Rupert Murdoch Firmly in the Dock

[Guest fountainhall]

Anyone want a bet that bet that James Murdoch's the next head on the block?

This prediction was somewhat premature, for a second high-up police official is the next casualty. John Yates, an Assistant Commissioner of London police, has offered up his head and resigned.

 

But now there is also the first dead body in this evolving scandal, seemingly a suicide, although thw BBC tonight reports the person concerned had apparently been ill.

 

A former News of the World journalist who made phone-hacking allegations against the paper has been found dead.

 

Sean Hoare had told the New York Times the practice was far more extensive than the paper acknowledged when police first investigated hacking claims . . .

 

Mr Hoare had told the BBC's Panorama that phone hacking was "endemic" at the News of the World.

 

He also said the then NoW editor Andy Coulson had asked him to hack phones - something Mr Coulson denied.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-14194623

 

So, Prime Minister Cameron's former Communications Aide is once again firmly back in the spotlight. Cameron is returning early from Africa and will no doubt have a torrid times in the House of Commons this week.

 

This music just keeps going round and round . . . !

[Guest fountainhall]

With the dust settling, albeit temporarily, on News International’s various nefarious and seemingly illegal activities in the UK, more troubles are coming to light in parent company News Corporation’s base in the USA.

 

One case involves a 2009 trial which in reality started ten years earlier.

 

In July 1999, two brothers called George and Richard Rebh, the founders of a small start-up company called Floorgraphics, were invited to lunch with the dominant firm in their new area of business. The brothers were excited: they had invented a new product that involved sticking giant adverts on the floors of supermarkets, and were keen to show it off to the market leaders and talk about possible joint promotions.

 

They met the two top executives from the big firm, News America Marketing, in a Cantonese restaurant called A Dish of Salt in midtown Manhattan. Over hors d'oeuvre, News America's chief executive Paul Carlucci said: "So, I understand you're here to sell your company?"

 

According to transcripts of a trial that took place 10 years after the lunch, the Rebh brothers were astonished. No, they replied, they only wanted to talk about working together and had no intention of selling. George Rebh told the jury that Carlucci then said: "From now on, consider us your competitor and understand this: if you ever get into any of our businesses, I will destroy you. I work for a man who wants it all, and doesn't understand anybody telling him he can't have it all." News America is owned by News Corporation, whose chief executive is Rupert Murdoch.

Ten years later after assembling a near watertight case, Floorgraphics took News America to court.

 

The most controversial element of the trial was the evidence presented by Floorgraphics to the jury that its website, protected by password security, had been broken into without authorisation. The computer breach, which Floorgraphics discovered in 2004 and had taken place 11 times over four months, was traced back to an IP address registered to News America's offices in Connecticut.

 

The unauthorised access of the firm's computer from a News America address became the subject of a 2005 FBI and US secret service investigation. The outcome of those inquiries is not known.

 

The computer hacking, the jury at the Floorgraphics trial was told, gave News America access to information that could be used to damage its rival including details of every sale Floorgraphics had made, its client list and projections.

 

Soon after, the jury was told, Floorgraphics began to lose crucial contracts with key clients – Safeway, Winn-Dixie, the South Carolina retail chain Piggly Wiggly and others – many of whom defected to News America.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/jul/21/phone-hacking-news-corporation

 

The New York Times takes up the story.

 

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 . . .

 

News America was led by Paul V. Carlucci, who, according to Forbes, used to show the sales staff the scene in “The Untouchables” in which Al Capone beats a man to death with a baseball bat. Mr. Emmel testified that Mr. Carlucci was clear about the guiding corporate philosophy.

 

According to Mr. Emmel’s testimony, Mr. Carlucci said that if there were employees uncomfortable with the company’s philosophy — “bed-wetting liberals in particular was the description he used” Mr. Emmel testified — then he could arrange to have those employees “outplaced from the company.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/18/business/media/for-news-corporation-troubles-that-money-cant-dispel.html?pagewanted=1&_r=2&hp

 

This case is now being rehashed because New Jersey Senator Frank Lautenberg has just written to the Attorney General asking for his office to take into account the evidence presented at this trial as part of its on-going Justice and FBI investigations into News Corporation's practices.

 

655 million more reasons for the Digger to lose a little sleep.

[Guest fountainhall]

The crosshairs are now tightly focused and locked. Right in their centre is the one-time heir apparent, James Murdoch. The end of his coveted ambition to succeed will surely now come long before the trigger is pulled.

 

And when, in the fullness of time, he reflects on the last few weeks, he will realise it was all his own stupid, idiotic fault. For in giving testimony before the parliamentary commission, it now seems very clear that he lied – and that lie has already started a chain of events that seems certain to destroy his ambition, his job, and very likely land him in jail.

 

The story is detailed in full in many of today’s newspapers. It is complex, for it involves an answer he gave to one question from feisty Labour MP James Taylor. And it can be summed up in two words: “For Neville.”

 

Giving his evidence, Murdoch Jnr. was asked if he knew about the existence of a “For Neville” email. He replied he did not. This, according to several former colleagues, including the NoW’s long-time Head of Legal Affairs, Tom Crone, was a lie.

 

Seemingly insignificant, this 29th June 2005 email is what The Guardian now calls the “smoking gun”. It was found amongst the 11,000 files seized by police during the raid on the private detective hired by NoW, James Mulcaire, who subsequently went to prison for phone-hacking. The email had fortuitously been obtained by lawyers working for the Head of the Professional Footballers Association, Gordon Taylor. Taylor had taken the NoW to court in 2008, three years later, for hacking his phone. Partly thanks to this email, the NoW settled out of court providing Taylor with damages of an extraordinarily high level. Whereas damages for similar wrongdoing in the past had been relatively small, the NoW settled with Taylor for almost £1 million. As The Guardian points out: “On the face of it, the deal made little commercial sense.”

 

But – isn’t there always a “but” when things are not quite as they seem? – there were reasons for that huge payout. For that “For Neville” email had to remain totally confidential. Neville almost certainly refers to Neville Thurbeck, at that time the NoW’s chief reporter. Mulcaire’s email contained lists of carefully transcribed hacked private phone messages which had been sent to him by one of the NoW journalists named Ross Hindley.

 

Crone must have been shocked to realise the incriminating nature of the information the Metropolitan police possessed which could be used in future against his own employers.

 

Faced with such a crisis, Crone decided he had to consult his new boss, who was to authorise a huge, secret payout which buried the "Neville" dossier. He went to see the abrasive and self-confident younger son of the proprietor, 36-year-old James Murdoch.

 

Neither side disputes that James, without telling his father, agreed to hand over almost £1m of the company's money for a settlement that was to be kept totally confidential . . .

 

James, previously regarded as the heir apparent, now stands accused of complicity in an attempted cover up of crimes within his company. If that turns out to be true, it will be fatal for James' ambition, and also open him to a raft of legal dangers, as lawsuits proliferate against the Murdoch empire.

 

For the contents of the "For Neville" email are so obviously toxic that James, a reluctant witness, last week emphatically testified to MPs on the culture, media and sport committee and that he was never told about its existence.

 

Crone, with all his authority as the tabloid group's most long-serving and senior consigliere, at once publicly contradicted him. Crucially, Crone has the support of the third man at the crucial meeting. This was Colin Myler, the then editor of the NoW, who issued a formal statement jointly with Crone on Thursday, backing the lawyer's version of events.

 

John Whittingdale, the committee chairman, is demanding to know whether his committee has, yet again, been misled, and Tom Watson, the Labour MP who extracted James Murdoch's disputed testimony, has notified the police.

 

The gauntlet has been thrown down to Rupert Murdoch and his son this weekend, in the most melodramatic fashion yet.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/jul/22/for-neville-email-empire

 

Unsurprisingly, Junior has issued a statement standing by his version. But he just cannot get his frame out of that telescopic sight.

 

And the music keeps going round and round . . . !

[Guest Thor69]

It appears he is the devil!

[Guest fountainhall]

I like this somewhat vampire-like one from today's Independent in the UK - especially with all the blood around, including the splatter on the wall behind!

[Guest fountainhall]

And now, it seems, Piers Morgan is in the dock - or soon will be. As a former editor of Murdoch's NOW and then the tabloid Daily Mirror for nearly a decade, his enemies on both sides of the Atlantic are now rushing forward to tell whoever will listen that, despite Morgan's denials, he was pretty heavily involved in hacking and other dirty deeds. And it is his "unchecked vanity" rather than the police that is giving the game away.

 

Once again, the story is in The Guardian.

 

Morgan admitted in a column for the Daily Mail in 2006 that he had heard a message left by Sir Paul McCartney on the phone of Heather Mills, then his wife, in which the former Beatle sounded "lonely, miserable and desperate". The disclosure has prompted Mills to claim the message could have been heard only by hacking into her phone.

 

Certainly, Morgan appears to have known that there were people capable of hacking phones on behalf of journalists . . . Former Mirror business journalist James Hipwell alleges phone hacking happened regularly under Morgan. Hipwell, who sat next to the Mirror's showbusiness desk, said he could "name 10 people" who were phone hacking on the paper. "It was a widespread practice," said Hipwell, who is in talks with literary agents about publishing a book on some of Fleet Street's murkier practices. "People saw it as a bit of a game, a wheeze. It wasn't just celebrities, it was people like PR handlers at the BBC."

 

Morgan consistently denies any knowledge his paper ran stories obtained by hacking, which seems unlikely to Hipwell. "He was the beating heart of the paper, nothing happened without him knowing," Hipwell said. "He spent a great deal of time with the showbiz desk, sitting with them as much as twice a day."

 

. . . Morgan also faces questions over whether his newspaper used private detectives to help reporters obtain information. In his book, The Insider, Morgan recalled how in April 2000 "someone had got hold" of Kate Winslet's phone number, adding: "I never like to ask how." Winslet asked Morgan: "How did you get my number? I've only just changed it. You've got to tell me, please, I am so worried now."

 

Morgan also bragged that he saw off a potential legal challenge from Princess Diana's former lover, James Hewitt. Morgan wrote that Hewitt claimed he had not been paid for his collaboration on a book. Morgan replied: "Yes you did – I saw your bank statements". It is doubtful whether such information could have been obtained by anything other than illegal means. Hewitt is now in the process of reporting Morgan to the police, urging them to reopen an investigation into allegations surrounding the theft of his personal letters from the princess.

 

. . . So far Morgan has weathered the storm. The allegations made by Mills and Hewitt have been shrugged off as both have question marks over their credibility and motivation . . . But Morgan's chief concern now must be that a heavyweight accuser comes forward whose claims carry more weight. Certainly there is no shortage of people who have it in for him.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/aug/06/piers-morgan-phone-hacking-scandal

[Guest fountainhall]

Damaging evidence has surfaced in London indicating that a cover up was well under way in Murdoch's UK Empire long before the Parliamentary Committee hearings last month. Further, it indicates that both Rupert and James Murdoch almost certainly lied when giving evidence. James, in particular, is now in deep shit.

 

This may not be of Watergate proportions yet; but with the slow drip drip drip of lies and damning evidence, it may well get there. Because, as we have seen, the Prime Minister's former media adviser Andy Coulson was a former NoW editor when all these illegal shenanigans were going on. Despite being fired, he was eventually taken on by PM Cameron whose judgement is repeatedly being questioned. Cameron's naievety is increasingly being seen as permitting a Murdoch mole access to the heart of the British government.

 

Four items have been discovered/provided.

 

1. A letter written 4 years ago by the NoW

[Bob]

4. The former NoW in-house lawyer has also now disputed James Murdoch

[Guest fountainhall]

In another thread, yesterday, I mentioned the Hong Kong Foreign Correspondents Club magazine. The editor, it turns out, used to work as Assistant News Editor on Murdoch

[Guest fountainhall]

I picked up a copy of the New Yorker magazine the other day. It’s the issue of 1st August and features a major story titled "Hack Work" on the Murdoch saga. It’s long, but extremely interesting about Murdoch’s British newspapers, especially The News of the World, The Sun and The Sunday Times. A few excerpts -

 

Fear and loathing of the press is as old as the press itself, and the press would argue that the mighty in their seats have much to be fearful about; but the British tabloid press, in particular, spends much less time on the mighty, from day to day, as on the lowly, the lecherous and the foreign. The Sun, on July 4, 2003: “Police swooped on a gang of East Europeans and caught them red-handed about to cook a pair of Royal swans.” The Press Complaints Commission found that the newspaper “was unable to provide any evidence for this story.”

 

Yet the story ran, deftly hardening the readers’ xenophobia, though its primary purpose, in the land of the gray sky, was surely to dispel their clouded gloom.”

Another anecdote.

 

“If one has to isolate an instant that best portrayed the Murdoch touch, it would be the dictum that he issued over the phone on the evening of Saturday, April 23, 1983. The Sunday Times, poised to publish Hitler’s diaries, had hit a wrinkle; the historian Lord Dacre, who had verified their authenticity, was having second thoughts. Over to Murdoch, in New York: “Fuck Dacre. Publish!”

 

That is a sheer tabloid instinct, in a broadsheet world (The Sunday Times is a noted UK broadsheet paper). It paid off, too; the diaries were soon exposed as forgeries, but, as William Shawcross explains in his 1992 biography of Murdoch, ‘the circulation of the Sunday Times rose 60,000 while the controversy raged, and 20,000 of those readers stayed with the paper.”

One of the most sickly of his stories centres on the daughter of the much-loved British actor, Denholm Elliot (Indiana Jones, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Room with a View etc.). Married, but bisexual, he had died in 1992 of AIDS – a big news story at the time. His daughter, Jennifer, had a drug problem. In 1995, the NoW printed a story alleging she was not only a drug addict but also a part-time prostitute. The writer, a journalist named Paul McMullan, admitted that the tipoff came from a policeman who had taken payment from one of his colleagues. (Interestingly, Piers Morgan left the editorship of NoW around this time and so I do not know if it featured in his reign or not. On one website, Morgan states, “for the record, I do not believe that any story we published … was ever gained in an unlawful manner.”). Jennifer Elliot later hanged herself.

 

Asked by the BBC, “Do you think that decision had anything to do with what you wrote and what you did?”, McMullan replied:

 

‘Yeah, I totally humiliated and destroyed her. It wasn’t necessary, and she didn’t deserve it. She was having a bad time after her own dad had died. Yeah, I went a step too far. And it was based on a now criminal act, and so you gotta sometimes question, well, in some cases, criminal acts perpetrated by journalists aren’t always justified. And in this case, not only was it not justified, I sincerely regret it, and, again, if there was anyone to apologise to, I would. But they’re all dead.’”

This low-life is now one of the whistle-blowers-in-chief against Murdoch. The whole Murdoch saga seems filled with very odd contradictions!

 

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/08/01/110801fa_fact_lane

[Guest fountainhall]

The waters become murkier - or should that be muckier? In an interview in the forthcoming issue of Vogue magazine by Wendi Deng, wife of Digger Murdoch, she reveals that a godparent to one of her daughters is none other than - Tony Blair!

 

The former UK prime minister was reportedly present last March when Mr Murdoch's two daughters by his third wife, Wendi Deng, were baptised . . . Tony Blair's office declined to comment on the report, which sheds new light on Mr Blair's ties with the media mogul.

 

Photographs of the event, which took place a few weeks before the UK general election, were featured in Hello magazine, but Mr Blair's involvement was not revealed at the time.

 

In the Vogue article, Mr Blair is reportedly described as "one of Murdoch's closest friends" . . . The two struck up a friendship after he accepted an invitation to address a News Corporation conference on Hayman Island, Australia, in 1995, when Mr Blair was the leader of the opposition.

 

In his autobiography A Journey, Mr Blair describes how he came to like and admire the media mogul, despite his right wing, Eurosceptic views.

 

"He was hard no doubt. He was right wing. I did not share or like his attitudes on Europe, social policy or on issues like gay rights, but there were two points of connection: he was an outsider and he had balls," writes the former prime minister.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-14785501

 

1995 of course was two years before Blair became Prime Minister, fully endorsed by the Murdoch newspapers. Odd that this godparent tidbit should creep out in a fashion magazine when I'd have expected the tabloid press to have a feeding frenzy over it before now!

[Guest fountainhall]

The Murdoch family empire annual shareholders' meeting was held yesterday in LA when, CNN reports, one shareholder after another roundly condemned the company's leadership failures. Notwithstanding, Murdoch senior and his sons were returned to their respective positions, a wholly expected event given that the family controls 40% of the voting shares.

 

However, one British MP, Tom Watson, travelled to LA and informed the meeting -

 

". . . police in the UK were investigating allegations that private investigators associated with News Corp. had impersonated "a former prime minister" and had hacked into personal computers in addition to phones.

 

"You haven't told any of your investors about what is to come, and I have to say, Mr. Murdoch, if I know about this, then with all of the resources that you're putting into clearing up this scandal, you must know about this too," Watson said.

 

Murdoch called the allegations "rumors" that "are all being worked by us with the police."

http://money.cnn.com/2011/10/21/news/companies/murdoch_news_corp_meeting/index.htm?cnn=yes&hpt=hp_bn1

 

Clearly, a lot more of this sleeze is to come out.

[Guest fountainhall]

With another parliamentary committee grilling coming up on Thursday, James Murdoch, son of 'Digger', will once again be in the dock, this time facing a lot of much nastier allegations than last time. Some will centre on Murdoch Junior's persistent denials of knowledge of phone hacking in his father's empire, denials which now look very hollow indeed.

 

Another will certainly focus on the severance payments made to Rebekah Brooks, the one person in the empire the 'Digger' wanted to save. She, of course, ended up resigning before more shit hit the fan - and just before she was arrested on charges of phone hacking and corruption.

 

Now Britain's Sunday Observer reveals that she received a pay-off of more than US$2.7 million plus a chauffeur-driven limousine and the use of a central London office for two years.

 

Dave Wilson, the chairman of Bell Pottinger, the public relations group hired by Brooks to deal with the fallout from her resignation, declined to comment on the "confidential" details of her severance package.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/nov/05/murdoch-phone-hacking-rebekah-brooks

 

I wonder if Mr. WIlson's fees are also part of the package?

[Guest fountainhall]

Although this thread has been silent for some time, events have been unfolding which continue to put Digger Murdoch and his Empire under intense pressure.

 

Recently, ten current and former members of staff at Murdoch’s Sun newspaper in London have been arrested as part of the on-going legal inquiry into the phone hacking scandal. The Sun is Britain’s most popular paper with a daily readership in 2011 of 2.725 million. Following the arrests, there has been a revolt amongst the paper’s journalists, with some talking about a “civil war” in the Murdoch Empire.

 

It seems the US parent company News Corporation’s Management and Standards Committee has given the UK police evidence about its own journalists and their alleged sources, thereby breaking one of the cardinal journalism rules about protecting sources.

 

In an attempt to quell the revolt, Murdoch flew into London yesterday and is scheduled to meet The Sun’s employees later today.

 

The revolt has spread to News Corp’s flagship UK paper, The Times – “into which Murdoch has poured hundreds of millions of pounds over the years to cover its losses.” The future of that paper remains in doubt, some say.

 

Shareholders in the US remain increasingly concerned that the ongoing UK scandal will open the door to an investigation under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, an event which could see fines of hundreds of millions of dollars.

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-17063950

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/9077999/Rupert-Murdoch-faces-revolt-from-angry-Sun-staff.html

[Guest fountainhall]

Whilst Murdoch Snr. had a smile on his face over the week-end when his newly launched Sun on Sunday newspaper (the replacement for the now dead News of the World) hit sales of over 3.2 million copies – he failed to crow about the 50% reduction in cover price! – his empire is now in even deeper trouble in the UK.

 

Son James has now resigned from his position as Executive Chairman of News International, Murdoch’s UK arm, and is being despatched to the USA. This comes as News International has been paying out large sums to scores of celebrities whose phones it hacked. Worse, there are new and highly damaging revelations that cover both the NOTW and Murdoch’s daily Sun newspaper.

 

The Murdoch empire seemed to face fresh trouble on Monday when a senior police officer told a judicial inquiry that the daily Sun had systematically paid large sums of money to “a network of corrupted officials” in the British police, military and government.

 

The accusations were part of a deepening criminal inquiry into The Sun and The News of the World.

 

The police officer, Deputy Assistant Commissioner Sue Akers, who is leading the criminal investigation into Mr. Murdoch’s newspapers, said The Sun had illegally paid the unidentified officials hundreds of thousands of dollars in exchange for news tips and “salacious gossip.” She said the payments had been authorized “at a very senior level within the newspaper.”

 

http://www.nytimes.c...ref=global-home

[Guest fountainhall]

Just a quick update, for this story is continuing to throw up a host of new allegations and arrests.

 

Rebekah Brookes, the executive of News International whom Murdoch Snr. stated to the world’s media he had come to protect when he flew to London last summer, has just been re-arrested. This time it is on suspicion of conspiracy to pervert the course of justice. It marks the third separate charge under which Ms. Brookes has been arrested. Wonder who is paying all her legal bills!

 

Also arrested today was News International’s Head of Security, Mark Hanna.

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-17349578

[Guest fountainhall]

"Rupert Murdoch Not A Fit Person to Exercise the Stewardship of a Public Company"

 

In a withering and damning Report, so has decided a British Parliamentary Committee, one of several investigations into Murdoch Senior and Junior's dealings at New Corporation's British entity. The Report concluded that Murdoch exhibited "wilful blindness" to what was going on at News Corp.

 

It noted that the newspaper mogul had "excellent powers of recall and grasp of detail when it suited him", and added: "On the basis of the facts and evidence before the committee, we conclude that, if at all relevant times Rupert Murdoch did not take steps to become fully informed about phone hacking, he turned a blind eye and exhibited wilful blindness to what was going on in his companies and publications.

 

"Corporately, the News of the World and News International misled the committee about the true nature and extent of the internal investigations they professed to have carried out in relation to phone hacking; by making statements they would have known were not fully truthful; and by failing to disclose documents which would have helped expose the truth."

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk...litics-17898029

 

This conclusion must come as a major blow to both Murdochs. It will no doubt add grist to the mill of those in the US trying to oust at least Murdoch Jnr. from the Board of the company's US parent.

[KhorTose]

You know, I can't help feeling good about seeing this right wing media mogul going down. I know it is wrong to take delight in someone else's tragedy, but it seems to me that both he and his publications have been operating without any moral constraints, or need for accuracy for years. Am I being smug, or is he really getting just what he deserves?

[Guest thaiworthy]

Am I being smug, or is he really getting just what he deserves?

 

No, you are not being smug. You are telling the truth. He is getting exactly what he deserves and I hope it teaches a lesson to others like him.

[Guest fountainhall]

In the wake of the parliamentary committee accusing Rupert Murdoch of “willful blindness”, there’s an interesting article in today’s Guardian about the blindness shown by many senior corporate executives who fail to surround themselves with independent thinkers and critical allies with the freedom and moral courage to tell them the truth.

 

We are all susceptible to wilful blindness, ignoring truths about ourselves, each other and the way we live, that threaten our sense of identity and security. If phone hacking were endemic in News Corporation, what did that say about its founder? Murdoch wasn't the first to believe himself incapable of running a corrupt organisation; to his dying day, Enron's chief executive did likewise . . .

 

Richard Fuld, the Lehman Brothers CEO, was also wilfully blind. He organised his life to ensure that he never encountered employees unexpectedly. The chief executive of Bear Sterns chose not to implement a form of risk analysis that might actually have revealed how much debt the bank carried. And the Catholic church, when first confronted with the fact of child-abusing priests, chose first of all to take out insurance. All these institutions were blindsided by their choices – that is, they can't blame their blindness on others.

 

As the culture committee says, and as the verdicts against Enron executives made clear, it is the responsibility of the powerful to ensure that they surround themselves with independent thinkers and critical allies who have the freedom and moral courage to tell them the truth. When leaders choose not to do so, they embrace blindness and the moral darkness that goes with it.

 

http://www.guardian....erous-blindness

[Guest thaiworthy]

In the wake of the parliamentary committee accusing Rupert Murdoch of “willful blindness”, there’s an interesting article in today’s Guardian about the blindness shown by many senior corporate executives who fail to surround themselves with independent thinkers and critical allies with the freedom and moral courage to tell them the truth.

 

Many years ago I did some work for a motivational speaker who told me a story about J. Paul Getty. He had many advisors and "yes men" who basically agreed with most of what he had to say, until one day an advisor told him, "no, Mr. Getty, I think that is a terrible idea and here's why . . . " Consequently, J. Paul fired some of those "yes men" and promoted the guy who disagreed with him. While this story is certainly inspirational, it is far from realistic in today's world.

 

J. Paul Getty was one-of-a-kind, uncommon among great men. But ego plays a large part among the elite upper management and leaders in today's world. They love 'yes men," who agree with them and tremble at their feet over just the thought of disputing what they had to say. For every Getty, there are thousands more who are totally opposite. To live one's life thinking you can be honest with your opinions in the corporate world is sometimes an ill-chosen concept when dealing with certain personalities. While the story is a remarkable one, it is nearly impossible to achieve in the typical bureaucratic corporate world. One ass kisses another ass which kisses another ass-- on up the ladder. No one in the chain with contrary evidence to policy could survive very long unless you reported directly to the key player and were very confident in your ideas.

 

There was only one J. Paul Getty and plenty of puckered assholes.

[Guest fountainhall]

And so the chickens come home to roost - or so it would seem. Today, Rebekah Brookes, once one of the highest paid editors in the UK and the CEO of the UK arm of Rupert Murdoch's News International, will along with her husband be charged with three counts of conspiracy to pervert the course of justice in July last year. She is accused of conspiring with others to conceal material evidence from detectives. The charge is serious and can result in a life sentence, although the average is more in the region of 10 months.

 

As anyone who saw Brooks' testimony before the Levison Inquiry last week will know, Ms. Brooks is a feisty and very precise individual. On hearing the news, she and her husband made a typical statement: "We deplore the weak and unjust decision after the further unprecedented posturing of the CPS (Crown Prosecution Service)."

 

The news comes as two more arrests have been made over the alleged bribing of public officials.

 

It's hard not to speculate that Ms. Brooks has become the sacrificial lamb for Murdoch Snr. and Jnr.

[Bob]

Given her personality, it's rather difficult for me to accept that she wasn't aware of the phone hacking that occurred for years under her watch. Even less controlling editors do tend on occasion (like ever 10 minutes?) ask to know the source of a reporter's story. A few of the "news" stories involved in this case concerned very personal matters (such as medical issues) that would have begged even the dumbest editor in the world to ask the question.

 

I simply don't buy the "Sgt. Schulz" ("I know nothing, I see nothing, etc.) defense.

[Guest fountainhall]

This afternoon, the shit finally settled when the Crown Prosecution Service announced that it has concluded there is sufficient evidence to charge eight former senior News International employees with criminal offences which include conspiring to intercept communications without lawful authority (phone hacking).

 

Rebekah Brookes, Murdoch’s right hand woman in the UK, will face four separate charges (and this is in addition to three counts of conspiring to pervert the course of justice earlier reported). For the Prime Minister, David Cameron, there is worse news. The man he personally picked to be his Communications Director, Andrew Coulson, after he resigned from his job with Murdoch as Editor of the now disbanded News of the World newspaper, is being charged with six criminal offenses. Cameron has come under withering criticism about the appointment, and no doubt that will now be raised to a much higher level.

 

Over 600 cases of phone hacking are involved. Those whose privacy was invaded include celebrities Paul McCartney, Heather Mills, Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Hugh Grant, Jude Law and Sienna Miller, politicians, a member of the Royal Family, and the family of murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler, the case which cracked open the whole phone-hacking cancer.

 

Is it any coincidence, I wonder. that Rupert Murdoch resigned all his UK directorships last week.

[Guest fountainhall]

Well, now the Old Digger has been split in two in more ways than one - commercially and amorously 

 

Today his commercial empire will be split in half. Not for regulatory reasons, of course. This is all about money - well, what isn't when it comes to this octogenarian right winger? The commercial money spinners, the 20th Century Fox movie studio and the ghastly Fox News network, will become 21st Century Fox (doesn't quite have the same ring about it, though, does it?). The troubled publishing assets in News Corporation (there's more revelations to come, we are led to believe - just wait till those trials start in London!), Wall Street Journal, The Times (UK), Harper Collins et al will remain as News Corporation.

 

Shareholders are thrilled. 21st Century Fox walks away with nearly all the big profit making ventures from the old business, whilst News Corp hangs on to a print empire than it all but dying on its feet. Old Digger is not worried, though. As he has maintained throughout his long, long life, he continues to declare "the future for newspapers is bright."

 

Not so bright is his personal life for he is now effectively single once again - for the third time. Who initiated divorce proceedings is not known but he will no longer have a feisty wife, Wendy Deng, at his side. She is the one who threw a punch at an intruder who tried to get at Murdoch during Parliamentary hearings last year.

 

But it will be a mere dent in his personal fortune. Worth an estimated US$12.1 billion, the settlement with wife No. 2 in 1998 was estimated at US$1.7 billion - more than 40% of his actual then worth. That marriage had taken place in the days before pre-nups, though. Not so in 1999 when Rupert got hitched to Ms. Deng on a luxury yacht. Almost all commentators reckon Ms. Deng will walk away with far less - and cry all the way to the bank 

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2013/jun/18/rupert-murdoch-split-empire-news-corp

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2013/jun/14/rupert-murdoch-divorce-money-wendi-deng