Howling Mad Murdoch

According to Richard Heller, a British author and journalist and former chief of staff to Denis Healey, deputy leader of the British Labour Party:

If any story could strike terror into the leaders of Britain’s two major political parties, it would be: MURDOCH NEWSPAPERS ACCUSED OF CRIME SPREE.

And it happened last week, when The Guardian revealed a £1 million ($1.54 million) legal settlement by News International (Murdoch’s U.K. newspaper company) for illegally intercepting telephone voicemails of Gordon Taylor, head of England’s Professional Footballers' Association, and of his legal adviser. The Guardian also accused Murdoch’s newspapers—the weekday Sun and its Sunday stablemate The News of the World—of obtaining information by criminal means from 3,000 other people.

The terror of Rupert Murdoch has dominated British politics for around 25 years. Even Margaret Thatcher, famous for her resolute defense of free enterprise, personally refused to enforce anti-monopoly laws in newspapers and television for the benefit of the owner of The Sun, News of the World, The Times, and Sunday Times. Since then, every leader of each major party has been Murdoch’s eager courtier. Tony Blair set the style of the relationship in his first year as leader of the Labour Party, when he dashed halfway across the world to speak to Murdoch’s executives on a holiday island in Australia. (In return, Murdoch was gracious enough to praise Blair for his courage.) In his first year as prime minister, Blair made a personal call to then-Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi to help Murdoch’s bid for Mediaset—the first time in history that a British prime minister has helped a non-British company to make a non-British acquisition.

Gordon Brown followed suit by courting Murdoch’s economic guru, Irwin Steltzer, nervously awaiting the latter’s verdicts on his handling of the British economy like a schoolboy hoping for a good report card from the principal. It was most clearly seen when both Brown and the Conservative Party opposition leader, David Cameron, were desperately eager to attend the recent wedding of Sun editor Rebekah Wade, who is shortly to become chief executive of Murdoch’s British newspaper empire.

As a belated wedding present for the blushing bride and her boss, Cameron suddenly promised to strike down Ofcom—the body which regulates Murdoch’s British operations, and which, a few days before, had told him he was charging too much for the rights to British football and Hollywood movies.

In this political context, neither of the major parties wants to be forced into action against Rupert Murdoch as a result of the Guardian story.

Two years ago, when the News Of The World’s royals editor, Clive Goodman, went to jail for hacking royal telephone calls, both party leaderships were happy to buy the story that this was a one-off case and that Goodman was a “rogue operator,” whose methods were unknown to his editor, Andy Coulson, and to senior Murdoch executives.

Now the Guardian has established that Goodman’s was not a one-off case and alleges that senior Murdoch executives knowingly approved, authorized, and even directed the use of methods that are potentially criminal. Although the Guardian story is much more embarrassing in the short term to Cameron, who chose Coulson as his spin doctor, it is just as hot a potato for Gordon Brown. If any of the Guardian’s allegations stand up, the prime minister might see his attorney general deciding to prosecute Murdoch’s senior executives.


Brown is therefore secretly delighted that the police have decided to make no investigation of the Guardian's claims. If it were up to him and Cameron, the Guardian story would simply disappear. Two factors may prevent this.

The first is the decision by the House of Commons Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport to re-open its inquiry into media incursions into privacy.

Normally, House Select Committees are very tame bodies, with nothing like the independence or authority of U.S. congressional committees. Their members are generally handpicked by party whips and their reports are usually anodyne and ignored.

This particular select committee may be different. It is in the last year of its life and has little to lose if it decides to go out with a bang. After months in which MPs have been pilloried by the British media over expenses scandals, MPs on the committee may find it irresistible to strike back at the media—especially when they could pose as the protectors of the personal privacy of popular celebrities—such as domestic goddess Nigella Lawson, named by the Guardian as a Murdoch newspaper victim.

The committee chairman—Conservative John Whittingdale—is out of favor with his party leader and has no reason to do his bidding. Another member, Paul Farrelly, is an independent-minded Labour MP—and a former investigative journalist for the Guardian’s Sunday cousin, the Observer.

Another Labour member, Alan Keen, has already urged his colleagues to investigate James and Rupert Murdoch, to establish the general principle that newspaper proprietors are responsible for the methods of their employees. Other committee members are known to be angry at the statements they were given by Murdoch executives on the Goodman case, and are eager to grill them again. Between them, the MPs might just decide to hand down a hard-hitting report, which Brown and Cameron could not ignore.

More important, neither Brown nor Cameron can predict the results of further litigation.

By revealing the Gordon Taylor settlement, the Guardian has alerted many people, and not only celebrities, that they might win huge tax-free damages from Murdoch’s newspapers in a civil action, where the burden of proof is much lower than for a criminal offense.

Mark Stephens, a leading London media lawyer, has suggested that each individual litigant could win around £500,000 ($770,000); he himself has already been approached by two high-profile figures who believe their telephones were hacked. News International could find itself having to pay off a stream of successful litigants—and any one of their cases could generate evidence to support a criminal prosecution.

The Guardian story could, just possibly, force Britain’s major parties to face up to Rupert Murdoch after 25 years of subservience.

Echoes of W.R. Hearst anyone?

Lets put something into prospective denu, British law states that to prove a case there cannot be any shadow of a doubt. First the law that itself is bent and in cohurts with the Murdocs, has to prove that it was the NOTW that did the hacking. There is no doubt in my mind that every newspaper in the UK is doing it, and this will go a lot deeper before it ends. TNOW was just the tip of the iceburg and to prove a case against news international for every indevidual is damn near impossible. I would like to point out that if they can do it with low tech over here then over in the States it must be rife.

Be well IAN 2411

Oh I think this kind of unethical behavior hasn't changed a bit since the days of Hearst. That journalism in general has been taken over by corporate interests.

Labour leader Ed Miliband is calling for Rupert Murdoch's UK media empire to be broken up, despite the News International boss insisting he will "put right our wrongs".

News International has, for the second day, published full page adverts in a range of newspapers declaring there should be "no place to hide" from the police investigation into phone hacking.

The adverts also say the company will cooperate fully with the probe and pay compensation to those affected.

In relation to the police inquiry, it says: "There are no excuses and there should be no place to hide. We will not tolerate wrongdoing and will act on any evidence that comes to light."

The advert concludes: "Apologising for our mistakes and fixing them are only the first steps."

Although Mr Murdoch closed the News of the World last week, he still owns the Sun, the Times and the Sunday Times, and 39% of BSkyB.

And Mr Miliband has said that is not enough and he wants media ownership rules to change.

''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," Mr Miliband told The Observer.

"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."

The Labour leader has been emboldened over the last two weeks because his call for Rebekah Brooks to quit News International, considered rash by many commentators at the time, proved to be in step with public opinion.

He hopes to capitalise on that by turning his stance into a broader theme about the need for the powerful in society to take more responsibility.

Labour's deputy leader Harriet Harman praised Mr Miliband's stance.

"It was testament to the overwhelming power that Murdoch had that neither the Labour Government nor the previous Tory Government took the action that was needed to be taken...

"There was just a sense that it was too difficult to take on the Murdoch empire because it was too strong," she told Sky News' Murnaghan.

"Now Ed Miliband has just broken through all of that and just said 'this needs to be done'. He's the first political party leader to do that and I think it's going to bring very positive change."

Critics may argue Mr Miliband is yet to explain how exactly he thinks Mr Murdoch's media interests should be split up - or if he is suggesting some are closed down, how to maintain media plurality.

Defence Secretary Liam Fox said Mr Miliband should not go "jumping on bandwagons and getting today's headlines".

"I think politicians would be wise at the moment not to over-react, that there is a definite feeling of politicians wanting to, if you like, get their own back on some elements of the media," he told Sky News' Murnaghan programme.

Earlier, Foreign Secretary William Hague defended David Cameron, saying he was "not embarrassed" by the extent of the Prime Minister's dealings with News International.
It has emerged Mr Cameron met its top executives 26 times in the 15 months after he took office.

Mr Hague also defended the PM's decision to entertain Andy Coulson after the latter quit as Downing Street Director of Communications over the NOTW phone-hacking scandal.

He said it was a "normal, human thing" to invite Mr Coulson to Chequers to thank him for his work, adding it showed a "positive side" to Mr Cameron's character.

Rupert Murdoch, the News Corporation chairman is to be questioned by MPs on Tuesday alongside his son, James, the chairman of News International, and Rebekah Brooks, who quit as chief executive of NI earlier this week.

MPs want to quiz the trio about phone hacking claims, the suggestion police were paid for stories and why out of court settlements were apparently paid to victims of the scandal.

All three deny any knowledge of the wrongdoing and James Murdoch said he did not know all the facts when he authorised the payments to victims.

Other stories about the phone hacking scandal:

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It seems that all the people that helped to put the UK in deep shit and most out of work, are now in the same shit but deeper. What goes around comes around. Poor old Mr Milliband the Sun newspaper never liked the way Labour fucked up the country for 14 years and put them out of office. Closing down the Murdoch empire will not get him in as PM if it does i will leave the Country to him and his comunist mates.

Yes denu i have just read about W R Hearst, it seems that Merdoch took over the torch. You are correct it is an echo.

Be well IAN 2411