The media titan Rupert Murdoch sought to stanch damage to his News Corporation empire from a deepening phone-hacking scandal on Thursday by sacrificing the mass-circulation British weekly The News of the World, even as the arrest of one of the paper’s former editors, Andy Coulson, appeared imminent. The paper will publish its final issue on Sunday.
The saga turned yet more disturbing Thursday with suggestions that the paper had broken into the voicemail not only of a 13-year-old murder victim but also of relatives of soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, and that the paper had paid tens of thousands of dollars in bribes to police officers for information.
In the past 10 days, Fox has run more than 30 segments calling for the nonprofit group to be stripped of its tax-exempt status. Its Fox Nation website has even provided a link to pre-completed complaint forms against Media Matters to send to the Internal Revenue Service.
How long until the heavily doctored Breitbart tapes of pimps in Media Matters offices hit? How long until the Washington Post ombudsman scolds the librul media for failing to pay sufficient attention to these doctored tapes?
Future historians will wonder why the United States and United Kingdom allowed an Australian eccentric to take control of their political systems. Some contemporary bloggers will never address this question.
When I saw this yesterday, I assumed it was serious.
Brian R.
How long before Lori Montgomery of the WaPo writes another poorly-sourced article claiming “a Democrat who once saw a picture of President Obama” says the administration wants to give Rupert Murdoch absolute control of all the nation’s media, and then all the emo kids start cutting themselves because they’re so fucking gullible?
JPL
Doug, The hackers deleted Milly’s voice mail, thereby causing the parents to think she was alive and deleted it herself.
SICK SICK SICK
James, Rupert’s son paid money outside of court to victims.. I call it hush money but today he said he wouldn’t have paid off anyone had he known how sleazy his journalists were.
The editor lives for another day, she was not laid off.
Rebekah Brooks, is chief executive and crony of Rupert ..
feebog
Well, we can hope that Murdoch is dead. I have my doubts. Money can buy a lot of things, including slipping away from justice.
Scott
A smart news organization — granted, not the WaPo or the NYTimes or any other major papers — could probably have a lot of fun looking into improprieties at Murdoch-owned companies in the US…
Gin & Tonic
An article in CJR the other day referred to her as “the soon-to-be-fired Rebekah Brooks.” I don’t see how long Rupert can keep propping her up. Now that 200 or so people at NoTW have very likely lost their jobs with News Corp while (for now) she has kept hers, it won’t take more than a couple of beers for several of them to start dishing everything they know about her and how she operated. While they were working for her/Rupert they had incentive to keep their mouths shut. Now, not so much.
sukabi
Fox is likely ramping up it’s attacks on Media Matters as a pre-emptive strike… seriously, how long will it be before someone in the media takes a look at FOX and their ‘journalistic’ practices… there is a reason that O’Reilly can send his hit men out to stalk folks at their homes and while they are on vacation… do you think they send their itinerary out to O’Reilly prior to going on vacation?
Frapalinger
I caught some HLN at the gym this morning. They had major coverage of protesters picketing against the verdict in that trial that is no one’s business. I thought to myself, “Wow, in half an hour, CNN HLN gave more coverage to these people than they did to every single anti-iraq war protest for 6 years.”
Elizabelle
I’ve been looking for a list of Fox News Channel advertisers, and found this website.
http://foxnewsboycott.com/resources/f-a-q/
Does anyone know anything about this organization? I did not find an “about us” blurb or anything to tell me who’s behind this. (Cursory search.)
I’m not expecting it was Olbermann during his hiatus, but who knows?
It would give me pleasure to find the advertisers whose products and services I use, and tell them that I’m instituting my own little personal austerity program, in light of their supporting Rupert Murdoch and fake journalism.
Calouste
who after he stepped down as editor went on the become communications director for then Leader of the Opposition and now Prime Minister David Cameron. And then resigned from that post earlier this year after more details of the scandal became known.
Cameron is really, really close with the News International clique. He is also a personal friend of Brooks.
Dexter
Guardian had a list yesterday of people who have been targeted by News of the World. It included the press aides of Prince Charles, William and Harry. So they may well have some very powerful enemies. There will be some pain for ole Rupert.
mainsailset
And won’t it be curious if the US side of Murdoch’s empire becomes mired in this when we just learned that Roger A’s first conceived of a GOP news corp in Nixon’s WH that was brought down by its illegal wiretapping.
Narcissus
This won’t impact Murdoch at all.
eemom
ding dong, the doch is dead!
WHICH old doch? The Murder-doch!
ding dong, the wicked doch is deeeeaaaaad……..
JonF
MM has been a target of videographers. It went nowhere.
quannlace
Well, you may think the IRS is evil, but they’re not stupid. Pretty sure they see this crap for what it is.
aimai
Calouste is right. Also, though this hasn’t been well reported over here, one of the chief issues is that NewsCorp (or News of the World) was paying Police officers as informant or for some other reason. That is one reason why the police themselves are as enmeshed in this scandal as any other player–the public apparently is suspicious that an earlier investigation didn’t get any higher than the jailed private detective because the police themselves had been paid off by Murdoch et al. The affaire murdoch is closer to being Italy redux than people over here are admitting–Murdoch and his people have their lines into the highest and lowest levels of the British political system, from the police to the prime minister and everything in between. Unless this results in the breakup of his media empire I just don’t see that British democracy is safe and that goes double for us.
aimai
Mike Kay ( Geronimo!!)
Of course, there weren’t any dead white girls in Iraq.
Frapalinger
Don’t any of you get your hopes up. In all likely hood Media Matters will lose its non-profit status and Fox News will go on for decades, stronger than ever.
NonyNony
The worst that could happen to Murdoch (Rupert) is that his shareholders decide he’s a liability and ask him to resign.
The fastest track to that is if the whole “Sky” purchase in the UK gets tanked by the UK government because of this.
Personally I’d love to see it happen – the UK government telling Rupert “sorry – your organization is just too toxic for us to let this go through” and then him getting turned on and savaged by his shareholders.
Probably end up with his son in charge of the whole thing in the end but still – it would be a fitting end to a reprehensible person’s career.
D0n Camillo
It will be interesting to see if Rupert Murdoch is willing to let his News International empire get dismantled just in order to save Rebekah Brooks, because I don’t se this going away as long as she stays.
http://www.hasrebekahbrooksbeensackedyet.com/
Poopyman
Luckily Murdoch isn’t truly dead, since he needs to suffer for his deeds. Though I doubt he ever will, sadly.
And am I the only one who thinks Rebekah Brooks looks like the quintessential Lady MacBeth?
Jeremy
Brilliant Mekons quote!
MikeB
I Emailed Sullivan today about this and got a reply from one of
his lackeys stating that he is on vacation.
Maybe the lackeys are reluctant to preempt Sully with a post on this issue,
and we will hear from him when he returns.
Warren Terra
Killing News Of The World might have made business sense without this scandal. Murdoch (and the UK’s) biggest “daily” tabloid is the Sun, which currently doesn’t have a Sunday edition. Murdoch will soon enough have the sleaziest Sunday tabloid in the UK again, but now with the advantages of unified branding.
I’m not saying the scandal might not hurt him, but I doubt he’s shedding a tear about having to, in effect, rename his Sunday tabloid.
jinxtigr
NotW: not “died of shame”, but “kill the witness”.
How difficult is this to understand, really?
Dennis SGMM
In theory this would be a cue to Congress to take a second look at media consolidation. In theory. Once again, money talks and Congress claps its withered flippers for a fish. Even though all of the arguments in favor of consolidation have been proven completely wrong the Clear Channels and Murdochs of this world will continue to hoover up and homogenize until journalism, localized entertainment, and investigative reporting are all stone dead.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
I went on vacation this last weekend. Is there a particular reason Fox is going after Media Matters, or is it just because MM tries to practice journalism?
jaleh
There is nothing on foxnews.com on this…
Louis
Doug, thanks again for another secret MEKONS reference.
Suicidal Zebra
Murdoch is an expert of 11-dimensional chess. The phone hacking scandal of the last week has done little to harm his position:
1. The Printed Press is dying. Over here as well as over there circulation numbers are down and it’s only a matter of time before their customers start looking at spending their advertising dollars elsewhere. Murdoch wants Television, because it’s one of the few remaining reliable ways to frame the narrative fed to the public.
2. News International desperately wants the remaining 61% of BSkyB, the UK satellite carrier, to take overall control of the platform. Questions of News media plurality had given pause to this deal even in the face of an immensely pro-Murdoch Conservative Party being the arbiters of whether or not it is referred to the Competition Commission. Few people, apart from Jeremy Hunt (the Minister in charge), were convinced by assurances that they’d spin Sky News off because it didn’t work with the Times of London (and frankly no-one trusts NI). There’s no way Sky News will remain editorially independent given their funding and broadcast platform would be totally at the whim of News Corp.
3. Today, Murdoch killed the NotW brand. Already pundits are saying that this may give NI an escape from the plurality issue, easing the mergers passage over the next few months.
Murdoch may keep News International sufficiently insulated from the brouhaha. Their toadies in Cabinet may be convinced by the specious argument that killing NotW (but creating a new ‘The Sun on Sunday’) weakens their dominant position enough to grant them the ownership of an entire broadcasting platform outright. If this turns out to be the case, this past week should be looked on as a huge net win for Murdoch and News Corp.
Pessimistic? Me?
MattR
I can see a Breitbart-esque attack on Media Matters, but I can’t see the higher ups at Fox actually wanting a serious challenge to MM’s tax exemption. It just seems like it would provide too much sunshine to things about Fox that they are trying to hide.
Calouste
@NonyNony
I don’t think the BSkyB deal is going to be stopped by the government unless the LibDems threaten to leave the coalition if it goes through. On the other hand, the whole affair had quite an impact on both NewsCorp and BSkyB stock prices, and that might scupper the deal.
jl
From what I have read of this, Murdoch plays a role in UK politics even greater than Fox does here in the US, and politicians fear him more than Ailes. So, unless the damage is severe enough to change that, I think Murdoch and the deal to by Sky News is very much alive.
I hope I am wrong, though.
Edit: unless as the commenter above notes, the stock market reaction makes the deal more difficult from a business POV, and easier to kill politically.
MikeJ
@Calouste:
That’s not a very credible threat. Usually bringing down the government is done with an eye towards being there to pick up the pieces and get in power. Most people don’t try to bring down the government while they’re universally hated. I don’t know anybody who would vote for a libdem for dogcatcher now.
David
Those Conservatives sure know how to flush a 170-year old brand name down the toilet.
jl
Liberal Democrats may realize short run it is a no win situation for them. But, longer term, they may need to do something dramatic to prove that, at their core, they are not sell outs.
Unless, at their core, they are sell outs, which is something I have wondered about even before their role in the current government. Don’t follow UK politics enough to really know, but they have done and said things in the past that alerted my ‘willselloutdar’ equipment.
Edit: Maybe, it is something different about them that bothered me, more like a ‘don’t really mean what they say’ or ‘core values not as advertised’ feeling. My political sense is very bad, but if I were in their shoes, I would want an excuse to get out of their current role.
Sinnach
While we’re on the subject of Murdoch I want to throw out a link to what kind of coverage this is getting.
UK tabloid closure points to Murdoch savvy
Yeah, instead of tearing into him for the disgusting revelations that caused him to shut it down they are working hard to kiss his ass. What a ‘bold’ move – to shut down a scandal-ridden newspaper that will likely lead to arrests tomorrow. That’s business sense there! Ugh. I hate our corporate media.
Cat Lady
I love Alex Pareene and want to have his babies. That is all.
ETA: We should have a BJ pool for the first publicly named victim of the same Murdoch “journalistic” practices here. I say Michael Jackson, triggering a media singularity into which tweets, blogs, broadcasts and print media disappear into the event horizon, leaving a black hole of information from which only smoke signals will be detectable.
MikeB
This IS bad news for certain UK politicians, especially Cameron…
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/peteroborne/100095686/david-cameron-is-in-the-sewer-because-of-his-news-international-friends/
mellowjohn
murdoch won’t be dead until his head is cut off, his mouth is stuffed with garlic, and a stake is driven through where his heart ought to be.
scav
Certainly going to be interesting. Because now, as I’m reading things, both the police and the govt have to prove to the public in some way that they’re not 100% lap dogs of Murdoch and NI. Of the two, the police are probably the more dangerous. I’d say further that the way they’ve handled the firing at NoTW, sacrificing the general staff but keeping Rebekah of the Hair as crucial leadership has not engendered a lot of good feeling among journalists in general (wasn’t there a quick walkout by some Sun employees — sub-editors? — for at least 1/2 hour when they heard the news?) which introduces still more wild cards/loose cannons into the equation. Why they’re clinging like limpets to Rebekah is the seriously mysterious part of the whole thing to me. Hearing Murdoch v2.0 and that Greenwhoever guy who can speak for minutes without establishing a single fact both go the mat to say an editor / manager should be kept on because she clearly had no idea of what was going on underneath her is baffling.
PIGL
He’ll get his SkyNet, I predict.
If there was even one single western nation with a competent government agency serious about the defense of the realm, RM would have been languishing in a black prison long since.
The reason we can be sure that black ops organisations like we see on TV and in movies really do not exist is that RM is still breathing.
RossInDetroit
Possibly because she also knew what was going on above her. One reason to keep her on board would be to buy her silence about Murdoch’s involvement.
Calouste
@ MikeJ:
The LibDems might recover some voters if they are perceived as standing up against the Cons in this scenario. I think they have pretty much realized by now that the coalition is the kiss of death for them, and that things are not going to change if they stay on for the ride.
2liberal
LINK
Poopyman
That’s the spirit! Now about your blogging name ….
bargal20
Rupert Murdoch is an American , not an Australian. Why does DougJ hate immigrants?
scav
@RossInDetroit: yeah, but I still think they’re handling things remarkably clumsily. Couldn’t she just be rewarded later, in some other way, after being a good little sacrificial lamb the way they usually work it?
Poopyman
@Ross:
I was thinking along similar lines. With a boss like Murdoch it’s always useful to have some “insurance”.
May be more like Lady MacBeth than just looks.
Chuck Butcher
Murdoch has had his tentacles into the UK a lot longer than here. That may say a lot about Sky, especially in the face of the fact that FauxNews is treated as news here.
200 lose jobs, their other paper gets a Sunday issue – not so much.
pete
For the laughs, here’s a brief excerpt from one of the Guardian’s reports:
You gotta love “rejected this explanation,” dontcha?
Anya
Cat Lady @ 38
I hate that Natasha Lennard shares a space with him. She should be working for Politico or WaPost.
patrick II
As much as Murdoch plays power politics, and as he also seems to have people with the ability and ruthlessness to tap anyone’s phones, I be surprised if there were not some opposition politicians whose phones were tapped.
Possibly just paranoid, but I don’t know that Murdoch would draw the line with child kidnap victims and families of war fatalities.
Anya
I think Murdoch will continue to own the leaders of the English speaking countries, until he succumbs to senility. When that happens, there will be an epic war between his current wife and his older children.
Jeffro
Pareene rocks. He is constantly smacking all the right people upside the head.
Disclaimer: I don’t want to have his babies, or know who Natasha Lennard is, just think Alex’s snark and creativity make dealing with the daily news onslaught that much more bearable.
GO ALEX
Calouste
@patrick II:
That the NotW has been tapping politicians’ phones has been knowledge for a few years. And entertainers, royalty and police officers.
Although people used to think it was somewhat limited, not the 4-8000 that is being talked about now.
stuckinred
Talkin about dead, this thread is on life support.
scav
@patrick II: Cameron before Parliament yesterday as to why it was now serious: “We are no longer talking here about politicians and celebrities, we are talking about murder victims, potentially terrorist victims, having their phones hacked into,”
Yurpean
patrick: we’ve known that politicians have been hacked for ages, it’s just the general public didn’t particularly care. It was only when the Milly Dowler hack news came out on Monday that anybody but Guardian reading politics geeks like me started paying attention.
Mike Kay ( Geronimo!!)
There’s an old saying, never get caught with a dead girl or live boy. Murdoch/Newscorp did the former.
Anya
I am guessing, she’s as mean and vindictive as she looks. Obviously, a beneficial trait when it’s directed at your enemies and the people you want to destroy, but not so much, when it’s directed at you, specially, when she knows where all the bodies are buried.
scav
well, here, to make the thread slightly more Cole-relevant, this image has been making me giggle all day.
ETA: well, Lady MacBeth might perhaps find herself a little lonely in her phyrric victory as I think she’s sporting Toxic no. 5 as her signature scent.
Davis X. Machina
Fox/NewsCorp/NI’s reach and influence here isn’t a patch on what it is, and has been for at least a decade, in the UK.
Here they’re much more smoke and noise than real power.
Davis X. Machina
Every day Murdoch looks at Berlusconi, and sighs.
Three countries — US, UK, Australia — and he doesn’t even actually run one of them.
Chuck Butcher
sure he does and without the trouble of being elected
Dee Loralei IPhone
Dear God, is anyone watching Rachel and her discussion on the death penalty in Texas ? The Supremes in an unheard of 5-4 split okd perry to kill a foreign national who had no representation from his own embassy! I thought we had treaty obligations for stuff like this?!!
Martin
Shocking that the American Exceptionalism wing of the Supreme Court would decide that way.
Martin
You know, wouldn’t have happened if that child had been armed.
hilts
James Murdoch’s statement
h/t http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-14070822
MikeB
Murdoch is desperate to keep this scandal confined to the UK
according to this article from the Guardian, but there are connections
in the US. Also an explanation for the pursuit of Media Matters by Fox?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/jul/07/murdoch-phone-hacking-scandal-us
Jules
Dear Maddow,
“Punching the Hippy” is a feature not a bug.
KTHX
Martin
Worse than Bush!
Yeah, the whole housing relief effort has been something of a mess. Good to see that they’re still plugging away at it.
No one of Importance
Murdoch threw away his Australian citizenship for a mess of pottage, and should never again be referred to as ‘Australian’.
What he is, is a disgrace and a pox on humanity.
Elizabelle
Tee hee.
The phone hacking scandal blew up while Murdoch is in Sun Valley, Idaho at annual conference for titans of media, etc. Rather lovely to see HIM pursued by cameras and microphones.
Allen and Company Sun Valley Conference
http://www.idahostatesman.com/2011/07/06/1717648_a1717674/2011-sun-valley-conference.html
Warren Buffet, Michael Eisner, Jeffrey Katzenburg, lotso folks.
Oddly, same conference where Katharine Graham took her fatal fall ten years ago.
Viva BrisVegas
The US situation speaks for itself, Fox News has remade the US political landscape in its own image.
In the UK, Murdoch has been in control of both sides since the Falklands War.
In Australia, he owns 70% of the print industry, which has been relentlessly tearing strips of the current Labor government for having the temerity to introduce a tax on mining superprofits and a Carbon Tax.
At the moment Labor in Oz looks like a wounded deer caught in the headlights of a Mack truck being driven by Rupert, and he wants venison.
And yes, he is American.
hilts
h/t http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2011/07/map-which-countries-use-the-death-penalty/241490
Martin
Lots of states don’t belong on that list.
RossInDetroit
According to the Wikipedia:
PeakVT
The Supremes in an unheard of 5-4 split okd perry to kill a foreign national
FSM dammit. Another Texas politician eager to pull the trigger for political gain.
Davis X. Machina
@Viva BrisVegas: Ah, all that power, but not president or premier. Only Charles Foster Kane can really empathize.
Davis X. Machina
@Dee Loralei IPhone: He wasn’t a ‘foreign national’ he was a Mexican. In Texas, that makes all the difference.
El Cid
__
I don’t think many people noticed this:
Comrade Kevin
@Anya:
Oh, she most definitely is. The next few issues of Private Eye oughta be something else.
j
It’s about time for the State Department and the Justice Department to look into Rupert Murdoch’s quick time citizenship. He was given an emergency”hardship” citizenship decree by Reagan in 1985, although he never fulfilled any of the requirements for citizenship.
Strip him of his papers and send his ass packing.
Brachiator
I have been seeing a few stories about how tough it has been for Jones, trying to make it in the man’s world of publishing. Don’t think the attempt at sympathy is working.
Brachiator
Crap. I meant Brooks. Couldn’t get back into the post to edit it.
Sorry
ThatPirateGuy
I would love to see Murdoch spend his final years in prison.
GregB
I blame Soros.
Xenos
@j: The only way to undo a naturalization is if Murdoch lied on the application. If you hide criminal convictions or communist or Nazi party membership you can have the naturalization undone pretty quickly. While I imagine that bribing INS officials to approve your application would have a similar result, that has not come up in the case law as far as I have heard.
As for political cronies and powerful friends pushing the approval of questionable applications, there is a long and storied tradition of that being perfectly acceptable and legal.
Wannabe Speechwriter
Speaking of Murdock, here is a clip that is a truly amazing documentation in stupidity-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QP2bUZ0K1iA&feature=player_embedded
Kane
Those who are part of what remains of the legitimate media need to continue to investigate this story throughout all branches of the Murdoch media with the same vigor and relentlessness that it would be covered if the shoe were on the other foot. Terminate with extreme prejudice.
Mike G
He was given an emergency
”hardship”campaign donor citizenship decree by Reagan in 1985Fixed.
Laws are for little people.
Someguy
It’s about time that Murdoch media empire gets muzzled. Now if we can only figure out how to shut up the Koch/Scaife noise machine… The last 30 years demonstrates what a disaster it is when media and publicity outlets fall into the wrong hands.
Nutella
I hope Media Matters has done everything legally possible to record its contacts with outsiders so it can publish its own videos when the fake Breitbart one comes out. Like Hugh Grant.