Showing posts with label Murdoch. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Murdoch. Show all posts

Wednesday, February 19, 2014

Revealed - the Two Faces of Tony Blair. They're Both Ugly.


A lot of people realized when Tony Blair jumped aboard the Bush/Cheney bandwagon to conquer Iraq that he was a two-faced weasel.  Now, courtesy of Rupert Murdoch, any lingering doubt about Blair's integrity has been erased, obliterated.

Former British prime minister Tony Blair offered to act as a secret adviser to Rupert Murdoch during his media empire's phone-hacking scandal, suggesting the firm follow steps he took to calm public anger over the Iraq war, a London court has heard.

Rebekah Brooks, the ex-boss of Murdoch's British newspapers, wrote an email to Murdoch's son James detailing advice Blair had given her during an hour-long phone call in July 2011 at the height of a furore over phone-hacking allegations at the media mogul's News of the World tabloid.
 
"He (Blair) is available to you, KRM and me as an unofficial adviser but needs to be between us," said the email from Ms Brooks to James Murdoch, who at the time ran News Corporation operations in Britain. KRM refers to Rupert Murdoch's initials.
Ms Brooks said Mr Blair had counselled: "It will pass. Tough up." Four days later she quit her job and she was arrested by police two days after that.

The email was sent the day after News Corporation closed the 168-year-old News of the World in the face of huge public anger over revelations that its staff had hacked into the voicemail messages of a murdered schoolgirl.

Mr Blair's suggestions to Ms Brooks contrast with a public statement he made three days before their phone call, when he had denounced the hacking scandal as "beyond disgusting".

The email also demonstrates just how close Ms Brooks and Rupert Murdoch were to Britain's elite, a relationship critics said allowed him to use his British newspapers to influence politicians for the benefit of his business interests.

Greasy Tony, greasy - you despicable, jumped up little shit.

Sunday, March 04, 2012

Will a 25-Year Old Murder Bring Down Rupert Murdoch?

Daniel Morgan

Hacking celebrity voicemails for lurid gossip is one thing but obstructing a murder investigation, an axe murder possibly committed by crooked cops,  is something else altogether.  It's one of the most fascinating aspects of the ongoing News of the World/Sun enquiry.   This is real Agatha Christie stuff.

25-years ago, British private investigator Daniel Morgan is "found slumped by his BMW in the car park of the Golden Lion pub in Sydenham, south London."   Somebody, wielding an axe, murdered Morgan while he was trying to sell details of police corruption.

Even the skeletal timeline in The Guardian is riveting with suggestions of police corruption and the possibility that crooked cops butchered Morgan to protect themselves from exposure.

Now the Leveson enquiry into News International corruption is receiving evidence that News of the World reporters may have played a role in derailing the murder investigation.

"...what were journalists from the News of the World up to when they started monitoring the movements and calls of a police officer investigating the murder of private detective Daniel Morgan?

"...The murder of the private detective who was trying to sell details of police corruption 25 years ago has been investigated five times. It is now believed that News of the World reporters intimidated the investigating officer, Detective Superintendent Dave Cook and his then wife, TV presenter Jacqui Hames. Appearing at Leveson, she said: "I believe that the real reason for the News of the World placing us under surveillance was that suspects in the Daniel Morgan murder inquiry were using their association with a powerful and well-resourced newspaper to try to intimidate us and so attempt to subvert the investigation."' 

"...Labour MP Tom Watson used parliamentary privilege to name police officers in the Morgan case and then offer a free-flowing analysis of the corruption between News International and the police.

"As the media absorbed the news about...  ...Watson's speech and an announcement by the police minister, Nick Herbert, that the Met was carrying out a forensic review of the case, the big news broke. James Murdoch had resigned the executive chairmanship of News International."

The Guardian item speculates that this could finally be the end of Murdoch's reign.  Evidence from the Leveson enquiry already has the FBI exploring international corruption offences by Murdoch's head company, News Corporation.

Thursday, July 28, 2011

Murdoch Crew Caught In Yet Another Outrageous Hacking Scandal

This time the target was Sara Payne whose 8-year old daughter was murdered by a repeat sex offender in 2000.   Scotland Yard has now added Mrs. Payne to their list of probable phone hacking victims.

Murdoch's defunct News of the World, believed responsible for hacking Mrs. Payne's phone had earlier supported her bid for a law requiring parents to be warned if a child sex offender lived nearby.  It has been suggested the voice mail for the phone hacked was a cellular phone actually given to Mrs. Payne by NOTW CEO Rebekah Brooks.

Thursday, July 21, 2011

Placing Murdoch - and Britain - In Perspective

David Cameron and Rupert Murdoch and all their minions are running a PR campaign on the News International scandal, telling people to keep it "in perspective."  It's not really a big deal or at least that's how they want the British public to see it.

The Guardian's Seumas Milne took up the Cameron/Murdoch challenge and wrote an excellent "perspective" piece on what this scandal really means:

As the cast of hacking victims, blaggers and blackmailers has lengthened, and the details of the incestuous payments and job-swapping between News International, government and Scotland Yard become more complex, it's easy to lose sight of the bigger picture that is now emerging.
If it were not for the uncovering of this cesspit, the Cameron government would be preparing to nod through the outright takeover of BSkyB by News International, taking its dominance of Britain's media and political world into Silvio Berlusconi territory. But what has been exposed now goes well beyond the hacking of murder victims and dead soldiers' families – or even the media itself. The scandal has lifted the lid on how power is really exercised in 21st-century Britain – in which the unreformed City and its bankers play a central part.

Murdoch's overweening political influence has long been recognised, from well before Tony Blair flew to Australia in 1995 to pay public homage at his corporate court. What has been less well understood is how close-up and personal the pressure exerted by his organisation has been throughout public life. The fear that those who crossed him would be given the full tabloid treatment over their personal misdemeanours, real or imagined, has proved to be a powerful Mafia-like racket.

It was the warning that News International would target their personal lives that cowed members of the Commons culture and media committee over pressing their investigation into phone hacking too vigorously before the last election. Barely a fortnight ago, Ed Miliband was warned that Murdoch's papers would "make it personal" after he broke with the political-class omerta towards the company. The same vow of silence meant that when Rebekah Brooks told MPs in 2003 her organisation had "paid the police for information", the bribery admission sank like a stone.

The Sopranos style is deeply embedded in the Murdoch dynasty. When the New Labour culture secretary Tessa Jowell broke up with her husband in 2006 as he faced Berlusconi-linked corruption charges (he was later cleared), Brooks took her out, letting her cry on her shoulder – just as News International was hacking into the couple's phone.

...Murdoch is a case apart, not only because of his commanding position in both print and satellite TV, but because of the crucial part he played in cementing Margaret Thatcher's political power and then shaping a whole era of New Labour/Tory neoliberal consensus that delivered enfeebled unions, privatisation and the Iraq war. His role in breaking the print unions at Wapping in the 1980s by sacking 5,000 mostly low-paid workers is still hailed in parts of the media as a brave blow for quality journalism.

It was nothing of the kind. The golden age of new titles never materialised, and it's certainly no coincidence that journalists were prevailed upon to resort to systematic illegality in a company that has refused to recognise independent trade unions ever since. Over those years, News International has used its grip on the political class to rewrite media regulation in its own image. As we now know, it has also suborned politicians and the police and operated as a freelance security service – not to expose the abuse of power, but to carry it out.

These revelations should ram home the reality that Britain has become a far more corrupt country than many realise. Much of that has been driven by the privatisation-fuelled revolving door culture that gives former ministers and civil servants plum jobs in the companies they were previously regulating.

Monday, July 18, 2011

Another Player Tumbles, Cameron Calls for Parliament to Debate Phone Hacking Scandal

Yesterday it was Metropolitan Police commissioner Stephenson who fell on his sword.   Today  his second in command, assistant commissioner Paul Yates, also resigned.

Events are spinning out of control so quickly that Conservative prime minister David Cameron has cut short an African trip and ordered Parliament back to debate the News International scandal.

Speaking in South Africa, Mr. Cameron said Parliament would be extended beyond the start of its scheduled summer recess for an emergency session on Wednesday, a day after Mr. Murdoch, his son James and Ms. Brooks are set to testify to a parliamentary inquiry into the scandal. 

Labour leader, Ed Miliband appears to be reversing his party's fortunes by his handling of the scandal and he pulled no punches in taking Cameron to task for his involvement:

It is of great concern,” Mr. Miliband said in a speech, “that the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police was unable to discuss vital issues with the Prime Minister because he felt that David Cameron was himself compromised on this issue because of Andy Coulson.” 


He added: “It is also striking that Sir Paul Stephenson has taken responsibility and resigned over the employment of Mr. Coulson’s deputy, while the Prime Minister hasn’t even apologized for hiring Mr. Coulson.

The Conservatives cling to power only with the support of an increasingly disaffected Liberal Democrat caucus.  If they revolt, Cameron could fall.

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.

Friday, July 15, 2011

Another Murdoch Lieutenant Falls

The day began with the announcement that News International CEO Rebekah Brooks had resigned.   Now she's followed by her predecessor and Rupe Murdoch's handpicked publisher of The Wall Street Journal and chairman of Dow Jones, Les Hinton who has announced his resignation.

Hinton ran News International from 1997 through 2005.  Rupe Murdoch, never one to give up a fight without plenty of  blood on the floor, is plainly running from this one.   First he shuttered News of the World, then he dropped his all but guaranteed takeover of BSkyB pay TV system, then Brooks fell on her sword, now Hinton does the same.

The Murdochs, Rupe and Jimmy, are due for an appearance before a British parliamentary committee next Tuesday.  By then they'll have no one left to fire but themselves.   Oopsie.

Meanwhile, on the truly dangerous side of the Atlantic for the Murdochs, the FBI has begun an investigation into reports that Murdoch crews tried to do the telephone voicemail hacking scam on survivors of the 9/11 victims.

Wednesday, July 13, 2011

Shining a Light on Media Corporatism

Britain might get to the bottom of the rot that has set in throughout the mass media in Britain and elsewhere.   The tsunami of public outrage over the latest disclosure of phone hacking and police corruption by Rupert Murdoch's crews has led prime minister David Cameron to launch a broad-reaching enquiry to examine  "the extent of unlawful or improper conduct at the News of the World and other newspapers and the way in which management failures may have allowed this to happen. This part of the inquiry will also look into the original police investigation and the issue of corrupt payments to police officers. And it will consider the implications for the relationship between newspapers and the police."

The second, and potentially more important part of the enquiry will scrutinize  "the culture, practices and ethics of the press; their relationship with the police; the failure of the current system of regulation; the contacts made, and discussions had, between national newspapers and politicians; why previous warnings about press misconduct were not heeded; and the issue of cross-media ownership."

Clearly, some aspects of the enquiry, including press ethics, media regulation, concentration of ownership and media cross-ownership, are relevant to other countries including Canada.  Perhaps the Brits might spark the sort of public debate we've long needed in our own land.

As we've argued repeatedly on this site, the first step to restoration of progressive democracy in our country surely must be the break up of the corporate media.   Democracy depends on free public access to the broadest range of opinion.   The more voices the better.   This drift to concentrated, corporate ownership of the Canadian media inherently undermines our democracy and gives rise to a potential for symbiosis between the corporate media and political authority.

Monday, July 11, 2011

The Very Face of Corruption


This is what the Corrupter Incarnate looks like and it's not pretty.  Anything he touches, including the Wall Street Journal, turns to slime.   Anything he creates, like FOX News, is fueled on slime.  In any legitimate democracy, people like this have no place in the mass media.   At the very least, his corporate aggregator, News Corp, ought to be renamed NewsPorn.

This very thought is now running through the heads of British politicians who, following their endless phone hacking scandal, are finally openly questioning whether Murdoch's operations can possibly meet the "fit and proper" requirement to hold a broadcast licence.   That they have to ask shows how much power this old bastard still wields.

Seriously, They're Afraid of This?

British deputy prime minister Nick Clegg is urging Murdoch to "do the decent and sensible thing" and drop his bid to acquire control of British Sky Broadcasting.