Saturday, July 16, 2011

A Conspiracy to Pervert the Course of Justice

Poor ol' Rupe Murdoch.   The old geezer is trying hard but he keeps falling behind the unfolding of events that could bring down his whole rotten enterprise.

The latest is word in The Telegraph that News International executives, including Rebekah Brooks and Rupe's boy, James, are subjects of an investigation into whether they were involved in a conspiracy to pervert the course of justice.

The source said: “News International appears to have covered up this scandal. That is potentially a conspiracy to pervert the course of justice. It would have to be proved that James Murdoch, Rebekah Brooks or any other senior executive knew the information handed over in 2011 was actually in the system in 2006 and suppressed it.

The way they are sacking people at the moment, you can’t rule out further information coming out.” 
News International has confirmed that a series of emails had been read by senior executives – a source declined to say who – before being sent in 2007 to an outside law firm where they remained for four years before being handed to police. 

Labour leader Ed Miliband wants all party agreement on new media ownership laws.

"I think that we've got to look at the situation whereby one person can own more than 20% of the newspaper market, the Sky platform and Sky News.  ...I think it's unhealthy because that amount of power in one person's hands has clearly led to abuses of power within his organisation. If you want to minimize the abuses of power then that kind of concentration of power is frankly quite dangerous."
 
Before this is over, we may all owe a debt of gratitude to News Corp, the Murdochs and their crews for shining a powerful light on the perils of corporatist media and the abuses of power that attend a mass media beset by concentration of ownership and media cross-ownership.   We have these very problems in Canada and the standards of Canadian journalism have decayed in the result.  Break up the media cartels, force divestiture.   Put the media back where it belongs, in many hands, for that is the only way to ensure that the Canadian public have access to the widest range of political opinion.  That is the only way to force the media to again serve the public as the watchdog of government instead of serving as the lapdog of favoured political movements.   The Opposition ought to harangue Harper for that, badger him incessantly.   Let the Canadian public know that the Murdochs may not be here but we have our own Murdoch clones.

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