At least three British investigations into phone-hacking and payments to police and others by the now-shuttered News of the World tabloid are underway, with 10 arrests so far. News Corp. and its executives have apologized profusely and are cooperating with authorities. Phone-hacking is illegal, and it is up to British authorities to enforce their laws. If Scotland Yard failed to do so adequately when the hacking was first uncovered several years ago, then that is more troubling than the hacking itself.
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In braying for politicians to take down Mr. Murdoch and News Corp., our media colleagues might also stop to ask about possible precedents. The political mob has been quick to call for a criminal probe into whether News Corp. executives violated the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act with payments to British security or government officials in return for information used in news stories. Attorney General Eric Holder quickly obliged last week, without so much as a fare-thee-well to the First Amendment.
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The last time the liberal press demanded a media prosecutor, it was to probe the late conservative columnist Robert Novak in pursuit of White House aide Scooter Libby. But the effort soon engulfed a reporter for the New York Times, which had led the posse to hang Novak and his sources. Do our media brethren really want to invite Congress and prosecutors to regulate how journalists gather the news?
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Phone-hacking is deplorable, and we assume the guilty will be prosecuted. More fundamentally, the News of the World's offense—fatal, as it turned out—was to violate the trust of its readers by not coming about its news honestly. We realize how precious that reader trust is, and our obligation is to re-earn it every day.
Quote by TriSec:
Morning, comrades.
Got BBC World Service on; there was a headline regarding a "Recall of Parliament" that's supposed to happen Wednesday. I don't know what that means in terms of British Politics, but I expect to be filled in further later in the hour.
Is the current British Government in danger of falling over this?
Quote by Raine:
I'm amazed frankly at this line of attack from News Corp. -- I don;t know if it will take the company down, but I think the brand is finally thoroughly in the shitter.
When a major newspaper allows something like that editorial to be printed -- Going after the DOJ, The Police and others for things that they did-- it's just stunning.
The complaint summed up the ethos of News America nicely, saying it had "illegally accessed plaintiff's computer system and obtained proprietary information" and "disseminated false, misleading and malicious information about the plaintiff."
The complaint stated that the breach was traced to an I.P. address registered to News America and that after the break-in, Floorgraphics lost contracts from Safeway, Winn-Dixie and Piggly Wiggly.
Much of the lawsuit was based on the testimony of Robert Emmel, a former News America executive who had become a whistle-blower. After a few days of testimony, the News Corporation had heard enough. It settled with Floorgraphics for $29.5 million and then, days later, bought it, even though it reportedly had sales of less than $1 million.
But the problems continued, and keeping a lid on News America turned out to be a busy and expensive exercise. At the beginning of this year, it paid out $125 million to Insignia Systems to settle allegations of anticompetitive behavior and violations of antitrust laws. And in the most costly payout, it spent half a billion dollars in 2010 on another settlement, just days before the case was scheduled to go to trial. The plaintiff, Valassis Communications, had already won a $300 million verdict in Michigan, but dropped the lawsuit in exchange for $500 million and an agreement to cooperate on certain ventures going forward.
The News Corporation is a very large, well-capitalized company, but that single payout to Valassis represented one-fifth of the company's net income in 2010 and matched the earnings of the entire newspaper and information division that News America was a part of.
Because consumers (and journalists) don't much care who owns the coupon machine in the snack aisle, the cases have not received much attention. But that doesn't mean that they aren't a useful window into the broader culture at the News Corporation.
Quote by Mondobubba:
So, how about that Woman's World Cup Final?
Employee announces he quit on sign: wivb.com
Quote by wickedpam:
Did Charlie say he owned the Herald?
Quote by wickedpam:
Did Charlie say he owned the Herald?
Quote by Raine:
Does Murdoch own any papers in Boston?
Quote by TriSec:
Well, I finally had a minute to read the WSJ editorial. I think my brain fell out.
Murdoch made his first acquisition in the United States in 1973, when he purchased the San Antonio Express-News. Soon afterwards, he founded Star, a supermarket tabloid, and in 1976, he purchased the New York Post. On 4 September 1985, Murdoch became a naturalised citizen to satisfy the legal requirement that only US citizens were permitted to own American television stations. Also in 1985, Murdoch purchased the 20th Century Fox movie studio. In 1986, Murdoch purchased six television stations owned by Metromedia. These stations would form the nucleus of the Fox Broadcasting Company, which was founded on 9 October 1986. In 1987, in Australia he bought The Herald and Weekly Times Ltd, the company that his father had once managed. By 1991, his Australian-based News Corp. had worked up huge debts (much from Sky TV in the UK)[citation needed], forcing Murdoch to sell many of the American magazine interests he had acquired in the mid-1980s.
In 1995, Murdoch's Fox Network became the object of scrutiny from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), when it was alleged that News Ltd.'s Australian base made Murdoch's ownership of Fox illegal. However, the FCC ruled in Murdoch's favor, stating that his ownership of Fox was in the best interests of the public. That same year, Murdoch announced a deal with MCI Communications to develop a major news website and magazine, The Weekly Standard. Also that year, News Corp. launched the Foxtel pay television network in Australia in partnership with Telstra.
Quote by TriSec:
Reading the Wiki entry for the Herald....I was once a paperboy for them, back when it was a broadsheet called the "Herald American".
Quote by wickedpam:
oh lord, tea party crazy
Quote by TriSec:
Wouldn't you love to see Dick Cheney somehow involved in all this?
Quote by Raine:Quote by wickedpam:
oh lord, tea party crazy
Yeah, I am not really feeling this. John is trying to debate honestly with someone who set up a strawman as his debate position.
Quote by Raine:
This guy is totally showing true colors. Trying to say we should go back to a post WWII levels????
Basically it comes down to this: he wants to get rid of what little shreds we have left from the New Deal. Limbaugh advocated that about 20 years ago.
Quote by trojanrabbit:
Morning all
I just don't see this News Corp stuff going far here, at least I'm not getting my hopes up. The right people will be bought off and there's still Rethug control in the House and Judicial. The same bad feeling that tells me Roger Clemens' trial was deliberately botched.
Anyway, another addition to the Rabbit's Electronics Fail Of The Week. Last week was my laptop. Yesterday was my DVD recorder's DVD drive (I think). Says every DVD I put in is "dirty". Tried vacuuming it out and of course Sophie was trying to replace what I vacuum out by rubbing the side of the case. I'll try cleaning the DVD burner lens before I start scouring eBay. Or try an old slower DVD-RW disc that I know works.
Just ordered a work laptop, so maybe I'll have that in a couple of days. Need it for when I do my little trips to Andover.