Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Police Charge News of the World Editor Over Voicemail Hacking

Posted by Soulskill on from the figuring-out-where-the-line-is-drawn dept.

New submitter HarryatRock writes with news that former News of the World editor Rebekah Brooks and five others have been charged by police for their involvement in intercepting voicemail messages left for a murdered girl. From the article: "She is charged with conspiring with her 49-year-old husband, personal assistant Cheryl Carter, chauffeur Paul Edwards, security man Daryl Jorsling, and News International head of security Mr Hanna to "conceal material" from police between 6 and 19 July. In a second charge Mrs Brooks and Ms Carter are accused of conspiring to remove seven boxes of material from the News International archive between 6 and 9 July. In a third charge, Mr and Mrs Brooks, Mr Hanna, Mr Edwards and Mr Jorsling are accused of conspiring to conceal documents, computers and other electronic equipment from police officers between 15 and 19 July."

8 of 131 comments (clear)

  1. Just another reason... by ToiletBomber · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ...to avoid anything related to Fox News like the plague

    1. Re:Just another reason... by dgatwood · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Of course you're trolling, but what does Rupert Murdoch's gutter-level right-wing editorial service called Fox News have to do with a legitimate news operation?

      --

      Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.

    2. Re:Just another reason... by Tarsir · · Score: 5, Insightful

      There is a reason Fox News regularly kills the other news networks viewership numbers combined.

      This is because Fox News regularly throws journalistic integrity to the wind in pursuit of ratings.

    3. Re:Just another reason... by nbauman · · Score: 4, Insightful

      This is not a debate where there is some merit to both sides. News Corp. is right-wing propaganda. They're not just a right-wing version of NBC, CBS and the Washington Post.

      The only people who defend News Corp. are right-wing wackos who don't know the difference between truth and propaganda.

      They're not like other American news organizations. Murdoch orders his editors to distort the news to advance his political goals.

      Fox News made "Fair and balanced" a cynical joke. It's like cigarette companies advertising that their cigarettes are healthy and doctors recommend them.

      The worst thing Murdoch did is destroy the Wall Street Journal, which used to be the best newspaper in the world, respected by left and right:

      http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/14/business/media/14carr.html
      Under Murdoch, Tilting Rightward at The Journal
      By DAVID CARR
      December 13, 2009

      A little over a year ago, Robert Thomson, The Journal’s top editor, picked Gerard Baker, a columnist for The Times of London, as his deputy managing editor. Mr. Baker is a former Washington bureau chief of The Financial Times with a great deal of expertise in the Beltway. The two men came of age in the more partisan milieu of British journalism.

      According to several former members of the Washington bureau and two current ones, the two men have had a big impact on the paper’s Washington coverage, adopting a more conservative tone, and editing and headlining articles to reflect a chronic skepticism of the current administration. And given that the paper’s circulation continues to grow, albeit helped along by some discounts, there’s nothing to suggest that The Journal’s readers don’t approve.

      Mr. Baker, a neoconservative columnist of acute political views, has been especially active in managing coverage in Washington, creating significant grumbling, if not resistance, from the staff there. Reporters say the coverage of the Obama administration is reflexively critical, the health care debate is generally framed in terms of costs rather than benefits — “health care reform” is a generally forbidden phrase — and global warming skeptics have gotten a steady ride. (Of course, objectivity is in the eyes of the reader.)

      The pro-business, antigovernment shift in the news pages has broken into plain view in the last year. On Aug. 12, a fairly straight down the middle front page article on President Obama’s management style ended up with the provocative headline, “A President as Micromanager: How Much Detail Is Enough?” The original article included a contrast between President Jimmy Carter’s tendency to go deep in the weeds of every issue with President George W. Bush’s predilection for minimal involvement, according to someone who saw the draft. By the time the article ran, it included only the swipe at Mr. Carter.

      On Aug. 27, a fairly straightforward obituary about Ted Kennedy for the Web site was subjected to a little political re-education on the way to the front page. A new paragraph was added quoting Rush Limbaugh deriding what he called all of the “slobbering media coverage,” and he also accused the recently deceased senator of being the kind of politician who “uses the government to take money from people who work and gives it to people who don’t work.”

      On Oct. 31, an article on the front of the B section about estate taxes at the state level used the phrase “death tax” six times, but there were no quotation marks around it. A month later, the newspaper’s Style & Substance blog suggested that the adoption of such a loaded political term was probably not a good idea: “Because opponents of estate taxes have long referred to them as death taxes, the term should be avoided in news stories.”

  2. Re:I'm Shocked by Hatta · · Score: 4, Insightful

    No indictment for any Murdoch.

    --
    Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
  3. Re:Lots are falling on swords to keep Murdoch in. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    When you're the 1%, the 99% take the sword.

    And in this case, when you're in the .01%, 99% of the 1% are fair game too.

  4. Re:Lots are falling on swords to keep Murdoch in. by Spad · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Remember that the Murdochs are several degrees removed from all of these charges. Now they may be evil masterminds and they may eventually be charged with one or more crimes, but for the moment the police are having to work their way up through the ranks.

    I suspect that for anything substantial to stick it's going to take more than one or two NOTW employees pointing at the Murdochs and saying "they made me do it".

  5. It's the coverup by residents_parking · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It is the attempted coverup they are being charged for, not the crime of phone hacking. That's what "perverting the course of justice" means here in the UK. It's a common law offence that usually carries a prison sentence, which can be up to life.