The Murdoch Empire's Greatest Test

[Prospero]

Have to say that while I may share the judgement that Murdoch is "unfit etc"... the Press rather buried the fact that this was contested by the Conservatives on the panel. This statement made good hedlines and the fact that Mensch and her Tory colleagues all voted against it's inclusion in the final report was buried in the text. Not the most shining of moments for the rest of the media - with only the BBC's daily Politics Show highlighting this crucial and deep divide.

[robertlouis]

Have to say that while I may share the judgement that Murdoch is "unfit etc"... the Press rather buried the fact that this was contested by the Conservatives on the panel. This statement made good hedlines and the fact that Mensch and her Tory colleagues all voted against it's inclusion in the final report was buried in the text. Not the most shining of moments for the rest of the media - with only the BBC's daily Politics Show highlighting this crucial and deep divide.

The Guardian had two pages on it on Tuesday.

[Prospero]

They did indeed have two pages on the report - but the fact that the line about Murdoch being disowned by all the Conservatives o the panel was somewhat buried. I'm all for fair play.

[robertlouis]

They did indeed have two pages on the report - but the fact that the line about Murdoch being disowned by all the Conservatives o the panel was somewhat buried. I'm all for fair play.

And seeing Louise Mensch doughnutting every interview and TV opportunity to distance the Tories from the report's statement about Murdoch is both unedifying but sadly all too predictable.

Personally, I can well understand Tom Watson's antipathy towards Murdoch and his cohorts after what they put him and his family through - and almost certainly breaking the law several times in doing so, by the way - but a select committee report was simply the wrong vehicle for continuing his own personal crusade.

[Stavros]

The trial in London of Rebekah Brooks and Andy Coulson is under way and I think this succinct piece from the New York Times is worth reading, although I think Brooks is in deeper shit than the Times thinks.

Incidentally, did anyone notice the claim that Tony Blair had been 'visiting' Wendi Deng without Rupert's knowledge? Where and when? Maybe he is just comforting her through the torture of her divorce from Rupert. I wonder who gets the Park Avenue Apartment--?

Fates of Brooks and Coulson in Tabloid Hacking Case Are Diverging

By SARAH LYALL

Published: December 2, 2013

LONDON — Once they were friends and colleagues who reveled in the heady world of British news, politics and intrigue. Together they rose from the scrappy newsrooms of London’s tabloids to the heights of establishment power, she as head of Rupert Murdoch’s British newspaper empire, he as Prime Minister David Cameron’s chief spokesman. For six years they were lovers, carrying on their affair even as each married someone else.

Andy Coulson has lost more.


Now Rebekah Brooks and Andy Coulson are together again, this time in the dock at the Old Bailey, London’s main criminal court, facing charges of illegally intercepting voice messages and other crimes in connection with their work for Mr. Murdoch’s now-defunct News of the World tabloid.
Since their arrests, their lives have sharply diverged.
Though they sit side by side in court, it is not by choice; their seats are assigned. Nothing about their body language suggests their history of intimacy. They bid each other good morning and good evening, but there is little more than that. When the prosecution read out a steamy letter from Ms. Brooks to Mr. Coulson as evidence of their affair, she looked uneasily down at her lap; he stared straight ahead.
Ms. Brooks, 45, a Murdoch darling who worked as chief executive of Mr. Murdoch’s News International before resigning when the phone hacking scandal engulfed her in the summer of 2011, never lost the support of the man who was her boss, friend, mentor and protector.
She walked away with a $17.6 million severance package that incorporated “compensation for loss of office” and various “ongoing benefits.” These have not been specified but are believed to include the car and driver that bring her to court each day. She has houses in London and in Oxfordshire.
But from appearances at least, she is a changed woman. Her clingy, look-at-me clothes have been replaced by functional skirts and blouses; she wears little makeup. She sees a small circle of close friends, no longer goes to the glamorous parties she used to love, and is devoting her time to the legal case and to the baby she had via a surrogate.
“She’s doing as well as can be expected, which is not great,” a friend said.
Still, she is rich. And she is in better shape than Mr. Coulson, 45, who resigned twice over different phases of the phone hacking scandal: once as editor of the News of the World in 2007 and again as director of communications for Mr. Cameron in 2011. Cut loose by the Murdochs, shunned by his old government friends, short of cash and out of work for nearly three years, he has had to sell his expensive London house and move out of town with his wife and three children.
Mr. Coulson appears unchanged physically, and still wears the same nondescript business suits he always did, He commutes to the trial from his new home in Kent or stays overnight in modest hotels or friends’ houses. The Murdochs washed their hands of him long ago, rightly concluding that his employment at Downing Street made the hacking scandal far more combustible by implicating the government and the Conservative Party.
“My feeling is that he has paid a much higher price than anyone else,” said Roy Greenslade, a professor of journalism at City University here. “He didn’t get a massive payoff, he didn’t get Murdoch standing behind him, and he had to fall on his sword twice.”
A journalist from a competing news organization said, “He has lost everything, basically.”
While Ms. Brooks’s legal expenses have been paid by her old employer, Mr. Coulson — whose bills have passed the $400,000 mark and will inevitably climb much higher — has had a different experience. Despite negotiating an exit package in which the company was obliged to pay his legal bills should he be charged in connection with his work as editor, Mr. Coulson has had to take the company to court to obtain the payments.
Even though it lost the case, the company is still paying only grudgingly, Mr. Coulson’s friends say.
“To this day, they’re making it supremely difficult for him to get his bills paid,” said an acquaintance of Mr. Coulson’s who, like others interviewed for this article, spoke anonymously to comment on a pending case. “They’re going through his bills with a fine-tooth comb, and the big problem is that they’re delaying payments. He has a big team, and it makes life very difficult.”
Both Mr. Coulson and Ms. Brooks are likely to have to pay back at least some of the money to the company if they are found guilty. (Both have pleaded not guilty to the hacking charges.)
The trial is expected to run for several more months. It is now in its second month, and the prosecution is still presenting its arguments. This is a complicated undertaking, in part because of the multiple defendants and multiple charges relating to phone hacking, computer hacking, paying off public officials and perverting the course of justice.
In addition to Mr. Coulson and Ms. Brooks, there are six other defendants, among them Charlie Brooks, Ms. Brooks’s husband, who has been accused of conspiring with her to destroy evidence.
More trials are expected to follow. What began as an investigation into the illegal interception of voice mail messages has grown into a sprawling octopus of a case, with law-enforcement strands stretching in many directions and involving more than 160 police officers and staff members; at least 1,000 likely victims from politics, sports, show business and the media; and millions of emails and other documents.
It is far too early to say how the case will end; the defendants’ lawyers have not started presenting their arguments. But on the surface, at least, Mr. Coulson looks to be in a worse position than Ms. Brooks. While prosecutors have already introduced email and voice mail messages that they say directly link Mr. Coulson to phone hacking, they have not yet presented similar evidence in the case of Ms. Brooks.
She and her husband seem more vulnerable to the charge of conspiring to pervert the course of justice. The prosecution contends that they illegally removed files from the office and tried to discard a laptop that potentially contained evidence in the case.
As for Mr. Coulson, even when this case is finished, his woes will not be over. Whether or not he is convicted, he faces a second trial in Scotland, which has a different legal system from England’s and a reputation for being tough on English journalists. He stands accused there of committing perjury while testifying in the trial of a Scottish politician who, among other things, claimed his phone had been hacked.
In that trial, Mr. Coulson repeatedly declared that there was no phone hacking going on at the News of the World.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/03/wo...ref=world&_r=0

[Stavros]

I have lost count of the millions of pounds the Murdoch empire has forked out in recent years to settle legal cases arising from the criminal and dirty practices of the 'journalists' he employs in the UK, yet he continues to operate a business which has a large stake in the UK media. It remains to be seen if the revelations about yet more millions paid out to settle suits, in the latest case involving sex-pest Bill O'Reilly, will undermine Murdoch's attempt to purchase the remaining shares in SKY to give his family firm full control of yet another media outlet in the UK. Murdoch appears to preside over companies which employ crooks, sex-pests, liars, and con-men for whom truth is an elastic band wrapped around a firework. And yet, he survives. Proof that there is no justice in this world, or just not yet.
https://www.theguardian.com/media/20...eilly-cover-up

[Stavros]

The news in recent days has been about Murdoch selling assets to Disney-

Under the terms of blockbuster deal, Fox is selling scores of assets to Disney, including its 20th Century Fox movie and TV studios, cable networks and other international operations.
If the deal goes through, Disney will be the new owner of Fox’s FX and National Geographic cable channels, India’s main network Star, and its stake in Sky, which of course is listed here in the UK.
It is also buying Fox’s stake in Hulu, a video streaming service.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/bu...-a8110166.html

Less well reported has been the ongoing probe into corruption in the governing body of football, FIFA and the revelation that Fox Executives have been implicated in bribes-

Senior executives at Rupert Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox corporation are alleged to have agreed for millions of dollars in bribes to be paid to South American soccer officials to secure major broadcast deals, according to US prosecution documents unmasked by sworn testimony.
https://www.theguardian.com/media/20...a-libertadores

If true, and there seems to be strong evidence that it is, does it not prove yet again that there is in the Murdoch Empire a culture of indifference to the law, wherever it takes place, be it the UK or Latin America? When is Rupert Murdoch and his clan going to be held responsible for the 'dirty deals' done under their noses by their -well-primed?- executives? Or is law breaking so common in the corporate world that nobody cares?

[broncofan]

Edit: My post doesn't make sense now that I read Fox News won't be sold.

[Stavros]

Edit: My post doesn't make sense now that I read Fox News won't be sold.

I didn't see the post before you edited it, but the point might be that Murdoch retains his so-called 'News' outlets because they feed his colossal ego as a political agitator who can walk into the White House of Downing Street any time he wants and expect to be listened to, to even have his ideas put into practice -such as his persuading Ronald Reagan -via the Federal Communications Commission- to drop the Fairness in Broadcasting in 1987. One wonders why it is even called 'news' when Murdoch has established a media culture in which so-called journalists are expected to invent the news that doesn't exist, or distort the news that does, all in the name of some vague libertarian idea of 'freedom' which enables Murdoch to be mates with Bill Clinton and Tony Blair (godfather to one of Murdoch's children) and the con-man sitting in the Oval Office today. A nasty piece of work. But that's not news.

[filghy2]

Surely Tony Blair is no longer a mate, given all the reports about his relationship with Murdoch's ex-wife.