Slashdot Mirror
James Murdoch's Defense Crumbles
Hugh Pickens writes "Brian Cathcart writes that whatever happens to News Corp., it will surely happen without James Murdoch, the clever, dashing heir apparent to his buccaneer father, Rupert, who has become a liability with little hope of survival. James Rupert told members of Parliament that when he approved a payment of about $1.1 million in 2008 to settle the first lawsuit brought by a phone-hacking victim, he was not shown an email that suggested phone hacking was more widespread at the News of the World, and not limited to one 'rogue' reporter. 'He is saying one thing—that in briefing him they gave an "incomplete picture" — and, remarkably, in a statement Thursday, they publicly denied that,' writes Cathcart. All the News Corp. executives used to tell the same story but one by one as the pressure has grown these people have been cast off or have drifted away and now as the little group has splintered and scattered, and they all need to save their own skins. 'It's not just James who is done,' writes David Carr in the NY Times. 'Rupert Murdoch, as we have long known him, is done as well.'"
I've actually been switching between CNN, MSNBC, and FNC to see how each are covering it.
While I expected CNN & MSNBC to have non-stop coverage out of schadenfreude & FNC to ignore it, my totally unscientific survey has shown the opposite. Several times, FNC had a live feed in the courtroom while the other two were talking about the debt or celeb news.
I watch TV for about 30 minutes a day on average, so I could be totally off.
Grammer Nazis - I mod you "troll" unless you actually add something on-topic. Yes, I know I have mispellings in my sig.
I don't think Murdoch's company was the only one to use phone hacking.
Many papers did, through arms-length dealing with private detectives.
The UK government caught some detectives stealing private information, and published which newspapers were buying it Read page 11 of this report.
The top three newspaper companies buying illegal information were Trinity Mirror (1679 times), Daily Mail and General Trust (1387 times), then News International (only 256 times).
It's not the quantity of hacking, but who got hacked. The public didn't really care about celebrities being hacked, but went apeshit when they heard a little girl got hacked.
Does my bum look big in this?
It is most likely that Murdoch, Snr and Jnr, Brooks-Wade, Coulson, et al are all on the receiving end of a pretty well orchestrated operation by British state forces to finally remove them from their positions. It is likely that senior figures in the British establishment--which clearly did not include the Prime Minister--decided that News International had become an over-mighty threat to the state and needed to be dealt with.
While there were certainly a number of factors and influences in this decision (not least the hacking of the royal household phones), the likely precipitating event was the Vince Cable sting operation and resignation last December 2010. The entrapment and deposement of the Business Secretary, the last remaining obstacle to total NI control of BSkyB, was clearly a step too far for the comfort of the people in charge of Whitehall, who could see a time coming when no scalp would be safe from the media's baleful eye. The experience of the MP Tom Watson was probably also a big factor; the MP was all put placed under interdict by Brookes, apparently for him having rebuffed one of her political requests.
Essentially, News International had grown over-mighty, and simultaneously too close to the reigns of power. The company and its executives liked to think that they were somehow separate form the maelstrom of political forces they were unleashing, and which they chose to unleash to benefit themselves. Fortunately for the British public, if not the wider world, there are still people in the public service who can see when the feathers of over-mighty Barons, media or otherwise, need to be clipped for the good of all.
May the Maths Be with you!
Actually, the first of the final straws was provided by Hugh Grant some weeks before the Millie Dowler thing became widely known. Up until that point there had been little publicly available evidence that the accusations (circulated for a few years and thus far dismissed by the police despite the fact they were sitting on a large chunk of evidence that was either being ignored or simply hadn't been properly analysed). Hugh, bitter at being one of the targets, pulled a blinder and managed to record an ex NotW reporter talking about some og the things that had gone on but were being publicly denied.
This caught the attention of non-Murdoch media anew, which in turn piqued the public interest to the point of forcing the police to (re)review the evidence. At this point the information about Millie's phone came out, particularly the part about them wiping the existing messages so more could come in which did interfere with the investigation (and legally speaking is evidence tampering, which is a serious offence, and morally speaking is completely reprehensible too). Whether this new evidence about Millie came from the police looking at their records again or from "new" information found/provided by other media bodies, I forget.
Now the public were baying for blood. Celebrities? We couldn't give a monkey's chuff, to be frank. Let them sort their own problems out. They can afford good lawyers. Interfering with the investigation into the disappearance (and, it turn out, murder) of a young girl? Now that is something we got hot under the collar about. The final nails in the coffin were evidence coming out of the woodwork regarding the "hacking" of the voicemail of victims of the "7/7" bombings in London and their families, and the voicemail of injured/killed soldiers. This brought new condemnation from other sources and was what closed the NotW (many organisations, commercial and charitable, call all ties with the paper after those revelations - though why some of them didn't over just the murder case rather than sitting quiet until these new accusations is beyond me).
Whether Hugh was put up to his actions by someone in the know who wanted to skupper the BSkyB thing (there are many people, both high and low profile, who wanted to see that fail), and/or whether the ex reporter he "stung" was in on it, or whether the timing was coincidental, is subject to debate. Personally I err on the side of coincidence here, partly as the timing would require some impressive orchestration to pull off intentionally, with advantage being taken once the situation arose rather then some group planning it all to start with, but you never know.
The accusations of 9/11 victims and their families having been invaded in a similar manner are as yet just pure speculation as far as I can see. If good evidence for any such thing ever becomes apparent that could be very series for everyone significant in the organisation, old man Murdoch downwards, especially with this year being the 10th anniversary. I can see many people being most (justifiably) angry, that feeling deepened by thoughts and recollections close to the anniversary, and rival media outlets fanning the flames much enthusiasm, and that would lead to public calls for action against Murdoch in the US (calls too loud for the relevant authorities to ignore, even if they wanted to).