When the latest news about phone hacking by UK tabloids first broke last week, most commentators focused on the tolling of the death knell for the country’s most popular tabloid, the News of the World (NOTW). But I was convinced from the outset that there had to be much more to this scandal and that the NOTW was not the only tabloid involved:
That’s 4,000 people hacked by just one investigator for just one tabloid folks. Therefore, just imagine how widespread this practice must have been given the competitive and hyena-like nature of Britain’s tabloid press…
Interestingly enough, the police will have to launch an internal investigation as well because a number of officers have been accused of taking bribes from the NOTW to help facilitate this phone-hacking spree.
(Britain’s shocking (and still unfolding) phone-hacking scandal, The iPINIONS Journal, July 8, 2011)
Sure enough, no less a person than former Prime Minister Gordon Brown is now claiming that his tax returns, bank accounts, lawyers files, and children’s medical records were all hacked by other tabloids in Rupert Murdoch’s News International Ltd., which published the NOTW and still publishes The Times, Sunday Times, and the Sun.
This was a culture in both The Sunday Times and in other newspapers in News International where they really exploited people — I’m not talking so much about me here now, I’m talking about people who were at rock bottom — and rock bottom was the rock upon which The Sunday Times founded their reputation, and other newspapers in News International founded their reputation, for purely commercial gain and in some cases to abuse political power…
I just can’t understand this — if I, with all the protection and all the defences and all the security that a Chancellor of the Exchequer or a prime minister, am so vulnerable to unscrupulous tactics, to unlawful tactics, methods that have been used in the way we have found, what about the ordinary citizen?
What about the person, like the family of Milly Dowler, who are in the most desperate of circumstances, the most difficult occasions in their lives, in huge grief and then they find that they are totally defenseless in this moment of greatest grief from people who are employing these ruthless tactics with links to known criminals?
(Former PM Gordon Brown, Associated Press, July 12, 2011)
To be fair, News International not only denies any hacking against Brown, but claims that his wife gave consent for The Sun to run the story about his son’s cystic fibrosis, which he claims made both he and his wife cry in anguish when it was published….
Whatever the case, much of the shock and outrage being expressed by Brown and other commentators reflect a collective amnesia that is itself shocking and outrageous. After all, these folks all seem to forget that, despite all of the protection, defenses, and security surrounding the royal family, UK tabloids were clearly hacking the phones of Prince Charles and Princess Diana way back in the early 1990s.
Specifically, I remember well when The Sun published transcripts of the infamous “squidgy tapes” on which Diana could be heard cooing like a teenager to her lover, as well as the “tampon tapes” on which Charles could be heard telling his then mistress (now wife) Camilla how much he envied the access her feminine products had to her body.
What’s more, reports are that News International even paid a corrupt royal protection officer to feed its tabloids personal details about the Queen and Prince Phillip.
The difference is that back then the public was so fascinated by the prurient details the phone hacking revealed about the private lives of the purportedly genteel royals that nobody seemed in the least bit bothered by the criminal methods the tabloids used to get those details. It did not even matter that trusted members of the royal staff as well as members of the metropolitan police had to have been involved.
This is why my interest in this still-unfolding scandal is now focused primarily on:
– Whether Murdoch will deem any of his other UK newspapers (like the The Times) too toxic to survive. I think not;
– Whether any of his U.S. newspapers (like the New York Post) will be implicated. I think so; and
– Whether, after all of the parliamentary hearings and police investigations that are now underway, those ending up in jail will include members of Rupert Murdoch’s family, if not Murdoch himself. I think his son James and former NOTW editor Rebekah Brooks are headed to the pokey, but plausible deniability will spare Rupert. (The parliamentary committee investigating this matter has summoned all three of them to appear next week.)
[I]n the face of serious legal jeopardy, [former NOTW editors] Brooks and Coulson might be induced to implicate James and Rupert himself. Which explains the Murdochs’ surprisingly defiant together-we-stand,-divided-we-fall support for them.
(Britain’s shocking (and still unfolding) phone-hacking scandal, The iPINIONS Journal, July 8, 2011)
Meanwhile, in my original commentary I exclaimed, with justification, that nobody should shed a tear for any financial loss Murdoch suffers. But that was because the NOTW represented such a small fraction of his global media empire.
Now, however, the toxicity that forced him to close the NOTW is metastasizing. The most acute symptom of this is that parliament is expected to pass the following motion today:
This House believes that it is in the public interest for Rupert Murdoch and News Corporation to withdraw their bid for BSkyB [the British Sky Broadcasting company].
(Labour.org, July 12, 2011)
This motion will effectively force him to forfeit his $19 billion bid for full control of BSkyB, a satellite pay-TV company in which he’s now a minority (39%) owner. The leaders of all major political parties have made it plain that they are moving it as a way of vindicating the public anger that has become so palpable.
Do the decent and sensible thing, and reconsider, think again, about your bid for BSkyB. Rupert Murdoch is now in town in London seeking to sort things out. I would simply say to him: ‘Look how people feel about this, look how the country has reacted with revulsion to the revelations.’
(Nick Clegg, Deputy PM and Lib-Dem leader, BBC News, July 11, 2011)
Indeed, it’s an indication of how toxic Murdoch himself has become that Conservatives, most of whom always regarded him as a political godfather, seem just as eager to quarantine his influence as Labourites, most of whom always regarded him as a political gangster.
Incidentally, control of BSkyB would make Murdoch’s News International Ltd. a bigger media company in the UK than even the BBC. And many politicians are clearly co-opting public anger to exact personal revenge against Murdoch for all of the bad, and arguably unfair, press his publications have inflicted upon them over the years.
Notwithstanding all that is unfolding in the UK, however, his greatest fear must be that the cancer now eating away at his holdings there, which constitute only a small percent of his media empire, might metastasize throughout his holdings worldwide. And of particular concern in this respect must be America, where FOX News and the Wall Street Journal give him a considerable amount of both media and political power.
News Corp, his parent company with total assets of $60 billion, has already lost over $7 billion in market value. He excised the NOTW like a tumor in a drastic attempt to save his UK publications; he may now have to excise his UK publications in an even more drastic attempt to save his global media empire.
NOTE: It would constitute poetic justice if law enforcement officials were to hack the phones and email accounts of Murdoch and top News Corp. executives based on the probable cause that they may now be engaged in a desperate conspiracy to cover up their illegal activities.
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Britain’s shocking … phone hacking scandal