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Voicemail Hack Scandal Leads To Closure of UK Tabloid
Some Bitch writes "Britain's biggest selling Sunday tabloid will close after this Sunday's issue. The tabloid has been embroiled in a voicemail hacking controversy for some time now and the news that they compromised the voicemail of a murdered schoolgirl and paid bribes to Metropolitan police officers for stories kicked off a renewed assault on the paper. The News Corp daily counterpart to Sunday's News of the World is the Sun; the domain sunonsunday.co.uk was registered two days ago."
Send that fuck a bill for Iraq while you're at it.
If the intolerable hyping and biasing of the Casey Anthony trial in complete disregard of the defendant's right to due process isn't enough, there's that whole ordering people to tell lies about science to bias legislation thing.
so they close down one tabloid and move all the employees to another?
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
...here's the new name, complete with domain registration: http://webwhois.nic.uk/cgi-bin/whois.cgi?query=thesunonsunday.co.uk
I for one cheered when I heard this. A horrid, awful, sensationalist piece of crap 'news'paper. Excellent! Good riddance to bad rubbish!
This is the press equivalent of amputating a gangrenous limb to try and stop the spread of the infection, without even acknowledging that the rest of the body is already riddled with disease...
Actually, what he did in the case of the murdered girl was to fake the caller id record. Many voice mail systems do not prompt for a password when called from the persons home number.
Atlas stands on the earth and carries the celestial sphere on his shoulders.
Hugh Grant just called the Murdoch Empire a protection racket live on Question Time.
He almost certainly broke the law. The regulation of investigatory powers act makes it an offence for a corporate body to engage in this kind of behaviour and holds directors personally responsible for connivance and neglect.
If James Murdoch let things happen on a nod and a wink he's guilty of connivance. Even if he didn't have that level of knowledge, failing to do a full internal investigation based on the allegations from five years ago is a clear sign of neglect.
Nick
Frederick Greenwood, editor of the Pall Mall Gazette, met in his club one day Lord Riddell, who died a few years ago, and in the course of conversation Riddell said to him, `You know, I own a paper.' `Oh, do you?' said Greenwood, 'what is it?' `It's called the News of the Worldâ"I'll send you a copy,' replied Riddell, and in due course did so. Next time they met Riddell said, 'Well Greenwood, what do you think of my paper?' 'I looked at it,' replied Greenwood, 'and then I put it in the waste-paper basket. And then I thought, "If I leave it there the cook may read it" â"so I burned it!' http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/News_of_the_World#History
You thought you could break the laws of physics without paying the PRICE?
not a closure
the brand got torpedoed (in terms of goodwill)
so keep calm and carry on under a new name.
There's nothing new under the Sun.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
Hugh Grant just called the Murdoch Empire a protection racket live on Question Time.
Strangely enough Hugh Grant, someone I previously disliked for his films has actually shown considerable stones in this whole debacle.
The schoolgirl was arguably the worst however as they actually deleted some of her voice mails to make room for new messages to see what else they could dig up about the terrified friends and family. This is both deleting evidence in a murder investigation but also led the family to falsely believe she was still alive by thinking she was freeing up space on her voice mail.
I must say that I'm quite surprised that no-one technically minded has yet managed to raid Mr Murdoch and Mrs Brooks voicemails and publish them on YouTube. I'm sure there must have been some juicy irate messages left and would be a most apt thing to do.
Hang on, didn't them crafty LulzSec buggers have a request-line...?! Anyone got the number?
The reporter, as noted in another comment, stated that Rebekah Brooks knew full well what was going on. His "exposé" may be lacking when held up against heavyweight investigative journalism, but I don't think it's to be sniffed at.
Secondly, saying "they more or less got away with [it]" is a little disingenuous. Firstly, it's not over. Secondly, there's been an ongoing investigation into the phone-hacking charges and these things take time. Now, barring a criminal conviction, you're right, I suspect Rebekah Brooks will keep her job at News International but ask the 100s of employees of the NotW if they feel like they've "gotten away with it".
The key is, get chummy with the future PM and the most powerful media magnate in the world and you have job security for life. Do what your told by your mad, King Charles coiffed harridan of an editor and expect to get shit-canned as soon as the wind-changes.
He has the advantage that we already know his private life isn't whiter than white and has in any case semi-retired from acting. There isn't much you could really threaten him with.
The Sunday Sun is a Newcastle Upon Tyne based newspaper that has nothing to do with The Sun or News International.
http://webwhois.nic.uk/cgi-bin/whois.cgi?query=sundaysun.co.uk
I agree that boycotting the Sun and the Sun on Sunday is a good idea though.
Yeah. That does sound rather funny:
call to Hugh: We will threaten you with exposing your private life if you reveal anything on us.
-some muttering can be heard in background-
Call to Hugh: sorry, seems like we already did that. Is there anything else you would like us to threaten you with?
Hugh: not really
-more muttering in background-
Call to Hugh: turns out you are retired and we kinda draw the line at death threats at the moment (new company policy and all), and we're pretty much fucked anyhow. Continue as you were.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Why bother making people type another 8 characters when News International already own sunday.co.uk, which currently redirects to
the News of the World anyway.
The company isn't gone. This is the equivalent of The Coca Cola Company selling cans of Fanta Orange intentionally laced with arsenic, being caught out, and then agreeing to discontinue the brand "Fanta Orange" (but immediately announcing the launch of new "Sprite Orange"). Oh, and firing some factory workers who weren't even on the pay roll at the time of the arsenic-lacing for good measure.
The real issue is not the lack of morals in the tabloid press... We've always known that they never had any.
No, the real issue is how easy it was for some low-life private investigator to 'hack' voicemails all over the place. Most systems appear to use just 4-digit PINs and have no limits to how many times you can try your luck, as well as no logs (or nobody looking at the logs), so it's not surprising it is possible, but why haven't anything been done?! - This have been going on for 5 years or more, as we know from the early scandals involving this newspaper, and thus despite public knowledge nothing has been done?
Now that's the real scandal!
"For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) --