From the Guardian website:
David Cameron has bowed to pressure to hold public inquiries into the “absolutely disgusting” allegations of phone hacking by journalists at News of the World, and into the original police investigation into the scandal.
The phone-hacking crisis enveloping the News of the World has intensified after it emerged that Scotland Yard has started to contact the relatives of victims of the 7 July 2005 attacks to warn them they were targeted by the paper.
Ofcom has put out a statement on its website about its ability to intervene in the BSkyB takeover. Here it is.
In the light of the current public debate about phone hacking and other allegations, Ofcom confirms that it has a duty to be satisfied on an ongoing basis that the holder of a broadcasting licence is ‘fit and proper‘.
It is clearly not for Ofcom to investigate matters which properly lie in the hands of the police and the courts, however we are closely monitoring the situation and in particular the investigations by the relevant authorities into the alleged unlawful activities.
From a speech in parliament by Labour MP Tom Watson:
I want to inform the House of further evidence that suggests Rebekah Brooks [chief executive of News International] knew about the unlawful tactics of News of the World as early as 2002, despite all her denials yesterday. Rebekah Brooks was present at a meeting with Scotland Yard when police officers pursing a murder investigation provided her with evidence that her newspaper was interfering with the pursuit of justice. They gave her the name of another executive at News International, Alex Marunchak. The meeting, which included Dick Fedorcio of the Metropolitan police, told her that News of the World staff were guilty of interference and party to using unlawful means to attempt to discredit a police officer and his wife. She was told of actions by people she paid to expose and discredit David Cook and his wife Jackie Haines so that Mr Cook would be prevented from completing an investigation into a murder. News International were paying people to interfer with police officers and were doing so on behalf of known criminals. We know now that News International had entered the criminal underworld.
She cannot deny being present at this meeting when the actions of people she was paying were exposed. She cannot deny now being warned that under her auspices unlawful tactics were being used with the purpose of interfering with the pursuit of justice. She cannot deny that one of her staff, Alex Marunchak, was named and involved. She cannot deny either that she was told by the police that her own paper was using unlawful tactics, in this case to help one of her law-breaking investigators. This in my views shows her culpability goes beyond taking the blame as head of the organisation. It is about direct knowledge of unlawful behaviour.
And was Mr Marunchak dismissed. No. He was promoted.
Shares in News Corporation and BSkyB fell as the News of the World phone hacking scandal put Rupert Murdoch, and his bid to take control of the satellite broadcaster, under fresh scrutiny.
News Corp shares fell on Wednesday by 3.3%% in early trading on Wall Street to $17.56, (£11) as US investors reacted to the latest developments. BSkyB shares fell as low as 818p in London, a fall of more than 3% or 27p.
Cry me a river…
JGabriel
Guardian:
Terrorized twice. First, by right wing religious fundamentalists, then by right wing capitalist fundamentalists.
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Martin
Eh. Murdoch will emerge unscathed. He’ll sack a bunch of people, replace them with equally horrible people, and the stock will recover. It’s a corporation – so he’s shielded.
Corner Stone
Damn. That’s some cold shit.
They knew about this in 2002?? And she’s just been blissfully fucking people over for 10 years? While Murdoch has exponentially captured news and broadcasting outlets?
Jewish Steel
Glad you brought this up, Sarah. I was struck how the blame has come to rest on the shoulders of those in charge and not roll downhill to those “journalists” (term used advisedly) who, while they may be directly involved, are not equipped to defend themselves against the public onslaught. It’s the folks in charge who are ultimately responsible for the kind of culture that encourages this abuse.
Good on you for shining a bright light in their craven faces, UK.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
I’ll get more excited about this when it’s widely covered here in the US. And I’d check the butler’s pantry for that lovely Portuguese man.
Lab Partner
How come is it you never hear conservatives wailing about “victim’s rights” when there’s a conservative at fault?
Yurpean
At the heart of the scandal is Rebekah Brooks. She was the editor of the NotW in 2002, and has climbed up the greasy pole to running News International, which owns all of Murdoch’s UK newspapers. She’s very popular with Murdoch, which explains why she hasn’t been sacked yet, but who knows how long his patience will last.
In the meantime, NI are in full ‘throw Andy Coulson under the bus mode’, to protect Brooks. Andy Coulson was deputy editor at the time, and became full editor in 2003, before being forced to resign from that position in 2007 as the first prosecutions in the phone hacking scandal were reaching their conclusion. He subsequently became David Cameron’s spin doctor, a position he was forced to give up earlier this year as allegations swirled around him.
There’s a great video on youtube from Channel 4 News last night of an NI executive trying to justify the fact that Rebekah Brooks is in charge of investigating the wrongdoings, some of which occurred when she was in charge of the newspaper. Physician, investigate thyself!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Hzh1jZPOkU
joeyess
Anyone who thinks this that NewsCorp isn’t pulling this kind of bullshit in this country, only on a larger, political scale, needs to have their fucking head examined.
geg6
Sorry for the long quote, but this is just unbelievable. Not an ounce of human decency is evident anywhere. Fucking Murdoch is more evil than I had ever imagined. And that’s saying quite a lot.
TreeBeard
People out here are quite, quite pissed. If nothing is done about it, Labour will have a 20-tonne stick to beat the ConDem alliance on the head with, next time around the elections roll in.
I despise Murdoch rags anyway, but the extent of these shenanigans – the Dowler one to start with – has been horrifying to me. Now it turns out they hacked* the voicemails of even 7/7 bombing victims, which goes into James Bond villain levels of evil.
My far favourite excuse has been that “Rebekah Brooks was on holiday” when [some particular violation] occurred. Lets see a politician get away with that one. “I’m sorry the military dropped a nuke on New Zealand, I was skiing in the Alps”.
The best thing to come out of this has been how quick some brands have pulled their ads from the NOTW. Ford was the fastest and made a clean break, not just “considering our options” shit. Now I wish they stop advertising in ANY Murdoch toilet tissue.
*okay, “hacked” is too strong a word, but it’s also one that fits
sukabi
so if Scotland Yard KNEW about this in 2002, why wasn’t Murdoch’s ‘paper’ seized by the state or shut down? The folks in that enterprise were running a criminal organization and not just interfering in a police investigation, they were actively sabotaging it… it will be interesting to find out how many of these ‘practices’ are being employed at FOX.
JGabriel
Martin:
Yeah, that’s my thinking too. I almost wish I had money to buy News Corps stock and flip it when it goes back up.
Almost.
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Han's Solo
I’m not up on the specifics of this case, nor am I an expert on English law; can someone give me a rundown on potential outcomes? Can the Brits take away the broadcast license of “News International?”
I read the links, it looks like News International (I assume this is part of News Corp) hired PIs to hack into cell phones of politicians, cops, athletes and others. I assume this leaves them open to lawsuits from those they hacked, but is that the limit of their liability? In America we could sue for such a thing, but the Supreme Court would rule for News Corp and there would be no down side for News Corp. But this didn’t happen in the US.
So what is the likely/potential downside in the UK?
gene108
Meh…Murdoch still has his cash cow: Fox News…
U.S. Fox News fans aren’t going to (a) care about what’s happening in England and (b) won’t make the connection between News Corp.’s various news organizations throughout the world and Fox News.
sb
What geg6 said. If someone bet me that a news organization would hack into a victim’s phone and delete messages creating false hope, etc. you would have won some money from me. I’m not naive in that I know some dirty shit happens in all walks of life but the passage geg6 quoted above is just beyond me.
TheMightyTrowel
it will also be interesting to find out who at scotland yard was getting paid off so as not to investigate.
WereBear
I thought it was bad enough to delete the emails and give the family false hope. To show up and ask if they had any hope to goose the story; yeah.
No words.
JGabriel
Corner Stone:
You call it fucking people over, News International calls it achieving the corporate mission through creative use of extra-legal strategies.
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TreeBeard
The Mighty Trowel
The Met’s reputation has taken a battering over the last decade. Badly. This won’t come as a surprise to anyone.
gocart mozart
While cynicism is often justified, I think this goes too far. Victims could sue here as well and win. Offer void only if you can plausibly tie said privacy violations into protecting us from Islamic terrorism or other national security issues.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@gene108 #14:
You left out: (c ) if it comes right down to it they will demonize the victims and rationalize that “they had it coming”. The countertops, you know.
scav
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ: We’ve already seen the class-warfare defense (a.k.a. the “You’re only attacking Murdoch because you’re an elitist and he knows what real people want!”) being attempted in some threads (not B-J, could be Guardian or BBC or ??)
JGabriel
geg6:
This is pretty much exactly where I always imagined Murdoch and his media properties are on the scale of evil. It’s always a disappointment to see one’s worst expectations realized, though.
Not to mention that, once they reach that point, you know they’ll go further, and you have to find a new lower bound at which to set your new expectations.
I mean, does anyone think, with this story, that we’ve really discovered the worst that has ever been done by Murdoch’s media empire?
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Han's Solo
@gocart mozart: I disagree. Exxon got away (had the jury award lowered to a pittance) with the Exxon Valdez because SCOTUS pulled law out of their keisters; they would do the same with News Corp.
Name one case involving a big corporation of late where SCOTUS came down on the side of the injured party and not the corporation. That the company in this case, News Corp, is a rightwing mainstay makes it even less likely that SCOTUS would let any legal challenge hurt the company.
Corner Stone
@JGabriel:
We already knew they (Murdoch companies) donated to the GOP. What else did we need to know?
Gregory
Fish rots from the head down.
Dave
Ah, schadenfreude…you taste so sweet…
gene108
A Bit of Fry and Laurie’s take on if Murdoch had never been born.
Appropriate for this thread.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1aZcsY-O8Q
JGabriel
gene108:
Especially since (a)Fox News will never tell them about it, and (b) they don’t watch anything else.
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gene108
ThatLeftTurnInABQ #21
I’m not sure I know about the countertops – I just don’t get the reference here – but you are spot on about Fox News getting their viewers to blame the victions.
rickstersherpa
Schadenfreude. Particularly how this is screwing over Rupert’s acquisition of complete control over BSkyB. And this is getting pretty close to ol’ Rupert himself.
cleek
@gene108:
Malkin stalks a child.
ruemara
May it be a sword of karmic justice. He, at least his organization, may have allowed a murderer to escape justice. At the least, they turned the knife in the stomache of her family. They harassed families in mourning after their loved ones were killed or hurt in bombings. These are evil people and if there is no deity that will simply open the ground beneath them and swallow them and their ilk whole, then may they completely suffer criminally, personally and professionally.
different church-lady
@ gene108 (#30)
The Balloon Juice Lexicon, baby: how does it work?
(Scroll down to “counter tops”)
Corner Stone
It’s a sad damn day when Big Media Matt gets something so clearly:
Nothing can be done!
Hoocoodanode?
TreeBeard
The Telegraph – the bleedin’ TORYGRAPH! – has gone to town on this issue too. I suppose they’re just happy to beat on their competitor for the Tory side of the news. Although I dare say that even though I don’t like their slant on editorials and choice of articles, their reporting is good…
Anyway… The Times ignores phone hacking, then blames ‘journalism’ for News International’s shocking practices
But my favourite line is at the end:
Only in Britain!
pete
Simon Greenberg, the executive interviewed by Channel 4 (link @7, thanks to Yurpean), is a young man who will go far. Check him out. I have not seen such a magnificent display of nonspeak since the last time I watched John Bird and John Fortune (whom Google if ye know not).
Yurpean
@subaki The press and the police are malignantly intertwined over here, with the police leaking (& indeed selling) information when it’s helpful for them, and the press generally being supportive of the police in return[1]. Andy Hayman, the officer who lead the first investigation of phone hacking back in 2005-7 which looked at the hacking of only a handful of people in the Royal family, and ignored the evidence that thousands had actually been hacked, now writes the occasional column for The Times and other Murdoch papers. Fancy that.
[1] Not that such things don’t happen in the US. Ever wondered how the cameras always seem to know where and when a high profile ‘perp walk’ occurs?
Yurpean
@Han’s Solo The whole thing blew up again in 2009 (the initial investigation into the hacking of Royal voicemail and subsequent trial were 2005-7) after it emerged that News International had been making settlements (with associated gag agreements) with hacking victims. One big issue was that only a few people were aware of the fact they had been hacked, as the police didn’t bother going through the documents they’d seized during the 2005 investigation to tell other potential victims. Over the last few years, more people have found out they’ve been targeted and have joined civil suits agains NI. Some are still going forward, others have accepted pay-offs as compensation. It’s going to cost them millions, but NI is a huge company, and News Corp is massive, so the overall fiscal effect will be small.
Amir_Khalid
This seems about as evil as journalism gets. NOTW has a long history of hair-raising practices like making shit up and losing lawsuits over the made-up shit; bribing cops to get stories; and condoning illegal practices by its hired investigators(of which the phone hacking is only the latest example). Their 2000 name-and-shame campaign against child molesters got some innocent people attacked by angry mobs. All of this has happened since Uncle Rupert took charge in ’69.
If any newspaper deserves to get shut down it’s these evil fuckers, but I don’t see the authorities shutting them down because in Britain they can’t do that.
And to see their sister paper The Times of London claiming other papers do it too … Well, The Times used to be a great paper.
Frankensteinbeck
Lab Partner:
Only The Tribe has rights. This is very important to understand. In practice, anyone else having rights interferes with The Tribe’s rights. In theory, the whole idea of other people having rights is… just crazy. Why would they?
eemom
There’s another pic out there somewhere of that Brooks woman with her sunglasses off. She is creepy looking. Perfect for a Bride of Murdoch.
Catpause
Murdock makes W R Hearst look like Francis of Assisi.
Hey, TeaTards! Want your country back? Look in Rupert’s wallet.
Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal
we can only hope that the scandal mestastisizes and includes his u.s. operations. that this policy and procedure was widely adopted by all management go-getters across the operation.
of course, faux news has the perfect alibi, they either only report exactly what the gop wants said, or they make things up, and everyone knows it.
it would be fun to see them go to court to argue that they aren’t sufficently expected to be accurate in their reporting, so they are incapable of actually damaging anyone with libel.
PIGL
I keep harping on the same point, so maybe I am just wrong, but here goes again. The activities of Murdoch in Australia, Great Britain and the United States are not primarily matters for criminal justice or foreign investment review, or anti-monopoly rules. They are matters for counter-intelligence agencies.
This guy and his clan are out to subvert the realm(s), and the policies that have succeeded in advocating endanger national security, not to mention the future of the planet.
If even one western nation had a functioning service, Murdoch and family would have been squashed 10 years ago.
SRW1
Yurpean
Nice piece of journalism there. Somehow I doubt that Simon Greenberg was very keen to comply with the mentioned request by the Beeb for a follow-up interview.
Sly
@gene108
DirecTV and Sky Network, actually. Those two networks have turned Rupert Murdoch into the biggest purveyor of pay-per-view pornography on the planet.
Fox News makes News Corp. around 500 million annually. Just the pay-per-view pornography revenue from DirecTV alone brings in at least that much.
maus
Eh, his reputation isn’t sunk among the faithful, and he’s still a multibillionaire. If only he could be reduced to tatters, along with his trophy wife and horrible children.
Gozer
These are cartoonish levels of villainy and North Korean levels of ass covering.
EDIT: FYWP ruined my formatting…
the idler
@PIGL
Agreed- The Metropolitan Police Service has been penetrated by Murdoch’s minions. MI5 should lead this investigation.
NadePaulKuciGravMcKi
extortion blackmail bribery
protect criminals at all cost
bjacques
PM “Call Me Dave” Cameron, best buddies with Ms. Brooks and Mr. Murdoch (as all Tories are and nuLabour wish they could be), has to save his ass and make sure the Murdoch’s takeover of BSkyB goes through on time. But he’s still playing yesterday’s game. An inquiry is for stalling an angry public until the heat is off, and might lead to half-hearted attempts at cosmetic reforms, as with the invasion of Iraq and the banking scandals. That might have worked when the voicemail hacking targets were celebrities (part of the game), even with the involvement of crooked cops.
When the targets are war widows, victims of terrorist bombing and the parents of a murdered girl *led to believe she was still alive*, it crosses from venality to pure evil. Former editor Andy Coulson already copped to the celebrity tappings, and duly fell on his sword to protect his bosses and Cameron, but he’d have to be crazy to put his name to the new ones.
The public (rightly) wants blood. Murdoch wants his takeover deal. Cameron wants to save his political ass.
Towards the end of Hellraiser, a newly revived Frank has to flee the Cenobites who killed him and are after him again, but he’s too weak to move far. Julia, who’d been bringing him fresh victims, can’t deliver. Gas wha hoppen?
“Nothing personal, babe!
*CHOMP*!!”
Howlin Wolfe
Has Fuck Snooze even reported this? I don’t have cable, and wouldn’t watch it if I did, but I’m sincerely curious if this has even been mentioned there. Has any other US MSM outlet covered it in any detail? or are they too afraid of Roger Ailes (the evil one)?