Monday 29th of April 2024
Home » Blogs » John Richardson's blog

all hail the sun king .....

all hail the sun king .....

from Crikey .....

Michael Wolff, June 20, AdWeek:

"...this really appears to be an unstoppable thing.

"First, they did it. Boy, did they do it. And then they tried to cover it up. Oh, and it turns out they documented it, too. And then there is the hard-core, bedrock, long-oppressed, anti-Murdoch faction in the UK, suddenly armed with a mighty weapon: a scandal, into its third year, that drips out week after week. There doesn't seem like any going back to an invulnerable Rupert."

He's referring to the News of the World phone hacking scandal. It was unstoppable back then, but not enough to stop Murdoch finally getting the green light from the British government to pursue full ownership of BSkyB.

Hacking hundreds of phones of the rich and powerful in a clear and breathtaking breach of civil liberties may not have been enough to increase public pressure on British politicians, but now ... well, if Wolff thought this story was unstoppable before. This scandal just picked on the wrong person.

A 13-year-old, to be precise. Not rich, not powerful, not political, not privileged, not public. A murdered British schoolgirl.

We're not talking about Sienna Miller any more.

Wolff wrote back in June: "Hacking is not at all an aberration, or a what-were-they-thinking error of judgment and strategy, but an expression of the company's fundamental identity: it's not just that they did it, but, more importantly, this is what they do."

Hack missing 13-year-olds' accounts. Jeopardise police investigations. Destroy potential evidence. Give false hope to families. The same family who granted a full interview to News of the World at the time of their daughter's disappearance in a bid to publicise her plight, all the while ignorant of the fact the paper was listening in on their daughter's phone.

This is what they do.

meanwhile .....

If the Gillard Government is looking for an excuse not to give Sky News the $223 million Australia Television contract, it should come straight out with a probity argument based on the News of the World phone hacking scandal.

 

There would be no better moment given the white anger which exploded in the UK overnight after The Guardian revealed the News of the World had hacked the voicemail of Milly Dowler, a 13-year-old Surrey school girl who was abducted and murdered in 2002.

 

The ABC is presumably talking up its probity strengths in the Australia Television tender battle and it was a little surprising that AM didn’t cover the Milly Dowler story today. Instead, host Tony Eastley latched onto the hacking of the Fox News Twitter account which for an extraordinary 10 hours carried messages declaring Barack Obama had been assassinated. Oh dear.

 

The problem for Julia Gillard and Stephen Conroy is that they’ve already gone on the record saying the Australia Television tender has been reworked to take account of the Arab Spring.

 

Questions are now rightly being asked, including by Margaret Simons in Crikey yesterday.

 

Even Mark Day weighed in for The Australian on Monday declaring that he could smell a rat in the delay. The headline on his column brazenly declared that “Australia Network tender process lacks transparency.”

 

There can be no greater lack of transparency than illegally hacking thousands of phone messages for up to a decade. If Julia Gillard declared in Question Time today that the probity of tenderers was an issue and she was appalled by the Milly Dowler revelations overnight, the News Corp outlets would be obliged to report about one of its most despicable acts in the 58 years Rupert Murdoch has spent building the company.

 

It was very interesting that Fairfax got what looked like a drop out of Rudd’s office or DFAT for yesterday’s splash in the broadsheets. It looks like the old truism, “my enemy’s enemy is my friend” may well be at work with Kevin Rudd back co-operating with News Corp.

 

I remember bumping into Conroy at the ABC studios in Melbourne three years ago and suggesting he give Maurice Newman the flick as ABC chairman. “That’s Kevin’s decision,” was his immediate reply.

 

Clearly things have changed now with Cabinet formally stripping Rudd of the power to award the 10-year Australia Television contract to Sky even though Rudd previously declared it was a matter for him.

 

Sky is an equal three way partnership between Seven, Nine and BSkyB, although the Murdoch interests clearly have the greatest influence over management. Seven and Nine have every reason to be furious with News Ltd’s recent conduct in Australia.

 

It takes a certain level of chutzpah to simultaneously run an utterly biased campaign against the Government whilst sticking your hand out for a juicy government contract, but that’s News Ltd for you.

 

Stung by The Australian’s ongoing campaign against the NBN, Senator Conroy is clearly onto this issue and my money is that he will move heaven and earth not to give the Murdoch interests a red cent.

 

Finally, check out this package on phone hacking from the Columbia Journalism Review, especially the hilarious video when a Fox News anchor is reprimanded by the Sun King for daring to question him about phone hacking.

 

Rupert won’t be able to refuse to comment at the 2011 News Corp AGM.

 

 

the privilege of hypocrisy .....

Britain's phone hacking scandal intensified as the scope of tabloid intrusion into private voice mails became clearer: Murder victims. Terror victims. Film stars. Sports figures. Politicians. The royal family's entourage.

Almost no one, it seems, was safe from a tabloid determined to beat its rivals, whatever it takes.

The focal point is the News of the World - now facing a spreading advertising boycott - and the top executives of its parent companies: Rebekah Brooks, chief executive of News International and former editor of the tabloid, and her boss, media potentate Rupert Murdoch.

In his first comment since the latest details emerged, Murdoch said phone hacking was "deplorable and unacceptable".

Murdoch issued a statement condemning the alleged interception of voicemail messages and payments to police officers.

He said: "Recent allegations of phone hacking and making payments to police with respect to the News of the World are deplorable and unacceptable.

"I have made clear that our company must fully and proactively co-operate with the police in all investigations and that is exactly what News International has been doing and will continue to do under Rebekah Brooks' leadership.

Brooks, one of the most powerful women in British journalism, maintains she did not know about the phone hacking. She said she will continue to direct the company.

Murdoch Condemns Deplorable & Unacceptable Phone Hacking

If anyone had the slightest doubt, the News of the World scandal has confirmed that the principle of accountability is dead.

That Rebecca Brooks, as the organisation's most senior executive, thinks that by denying knowledge of the methods used by her corrupt organisation to intrude into the privacy of people's lives somehow absolves her from being accountable for that behaviour, simply explains how the corruption is able to flourish.

Whilst so-called leaders from all walks of life are ready to lecture us on how we should live our lives, they carefully avoid applying the same standards to themselves or those they serve.

Whether it be John Howard & Alexander Downer denying knowledge of the practices of AWB; whether it be the Pope covering for fallen clergy; whether it be that mad, bad pommie war criminal, "Aussie Tony" Blair, denying that he fabricated the case for war against Saddam Hussein; whether it be the american simpleton, Bushit, or his criminal cronies, who openly subscribe to a philosophy that America can do whatever it wants, or whether its the "Mad Monk" Abbott demanding that everyone conduct themselves according to standards that he himself refuses to observe.

from the head .....

The rotting morality inside News Limited ....the stench just continues.

Rebeka Brooks, the embattled chief executive of Rupert Murdoch's News International, personally commissioned searches by one of the private investigators who was later used by the News of the World to trace the family of the murdered Surrey schoolgirl Milly Dowler, The Independent can reveal.

Ms Brooks, while editor of NOTW, used Steve Whittamore, a private detective who specialised in obtaining illegal information, to "convert" a mobile phone number to find its registered owner. Mr Whittamore also provided the paper with the Dowlers' ex-directory home phone number.

The Information Commissioner's Office, which successfully prosecuted Whittamore for breaches of the Data Protection Act in 2005, said last night it would have been illegal to obtain the mobile conversion if the details had been "blagged" from a phone company.

Ms Brooks, who said yesterday she was "shocked and appalled" at the latest hacking claims, admitted requesting the information. But she said it could be obtained by "perfectly legitimate means". She faced demands for her resignation last night.

The revelation came as News International battled a political and commercial firestorm over the disclosure that its bestselling paper interfered with the police investigation into Milly's disappearance in March 2002 by hacking into her mobile phone and deleting messages. One big advertiser, Ford, announced it was suspending its account with the paper while the energy company Npower and Halifax bank said they were considering options. Thousands of readers joined boycott campaigns on Facebook and Twitter.

An emergency three-hour debate is to be held in the House of Commons today. The Labour leader Ed Miliband hardened his position on the scandal, demanding a public inquiry and calling for Ms Brooks to "consider her conscience and consider her position".

David Cameron described the hacking as "quite shocking" and a "truly dreadful act", but rebuffed the call for a public inquiry. He insisted Scotland Yard be allowed to follow the evidence wherever it led.

In a fiery speech delivered in the House of Commons, Labour MP Chris Bryant called for News of the World editor Rebekah Brooks to resign over the phone hacking scandal if she has "a shred of decency".

Thank you for posting it

Thank you for posting it here. A scandal has broken out regarding English rumor newspaper News of the World, and it is causing advertisers to desert the paper as if it were a bad habit. This isn't the first time the newspaper was accused of breaking people's privacy. The paper is being investigated by the London police. Here is the proof: News of the World losing advertisers amid phone hacking scandal. You can also check that out for a detailed information.

hail rupert!...

"It is easy to demonise Rupert Murdoch," she writes in her column today. "Yet without his involvement in the British media, the newspapers he now owns might not exist at all.

"As someone who worked for the Times, I concede an interest here. His defeat of the print unions changed the economics of the British press and made new ventures, such as the Independent, feasible.

"With Sky, he transformed the television landscape, giving British viewers a breadth of choice that has only recently come to the rest of Europe.

"With each expansion he made new enemies, with many seeing any Murdoch gain as a threat. It may or may not be coincidence that each twist of the phone-hacking scandal seemed to coincide with a stage in Murdoch's efforts to gain the majority stake in BSkyB.

"Each revelation has served as a convenient peg to hang an anti-Murdoch agenda on."

Dejevsky is clearly a woman of independent thought, as befits the chief editorial writer at "the Indie". Six years ago she gave an Intelligence Squared address titled: 'Elections are fair and free under Putin'.


Read more: http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/81445,people,news,message-to-rupert-murdoch-somebody-loves-you#ixzz1Rew16UEQ