Dial M for Murdoch

A successful politician must be able to deny the obvious: “I am not a crook” or “I did not have sexual relations with that woman.” It was the British courtesan Mandy Rice-Davies, testifying during the 1963 scandal over her friend Christine Keeler’s simultaneous affairs with the British War Minister John Profumo and a Soviet naval attaché, who is credited with the definitive response to such lies. Told that her own lover, Lord Astor, denied ever having met her, she supposedly replied, “Well, he would say that, wouldn’t he?”

Prime Minister David Cameron told the BBC in April that “the idea there was some grand bargain between me and Rupert Murdoch—that is just not true.” The devastating May 1 parliamentary report, which concluded that Murdoch “is not a fit person” to run a major public company, offers a vivid example of why political connections have always been so important to the media mogul’s business model. The very phrase “not a fit person” is a clear signal to Ofcom, the British broadcasting regulator, which has the power to take away Murdoch’s broadcasting franchise here. Yet the sharp divisions among the select committee—whose five Conservative members all voted against the report, which passed thanks to the one Liberal Democrat and five Labour members—have blunted the report’s force while at the same time underlining just how much was at stake when Murdoch gave Cameron’s party his backing.

Rupert Murdoch: I was the victim of phone-hacking cover up

Rupert Murdoch used his testimony before a U.K. inquiry on Thursday to portray himself as the victim, not perpetrator, of a cover-up over phone hacking — a twist that could certainly anger those suing his company for invading their privacy to sell newspapers.

The 81-year-old media magnate apologized. He said he had failed. He noted that the corporate cleanup of the British phone hacking scandal had cost his New York-based News Corp. hundreds of millions of dollars and transformed its culture.

“I failed, and I'm sorry about it,” Mr. Murdoch said, adding later: “We are now a new company altogether.”

Mr. Murdoch's two days of testimony, which began Wednesday, marked his attempt to corral the scandal that has rocked Britain, tainted senior politicians, prompted top police commanders and media executives to resign and affected large swathes of his media empire.

It boiled over in July after it became clear that journalists at Mr. Murdoch's now-shuttered News of the World tabloid routinely broke the law in pursuit of scoops, with Murdoch-friendly police and politicians turning a blind eye to a litany of abuses including illegal espionage and bribery.

James Murdoch Lightly Grilled

According to SEC filings, James Murdoch’s base salary as chief executive of News Corporation’s Asian and European operations was $3.4 million. He was also eligible for a performance bonus of between $6 and $12 million. And a further signing bonus of 400,000 shares of company stock—presumably to secure his services from the many rivals bidding for the talents of the Harvard dropout and failed hip-hop record producer.

Those figures are worth bearing in mind when considering Murdoch minor’s response to the admirably precise summary of Robert Jay, the attorney acting as lead inquisitor to the Leveson Inquiry into the culture practice and ethics of the press, which was set up in response to the scandal last summer over revelations that reporters on the News of the World had hacked into the voicemail of various celebrities, politicians and figures in British life. At the time the hacking took place James Murdoch was busy running the British broadcaster BSkyB, but one of the first tasks he faced when he took over News International, the family’s British newspaper interests, in December 2007 was to settle a lawsuit by Gordon Taylor, head of the British football players’ union, whose phone had been hacked. The Taylor claim was significant because it exploded News Corp.’s claim that phone hacking, which first hit the headlines here with the January 2007 arrest of News of the World royal correspondent Clive Goodman, had been limited to a lone “rogue reporter.” And in agreeing to a settlement of over $ 1 million James Murdoch was paying way over the odds, leading to suggestions that the payment was “hush money” to keep the scandal under wraps.

MI6 Phone Hack: 'No Government Can Stop Us' Says TeamPoison Leader TriCk

The leader of the hacking group TeamPoison ('TeaMp0isoN') is a pretty old hand when it comes to carving up government security systems.

He is, he says, 17 years old.

Known as Trick (or, more correctly, 'TriCk'), his group has hacked the United Nations, Nato, Facebook, the English Defence League, a personal email account linked to a former staff member of Tony Blair and other major organisations and governments.

They say they are behind the alleged 'phonebomb' attack in which MI6's anti-terrorism hotline was reportedly blocked for more than 24 hours, and several of their internal phone discussions were recorded and leaked to YouTube.

The attack has been described as a potentially "catastrophic" break-in by some security experts.

But Trick, who refused to reveal his real name, laughs off the idea it was difficult.

"It wasn't a hard hack at all," he said in an exclusive interview with the Huffington Post UK.

Phone Hacking: Around 800 Victims Of News Of The World Phone Hacking, Says Met Police

Around 800 people had their phone hacked by the News of the World, according to the Metropolitan Police.

Officers involved with Operation Weeting, Scotland Yard’s phone hacking enquiry, revealed the numbers on Saturday, with Deputy Assistant Commissioner Sue Akers telling The Times newspaper: "We are confident we have personally contacted all the people who have been hacked or are likely to have been hacked."

According to the Guardian, the Metropolitan Police now believe that the “false hope” moment given to Bob and Sue Dowler, parents of the murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler, may not have been caused by journalists working for the News of the World deleting phone messages.

"It is understood that while News of the World reporters probably were responsible for deleting some of the missing girl's messages, police have concluded that they were not responsible for the particular deletion which caused her family to have false hope that she was alive," said the report.

Piers Morgan Appears To Admit To Knowledge Of Phone Hacking In 2009 Interview

In a recently unearthed 2009 interview, CNN host Piers Morgan appears to acknowledge to a BBC radio host that he ran stories based on phone hacking while he was a tabloid editor in Britain.

Morgan edited Rupert Murdoch's News of the World from 1994-1995, before jumping to Murdoch's main tabloid rival, the Daily Mirror, in 1995. He edited the Mirror until 2004, when he was forced out over a faked photo scandal involving the British military.

Morgan's appearance on the venerable BBC radio program "Desert Island Discs" was dusted off by the Daily Telegraph, which uploaded a portion of it to the Internet. The Daily Beast later ran a version of the same audio. In the Telegraph's clip, host Kirsty Young asks Morgan how it felt to "dealing with, I mean essentially people who rake through bins for a living, people who tap people's phones, people who take secret photographs, who do all that nasty down-in-the-gutter stuff."

"Not a lot of that went on," Morgan replies. "A lot of it was done by third parties rather than the staff themselves. That's not to defend it, because obviously you were running the results of their work. I'm quite happy to be parked in the corner of tabloid beast and to have to sit here defending all these things I used to get up to, and I make no pretense about the stuff we used to do."

Full Article
Source: Huffington 

Phone hacking: MPs 'were misled' by James Murdoch

The former editor of the tabloid and its lawyer said that in 2009 they told Mr Murdoch, the chairman of News International, about evidence suggesting phone hacking was not limited to a single “rogue” reporter.

Appearing before MPs earlier this week, Mr Murdoch said that he had not been aware of the evidence at the time, a statement which has now been called into question by two men who claim they told him personally.

MPs announced that Mr Murdoch would have to explain the alleged discrepancy in his evidence to their committee. Misleading a parliamentary committee is potentially a criminal offence.

It came as it emerged that Matt Nixson, a former news editor at the News of the World, was on Thursday sacked as features editor at The Sun over allegations of misconduct from his time at the Sunday tabloid.

News International is coming under growing pressure as it is claimed that it orchestrated a cover-up, with allegations that executives and lawyers acting for the firm were aware of widespread potential criminality several years ago.

Full Article
Source: the Telegraph 

James Murdoch Accused Of Misleading Parliament Over Phone Hacking

James Murdoch was accused on Thursday of misleading Parliament about his knowledge of phone hacking at the News of the World by the paper's former editor and top lawyer.

Colin Myler, the former editor, and Tom Crone, the former lawyer, issued a statement on Thursday contradicting one of Murdoch's key claims in his testimony before Parliament on Tuesday: that he had signed off on huge payments to footballer Gordon Taylor without knowing why he was doing so.

Murdoch said that his lawyers had simply advised him that News Corp. was likely to lose if the Taylor lawsuit—which accused the paper of hacking his phone—went to court, and that he had authorized the company to pay Taylor hundreds of thousands of pounds as a way to end the suit, even though he did not know why, exactly, News Corp. was in such a compromised position.