Indict Rupert Murdoch

[jason_c]

This scandal - Jason - is about people with the morals of dogs invading the privacy of people experiencing their darkest hours. People are entitled to be outraged and it is nothing at all to do with politics.

Then why did you and Derrick choose to single out Rupert Murdoch rather than Glen Mulcaire?

Glenn Mulcaire isnt a political, Murdoch is.

[Limehouse]

Then why did you and Derrick choose to single out Rupert Murdoch rather than Glen Mulcaire?

Glenn Mulcaire isnt a political, Murdoch is.

How is Murdoch political except by his own actions?

He is the man at the top. He sets the culture of the organisation. Additionally, he benefits financially and in all sorts of other ways from being the man at the top and he is the man that must take responsibility for the people he employs.

[Natalie Severn]

How is Murdoch political except by his own actions?

He is the man at the top. He sets the culture of the organisation. Additionally, he benefits financially and in all sorts of other ways from being the man at the top and he is the man that must take responsibility for the people he employs.

Absolutely Julie.Andy Coulson ,David Cameron's Director of Communications was appointed in the middle of all this a few years back and Cameron took him to Downing Street with him as Head of Communications,even though he had been warned about Coulson's methods.Its an absurdity that nobody at the top knew anything about what was going on.Its is just ridiculous.They have admitted paying £100, 000 to the police for information.Did nobody ever ask who the £100,000 was being paid to? Why was the investigation that began five years ago stopped?
This Rebekah Brooks, after being Editor of the News of the World before Coulson , was then made ' Chief Executive 'of the whole of Murdoch's empire, 'News International'.She attended David and Samantha Cameron's Christmas party in Oxfordshire -was /is part of that Oxfordshire set......
Meanwhile the country is told that nothing but nothing appears to have been left sacred from the News of the World's prying by phone hacking ----the Soham murder case victims,the Millie Dowler case victims , even apparently the families of our service men and women who died in Iraq and Afghanistan .
How anyone can defend any of this is beyond belief.

And so much for a 'Free Press' owned and directed by these people.

[Phil H]

Should not the british public take some share of the blame, or at least the disgrace, in this affir.

The NOTW was, after all, the best selling English language newspaper. It is bought weekly by the public in their millions. Surely the journalists and NI have simply been catering for their tastes and desire for "news".

I am not in anyway exhonerating the Murdoch family, employees or their agents. Far from it.

But if the UK population REALLY dislikes the methods used by Murdoch and his men, then they have a ready tactic to hand - boycott his papers, unscubscribe from Sky - this can be immediate, would hit NI where it hurts, in its pocket, and show the disdain so vocally expressed. There are alternative TV stations and newspapers.

Will it happen? I doubt it because the British public has become spineless and possibly mesmerised by the glamour of Murdoch's publications. Much of the so-called "shock" and disgust is paper thin - and as usual, someone else must take the action.

Sure NI should not be allowed to take-over BSB - no brainer. But the law may not make that easy - Ministers cannot act in an arbitrary way.

The scrapping of NOTW is a cynical ploy to save the career of Brookes (anyone know why NI is so loyal to her?) but I think it will be seen through. But if the public don't like what he has done, then do what the Liverpudlian population has done a sustained way in regard to The Sun (because of its coverage of the Hillsborough disaster years ago) and refuse to buy the alternative remaining NI titles.

Phil

[miss marple]

Rebekah Wade knows where the bodies are buried,better to have her inside the tent pissing out than outside pissing in.
Murdoch still hopes he can save the skybsb deal by throwing news of world overboard.
Wade has presiding over a culture of corruption for twenty years,for her to abdicate all responsibilty for actions at NoW is cynical in the extreme.
All govenments since Thatcher have cosied up to Murdoch, Cameron is in up to his neck, he is far too close to Wade. The whole thing stinks.

Miss Marple

[Phil H]

All govenments since Thatcher have cosied up to Murdoch, Cameron is in up to his neck, he is far too close to Wade. The whole thing stinks.

Probably true..
but pragmatically, the media are a big player in UK politics; Murdoch is a big fish in the media swamp.

So what are political parties to do?

If in opposition do they condemn NI and all its works, perhaps to stay in opposition as a result?

Or if in Government, do they oppose Murdoch and perhaps end up in opposition? After all political parties are about gaining power not losing it.

And Murdoch has undoubtedly made Governments over the years. All political parties are tainted in that regard.

I'd also add that it was likely that any Government up until this time that had sought to control or reduce press freedom would have been castigated from every side as being anti-democratic; anti-populist etc.

Murdoch has provided products that have consistently met and broadened the needs to UK consumers of media products - in Sky, in The Sun and especially in NOTW.

I believe that if it had been put to the vote in previous years people would have voted for Murdoch and against Government in huge numbers. Isn't that what democracy is for? People like their page 3 girls and scadal, the lives of Jordan or the Coles or beckhams - and the indide stories are got from insiders and money is paid.

I'd scrap the lot, have no topless ladies in newspapers and banish all reporting of scandal, but I'm a elitist, out of touch, man.

We get what we deserve as a society and that is true in this case.

Phil

[Jonathan H]

Phil H and I do not often agree, but I say hear, hear! for his previous post.

What did Hunter S Thompson write about Nixon in his 'Fear and Loathing ...' series? That instead of resignation, Nixon should have been found rotting in the belly of a shark.

Anyway, something like that demise is too good for Rupert for his destruction of even the vestiges of journalistic ethics, his relentless undermining of the rights of working people -- globally -- and his taking a satire like 'Network' and making it really 'real' with 'Pox' News, which is much, much more poisonous (Howard Beale was, after all, left-wing). Murdoch has done something a drunken slob like Joe McCarthy could not; he has institutionalized demagoguery.

[Phil H]

Phil H and I do not often agree, but I say hear, hear! for his previous post.




It's good to find common ground.

Phil

[caz]

Journalistic ethics? Excuse me?

Is anyone really shocked about any of this? An awful lot of heads would be set to roll if the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth were to emerge concerning who has ever hacked and who has ever turned the old blind eye to a spot of hacking or made money out of those hell bent on doing it to sell papers to willing readers. Why is it 'bad' all of a sudden, now the tip of this unsavoury iceberg can no longer be ignored by every one of us? Stick Maddy and Milly and Holly and Jessica on top and the outrage that didn't even exist previously comes to the surface and boils over.

When will newspaper readers wake up and realise they have been paying all these years to be outraged?

Love,

Caz
X

[Phil Carter]

Hello Caz,

An awful lot of heads would be set to roll if the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth were to emerge concerning who has ever hacked and who has ever turned the old blind eye to a spot of hacking or made money out of those hell bent on doing it to sell papers to willing readers.

I am in total agreement with you.
You can bet your last penny it isn't JUST the News of the World that has been up to no good. Quite a few heads are laying very low at this moment, because, as you say, if the lid really DID come off this method of conducting business, it would be far far worse than what we already know.

All sorts of dirty tricks have been used for many many years by various individuals and organisations within the newspaper industry in the UK.
Sniffing through rubbish bags, dustbins, installing hidden microphones inside rooms, houses and cars, tracking devices affixed to vehicles.. it goes on and on and on. There is a great deal more under the surface than just this exposure now. Much much more.

best wishes

Phil

[Zodiac]

NOTW axed, but fear not, other brands of toilet paper are available!!!

The circulation of all ten national daily newspapers, added together, now barely tops 9,000,000 and the numbers continue to spiral downward, month on month and year on year. The figures for regional/local papers are falling even faster. So for myself, and the other 85% of the UK population who don't waste their money paying to be outraged by these scandal-rags, I concur with what an earlier poster said, namely, if you don't like or agree with what a newspaper is doing then stop buying the damn thing! If enough readers vote with their feet then the paper will either go out of business or have to change its approach so as to attract back its readership. Otherwise, as Caz has pointed out, you will just carry on as ever paying to be outraged.

Best wishes,
Zodiac.

P.S. All outrage contained within this post was provided gratis.

[jason_c]

The circulation of all ten national daily newspapers, added together, now barely tops 9,000,000 and the numbers continue to spiral downward, month on month and year on year. The figures for regional/local papers are falling even faster. So for myself, and the other 85% of the UK population who don't waste their money paying to be outraged by these scandal-rags, I concur with what an earlier poster said, namely, if you don't like or agree with what a newspaper is doing then stop buying the damn thing! If enough readers vote with their feet then the paper will either go out of business or have to change its approach so as to attract back its readership. Otherwise, as Caz has pointed out, you will just carry on as ever paying to be outraged.

Best wishes,
Zodiac.

P.S. All outrage contained within this post was provided gratis.

Or letting politicians behave corruptly. Its a journalists job to get down and dirty. In the NOTW case it became corrupt itself. But there is a fine line in all of this somewhere. Its not a line I would find easy to distinguish.

I just hope politicians dont abuse this. I can see all sorts press limitations being advocated by those with something to hide.

And I get a bit pissed off at those who look down their nose at good old fashioned titillation.

So, farewell Fake Sheik. I may purchase the Sunday Sport next weekend to get my fix of boobs, aliens and celebrity gossip.

[Derrick]

Then why did you and Derrick choose to single out Rupert Murdoch rather than Glen Mulcaire?

Glenn Mulcaire isnt a political, Murdoch is.

Do you actually believe that Mulcaire was acting on some self initiative motive when hacking peoples phones?

His actions were sanctioned by individuals at editor level as it up to editors along with lawyers to assess what can be published. Obviously this step was bypassed by the NOTW and NI.

Even more invidious is the finiancial relationship between NI and the police. Coulson admitted that over £100k was paid to the old bill for information.

Now let us be very clear here......

Was that money paid out of Coulson's own pocket? No of course not. It was paid out of company funds unless, like Watergate, Murdoch had a slush fund of cash to pay the plod.

As Julie and others have said Murdoch's form is whenever the **** hits the fan, sack the workers and try to save his own skin. If Murdoch still harbours the faintest ambition to own BSkyB outright then NI's complete culpability in the hacking of Milly Dowler's phone will put paid to it.

Ofcom's rules governing the "fit and proper ownership" of media outlets will bar this scumbags route to his treasured prize. It will not come down to public outrage now....NI have shown, themselves, that they are neither fit nor proper.

As I said when I started this thread, Murdoch and his board should be charged with perverting the course of justice. If anyone thinks that the investigation into a child's disappearance is something that one can play games with then they are sick and inhuman. Lets not mince words here.....Murdoch knew what was going on from the very start. He is no shrinking violet in dirty tricks. He couldn't give a Donald Duck who gets in his way and sadly our elected reps cowl to this turd.

This does not include the advantage that Cameron may have gained from all of this through having Coulson as his DOC. Who knows what kind of information Coulson may have been able to pass onto to our great un-elected leader. No wonder Cameron and his little junta are shitting themselves over what to do now.

Derrick

[Limehouse]

And I get a bit pissed off at those who look down their nose at good old fashioned titillation.

Are you seriously titilated by the contents of a missing girl's mobile phone?

Do you realise that because a hacker delated some of the messages on her phone to make room for more messages he could hack into - Milly's family thought she was alive?

How could anyone fail to be outraged?

[ChrisGeorge]

Apparently Murdoch would rather detonate one of his biggest selling sunday titles than punish Rebbeca Brooks, or "Slapper" as the Eye likes to call her after her alleged Kemp-beating antics.

There's a measure of hypocrisy about the government now deciding to investigate the scandal and make arrests in that it seems that both the Tories and Labour under Blair and Brown were cheek by jowl with Murdoch. Wasn't Murdoch one of the first people in the back door of 10 Downing Street when Cameron got elected? Nor are Scotland Yard clean. Considering that the News of the World hacking infraction with the murdered girl's cellphone has been known for years and nothing was done then, the whole thing stinks.