Phone-Hacking Scandal (merged)

The Guardian

Arrested News of the World executive was employed as Met adviser


Neil Wallis, who has been questioned over phone hacking, advised commissioner on communications, Scotland Yard says

Scotland Yard has admitted it employed Neil Was an adviser to the commissioner until September 2010.

Wallis was employed to advise Sir Paul Stephenson and John Yates on a part-time basis from October 2009 to September 2010. During this time the Yard was saying there was no need to reopen the phone-hacking investigation – a decision made by Yates despite allegations in the Guardian that the first police investigation had been inadequate.

Wallis is a former News of the World executive editor. He was arrested on Thursday morning as part of the police's renewed phone-hacking inquiry.

Wallis joined the News of the World in 2003 as deputy to then editor Andy Coulson. In mid-2007 he became executive editor, eventually leaving the News International title in 2009. Police say he supplied "strategic communication advice". The Met said his company was chosen because it offered to do the work for the lowest price. He was paid £24,000 by Scotland Yard to work as a two-day-a-month consultant.

Relations between senior Met officers and News of the World senior executives have been under scrutiny. In September 2006 Stephenson, as deputy commissioner, accompanied by the Yard's head PR man, Dick Fedorcio, dined with Wallis. This was a month after officers had arrested the paper's royal correspondent, Clive Goodman, and at a time when detectives were still attempting to investigate whether other journalists or executives were involved in the interception of voicemail messages. In theory Wallis was a potential suspect in the inquiry.

Scotland Yard said: "Chamy Media, owned by Neil Wallis, former executive editor of the News of the World, was appointed to provide strategic communication advice and support to the MPS, including advice on speechwriting and PR activity, while the Met's deputy director of public affairs was on extended sick leave recovering from a serious illness.

"In line with Metropolitan Police Service/Metropolitan Police Authority procurement procedures, three relevant companies were invited to provide costings for this service on the basis of two days per month. Chamy Media were appointed as they were significantly cheaper than the others. The contract ran from October 2009 until September 2010, when it was terminated by mutual consent.

"The commissioner has made the chair of the police authority aware of this contract."

The Guardian

Phone hacking: NI plans full page apology in national press

Rupert Murdoch's company hope statements of regret surrounding News of the World saga will rebuild tarnished image


News International's Rupert and James Murdoch and Rebekah Brooks. Photograph: Indigo/Getty Images

News International is planning to book advertising space for a full page apology in a range of national newspapers over the weekend as the publisher seeks to draw a line under the News of the World phone-hacking scandal and start the slow process of rebuilding its tarnished image.

The publisher of the Times, Sunday Times and Sun has also tentatively sounded out advertiser reaction to launching the Sun on Sunday on 7 August, the weekend before the start of the Premier League season, when the now defunct News of the World traditionally put out a bumper issue.

News International is in last-minute discussions with rival publishers of titles including the Independent, the Daily Telegraph, the Daily Mail and the Guardian – as well as their Sunday counterparts – and possibly the Daily Express about running a full page apology ad.

Final plans on when the ad will appear are still being finalised, however it is understood it will run on two days out of three between Saturday and Monday. News International declined to comment.

"They are talking to all of the quality and mid-market newspapers about booking a full-page ad," said one media buying industry executive. "I'm not sure exactly what it will say but I think it will be a contrite message, perhaps not dissimilar to the tone of News of the World's editorial last Sunday."

News International executives are also understood to have been testing the water for a potentially swift launch of a Sunday edition of the Sun as a replacement for NoW, which published the final issue in its 168-year history on Sunday, in conversations with advertisers and media buyers.

The publisher would like to launch a replacement as soon as possible to try and stop the 2.6m former buyers of Britain's second-biggest selling newspaper defecting to rival titles such as the Mail on Sunday and the Sunday Mirror.

However, executives are aware that relaunching into the market so quickly after the closure of the NoW could be seen as a cynical move and potentially tarnish the Sun brand as well.

"It was mentioned as an option but certainly no stronger than anything else they have going on," said a source with knowledge of the discussions. "I don't believe that they are basing a massive strategy around that particular date, it was more testing the water. It feels a bit too hot at the moment, but who knows in a couple of weeks, the most important thing is they want to gauge advertiser appetite and they want their support."

Media buying sources believe it is more likely that if a Sun on Sunday is launched it will be from September onwards.

Victoria Newton, the former Sun Bizarre showbiz column editor who is now deputy editor of the News of the World, is being heavily tipped as the most likely candidate to edit a Sunday edition of the Sun.

There are rumours that the title might be launched as a freesheet, although media buying agency sources dismiss this as incredibly unlikely given the dynamics of the Sunday market and the losses it would incur.

NoW made more than £100m per year from circulation revenue, and just £37m in ad revenue. One media buying source said they would be "insane" to go free – beyond perhaps the first issue as some sort of sampler – and newsagents would not want to aggravate the other publishers by putting such a title on their shelves.

The pitchforkers are really, really, not thinking this one through...

So, rotten apples in the police have been selling info on...so why has no-one sold on anything to do with Madeleine McCann?

Surely that would have been worth megabucks? But it didn't happen...

Oh sorry, we do know that at least one Scotland Yard officer was passing info to a blogger.

According to the blogger, anyway.

And that was de Freitas.

You knew perfectly well that the majority of the Portuguese information I posted from beginning to end was provided by Goncalo Amaral and yourself, with subsidiary input and documentation from others, including members of the PJ, officer De Freitas and lawyers associated with the case, for example

Oops!

Reuters

Is Piers Morgan Next to Fall in Phone-Hacking Scandal?

By Lucas Shaw. Fri Jul 15, 2011 4:39pm

CNN, which has given the scandal plenty of play, is starting to face questions about its treatment of allegations implicating its own Larry King replacement.

Seems Morgan was once an editor of the News of the World, the British tabloid that started all of this -- though his alleged improprieties were during his tenure as editor of a different tabloid: the Daily Mirror.

On Monday, a British politics blog titled Guido Fawkes claimed Morgan condoned hacking during his editorship.

"James 'Scottie' Scott, the Daily Mirror's showbiz reporter at the time, was listening into (English TV star) Ulrika Jonsson's voicemails when he was flummoxed by messages in her native Swedish," Fawkes wrote.

"Morgan decided to let '3AM Girl' Jessica Callan break the illegally obtained story under her byline in order to try and rid the column of its banal reputation."

The blog never supplied much evidence, but one of his sources might be Morgan's book, "The Insider," in which Morgan talks about a "little trick" that sounds a whole lot like hacking.

While different news outlets have begun to pick the story up, CNN has remained silent. Adweek pointed this out to CNN, which defended its silence by saying that Morgan has not been summoned to testify.

But while he has not been formally summoned like the Murdochs, MPs have said Morgan should face questioning.

Morgan himself addressed the speculation on Monday, telling the CBS daytime show "The Talk" that he had not broken any laws. However, neither CNN nor Morgan have responded to the allegations since then.

Is it me, or is this turning into a feeding frenzy and a chance for some to settle old scores?

bb1 wrote:Is it me, or is this turning into a feeding frenzy and a chance for some to settle old scores?

George (Ain't I gorgeous?) Galloway was slamming into Piers on TalkSport last night, as well as racheting things up against anybody he hates, which is one hell of a lot of people, as I recall!! LL

Galloway was hilarious in the run-up to the Scottish elections, mouthing off at every opportunity about how he was going to be wiping the floor with Alex Salmond in parliament.

He forgot one small detail.

He had to get elected first. He didn't

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/danielknowles/100086711/is-this-the-end-of-george-galloways-political-career/

quote:

The Union may be under threat, and the Lib Dem part of the Coalition is enduring a complete meltdown, but there is some good news in these election results. Apparently George Galloway and his ludicrous “coalition against cuts” has failed to win a seat on the Glasgow list for Holyrood. This is almost as satisfying as the raving Scotsman’s failure to win again in Westminster at the last election. It proves, reassuringly, that populist old-Labour soapbox politics still doesn’t work – not even in Glasgow.

Is David Cameron next to resign office...??

The Telegraph

Phone hacking: A scandal that has diminished Britain

David Cameron's friendship with Rebekah Brooks and employment of Andy Coulson puts him at the heart of the phone hacking story.



The chief executive of a newspaper company resigns after allegations that her colleagues have hacked into the phone accounts of murder victims and their families; a Prime Minister moralises noisily in Parliament, trying to distract attention from the fact that he has been spending family holidays with this disgraced CEO, and that he appointed as his director of communications a man who employed those phone hackers; meanwhile, the country’s most senior police officer is forced to admit that he, too, engaged someone implicated in the scandal – a ruthless and abrasive tabloid journalist from the same newspaper company – as his personal adviser.

This is the United Kingdom we are talking about, not one of those southern European countries whose corruption Britons have traditionally found so amusing. It will be a long time before we can make any more jokes at the expense of Italy or Greece. After the revelations of the past week, the whole world has learned the shameful truth about modern Britain: that its leading politicians and policemen have been lining up to have their palms greased and images burnished by executives of a media empire guilty of deeply criminal – and morally repugnant – invasions of personal privacy.

Rebekah Brooks, the former News of the World editor who stood down as chief executive of News International yesterday, has at least belatedly recognised the role she played in nurturing this culture. David Cameron, in contrast, has thrown Andy Coulson to the wolves rather than explain precisely why he admitted to his inner circle a man who, when he was editor of the same paper, presided over reporters who hacked the Royal family’s mobile phones. The Prime Minister has also done his best – unsuccessfully – to deflect attention from the fact that he spent Christmas with Mrs Brooks and her husband, and that Mr Coulson visited Chequers as recently as March. In addition, he is planning a long-term diversionary strategy that could impose state regulation on all newspapers, including those that, unlike the News International titles, did not shower him in hospitality. Such a move will no doubt delight Gordon Brown, whose claim that Mrs Brooks had invaded his privacy – delivered with theatrical fury to the House of Commons on Wednesday – was undermined by the fact that he had subsequently attended her wedding and invited her to a slumber party at Chequers.

In the middle of this chaos, Rupert Murdoch was forced to withdraw his bid for BSkyB. Mr Cameron duly attempted to take credit for this decision; but the truth is that it was his Government that allowed the bid to advance in the first place. Indeed, ministers gave every impression – in between mouthfuls of canapés at News International parties – of hoping that it would succeed.

Our senior policemen, too, were determined not to miss out on the hospitality of Murdoch employees. Between September 2006 and June 2009, Sir Paul Stephenson, now the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, had seven dinners with Neil Wallis, a former deputy editor of the News of the World at the time hacking is alleged to have gone on. They must have been agreeable occasions, for in October 2009 Mr Wallis was engaged as Sir Paul’s personal adviser – an appointment the Commissioner failed to acknowledge publicly until he was forced to this week. Mr Wallis also advised John Yates, the police officer previously in charge of the Met’s investigation into phone hacking. Even in Palermo, this would raise eyebrows.

Admittedly, the custom of Cabinet ministers and police officers grovelling to Rupert Murdoch’s lieutenants dates back at least as far as the early days of New Labour, for whom it was an essential element of statecraft. It therefore should make anyone feel queasy to hear Alastair Campbell pontificating on the subject of corruption, as he has been doing this week.

Still, David Cameron should have dismantled this quasi-masonic circle, with its conspiratorial deal-cutting and back-scratching. Instead, encouraged by George Osborne, he invited the circle into Downing Street, giving Mr Coulson an undeserved second chance. Mr Cameron is paying the price for this and other cynical moves. At a time when he is supposed to be navigating Britain through both the domestic and global debt crises, the Prime Minister is desperately trying to align himself with public opinion and distance himself from the News International scandal. Government has given way to the shallowest form of crisis management.

Large swaths of the British establishment have been implicated in this scandal. And the shady characters who have been exposed – policemen, politicians and News International executives – have so far only revealed one aim. That is, to avoid giving a straight answer to the public. The suspicion is that they are living in fear of what may yet be revealed. Meanwhile, Britain’s institutions and its national reputation are taking a terrible battering in the eyes of the world. This country has always prided itself on the low level of corruption in its public life. Can it still?

bb1 wrote:Is it me, or is this turning into a feeding frenzy and a chance for some to settle old scores?

Found the dates when Piers Morgan was a paper editor: NOTW 1994-95, Mirror 1995-2004. Yes it does look like people are trying to involve others in this; certainly it would appear that the time Piers was at the NOTW is before all this is supposed to have really started. As for when he was at the Mirror, well, it's not the Mirror that's in the limelight, it's the NOTW and the Sun. I don't condone hacking or anything illegal that the media may get up to, but trying to stitch others up is not my idea of fair play. If they think Piers was involved, then come out and say so, not make oblique references to matters as yet not under scrutiny. I don't like the man but I would defend his right to be allowed to replt to anyt allegations. I see many of the other newspapers trying to cover their own less than pristine tracks, to be truthful. LL.

REUTERS

Special Report - Inside Rebekah Brooks' News of the World

By Georgina Prodhan and Kate Holton

LONDON (Reuters) - "It was the kind of place you get out of and you never want to go back again." That's how one former reporter describes the News of the World newsroom under editor Rebekah Brooks, the ferociously ambitious titian-haired executive who ran the top-selling Sunday tabloid from 2000 to 2003.

Journalists who worked there in that period describe an industrialised operation of dubious information-gathering, reporters under intense pressure attempting to land exclusive stories by whatever means necessary, and a culture of fear, cynicism, gallows humour and fierce internal competition.

"We used to talk to career criminals all the time. They were our sources," says another former reporter from the paper who also worked for Murdoch's daily tabloid, the Sun. "It was a macho thing: 'My contact is scummier than your contact.' It was a case of: 'Mine's a murderer!' On the plus side, we always had a resident pet nutter around in case anything went wrong."

The 168-year-old paper published for the last time last Sunday after exposure of its widespread use of phone-hacking triggered a scandal that has engulfed Rupert Murdoch's UK newspaper group News International, its New York-based parent company News Corp, and Britain's political classes and police.

Brooks, one of two top Murdoch executives who resigned on Friday, has maintained she neither sanctioned nor knew about the phone hacking. The Guardian newspaper reported the paper's targets went beyond celebrities to include murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler and the bereaved relatives of dead soldiers. Murdoch has apologised personally to the Dowler family.

Four former employees of the Sunday tabloid have told Reuters that Brooks' denials are simply not credible. They say people on the paper's newsdesk, the hub that directs news coverage, were regularly grilled about the top stories by Brooks and later by her successor Andy Coulson, who resigned over the phone-hacking scandal in 2007 and went on to become Prime Minister David Cameron's spokesman.

"They went in and they were cross-examined for two hours every day. And it was all about the genesis of all the stories," the first ex-reporter, who worked at the paper for seven years, told Reuters.

The News of the World's reporting methods were first questioned when it published a story about an injury to Prince William's knee in 2005, prompting fears his aides' voicemail messages were being intercepted. The royal family complained to police. More than a year later the paper's royal editor Clive Goodman and private detective Glenn Mulcaire were jailed for six months for conspiracy to access phone messages.

Coulson, by then the newspaper's editor, resigned immediately, although like Brooks he has repeatedly denied any knowledge of phone-hacking. Until recently, the paper continued to maintain that the hacking was isolated to Goodman.

Former employees say that's hard to believe, not only because of the story approval process, but also because budgets were so tightly controlled that payments for such services would not have gone unnoticed.

"It's simply not conceivable that somebody who was editor wouldn't have known," says the journalist who spent seven years at the paper, covering general news.

Neither Brooks nor Coulson could be reached for comment, and News International declined comment for this story beyond saying: "There are numerous views from former employees and we are not going to counter each one."

Reuters is a competitor of Dow Jones Newswires, the financial news agency that News Corp acquired along with the Wall Street Journal in 2007.

SURVIVALISTS

When Brooks became editor, at age 31, she had a brief to broaden the paper's appeal by intensifying the focus on celebrity and showbusiness news and publishing fewer of the harder stories the paper had been known for -- politicians caught taking illegal drugs or footballers caught with their pants down. More and more front pages were taken over by stories about C-list celebrities, such as contestants in the TV reality show "Big Brother", to the irritation of the old guard.

At the same time, the pressure to get exclusive stories was so intense that dubious practices were barely questioned. "They were 'dodgy business HQ'. I'm not sure if people even realised it was illegal. It was a don't-get-caught culture," said the reporter of seven years' standing. New staff would be given the cold shoulder until they'd proved themselves to be "thoroughly disreputable" so their colleagues could trust them.

"It was no place for anyone to pipe up and say: 'This doesn't seem ethical to me.' That would have made you a laughing stock."

Journalists didn't explicitly ask for private investigators to get involved in their work, but help would be provided if a reporter got stuck on a promising story. "How it arrived on your desk was a bit of a mystery. You didn't know and you didn't ask," said the reporter. "Every week, somebody's mobile phone records, somebody's landline records, sometimes even somebody's medical records. It was common enough not to be notable."

A fifth former News International employee who worked with News Of the World journalists at this time said its reporters were under "unbelievable, phenomenal pressure", treated harshly by bosses who would shout abuse in their faces and keep a running total of their bylines. Journalists were driven by a terror of failing. If they didn't regularly get stories, they feared, they would be fired. That meant they competed ruthlessly with each other.

Because the News of the World was a Sunday paper, where a hot story on Tuesday could be useless five days later, pressure was much more intense than at the Sun, said the ex-journalist who worked at both titles.

"The News of the World was much more secretive than the Sun. At the Sun, you knew what was going on, what people were working on. In the News of the World you never knew what anyone was working on. They'd send you out to a job and wouldn't tell you what it was for. It'd be: 'You're going to meet a man. Don't ask his name and whatever you do don't get him excited. Just take his statement and leave,'" he said.

"You became a complete survivalist."

Reporters say they lived in constant fear of byline counts which weeded out those who had filed the fewest stories. "They were always seeking to get rid of people because it was a burn-out job. Their ideal situation was you work your nuts off for six months and they let you work there another six months," said the general news reporter.

"Every minute you spent there you felt that your employer hated you."

DESTROYING LIVES

Charles Begley, an ex-News of the World reporter, has spoken out about the bullying culture. He said he felt close to breaking-point when, three hours after the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York's twin towers, he was ordered to appear at the paper's daily conference dressed in a Harry Potter outfit he had been given to help the tabloid capitalise on the craze for the books about the boy wizard.

"At that time, we were working on the assumption that up to 50,000 people had been killed," he said then, according to tapes published in 2002 by the Daily Telegraph of a conversation between him and assistant news editor Greg Miskiw. "I was required to parade myself around morning conference dressed as Harry Potter."

It was during this conversation that Miskiw made a comment that was to become notorious in Britain: "That is what we do -- we go out and destroy other people's lives."

Contacted for this story, Begley said he did not wish to comment further on his experiences but stood by statements he made at the time.

The reporter who worked on both the Sun and the News of the World recalls that at one stage, every journalist in the News of the World newsroom was ordered to apply to become a contestant on "Big Brother", in the hope the paper could do an undercover report on it.

"Someone came round the office with all these application forms and we were all given a three-line whip to try to get on that bloody show. They were desperate to get someone on there and 'expose' it all. Everyone was moaning about it," he said.

The same journalist also described how four reporters were sent off as a punishment to spend a stint on a crack-ridden estate in Bristol and write a feature about it. They never went, he said.

Matt Driscoll, a sports reporter sacked in April 2007 while on long-term sick leave for stress-related depression, was later awarded 800,000 pounds for unfair dismissal. The employment tribunal found that he had suffered from a culture of bullying led by then-editor Coulson.

"Nobody ever felt secure there and that's the way they liked it. On the edge, scared, insecure," said the general news reporter.

SAVING MONEY

Contrary to a popular perception that the tabloid threw large sums of money around to get stories, the news budget was extremely tightly controlled, the journalists said. One described how entire expense reports might be struck through with a red line without any reason given.

Readers who supplied a front-page story would typically be paid about 10,000 pounds, while story pitches negotiated by a publicist would command at least twice that. Smaller user-submitted stories would fetch a couple of hundred pounds. On Saturday afternoon, when it was too late for a reader to sell a story to another paper, their fee would often be reduced.

This is another reason it was hard to believe senior editors were not aware of phone hacking and other expensive illegal services provided by outsiders, the ex-reporters told Reuters. Mulcaire, the private investigator later jailed for phone hacking, was paid more than 100,000 pounds a year by the News of the World.

"No newspaper editor would not know what a 102,000 pound budget was used for. They knew about every 50 quid," said the long-term freelancer.

Eavesdropping on voicemail or obtaining call logs was initially a money-saving measure, according to the former employees. Rather than committing a reporter to stake out a venue for as long as it took to catch out a couple having an affair, for example, voicemails could first be scrutinised to establish the time and place of a rendez-vous, saving the reporter time and the paper money.

As its uses became apparent, it was employed more and more. The general news reporter said he was first shown how to listen in to people's cellphone voicemail by a colleague in the 1990s.

"It became the course of first resort rather than last," the long-term freelancer told Reuters.

CYNICAL

But the focus on celebrities and reality television stars was causing problems inside the paper.

"It was a ridiculously cynical approach to news," says Peter Burden, author of the 2008 book "News of the World? Fake Sheikhs & Royal Trappings". "They just thought: here are these endless people that Joe Public are interested in because of 'Big Brother', and they thought they could do what the hell they liked with them and they raided them rotten, them and their families."

Editors would then often use damaging stories as bargaining chips, trading them for future access to public figures or to build relationships with stars. Often, the paper would drop the story they had altogether and publish something more sympathetic.

"It would be things like: 'We know you were sleeping with your secretary but we'll keep it out of the paper if you give us the story about how you were given away as a child," said the long-term freelancer.

"They used to call stories 'levers'," said the general news reporter. "They weren't necessarily interested any more in using the story you'd proved or got past the lawyers. They were interested in using the story as leverage in order to get a different story. Sometimes the kind of story that you would bargain as an alternative wasn't actually the truth. It annoyed a lot of reporters.

"It was relationship-building for them. Basically, she (Brooks) was trading in your hard work to be friends with influential PRs. They used the stories to bank credit with influential people. It then made the whole raison d'etre of the place something different."

MACHO CULTURE

Brooks did little to change the paper's culture. Former employees say she could equal her male counterparts in swearing, and would join the men for a drink in the pub. She could also be fearsome, intimidating even the aggressive Miskiw.

"Part of that macho culture was that you would laugh at the risk and the dodgy illegality you might find yourself involved in," said the general news reporter.

It became practically a matter of honour not to use respectable journalistic methods, the reporters said.

"The whole idea of having friendly relations with someone and getting them on the record -- that was just weird. You had to get stuff on someone and then confront them," he said.

In Brooks's resignation statement on Friday, she said: "I feel a deep sense of responsibility for the people we have hurt ... I now need to concentrate on correcting the distortions and rebutting the allegations about my record as a journalist."

(Additional reporting by Olesya Dmitracova and Stephen Mangan in London and James Mackenzie in Rome; Editing by Simon Robinson and Sara Ledwith)

http://verdict.justia.com/2011/07/14/rupert-murdochs-watergate/

***John W Dean was the key figure in Nixon's downfall. He explores the parallels between Watergate and NOTW.

Rupert Murdoch’s Watergate:The Troubling Parallels

Attention, directors, officers, employees, and shareholders of News Corp.: There is a cancer on your business, and it is growing.





I do not use the metaphor of cancer easily or lightly. Once before, I had occasion to offer a similar warning, when I told Richard Nixon that Watergate was going to destroy the American Presidency. I’m offering this warning again now, because the unfolding scandal that is currently hammering the reputation and value of News Corp. so closely parallels the sequence of events that provoked my warning to Nixon.

Today, I know a lot more about scandals than I did when I was living through one, and intuitively tried to get Nixon to take dramatic action to save his presidency. Of course, he did not—and the rest, as they say, is history. As I recently pointed out—on Twitter, a most convenient place to comment upon something as it is happening—when the News Corp. scandal first surfaced, it was immediately clear to me that this was a Watergate-type scandal, with striking parallels.

Murdoch’s Watergate-Like Scandal

Without going too deeply into the weeds of either Watergate or Murdoch’s scandal, the comparison is telling.

Watergate was a political scandal that was provoked by Nixon’s ruthless and shameless manner of doing business. Similarly, News Corp. is mired in a political and business scandal because of the brutal and coldblooded way its chairman and CEO, Rupert Murdoch, has conducted business. Just as Nixon did not undertake the initiating illegality himself (the bugging of the Democratic National Committee headquarters), nor did Murdoch personally undertake the illegal hacking of voicemails. Rather, both men created norms and standards within their respective organizations where such conduct was not only considered acceptable, but actually encouraged.

Nixon was unable to survive his scandal because he had, after many years, built a remarkable reservoir of public ill will, and had accrued many detractors who wanted to see him removed. Nixon was, in short, his own worst problem.

So, too, with Murdoch. While Murdoch is a bit more of a charmer than Nixon ever was, he has few true friends. Rather, he is surrounded by countless sycophants and retainers—not to mention more enemies than most public figures must endure, enemies who wish him nothing but the worst. In sum, Murdoch himself is News Corp.’s core problem.

The Watergate scandal did not end well for Nixon, and this current scandal will not end well for Murdoch.

The Nature Of Modern Scandals

Although history never repeats itself exactly, it does follow generally familiar patterns. Scandals, in particular, follow remarkably similar trajectories. To better understand scandals, I have continued to examine them, and over a decade ago, I found what has become my scandal bible: Cambridge sociologist John B. Thompson’s work Political Scandal: Power and Visibility in the Media Age (2000). I turn to Thompson’s work because it tells where a given scandal is in its development, and while his work was not designed to be predictive, in fact, it appears to be highly indicative of any given scandal’s trajectory.

In the course of his research, Professor Thompson has examined countless scandals, including Billygate (the activities of President Jimmy Carter’s brother), Nan Britton’s charging President Warren Harding with adultery, the Clinton-Lewinsky affair, Teddy Kennedy’s accident at Chappaquiddick, Iran-Contra, the Pentagon-Papers, the Profumo Affair, Teapot Dome, Watergate, and Whitewater—to highlight only a few.

Modern scandals, Thompson found, do not truly begin with the transgression(s) per se. Rather, the real scandal begins when the unacceptable behavior becomes a subject of public knowledge. Today, scandals are mediated by television, newspapers, and the Internet—becoming truly scandalous only when they attract public attention. Thus, Thompson divides scandals into four predictable and distinguishing phases: pre-scandal, scandal proper, culmination, and aftermath.

I can report that Murdoch’s Watergate-like scandal is taking a very predictable course. It has recently moved from what Thompson calls a pre-scandal phase—that first phase when charges fly but few stick—to phase two, which is a scandal proper. What comes next is either the scandal’s collapse, which is not likely here, or its peak. That peak will not be pretty for those involved, although it can be good theater for those who enjoy seeing miscreants getting their comeuppance publicly.

With this highly compressed summary, let me pause to examine Murdoch’s scandal—its current state and its potential future progress.

Murdoch’s Scandal Proper Is Now Beyond His Control: How the Scandal Began, and Its Current Status

In late May of this year, I read an interesting story in the Columbia Journalism Review (CJR): The Guardian newspaper in London had reported in 2009 that Murdoch’s News of the World tabloid newspaper had hacked not only the Buckingham Palace voicemails of the Royal Family, but also the voicemails of thousands of other people. Moreover, the tabloid had paid millions of dollars to keep people from talking about it all.

This was serious wrongdoing, with a conspicuous cover-up. But the public had yawned.

The CJR article also reported that, in 2010, the New York Times Magazine had published another devastating story about Murdoch’s people hacking the phone messages of hundreds of celebrities, government officials, sports stars and the like—essentially, “anyone whose personal secrets could be tabloid fodder.” The Times also noted that even Scotland Yard had been compromised into silence by Murdoch’s operatives, with the investigation largely curtailed.

What most troubled the CJR was that other British newspapers had been strikingly silent about the hacking activity. Murdoch, it seemed, had the scandal under control. A cover-up was in place, and at that time, working effectively.

Actually, this is not surprising. Under Professor Thompson’s analysis, the CJR was describing a typical phase one pre-scandal. Watergate’s course was very similar, in that only the Washington Post covered the story for some ten months. It was a non-story elsewhere, and the public initially had no interest.

Scandals, it seems, must reach a critical mass before they enter Professor Thompson’s next phase, where the transgressions become important to the general public. During phase one of the News Corp. scandal, most news organization were merely dismissing The Guardian and The New York Times stories as the work of Murdoch’s competitors—which of course, these newspapers are, in the UK and USA respectively.

Thus, the Guardian’s and Times’s stories were viewed as the efforts of organizations wishing for their own reasons to bring News Corp. down a few notches. And of course, that was no doubt part of what The Guardian and New York Times had, indeed, hoped to do. But the point that was missed was that the stories themselves were accurate, and what they reported was deeply troubling.

In August 2006, two of the Murdoch men involved in hacking the Royal Family’s voicemails—a news reporter and private investigator from the News of the World—were arrested, charged, and prosecuted. Still, until very recently, the voicemail-hacking story unfolded with minimal press coverage (almost none in the United States), and very little public interest or concern (in either the UK or the USA).

Now, however, the story has resurfaced with a vengeance. It found serious public attention when The Guardian uncovered the fact that the targets of Murdoch’s News of the World hacking were not merely the high and mighty. Rather, thousands of ordinary British citizens, many enduring the worst times in their lives, were also the victims of voicemail hacking.

The Cover-up Has Failed: How the Hacking of the Phones of a Young, Missing Girl, and of a Group of Soldiers Proved to Be the Last Straws for the Public

Public outrage erupted with the report, on July 4 of this year, that News of the World had hacked the voicemail of a missing and murdered schoolgirl, Milly Dowler. In that instance, Murdoch’s men literally removed voicemail messages from Ms. Dowler’s phone while the search was still underway. And heartbreakingly, this activity regarding Ms. Dowler’s voicemail provided her parents and investigators with false hope that she might still be alive.

And, as if that were not enough, it was reported that some 4,000 British citizens had also had their voicemail hacked by Murdoch’s people. To make the hacking even more despicable, it was reported that among those hacked were the families of soldiers serving, injured, and killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Understandably, the British public reacted with horror. While unlawfully invading the private lives of Royals, celebrities, and soccer stars may not have offended the public’s sensibilities, the depravity of hacking Milly Dowler’s phone, and the insensitivity of hacking the voicemail of the families of soldiers, merely in order to titillate the public with a “news story,” managed to totally appall nearly everyone.

A Pre-Scandal Becomes a Scandal Proper

Revelation of this information moved the scandal, under Thompson’s historically developed analysis, to the second phase: it became a scandal proper. In this posture, the scandal gains stronger legs.

Accordingly, new revelations have continued to flow, including charges of cover-up, police collusion, and more nefarious and illegal news-gathering techniques. These ranged from reporters’ assuming false identities, to the hiring of mobsters, to the paying of bribes—with callous editors relentlessly pushing for headline stories to be acquired by any means necessary, legal or illegal. Clearly, Murdoch has lost control. The cover-up has been breached, and as scandals proceed from phase to phase, the situation seldom improves for the perpetrators.

As John Thompson has written, and as I can confirm based on personal experience, those at the center of the scandal at this stage are more than likely still inclined to believe that they control their fate, that they can cut their losses, and that “the public will eventually grow weary of [the] story.” In fact, they have limited control of their fate.

In addition, you can be sure that Murdoch and his inner circle are now looking for the time when the scandal is deprived of the new blood of fresh disclosures. And they are doubtless hoping that, when this happens, they can then go back on the attack against their accusers—charging them with unfair competition, muckraking, and any unethical actions they can dream up (one might hope, without hacking anyone else’s voicemails).

When a bona fide scandal exists—and News Corp. is now involved in exactly such a scandal—strategies based on counterattacks, or on waiting for the public to grow weary, seldom work. Thus, sooner or later, this scandal will proceed to its third phase: its culmination or dénouement.

As Thompson describes it, this is “when the scandal is finally brought to a head.” There are admissions of guilt, resignations, sackings, and criminal prosecutions. (Rarely, but occasionally, a scandal at this stage can collapse and charges may dissipate, but that is not likely in News Corp.’s case, for there is hard evidence of guilt there.)

Ending the Scandal

News cycles are faster today than they ever have been—which means that scandals may unfold at a more accelerated rate. If an organization truly wishes to end the scandal, how does it do so? Only one thing can end a scandal like that surrounding News Corp.: Those responsible for the transgression must be removed from power.

Thus, as long as Nixon refused to succumb to the charges relating to his abuses of power, the Watergate scandal continued. When he and all others involved had resigned and been charged with crimes for their transgressions, it ended.

As long as Murdoch and his cronies remain in charge of News Corp., this scandal will continue working its way through phase two, toward a phase-three culmination. This may take years, or it may take mere weeks. But the scandal could be ended in days if Murdoch and his minions (some of whom are members of his family) were to resign. But resignation seems likely in only one scenario: If it is costing Murdoch too dearly to remain in charge.

In May 2004, in Sydney, I had a long conversation with the Australian investigative journalist Bruce Page, who has written about Murdoch for years. At the time, Bruce had recently completed The Murdoch Archipelago and I had been watching Murdoch for years. Thinking about how Murdoch had endlessly pushed Fox News’s right-wing political agenda, I asked Bruce if Murdoch was driven by ideology. That question caused Page to laugh, and he quickly advised me there is only one thing that drives Rupert Murdoch: money. He will do anything, and whatever it takes, to make money.

Bruce Page told me that Murdoch had few if any ideological beliefs, other than those that related to Rupert Murdoch’s making money. So Murdoch is likely to fight to the bitter end with the belief that he can make even more money when this passes. Unless he decides he is going to lose big money.

It would be wonderful it he ended his reign. It is well-known what Murdoch’s style of journalism has done to both American and British politics and public life. Without belaboring that point, for it is not necessary to do so, Rupert Murdoch is, in fact, not merely a cancer on the public corporation that he created—News Corp.—but also a cancer on American and British democracy.

Our political system needs for Murdoch to be gone, along with the cronies he has encouraged to pollute our politics. Nixon’s finest act as president was to resign. There could be no more fitting end to the unfolding saga for Murdoch than for him to do likewise. When this scandal threatens to take away his fortune, if not his freedom, he may actually do the right thing, and resign. For the public good, that cannot happen too soon.

Breaking

Sky News

Newspaper Journalists May Be Hacking Victims




Police have told two Mail on Sunday journalists their phones may have been hacked by private investigator Glenn Mulcaire.

Their names have been found in notebooks belonging to Mulcaire, who was hired by the News Of The World and jailed for phone hacking.

One of the journalists is former news editor Sebastian Hamilton while the other is ex-investigations editor Dennis Rice, the Mail On Sunday confirmed.

Mulcaire was sentenced in 2007 to six months in prison for plotting to hack into the telephone messages of Royal aides.

Police have said around 4,000 people could have had their phones targeted as officers continue their investigation, named Operation Weeting, into the phone-hacking scandal.

The latest allegations were revealed by Sky's Jeff Randall.

He said: "Sebastian Hamilton is currently editor of the Mail On Sunday in Ireland.

"He told me that Scotland Yard assumes Mulcaire was going into his phone - one to see if it could pinch any stories.

"And two for commercial advantage. Did he have any information about the purchase of serialisation rights, that sort of thing.

"In effect, what the News Of The World was up to was nothing sort of industrial espionage."

A spokesman for the newspaper said: "I can confirm that two senior journalists have been contacted by Operation Weeting officers and told that their phones may have been hacked by Glenn Mulcaire."

It has previously been reported that Mr Rice was launching legal action against the News Of The World over the alleged hacking.

SNP's Links To News International Questioned
Sky NewsSky News – 4 hours ago

Labour is urging the SNP to answer questions about its links with News International, in the wake of the phone hacking scandal.

The party has published a list of 25 questions, including asking when First Minister Alex Salmond last met with James Murdoch, News International chairman, as well as how much the SNP has spent on advertising with the company in the past four years.

Labour's business manager Paul Martin said: "There are a lot of unanswered questions over the SNP's links with News International.

"Throughout the entire phone hacking scandal Alex Salmond has ditched his usual megaphone diplomacy and has been uncharacteristically silent.

"Alex Salmond has desperately attempted to come across as whiter than white by keeping schtum and resorting to his default position of blaming Westminster.

"He would clearly rather we all ignored the fact that he personally met with James Murdoch, wined and dined the editor of the Scottish News of the World and provided free articles and advertising to News International newspapers worth thousands of pounds.

"If the SNP have nothing to hide then Alex Salmond must speak out and convince the public there has been no quid pro quo for Rupert Murdoch's support of the SNP."

An SNP spokesman hit back at the claims, saying: "This is embarrassing nonsense from Paul Martin - he obviously doesn't let the facts get in the way of a bad press release.

"For example, the First Minister was on record at a press conference last week calling on Rebekah Brooks to step down, and also gave numerous broadcast interviews supporting the Commons motion - of which the SNP was a co-sponsor - calling on News Corp's BSkyB bid to be withdrawn.

"Instead of engaging in smear, the key question Paul Martin has to answer is why the last Labour government did precisely nothing about the Operation Motorman report published by the Information Commissioner in 2006, revealing over 3,000 cases of a range of newspapers breaking data protection laws."

I see Labor are still trying to make the waters as murky as possible so as to steer the problem away from themselves and those pesky WMDs etc .... LL

Woeful, LL. The Labour party nationally would be well advised to STFU - I was truly sickened to see Two Jags Prescott preaching morality this morning

Now, I wonder if there is any meat in this, from:


http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/UK-News/Rebekah-Brooks-Lawyers-To-Meet-Culture-Committee-MPs-To-Discuss-If-She-Can-Attend-Hearing/Article/201107316032414?lpos=UK_News_Carousel_Region_1&lid=ARTICLE_16032414_Rebekah_Brooks_Lawyers_To_Meet_Culture_Committee_MPs_To_Discuss_If_She_Can_Attend_Hearing


Mrs Brooks' solicitor Stephen Parkinson said: "She is not guilty of any criminal offence. The position of the Metropolitan Police is less easy to understand.
"Despite arresting her yesterday and conducting an interview process lasting nine hours, they put no allegations to her and showed her no documents connecting her with any crime.
"They will in due course have to give an account of their actions and in particular their decision to arrest her with the enormous reputational damage that this has involved.
"In the meantime, Mrs Brooks has an appointment with the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee tomorrow.

Thing is, if all this chaos is based on dodgy info - then the fun really will begin.

If it turns out that there was indeed dirty work going on, but well down the food chain, and senior police officers have resigned because they are fed up and don't want dragged into the mess, it could get very interesting indeed.

And I simply cannot get worked up about someone getting special treatment for free after a cancer op - it's just a pity more people couldn't get the same.

This doesn't seem to be anything like the Profumo affair -now that was a scandal. And vastly more interesting as it involved sex and spies.

And God bless Boris Johnson for talking the first sense I have heard for a good few days - why DID Labour keep quiet when this first blew up years ago?

bb1 wrote:And God bless Boris Johnson for talking the first sense I have heard for a good few days - why DID Labour keep quiet when this first blew up years ago?

That is what I wondered a few days ago when Brown started whining about his election chances.

This won't link properly:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=v1AJjnl2y8U#t=28s

There is Ms Brook TELLING parliament the NOTW paid policemen. In 2003. When Labour was in power under Blair.

bb1 wrote:This won't link properly:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=v1AJjnl2y8U#t=28s

There is Ms Brook TELLING parliament the NOTW paid policemen. In 2003. When Labour was in power under Blair.

My, my, how interesting that is, Bonny.

bb1 wrote:This won't link properly:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=v1AJjnl2y8U#t=28s

There is Ms Brook TELLING parliament the NOTW paid policemen. In 2003. When Labour was in power under Blair.

I found out you could actually play it if you clicked on Replay after it cut off. LL

That's what I also did, LL.

Now, this is how wonderful Brown was as Chancellor.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/ambroseevans_pritchard/8638644/Return-of-the-Gold-Standard-as-world-order-unravels.html


Gold surged to an all-time high of $1,594 an ounce in London, lifting silver to $39 in its train. Photo: AP

By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard9:28PM BST 14 Jul 20111031 Comments

On one side of the Atlantic, the eurozone debt crisis has spread to the countries that may be too big to save - Spain and Italy - though RBS thinks a €3.5 trillion rescue fund would ensure survival of Europe's currency union.

On the other side, the recovery has sputtered out and the printing presses are being oiled again. Brinkmanship between the Congress and the White House over the US debt ceiling has compelled Moody's to warn of a "very small but rising risk" that the world's paramount power may default within two weeks. "The unthinkable is now thinkable," said Ross Norman, director of thebulliondesk.com.

Fed chair Ben Bernanke confessed to Congress that growth has failed to gain traction. "Deflationary risks might re-emerge, implying a need for additional policy support," he said.

The bar to QE3 - yet more bond purchases - is even lower than markets had thought. The new intake of hard-money men on the voting committee has not shifted Fed thinking, despite global anger at dollar debasement under QE2.

Fuelling the blaze, the emerging powers of Asia are almost all running uber-loose monetary policies. Most have negative real interest rates that push citizens out of bank accounts and into gold, or property. China is an arch-inflater. Prices are rising at 6.4pc, yet the one-year deposit rate is just 3.5pc. India's central bank is far behind the curve.

"It is very scary: the flight to gold is accelerating at a faster and faster speed," said Peter Hambro, chairman of Britain's biggest pure gold listing Petropavlovsk.
"One of the big US banks texted me today to say that if QE3 actually happens, we could see gold at $5,000 and silver at $1,000. I feel terribly sorry for anybody on fixed incomes tied to a fiat currency because they are not going to be able to buy things with that paper money."

China, Russia, Brazil, India, the Mid-East petro-powers have diversified their $7 trillion reserves into euros over the last decade to limit dollar exposure. As Europe's monetary union itself faces an existential crisis, there is no other safe-haven currency able to absorb the flows. The Swiss franc, Canada's loonie, the Aussie, and Korea's won are too small.

"There is no depth of market in these other currencies, so gold is the obvious play," said Neil Mellor from BNY Mellon. Western central banks (though not the US, Germany, or Italy) sold much of their gold at the depths of the bear market a decade ago. The Bank of England wins the booby prize for selling into the bottom at €254 an ounce on Gordon Brown's orders in 1999. But Russia, China, India, the Gulf states, the Philippines, and Kazakhstan have been buying.

China is coy, revealing purchases with a long delay. It has admitted to doubling its gold reserves to 1,054 tonnes or $54bn. This is just a tiny sliver of its $3.2 trillion reserves. China's Chamber of Commerce said this should be raised eightfold to 8,000 tonnes.

Xia Bin, an adviser to China's central bank, said in June that the country's reserve strategy needs an "urgent" overhaul. Instead of buying paper IOU's from a prostrate West, China should invest in strategic assets and accumulate gold by "buying the dips".

Step by step, the world is edging towards a revived Gold Standard as it becomes clearer that Japan and the West have reached debt saturation. World Bank chief Robert Zoellick said it was time to "consider employing gold as an international reference point." The Swiss parliament is to hold hearings on a parallel "Gold Franc". Utah has recognised gold as legal tender for tax payments.

A new Gold Standard would probably be based on a variant of the 'Bancor' proposed by Keynes in the late 1940s. This was a basket of 30 commodities intended to be less deflationary than pure gold, which had compounded in the Great Depression. The idea was revived by China's central bank chief Zhou Xiaochuan two years ago as a way of curbing the "credit-based" excess.

Mr Bernanke himself was grilled by Congress this week on the role of gold. Why do people by gold? "As protection against of what we call tail risks: really, really bad outcomes," he replied.
Indeed.

I don't know whether to laugh or cry. The McCanns have dun it again, and brought down an entire newspaper industry. It'll be The Government next week, if not sooner.
I'm awfully glad I'm on their side.

Is anyone else finding the Home Affairs Committee stuff - well, boring? It seems to be degenerating into he said/she said.

I don't know, you give up watching it as it is about as interesting as watching paint dry, and you miss the bit where someone tries to custard pie - or something - Rupert Murdoch, only to be knocked to the floor by Mrs Murdoch.

If Murdoch had paid him to disrupt proceedings, he couldn't have done better.

EPIC FAIL