News of the World hacking row escalates(Murdoch newspaper scandal)

New allegations have emerged of payments to the police as the row around the News of the World escalates.

The paper's owners have passed to the police e-mails which appear to show that payments were authorised by the then editor, Andy Coulson.

It comes as a solicitor representing some of the relatives of people who died in the 7/7 bombings says families may have been victims of hacking.

BBC business editor Robert Preston says the e-mail disclosure was "a significant development."

He said it had an important political dimension, in that Mr. Coulson went to work as director of communications at 10 Downing Street. Mr. Coulson resigned from that post in January.

Our correspondent says it also shows that the police investigation into alleged illicit techniques used by the News of the World to obtain stories goes much wider than an examination of the hacking of mobile phones....

The latest developments came after allegations private investigator Glenn Mulcaire, working for the News of the World, hacked the phone of murdered girl Milly Dowler when she was missing.

News International has promised the "strongest possible action" if it is proven Milly's phone was hacked.....

The Guardian has claimed Mulcaire intercepted messages left by relatives for Milly while she as missing and that the News of the World deleted some messages it had already listened to in order to make space for more to be left......

Now it appears that everyone’s been laid off at NotW, except for, er, the senior exec who (it’s alleged) either authorized the payments for this illegal activity, or turned a blind eye to it.

The Sun and the News of the World are two popular RIGHT WING rags, supporters of our troops, anti-union, anti-immigration, anti-Europe. Apart from the celebrity tittle-tattle and obsession with womens’ bosoms, there’s much to recommend them.

BUT: Nobody this side of the Atlantic - not even the neocons - are buying the idea that by binning hundreds of productive workers at a profitable newspaper just to save one one cretin in the boardroom violates is “good business”. Murdoch has misjudged the professional ethics of the white working class conservatives in Britain - i.e. our feeling is, if you do a good job and you make your employer a generous profit, you should not be thrown to the wolves simply to preserve one executive in the boardroom from having to apologise for something they know they’ve done wrong.

Even the leftists, who normally would gloat at the News of the World getting a kicking, now have a reason to side with the workers there, for the first time since the mid 80s.

I can only hope Murdoch Jr is after the B Sky B TV rights and has fed NotW to the lions in an attempt to stop him losing that deal, and will resurrect the NotW in another form as soon as the heat’s off- but even if that is the case it could turn out to be a very dangerous gamble.

Already, I’m told that Liverpool - which boycotted the Sun after it made disgusting slurs about the people who died in the Hillsborough fire and has never let that scandal rest - is now so animated that if you leave a copy of the Sun on a train seat nobody will touch it, not even if the toilet on the train has run out of paper the saying is “I wouldn’t want to get my arse dirty”.

God knows what the socialists are making of it - they must think it’s Christmas. Two top execs cover the arse of a third in face of mounting evidence that she’s culpable for this entire scandal... by laying off hundreds of people who for five years have bust a gut to keep the News of the World one of the top selling papers in the U.K. WITHOUT having to resort to the illegality endorsed by its past editors.

As Richard Littlejohn, right wing commentator, might put it: “you couldn’t make it up!”

The only thing people have systematically asked for, is for Rebekah Brooks or James Murdoch to acknowledge that these atrocities occurred on their watch and they’ve both known about these allegations for a very long time.

The law over here is crystal clear: if a corporation systematically flouts the law, then executives are accountable whether they knew about it or not.

The assumption being, if you don’t know what your own department is doing something illegal then you’re not fit to be a manager, and if you do know they’re doing something illegal then you’re complicit.

A manager in the UK would be expected by his own shareholders if nobody else, to tender his resignation if a scandal this big broke, and caused the collapse of the division he was responsible for.

A manager in the UK would also be expected by his own shareholders if nobody else, to resign with honor rather than throw his people to the wolves and wreck the company’s reputation purely to save his own skin.

So, no matter how you look at it, Rebekah Brooks should’ve resigned, and could’ve done so with honour.

And James Murdoch should’ve let her do so.

James Murdoch’s response suggests he genuinely doesn’t understand how seriously the whole business community, and the general public, and even the politicians, in Britain anyway, take the basic principle of “the buck stops at the top”.

On a scandal this big, to sack hundreds of blameless workers all to cover the backside of someone who’s at least tried to resign with dignity, is not going to win Murdoch any sympathy. In fact I think he’s outdone even Gerald Ratner for self-destruction.

James Murdoch’s response suggests he genuinely doesn’t understand how seriously the whole business community, and the general public, and even the politicians, in Britain anyway,

It would be considered a tempest in a teapot here.

On a scandal this big, to sack hundreds of blameless workers all to cover the backside of someone who’s at least tried to resign with dignity, is not going to win Murdoch any sympathy.

One of the first stories out of here after the closure announcement will show you the difference:

UK tabloid closure points to Murdoch savvy

Everyone knows the days of print media is coming to an end. News Corp. just shed the money losing MySpace and now has found a perfect opportunity to shed another questionable asset and look like a "good citizen" in the process. ("We hear you and are just as appalled. We will shut this rotten business down immediately!")

Stock Tip......buy NewsCorp.

Good citizen? Ooh, that’s the gift that keeps on giving. Murdoch’s not a citizen of the UK.

I bet you wouldn’t consider it a “tempest in a teapot” if you thought your mainstream media was controlled by a foreign bloke with no interest in...

Oh, wait. You have that.

But do you have the MSM bribing police officers, to the extent where evidence of criminality literally sits in back rooms while the investigators say “there’s no evidence”?

Oh, yeah. You have that too.

Trouble is, we’ve been apathetic over here for too long about that and for anyone who thinks us Brits can’t move mountains when roused, this week should be a hell of a wake-up call.

Agree with you about the business savvy here though, but Murdoch’s howling mad if he thinks that by burning the NotW he’s going to stop people calling for management heads to roll.

Leaving the two named executives in post is strategically dangerous, even if burning the NotW is a brilliant move. The Sun and News of the World have spent twenty years scooping corporate corruption and saying “the buck stops at the top” and until Murdoch actually practices what he preaches, he won’t get much support over here.

When told, “sack the crook”, Murdoch sacked everyone EXCEPT the crook.

In the short term, that’s not good PR, it’s not good business sense, it looks reactionary, hysterical, vindictive and incompetent.

Even if mothballing the paper is good business sense in the long run, Murdoch’s just sacrificed his “kingmaker” card, the one that has given him the keys to Downing Street at every election since Thatcher went, and he might as well have flushed his reputation down the toilet.

Like I said - BIG gamble even if he thinks it’ll help his BSkyB bid.

Also, I think people over in the USA don’t really understand how the press work over here and why this might be a monumental miscalculation by Murdoch.

For starters, the press has been, till now, almost completely “self regulating”, in that there’s a voluntary body called the Press Complaints Commission which is funded by the press, run for the benefit of the press not their customers, and has no legal powers. If you have an issue with something in print, you have two options: grin and bear it, or take them on in the courts (which is a pretty good setup but obviously doesn’t help the families of serving Forces personnel who cannot hope to afford to take Murdoch on in that fashion given the costs involved).

Also, there’s been an unwritten rule (gentleman’s agreement) amongst the newspaper editors that they don’t set loose the attack dogs against each other. They all cover each others’ arses.

That being the situation on the ground, which Murdoch has benefited immensely from in the past, here’s what’s changed.

1. We have a long standing press principle over here, if a politician has a policy along a moral stand and it’s found that he’s privately doing the exact opposite, the story is in the public interest and the press have an absolute right to expose the hypocrisy. One consequence of this fallout is that the Guardian was allowed to set the precedent, that the same rule applies to newspaper editors. So, from this day forward no newspaper editor can now rely on immunity from attack from its rivals in the way it would’ve been able to a week ago, if it preaches (for example) Help for Heroes on one hand, but is illegally hacking the phones of serving members of the Armed Forces, and their bereaved families, on the other.

2. Murdoch has in effect thrown the ailing Guardian a new lifeline and an enormous boost in public opinion, because for the first time in living memory he’s been made to look weak by what is, by comparison, a minnow. Governments used to run scared of Murdoch, they won’t anymore.

3. Murdoch’s other paper, The Sun, is going to be by far the easiest target for any similar press attacks now that the gentlemen’s agreement has been effectively torn up - because of its obsession with celebrity tittle-tattle and papparazzi and underhanded tactics, rather than real news and “quality” investigative journalism.

Then there’s the Office for Communications, which is the official regulator - it has no remit as far as the press is concerned, but does have the following mandate in terms of issuing licenses for broadcast media: “it has a duty to be satisfied *on an ongoing basis* that the holder of a broadcasting license is ‘fit and proper.’” Murdoch satisfies that requirement. For the moment.

But, his bid for a majority share of British Sky Broadcasting puts Murdoch in a position where he has to MAINTAIN his reputation as being “fit and proper”, while at the same time throwing a 160 year old newspaper on the bonfire along with 200 blameless employees, ostensibly to cover the asses of James Murdoch (his son) and Rebekah Wood.

Now in America that sort of behaviour might be regarded as “fit and proper” business practise, but this ain’t America. Over here, a “fit and proper” MEDIA broadcaster would’ve asked both execs to resign, put out a glowing eulogy to them both for falling on their swords, and waited for the heat to die down before doing a slash and burn on the organization.

Murdoch’s done the exact opposite of what a “fit and proper” broadcast license holder would do. In fact, it’s the opposite of what he’s done about scandals at Sky where he’s been very careful not to fall foul of the regulators.

So...

5. Murdoch’s just sent a massive signal to the people assessing his “fitness” to take over BSkyB, that if he can be “unfit and improper” with News of the World, he could be “unfit and improper” to BSkyB. This is a perception he has to address, and fast.

Because, press moguls can be total scumbags if they want, but over here there’s a legal requirement that media license owners ARE NOT scumbags.

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