I hadn’t been paying attention to the News International scandal, but this caught my eye:
Prosecutors have announced new criminal charges against the former News International editors Rebekah Brooks and Andy Coulson, this time over alleged illegal payments to public officials.
The Crown Prosecution Service announced on Tuesday that four former News International employees, and a defence official alleged to have been paid £100,000 for information, should stand trial.
We’ve gone from phone hacking to $160K in bribes to a single defense official – just imagine if Robert Gibbs had slipped that kind of money to David Petraeus as part of his job before he worked for Obama. DC would screech to a halt, and Politico would start a whole new publication dedicated to just that scandal.
Punchy
But but but its the Bri’ish! They talk funneh and have bad toofs. And didnt some chick just get totally screwed over on the Voice?
jeffreyw
And they would’ve gotten away with it were it not for that pesky reporter.
c u n d gulag
Are you kidding?
If Gibbs so much as bought Petreaus a manhattan at a restaurant they bumped into while dining there, Politico would go full-tilt-bozo insane!
They’d be begging Glenn Beck for his blackboards, to plot the possibilities.
MattF
Oh, poor Rupert. If it’s gotten to the point where you can’t bend the rules a little, then he’s just going to have to emigrate to Chile. Or something.
Feudalism Now!
Actually, the MSM would only pick up on it if Gibbs had slipped something else to Petreaus. Bribery is the way things are done. K street was not a problem, it is a job creation system. Our media this side of the pond believes in bribery through services rendered, tongue baths, tire swings, and water carrying for ACCESS! The access is used for more tongue baths, water carrying…etc. So, UK is coin based, US is barter.
Sly
Why are the Jewish-owned British governmental departments consistently against News Corp. in every crisis?
reflectionephemeral
Yeah, this’d only be a story in the US if it involved an affair.
Consider how our press treated the LIBOR scandal, vs. Europe’s press (for all its faults). We only do inane, partisan scandals here.
daveNYC
The fact that the LIBOR manipulation didn’t lead to heads on pikes was pathetic.
EconWatcher
If phone hacking and bribery of government officials were part of the culture at NewsCorp, what else have they been up to? It’s starting to feel like we might be heading towards a tipping point. Think about how much better the world would be without that organization.
scav
So they discovered the free market price point for information out of a national defence official and presumably made money off it? Why do you hate the Free Market and Job Creators(tm)? !
The Red Pen
OT: Allen West conceded.
I didn’t think wingnuts had any tears left, but there is renewed wailing and gnashing of teeth on Free Republic.
Elizabelle
Hope this blows up bigtime and hurts Murdoch for the long count.
Rumors a few weeks ago he was scoping out the Los Angeles Times.
No way he should be allowed anywhere near another major American newspaper.
redshirt
Meh. It’s no Benghazi.
Cmm
@Feudalism Now!:
“UK is coin based, US is barter.”
We’ll know the libertarians/Paulite have really arrived when we have a scandal involving payments in Bitcoin or bars of gold…
Soonergrunt
I wonder how long until one of these yahoos spills the beans on Rupert and his son? There’s no way either of them did these things alone. As long as it’s just fines they’re facing, they’ll probably stand tall, but the moment jail is mentioned, they’ll fold.
I’d love to see an FCPA prosecution out of this.
Fox News would no doubt tell their viewers that the administration was doing it for political reasons. Their viewers would no doubt believe this. But since their viewers wouldn’t vote Democratic anyway, there’s nothing to lose.
Villago Delenda Est
@Soonergrunt:
Yes, time work on flipping the minions to testify against the Big Cheese.
aimai
@MattF:
We have a good friend, who shall remain nameless, who is high up in the British TV press–everyone, everyone, went to those Murdoch/Rebekkah Brook parties. They may have paid off some people in cold hard cash but every other secret in British public life probably came to them for a couple of drinks and some caviar topped hors d’oeuvres.
aimai
blingee
Rawmoney looking like a regular guy for a change. Ya know if this picture came out during the election my total disgust for the guy maybe just maybe might have eeked up a notch towards respect.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/11/20/1163367/-BREAKING-Mitt-Romney-falls-back-to-Earth
1badbaba3
It would only be news if Gibbs slipped Herr General the salami. Maybe not even then, considering who they thought was the ‘man’.
Yutsano
@Soonergrunt: Start with the little fish, get little fish to roll on bigger fish, move up the chain. It’s been a mainstay of Mafia prosecutions for decades.
OT: looks like your governour opted out of the Medicaid expansion. How long before the hospitals start screaming for her to change her mind?
Maude
@daveNYC:
It’s not over for the banks involved in the LIBOR manipulation, in the US. Buy stock in pikes.
James E. Powell
Consider me a dullard. Even worse, consider me the average Republican voter. Where is the best source for an explanation of the LIBOR scandal.
And how is it pronounced, LEE-bor or LIE-bor?
Fred Fnord
just imagine if Robert Gibbs had slipped that kind of money to David Petraeus as part of his job before he worked for Obama. DC would screech to a halt, and Politico would start a whole new publication dedicated to just that scandal.
Oh, please. We’d never have heard of it. We don’t hear about important stuff, that would be inconvenient. We just get the gossip.
The Other Chuck
@James E. Powell:
LIE-bor. Rhymes with “Lie More”. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libor_scandal
In a nutshell. the London Inter-Bank Overnight Rate is _supposed_ to be a benchmark rate determined by a fair formula based on the actual interest rates submitted by banks, but it turns out that a lot of the big players like Barclays were simply lying about their rates to the banking association in order to cover up their actual financial situation in some cases, and to manipulate derivatives markets in others.
Since the US derivatives markets price just about everything in terms of LIBOR, this was seen as manipulating US markets, which is of course illegal to do when one is in possession of a British accent.