 percent at $15.48 in U.S. trading on Monday, for a fall of almost 15 percent in four days.

U.S. News Corp shareholders suing over the purchase of a business run by Murdoch's daughter filed a revised complaint, saying the phone hacking scandal reflected how the company's board failed to do its job.

But several major shareholders told Reuters they continue to have confidence in the company and one major investor in the company said the share selloff was overdone.

Donald Yacktman, chief investment officer of Yacktman Asset Management Co of Austin, Texas, the ninth-largest shareholder in News Corp, said the hacking furore "does slightly reduce the predictability of the cash flows, but the impact on the cash flows is minimal at best".

By referring News Corp's bid for the 61 percent of BSkyB it does not already own to the competition regulator, the government hoped to shield it from a tide of outrage over allegations that reporters for Murdoch's News of the World accessed the voicemails of murder and bomb victims and others.

But the stream of allegations continued.

Tuesday's Guardian newspaper quoted a letter from the Abbey National bank to another Murdoch paper, the Sunday Times, which said there was evidence that "someone from the Sunday Times or acting on its behalf has masqueraded as Mr Brown for the purpose of obtaining information from Abbey National by deception".

News International "noted" the allegation and requested more information.

The Guardian also said Murdoch's mass-selling Sun had obtained details from Brown's infant son's medical records.

The Sun revealed in 2006 that Brown's son Fraser had cystic fibrosis. Murdoch's Times quoted a source at News International saying the story had been obtained from a "legitimate source".

Police confirmed to Brown, who was finance minister and prime minister between 1997 and 2010, that his name had been on a list of targets compiled by Glenn Mulcaire, the private investigator at the centre of the voicemail hacking allegations against the News of the World.

"The family has been shocked by the level of criminality and the unethical means by which personal details have been obtained," Brown's spokeswoman said in a statement.

Murdoch, who had already taken a shock decision last week to shut the News of the World, Britain's biggest-selling Sunday paper, and has flown to Britain, had tried to seize the initiative again by withdrawing News Corp's offer to spin off BSkyB's Sky News channel.

The withdrawal of the offer, made to get the deal approved, opened the way for the government to refer the matter to the Competition Commission, whose investigation is likely to take a year or more.

"It's a smart tactical move," said Ian Whittaker, media analyst at Liberum Capital, noting that it also freed the government from a politically unacceptable but apparently unavoidable decision to approve the deal in the current climate.

"It gets the government off the hook. But there's still a very strong chance that in the end it will not go through in the short term or medium term. There are enough players out there that are opposed," he told Reuters.

CAMERON UNDER FIRE

Murdoch's News Corp wields influence from Hollywood to Hong Kong and owns the U.S. cable network Fox and the Wall Street Journal as well as the Sun, the country's biggest selling paper.

Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron has come under fire for his closeness to Murdoch's media empire; he is a friend of Rebekah Brooks, the News International chief executive who was editor at the News of the World during much of the alleged hacking; and he chose another former News of the World editor, Andy Coulson, as his communications chief.

Coulson, who quit in January over the scandal, was arrested last week for questioning in connection with phone-hacking and allegations that his reporters illegally paid police for information.

Cameron has defended his choice of Coulson and noted that Brown's Labour party also courted Murdoch when it was in power.

But on Monday he fired a warning shot at Murdoch, saying that News Corp needed to focus on "clearing up this mess" before thinking about the next corporate move.

The referral of the bid may ease the political pressure on Cameron as it meets a main demand of the opposition Labour Party, which had been threatening to drive a wedge into the coalition by forcing a vote in parliament on Wednesday.

Labour leader Ed Miliband said the government had moved reluctantly. "They are doing it not because they want to, but because they have been forced to," he said, urging Murdoch to "drop the bid for BSkyB".

Cameron's deputy Nick Clegg, from his Liberal Democrat coalition partners, also urged Murdoch to reconsider the bid for the 61 percent of BSkyB that it does not already own.

Other allegations emerged on Monday that News of the World had bought contact details for the British royal family from a policeman and tried to buy private phone records of victims of the September 11, 2001, attacks in the United States. Police declined comment.

"Do the decent thing, and reconsider, think again about your bid for BSkyB," Clegg told BBC News, addressing Murdoch, after meeting relatives of one of the victims of phone-hacking, a murdered schoolgirl.

Eight people, almost all journalists, have been arrested so far in a police inquiry into the allegations, which include one that a company executive may have destroyed evidence. News Corp's British newspaper arm denies any obstruction of justice.

A referral to the Competition Commission means the deal could be blocked on grounds of media plurality. But that would be better for Murdoch than if he and his team were found to be not "fit and proper" to run the broadcaster by the broadcasting regulator OfCom -- which has also been asked for a ruling -- as that could see him lose his existing 39 percent of the company.

(Additional reporting by Paul Sandle, Keith Weir, Tim Castle, Sudip Kar-Gupta, Sinead Cruise, Chris Vellacott and Michael Holden; writing by Philippa Fletcher and Kevin Liffey; editing by Michael Roddy)
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Had this hacking scandal surfaced during the election, Brown might have had a better time. If not a majority, he might had been given a larger base to talk with Clegg.

Just a thought.
 
I might need someone as a deputy leader. Want to be chancellor?
 
I think it's proper to say that we won't go for a M??se, but I was thinking of giving jetsetter a post as Health Secretary.

Who wants to be Minister for Norwegian affairs?
 
I want to be minister of banana peeling and/or festivities.
 
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BBC News - Hacking police round on News International

BBC News said:
News International tried to "thwart" the original inquiry into phone hacking at the News of the World, senior Met police officers have told MPs.

Ex-Deputy Assistant Commissioner Peter Clarke said while probing the claims in 2006, he came across "prevarication and what we now know to be lies".

Assistant Commissioner John Yates said the firm "appears to have failed to co-operate" during his review of the case.

Committee chairman Keith Vaz said Mr Yates's evidence was "unconvincing".

But the current Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police Sir Paul Stephenson said Mr Yates has his "full support and confidence".

more via link
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Well, I am a bit surprised by the BBC, with a true but misleading headline and initial copy shown above.

What actually happened was that three former and one current, senior Met Police cops were each grilled by the a Parliamentary committee, over their roles in the initial "phone hacking" investigation of 2005/06 enquiry and the 2009 review.

In the main, the answers they gave, the committee were unsatisifed with or unhappy about.

The committe could not acept that the original investigation had 11,000 siezed documents, which were not fully evaluated, with follow up actions taken.

The investigation was very narrowly scoped to ONLY look at data related to staff of and members of the Royal Family. (i.e. NOT Footballers, MPs, Celebs, Familys of murder victiims or fallen Servicemen, etc.) The investigation was undertaken by the Anti-Terrorist branch.

The other testimony was given was by DAC Sue Akers, the senior officer in charge of the current "phone hacking" investigation.

Deputy Assistant Commissioner Sue Akers, revealed to the committee that only 170 out of 3874 potential victims whose details were stored by private investigator Glenn Mulcaire have been contacted by police. But it only started in Jamuary 2011 and NewsInt lawyers only agreed a "protocol" for information requests after three months.

The committee was satisfied with her evidence and progress so far.

BBC News - Phone hacking: Rupert Murdoch 'could face MPs'

Invites are not mandatory, unlike in the US Congress. Murdoch, his boy and his squeeze Rebekah are invited to appear before the Parliamentary Culture & Media Committee next week.

Believe that when I see it next week.

:rolleyes:
 
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Perhaps the right cause of action would be to let the Queen invite him to tea, and let her tear him a new one.

I mean, even he can't refuse an invite from the Queen, can he?
 
In Defense of Murdoch
By ROGER COHEN
Published: July 11, 2011

NEW YORK ? Fair warning: This column is a defense of Rupert Murdoch. If you add everything up, he?s been good for newspapers over the past several decades, keeping them alive and vigorous and noisy and relevant. Without him, the British newspaper industry might have disappeared entirely.

This defense is prompted in part by seeing everyone piling in on the British hacking scandal, as if such abuses were confined to News International (we shall see) and as if significant swathes of the British establishment had not been complicit. It is also prompted by having spent time with Murdoch 21 years ago when writing a profile for The New York Times Magazine and coming away impressed.

Before I get to why, a few caveats. First, the hacking is of course indefensible as well as illegal. Second, Fox News, the U.S. TV network started by Murdoch, has with its shrill right-wing demagoguery masquerading as news made a significant contribution to the polarization of American politics, the erosion of reasoned debate, the debunking of reason itself, and the ensuing Washington paralysis. Third, I disagree with Murdoch?s views on a range of issues ? from climate change to the Middle East ? where his influence has been unhelpful.

So why do I still admire the guy? The first reason is his evident loathing for elites, for cozy establishments, for cartels, for what he?s called ?strangulated English accents? ? in fact for anything standing in the way of gutsy endeavor and churn. His love of no-holds-barred journalism is one reason Britain?s press is one of the most aggressive anywhere. That?s good for free societies.

Murdoch once told me: ?When I came to Britain in 1968, I found it was damn hard to get a day?s work out of the people at the top of the social scale. As an Australian, I only had to work 8 or 10 hours a day, 48 weeks of the year, and everything came to you.?

So it was easy enough, from 1969 onward, to rake in the media heirlooms. Along the way he?s often shown fierce loyalty to his people ? as now with Rebekah Brooks, the embattled head of News International ? and piled money into important newspapers like The Times that would otherwise have vanished.

The second thing I admire is the visionary, risk-taking determination that has placed him ahead of the game as the media business has been transformed through globalization and digitization. It?s been the ability to see around corners that has ushered him from two modest papers inherited from his father in Adelaide to the head of a company with about $33 billion in annual revenues.

Yes, there have been mistakes ? MySpace, the social media site just sold for a fraction of its purchase price is one. But I?d take Murdoch?s batting average. He?s gambled big on satellite TV, on global media opportunities in sports, and on the conflation of television, publishing, entertainment, newspapers and the Internet. British Sky Broadcasting and Fox alone represent big businesses created from nothing against significant odds.

A favorite Murdoch saying is: ?We don?t deal in market share. We create the market.?

Of course, his success makes plenty of people envious, one reason the Citizen Kane ogre image has attached to him. (He would have endorsed Kane who, when asked in the movie how he found business conditions in Europe, responded: ?With great difficulty!?) His success has caused redoubled envy in Britain because there he is ever the outsider from Down Under. (America doesn?t really do outsiders.)

The Times, which I?ve found a good read since moving to London last summer, has impressed me with its continued investment in foreign coverage, its bold move to put up a pay wall for the online edition (yes, people should pay for the work of journalists), and with the way the paper plays it pretty straight under editor James Harding. The Telegraph to the right and Guardian to the left play it less straight.

British Sky Broadcasting is emphatically not Fox. It?s a varied channel with some serious news shows. Overall, the British media scene without Murdoch would be pretty impoverished. His breaking of the unions at Wapping in 1986 was decisive for the vitality of newspapering. He took The Times tabloid when everyone said he was crazy. He was right. He loves a scoop, loves a scrap, and both the Wall Street Journal and The Times show serious journalists can thrive under him.

But Murdoch?s in trouble now. An important deal for all of British Sky Broadcasting hangs on his being able to convince British authorities News Corp management is in fact reputable. He?ll probably have to sacrifice Brooks for that. Politicians who fawned now fulminate. Prime Minister David Cameron is embarrassed. Both Murdoch and his savvy son James Murdoch (of more centrist views than his father) are scrambling.

I?d bet on them to prevail. When I asked Murdoch the secret of TV, he told me ?Bury your mistakes.? The guy?s a force of nature and his restless innovations have, on balance and with caveats, been good for the media and a more open world.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/12/opinion/12iht-edcohen12.html?_r=1
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If anyone was listening in NPR today you would have heard an interview with the author of the above. His arguments were quite compelling though judging by the comments on the NYT website most liberals do not seem to want to take the time to consider his assertions.

The interview: http://www.npr.org/2011/07/12/137795820/murdoch-papers-embroiled-in-hacking-scandal

In the United States entities like Fox News need to survive in order for there to be a balance of sorts in the news media. Fox takes the conservative viewpoint, everything else is liberal to one degree or another.
 
What I don't get is why taking the right wing viewpoint needs to lead to blatantly untrue, low-quality journalism in so many cases.
 
Oh, that's easy: Because it usually is also the viewpoint of the simple-minded. They need to keep it simple for them, thus resulting in less intelligent journalism. Intelligent rightwing journalism is a contradiction in terms, you know...

Just to put this into perspective: What is considered conservative in the U.S. today, is mostly what was considered far-right in the Weimar Republic.
 
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