Slashdot Mirror
Fox News Parent NewsCorp May Face Corruption Investigation
rtfa-troll writes "The Guardian reports that News Corporation may face FCPA investigations after an 'official of the British ministry of defence' was charged 'for allegedly receiving £100,000 from Murdoch's tabloid newspapers.' News Corporation, headed by Rupert Murdoch, is loved by most of the readers of Slashdot as the owner of Fox News and as the company which put the overly complicated paywall on the Wall Street Journal. The article states that the charges 'would be hard for the Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission to ignore and would warrant investigation under the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act which could lead to risks for 27 TV licences within the Fox network.'"
You know who is not going to be covering this story.
Mr Murdoch will be able to buy his way out of trouble...
If you mean pay huge fines that are still less than his yearly caviar tab, and then continue on "business as usual", then yes you are correct...
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
No, wait, I'm shocked, SHOCKED I tell you!
Sorry, but gray text on gray background is making my eyes bleed.
yeah, you were misreading (or not reading) TFA:
The latest legal difficulties to hit News Corporation could also potentially have ramifications on its 27 TV licences within the Fox network â" the real financial heart of the operation. Three of the licences are up for renewal, and in August the ethics watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (Crew) filed a petition with the US broadcasting regulator, the Federal Communications Commission, that called for them to be denied on the grounds that the company did not have the requisite character to run a public service.
The FCC is being asked to deny renewal for 3 of the 27 Fox licences. Whatever regulates the sat/cable industry might be asked to consider if Fox is a reputable enough company to own a licence to broadcast - the UK has such requirements, and I can't really believe the US has a totally deregulated media industry (a corrupt one, maybe).
Anyway, keep your eyes open, this time next week the Leveson Inquiry publishes its report into News Corp.
The fact remains that if a US company is convicted of bribing officials in a foreign country, that company can be prosecuted under domestic law. Whether NewsCorp will be or not is another question, but there have been strong hints dropped since the case really exploded in Britain that US authorities are carefully watching what happens in Britain.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
So an incident in a subsidiary branch 6000 miles away from the US should induce major headaches for a US-based organization at the hands of the US government.
That's what often happens. For one, foriegn bribes are illegal in the US. That is to say, if a fooreign subsidiary uses bribery, it is a crime (under US law) that can be charged against the parent company. That's why one company I worked for with more than 30 foreign subsidiaries had very very liberal expense accounting. You were expected to pay for bribes yourself, then charge them back as "dinner" or such, no receipt needed, and unprosecutable as far as the feds are concerned.
It was a requirement of doing business, as some countries require bribes. One specific example would have a US analog of:
What would you do if the Elbonia TSA made you pay $5 to get your laptop bin back at the security check? They are government employees, so slipping them $5 for your laptop would be a federal crime in the USA.
So yeah, if he gets convicted of bribery in the UK, then his company is on the hook for breaking the foreign corrupt practices act, and should lose all US licenses.
Why do you want to reward people who break the rules, so long as they break them creatively enough to satisfy you?
Learn to love Alaska
Dear Slashdot,
You've heard of the phrase "Pot calling the Kettle Black", right? Slashdot has no standing to call anyone else "biased".
You seem to have difficulty distinguishing between having an opinion about something and just plain Making Shit Up.
When someone has an opinion, no matter how tenuous, they have at least implicitly accepted that there is such a thing as objective reality, which gives you something to argue about.
When someone simply invents their own reality, then there's no common ground for argument or understanding.
And Slashdot, contrary to your construction of it, is far more diverse in its opinions than you seem to think. But when a collective bias does show (e.g. in anti-Microsoft diatribes), it's generally[*] based on commonly-held opinions that are derived from experience. My anti-Microsoft bias comes from trying to write and support stable server-based applications on an MS platform in the late '90s. Security and stability were such shit at that time that I moved to Linux simply in order to maintain my sanity (and professional reputation).
So, there may actually be pots and kettles here, but not where you're looking for them; comparing Slashdot to Fox is apples to oranges.
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[*] Generally. Statistically, there is a small but vocal cadre of clueless idiots in every group of a sufficient size.
Crumb's Corollary: Never bring a knife to a bun fight.
There will be a bidding war.
Don't worry, you're not going to miss anything if Fox disappears, except perhaps the singular experience of seeing Karl Rove shit his pants on live TV when the network declared Barack Obama re-elected.
And if you think maybe I'm being hyperbolic with the "shit-his-pants" description, it means you missed what happened on Fox when the election was called for the President. You could smell the fear-sweat through the TV screen when he realized he was going to have to tell a bunch of sociopath billionaires that they bought exactly nothing for the shipping containers full of money they gave to Rove on the promise that they'd get their own white president to own.
You are welcome on my lawn.
http://www.citizensforethics.org/legal-filings/entry/crew-petition-fcc-deny-renewal-news-corp-fox-broadcast-licenses-murdoch
Washington, D.C. – Today, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) filed a petition with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), asking the agency to deny renewal of three broadcast licenses held by Fox television stations. Because their licenses are set to expire in October, two Fox stations in Washington, D.C. and one in Baltimore – which are wholly owned subsidiaries of News Corp. – filed to renew the licenses this past June.
CREW is objecting to the renewals because under U.S. law, broadcast frequencies may be used only by people of good “character,” who will serve “the public interest,” and speak with “candor.” Significant character deficiencies may warrant disqualification from holding a license.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
"Don''t like" Fox Noise? Dude, it's not even news. It's nothing more than a propaganda channel, funneling the wishes and opinions of one of the richest and crookedest bastards in the world into American living rooms.
Have you noticed how divisive American politics has become? There is plenty of blame to lay at the feet of liberals and conservatives alike. Lots of blame for ALL of the big media channels. But Fox? Fox gets the lion's share of the blame for that. Those rotten bastards come into the living rooms of millions of Americans every day, to explain why Obummer is the Anti-Christ, and to explain for all the morons that America's end is nigh.
News? Fox is adamantly opposed to offering news. It's all propaganda noise.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
"Dude", it's every-bit as much of a news outlet as ABC,NBC,CBS,CNN,MSNBC, the NYT
What if it's not?
You just don't like any news story that runs contrary to your beliefs
What if it has nothing to do with beliefs? What if they are just objectively bad, but you don't want to think so because your beliefs agree with those broadcast by Fox News. Personally, I'm mostly politically moderate. I don't agree with the Loony Left or the Rabid Right and Fox News (the channel) appears to be objectively one of the worst News channels out there because they mix propaganda in with real news. In their 24 hour days they have around 7 or 8 hours of real informational (only a little politically slanted) news, but that means they have 16-17 hours of "opinion" programming (political propaganda) each day. It's not just me, Fox news watchers have consistently scored poorly on knowledge tests about current events. In at least one such test they scored lower than people who actively read and watched no news content. That should be a troubling result.
Frankly, if you're going to accuse everyone who disagrees with you of being biased, you'd better be doing a pretty good job of making sure you account for your own biases, which you haven't, because from your comments you appear to be rabidly right wing. You might want to consider whether some of the things you've "learned" from Fox News might be actually be distorted but you aren't seeing it because of your political leanings.
Fanatically anti-fanatical