Report: UK tabloid hacked into voicemails

[seemslikeadream]

It has also been mentioned by various sources there is a wave of gripping fear overtaking Fox News at the moment.

Amid the breaking news this morning that Newscorp/News International/Rupert Murdoch are abandoning their takeover bid for BskyB, and with the growing firestorm surrounding the phone hacking scandal at the now-defunct News Of The World becoming something of a Perfect Storm, questions are now being raised if in fact Rupert Murdoch will survive this scandal and if he will abandon the UK as any place to continue his empire.

Bets are on he will, as he has done many times in the past. Whether his son James or his coveted, trusty assistant, confidant, whatever-she-is Rebekah Brooks will survive is another question. Odds are neither Rupert or James will be obliged to testify at the Home Affairs Select Committee Hearings, since neither are actual British Citizens (oh, that citizenship thing again), but Brooks will be since she is a British citizen, and it may make for very interesting theater on Tuesday (the day testimony is tentatively scheduled).

As of yesterday there were calls by Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Sen. Jay Rockefeller to begin hearings on Newscorps' possible violations here while stockholders in Delaware are making their discomfort known. It has also been mentioned by various sources there is a wave of gripping fear overtaking Fox News at the moment.

As was indicated last week when the bomb was dropped over the closing of News Of The World, the story is changing constantly and quickly. At the rate this is going, it may change again by Friday.

But for the moment, here is BBC Radio 4's PM Program with the latest as of this morning (afternoon in the UK).

Stay tuned.

The Rude Pundit
Two Random Observations Regarding the News Corp Scandal(s):
1. News Corp is an American-based multinational corporation/Humboldt squid. News International is its British newspaper company. This ain't a British-only scandal. America is giving aid and comfort to the heads of a massive racketeering operation masked as a media conglomerate. And the executives of that conglomerate broke American laws. So if the Justice Department hasn't announced an investigation yet, it's either on the verge of doing so or is so cowed by the power of Fox "news," shitting itself in a corner for fear that Sean Hannity will say something mean, that it's worthless.

Rupert Murdoch's products in the United States have long been engaged in a one-sided war with the Obama administration. Now there's a justification for joining the fight, bringing all the power of the law to bear. It's a gift. Obama could crush Murdoch and make Bill O'Reilly have to beg CNN to let them blow Blitzer for quarters. The phone-hacking scandal is like God just handed the President a perfect, wet pussy and said, "No, it's okay. You can fuck it. Enjoy."

(Note: He won't fuck it.)

2. The Rude Pundit's initial and somewhat current reaction to the phone-hacking revelations, which members of Parliament and 10 Downing Street ignored when it was just famous people involved, probably because a good many of them liked hearing about who Sienna Miller was shagging (that's a British word, right?), was, "Huh. That's fucked-up, considering how much Murdoch's entities condemned Wikileaks, with some calling for Julian Assange to be killed. How is that any different in action than hacking into the phone and paying off cops to get the medical records and banking information of the then-Prime Minister? Is that not a national security issue?"

But the Rude Pundit has long believed that the citizens of a nation engage in behavior in roughly the same way that its government treats those citizens. So if, say, a government tortures people, then the people believe it's okay to torture. This is not to say that a good many people won't oppose those actions, but governments set the norm for a society. Technology and the way government uses technology also has an effect.

For instance, how many Americans actually give a happy monkey fuck about how much our own government is allowed to spy on us? Not a whole lot. But (and this may be a huge fuckin' leap, so let's hold hands and jump together) the rise of the U.S. surveillance state coincided with the rise of Facebook and other social media that ask us to voluntarily give up our privacy. Sure, we have control (except when Facebook just decides to across-the-board fuck with those controls). However, since we are constantly asked by the government to forego privacy and to allow pat-downs and spying and told that it's for the good of the nation to do so, it just seems like how we exist in this world. If we'd had a government that said, "No, we need to protect individuals from unwarranted intrusions. We need to protect privacy" and then shitcanned the Patriot Act, we might feel differently. Maybe, just maybe, in this leap we're making, people would have thought twice before tweeting every dingleberry of faux wisdom that is shat out of their brains.

Now, what the hell does this have to do with News Corp/News International/News of the World/phone-hacking/scum-sucking pigfuckers/Murdoch-gate?

In England, by one estimate, millions of cameras watch the citizens of the nation, with the police watching the monitors fed by those cameras. You step out in public in any city and chances are that your movements can be tracked from the second you leave the flat until you get to the pub and then back again. And you're probably being filmed inside the pub, too, by their security. In other words, the cops in the U.K. have made the case that the best way to keep the population under control is to spy on them, constantly, unendingly, in whatever way the cameras can catch you, wherever they can catch you. That's the legal stuff. That's what you know about, even if you can't always see the cameras. That's on top of the crazy post-9/11 shit. Gravy, man, not the meat.

It's not that big a leap to think that the media, especially the mad whores at the tabloids, would feel it is their responsibility, to their readers, to the corporations' shareholders, to their insane belief in what journalism exists for (apparently, to spy on the victims of child murderers), to hack into phones in order to get the best story possible. If the government doesn't believe in your right to walk your stroller with your baby in it down the fucking street without being recorded in case you are inclined to commit a crime with that baby, why should anyone else give a damn about your privacy?

In other words, the phone-hacking/cop-bribing scandal is the inevitable result of the merging of corporate profit-driven media, ultra-invasive technology, the competitive exhibitionism of social media, and governmental disregard of the rights of the citizens to exist outside a well-disguised prison that we helped to build.

[Stephen Morgan]

- Can anyone with computer knowledge less minimal than mine tell me: How easy will it be for NI to delete IRRETRIEVABLY all their journalists' emails from the last year? Is it even technically possible? And surely Microsoft are obliged to keep records for a substantial period of time, especially in the Age of Global Terror?
.

IRRETRIEVABLY? Sandblast/ burn/ run through a very powerful magnet then shred the email servers. All software deletion methods are recoverable to some or all extent afaik

Realistically, no-one without a supercomputer is getting anything of a zeroed hard drive.

[Byrne]

Liverpool was right about News International all along
My song, Never Buy the Sun, pays tribute to the scousers who started their own boycott after the Hillsborough stadium disaster

guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 13 July 2011 12.14 BST

20th anniversary of Hillsborough disaster
Football scarves from around the world pictured at the Hillsborough memorial on the 20th anniversary of the disaster in which 96 fans died. Many Liverpudlians still boycott the Sun over its coverage of the disaster. Photograph: Peter Byrne/PA
Link to this audio

For the past 22 years, people in Liverpool have boycotted the Sun newspaper because of the lies that it printed about the behaviour of Liverpool FC fans at the Hillsborough disaster. Ninety-six people were crushed to death at a football match at Hillsborough in Sheffield on 15 April 1989. The Sun ran a front page story that accused Liverpool supporters of variously robbing and urinating on the dead bodies of the victims as they were laid along the touchline. The reports were totally unfounded. Since then, many people in Liverpool have refused to buy the Sun on principle.

As I listened to the unfolding reports of the phone-hacking story last week, it occurred to me that the scousers had been right about News International all along.

I have a good friend who lost a brother at the Hillsborough disaster. The deaths were caused through failure of police control (see also this speech by Jimmy McGovern).

Phone hacking of the Hillsborough victims families was being carried out then, in 1989.

As noted above, the Murdoch Sun drove a concerted wedge into the victims families campaign.

[Hammer of Los]

Liverpool was right about News International all along
My song, Never Buy the Sun, pays tribute to the scousers who started their own boycott after the Hillsborough stadium disaster

guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 13 July 2011 12.14 BST

20th anniversary of Hillsborough disaster
Football scarves from around the world pictured at the Hillsborough memorial on the 20th anniversary of the disaster in which 96 fans died. Many Liverpudlians still boycott the Sun over its coverage of the disaster. Photograph: Peter Byrne/PA
Link to this audio

For the past 22 years, people in Liverpool have boycotted the Sun newspaper because of the lies that it printed about the behaviour of Liverpool FC fans at the Hillsborough disaster. Ninety-six people were crushed to death at a football match at Hillsborough in Sheffield on 15 April 1989. The Sun ran a front page story that accused Liverpool supporters of variously robbing and urinating on the dead bodies of the victims as they were laid along the touchline. The reports were totally unfounded. Since then, many people in Liverpool have refused to buy the Sun on principle.

As I listened to the unfolding reports of the phone-hacking story last week, it occurred to me that the scousers had been right about News International all along.

I have a good friend who lost a brother at the Hillsborough disaster. The deaths were caused through failure of police control (see also this speech by Jimmy McGovern).

Phone hacking of the Hillsborough victims families was being carried out then, in 1989.

As noted above, the Murdoch Sun drove a concerted wedge into the victims families campaign.

Thanks for that Slad and Byrne. I'm a Merseysider myself, my mother's family are Liverpudlian.

Disaster for Murdoch counts as a good news day as far as I am concerned, but that probably goes without saying.

Everyone involved should be criminally charged to the full extent, including those acting as accessories, and involved in conspiracy relating to the following charges;

The hacking is only the start of the criminality. NI is facing investigations into the hacking of the mobile phones of victims of crime and their families. This may well constitute the much more serious criminal offences of obstruction and perversion of the course of justice. There is also the question of the scale of such criminality. At this early stage of the investigation we already know that the mobiles of Milly Dowler and her family were hacked; the families of the victims in the Soham murders; the victims of the 7/7 terrorist attack and the families of soldiers killed on active service in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is not therefore unreasonable to conclude that there is a real prospect that the mobiles of the victims and their families of every major criminal case in the last decade were also subject to hacking. If that is the case we may be looking at very large numbers of criminal cases against NI journalists almost all of which would result in very serious criminal charges.

In addition, we have information coming into the public domain of substantial document destruction by NI executives after the commencement of the police investigation. This is another serious criminal offence of obstruction or perversion of the course of justice charges. Regulatory Compliance 101 is that no documents should be destroyed once any police or other regulatory investigation is commenced. In modern times document destruction is also almost pointless. Modern forensic techniques are very advanced and in most cases deleted electronic documents will be recovered. Further obstruction and perversion charges will only add to public outrage.

Worse still is the payment of police officers for information. This constitutes an offence under the Prevention of Corruption Act 1906. Again the offering and taking of bribes by public officials are two more very serious criminal offences. Even at this early stage we already have six police officers under investigation. There is also again the issue of scale: the prospect that dozens of serving and former policemen are found to have taken payments. The public will look upon such widespread criminality with even more disgust as many more journalists and policemen are charged with corruption offences.

To make matters worse for the Murdoch family and the senior management of News Corp and News International, the United States federal criminal authorities have significant criminal jurisdiction in this case. While News International Limited is a company registered in England & Wales it is a wholly owned subsidiary of News Corp, a US listed company. All US companies are subject to the provisions of the ferocious Foreign Corrupt Practices Act 1977. This makes it a criminal offence for a US company to offer payments for commercial advancement to a foreign public official.

However;

This is to presume, no doubt rashly, that the governments and judiciaries (and police forces, and journalists) of the UK and Ireland are seriously interested in getting to the bottom of this cesspit.

I hear the government has announced a Judge-led public enquiry will be convened. Of course, "public enquiry" being simply a euphemism for cover-up, this news has not led me to be over optimistic about anyone getting to the bottom of anything.

[Byrne]

I hear the government has announced a Judge-led public enquiry will be convened. Of course, "public enquiry" being simply a euphemism for cover-up, this news has not led me to be over optimistic about anyone getting to the bottom of anything.

The 'Judge-led public enquiry' will be set up under the Inquiries Act 2005:

Phone-hacking inquiry: who will judge the police?
PM's desire for a sitting judge means casting beyond supreme court for candidate to head probe into police investigation
Joshua Rozenberg guardian.co.uk, Monday 11 July 2011 14.00 BST
...
Who will be appointed to head the inquiry into how the police investigated the phone-hacking scandal?

The prime minister promised on Friday that witnesses would be questioned by a "judge under oath", which suggests that the inquiry will be set up under the Inquiries Act 2005.

More about the Inquiries Act 2005 here, which basically gives the government the ultimate veto on where the inquiry goes & what it uncovers!

[seemslikeadream]

Thom Hartmann: Murdoch - Rot at the Top?

[Stephen Morgan]

I've just remembered a story I once heard. A soldier, I believe, had his legs blown off or some such soldiery tale, and sold it to the papers, and he got offers from several papers, one of which was ten grand from the NotW, which was the highest, so he gave them the story. Then they refused to pay and only gave him two grand because the editor had decided it wasn't worth ten grand, and the contract had some sort of weasel words in it.

[Harvey]

Nobody in the media seems to be wondering why News International would want to hack the phones of 9/11 and 7/7 victims. I know I am.

[gnosticheresy_2]

F.B.I. Opens Inquiry Into Hacking of 9/11 Victims

In response to requests from members of Congress and to at least one news report, the Federal Bureau of Investigation in New York opened a preliminary inquiry on Thursday into allegations that News Corporation journalists sought to gain access to the phone records of victims of the Sept. 11 attacks, people briefed on the matter said.

The investigation is in its earliest stages, one of the people said, and its scope is not yet clear. It also is unclear whether the F.B.I. has identified possible targets of the investigation or possible specific criminal violations.

The inquiry was prompted in part by a letter from Representative Peter T. King, a Long Island Republican, to Robert S. Mueller III, the F.B.I. director, in which he asked that the bureau immediately open an investigation of News Corporation, citing news reports that journalists working for its subsidiary, The News of the World, had tried to obtain the phone records of 9/11 victims through bribery and unauthorized wiretapping, the people said.

The decision to open a case in New York stemmed from the expanding hacking scandal that has wracked Britain for days, ever since disclosures that The News of the World had illegally intercepted the voice mail of Milly Dowler, a 13-year-old girl abducted and murdered in 2002. It also follows a decision by the News Corporation’s chairman, Rupert Murdoch, to withdraw from the biggest media takeover bid in British history.

The investigation was expected to be handled jointly by two F.B.I. squads in the bureau’s New York office, one that investigates cybercrimes and another that focuses on public corruption and white-collar crimes, one of the people said. They all spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the case.

It was not immediately clear whether federal prosecutors in Manhattan were involved in the case; they would most likely have jurisdiction over any prosecution because the 9/11 victims and their cellphones were in Manhattan when they died.

Ellen Davis, a spokeswoman for the United States attorney’s office in Manhattan, also declined to comment.

Laura Sweeney, a Justice Department spokeswoman in Washington, said: “The department does not comment specifically on investigations, though anytime we see evidence of wrongdoing, we take appropriate action. The department has received letters from several members of Congress regarding allegations related to News Corporation, and we’re reviewing those.”

Jack Horner, a spokesman for the company, declined to comment.

Mr. King said in his letter on Wednesday that he was requesting the investigation not only as the chairman of the House Subcommittee on Homeland Security, but also as a congressman whose district lost more than 150 people in the 9/11 attacks. “It is my duty to discern every fact behind these allegations,” he wrote.

He cited recent news reports, apparently referring to an article first published on Monday in The Daily Mirror, a chief competitor to The News of the World, which was closed down on Sunday as a result of the scandal. The article said reporters working for the newspaper had contacted a private investigator, a former New York police officer, and offered to pay him to retrieve the phone numbers of 9/11 victims and get details of the calls they had made and received in the days leading up to the attacks.

“If these allegations are proven true,” Mr. King wrote, “the conduct would merit felony charges for attempting to violate various federal statutes related to corruption of public officials and prohibitions against wiretapping. Any person found guilty of this purported conduct should receive the harshest sanctions available under law.”

It is not clear whether the person referred to in the Daily Mirror article was a police officer at the time of the attacks.

At least five Democratic lawmakers, who all had previously been critical of the News Corporation, spoke out about the matter this week. Mr. King was the first Republican to call for an investigation into the activities of the company, whose chief executive, Mr. Murdoch, is a longtime supporter of conservative causes and Republican politicians.

Senator John D. Rockefeller IV, Democrat of West Virginia, was the first to issue a statement on the matter, saying on Tuesday that the United States government should hold investigations to “ensure that Americans have not had their privacy violated.”

On Wednesday, he was joined by the two New Jersey senators, Robert Menendez and Frank R. Lautenberg. Senator Menendez asked the Justice Department to investigate the claims involving 9/11 victims, saying in his letter that the “large scope” of the hacking in Britain made it “imperative to investigate whether victims in the United States have been affected as well.”

Senator Lautenberg suggested that both the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission should examine the case and consider opening a formal investigation. He cited news reports that journalists had “paid London police officers for information, including private telephone information, about the British royal family and other individuals for use in newspaper articles.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/15/nyreg ... tw-nytimes

[seemslikeadream]

Phone hacking: both Murdochs agree to face MPs following jail threat

Summons from parliament forces both Rupert and James Murdoch to give evidence to culture select committee

rupert and james murdoch
Rupert and James Murdoch will now appear before MPs on the culture select committee following a summons from parliament. Photograph: Eddie Keogh/Reuters

A threat of imprisonment by parliament forced Rupert Murdoch and his son James to perform a volte face and agree to give evidence next week to a Commons committee investigating why News International executives provided false information to MPs.

Hours after the parliamentary authorities delivered a summons by hand to the two Murdochs, News International announced that father and son would accept an invitation to appear before the Commons culture select committee next Tuesday.

Rebekah Brooks, the News International chief executive, had earlier accepted an invitation from the committee, which is seeking to discover why a succession of company executives provided misleading information about phone hacking.

The capitulation by the Murdochs represents a victory for parliament and the select committee system, which is often criticised for lacking bite. The culture committee issued a summons for the Murdochs after they missed a 9.30am deadline to say whether they would attend.

Lawrence Ward, the deputy serjeant at arms, hand-delivered the summons to a lawyer at the News International headquarters at Wapping. A member of the select committee said at the time: "We have taken it to Defcon Two. Whether we go up another notch is up to the house. We have been advised that parliament could vote to imprison them."

John Whittingdale, the Tory chair of the committee, was advised by the parliamentary authorities that he could refer the matter to the Commons if the Murdochs failed to accept the summons to appear on Tuesday. MPs could then vote to summon them to the bar of the Commons – the strip on the floor of the house marking the end of the standing section for MPs – where they could have been informed of their punishment. This could have included admonishment, a fine or imprisonment, possibly in a cell under Big Ben.

The summons was issued after Rupert Murdoch said he would not give evidence to the committee until after appearing before the public inquiry chaired by Lord Justice Leveson. James Murdoch said he could not appear until 10 or 11 August. Parliament will be in recess then.

Within a few hours of the summons, James Murdoch wrote to Whittingdale to say that and his father would appear after all. But he indicated that they may not be forthcoming because they have received legal advice that they must be careful not to prejudice the police investigation into phone hacking.

James Murdoch, who said that he and his father would co-operate fully with the public inquiry to be chaired by Lord Justice Leveson, wrote: "I am, however, very much concerned that we are now being asked to answer yet further questions in a different forum. We have been advised that, in light of the fact that there are to be multiple reviews of the issues, this does carry the risk of prejudicing other judicial proceedings and in particular the ongoing police investigation and any potential subsequent prosecutions. I would therefore respectfully ask you to take the utmost care in ensuring that the committee hearing does not run any risk of prejudicing that investigation and subsequent prosecutions."

Members of the select committee said they would dismiss any attempt by the Murdochs and Brooks not to answer their questions. "None of them has been arrested and sub judice rules do not apply," one MP said.

Tom Watson, a Labour member of the committee who has led the campaign against phone hacking, told Channel 4 News: "We need to know what Rebekah Brooks knew about payments to police. We need to ask James Murdoch how he authorised payments to buy the silence of hacking victims. And from Rupert Murdoch we just need a wider question: why did you let this happen?"

Brooks was forced to write to the Commons home affairs select committee in April to say she had no knowledge of payments to police officers in exchange for information. The News International chief executive, who edited News of the World before moving to the Sun in early 2003, told the culture committee that year: "We have paid the police for information in the past."

One member of the committee said: "Our committee has been pursuing this for four years. There have been two select committee inquiries. We want to get to the bottom of who knew what and when. We have had witnesses from News International who maintained at both inquiries who said there was just one rogue reporter. Since then the News of the World has closed and it is clear that after one of our investigations in 2007 evidence emerged in which complicity was uncovered. For the integrity of the committee we need to know what these witnesses knew and when they knew it. James Murdoch admitted in his statement announcing the closure of the News of the World that untruths were told to parliament He said he did not have the full picture when payments were made to victims of phone hacking. … News Corp need to amplify on what they told us. All the figures from News International who appeared before us have left the company, apart from Les Hinton."

What Rupert Murdoch and the Koch Brothers Have In Common
Posted: 7/14/11 12:38 PM ET

The Rupert Murdoch NewsCorp scandal is a loud and overdue warning bell about what has long been Murdoch's standard for professional ethics in journalism.

In 2004, I created Outfoxed to expose Rupert Murdoch's war on journalism. Outfoxed examined how media empires, led by Murdoch's Fox News, have long been running a "race to the bottom" in news delivery. The film provides an in-depth look at Fox News and the dangers of ever-enlarging corporations taking control of the public's right to know. Through exploring Murdoch's burgeoning media kingdom, the film examined the negative impact had on society when one person controls a broad swath of media. Clearly, the story didn't end there.

We've moved far beyond only hearing from the canary in the coalmine. As we now see layer upon layer of corruption exposed, the full extent of the story remains unknown. News of the World is shuttered. BSkyB is temporarily no longer in play for full Murdoch takeover. There are questions about how deep and how complicated the corruption spreads. We know that the voicemail of a murdered thirteen-year-old was hacked. We know bribes were paid to police. We know that soldiers killed in action and their families were also targeted for illegal spying. And now US senators have moved to call for a Department of Justice investigation into whether American citizens were additionally targeted; including whether 9-11 victims too had their phones hacked.

As I follow the unfolding story, it reminds me not only of the warning call of Outfoxed, but also of Brave New Foundation's latest project, an expose of the corruption and power of the Koch brothers. The conglomeration of too much power in the hands of ethic-less ideologues is a shared theme. When this happens in the world of journalism, and when this happens in the world of politics, the public inevitably pays the highest price.

A recent segment of Koch Brothers Exposed examined the intricate right-wing echo chamber the brothers fund in order to propagate policy lies into the mainstream debate. Unsurprisingly, Fox News was a key outlet through which they could accomplish this.


Such pooling of power and control has caused our political and journalistic institutions to lose integrity and to move away from the service they should provide to society. At what point do we say enough to such ideological conglomerate control of journalism and democracy? If the rash of stories this week isn't enough for us to seriously reconsider the role of corporate control of our society, I don't know what will be.

The ever-exposed corruption of Murdoch's empire, along with the ever-exposed corruption the Kochs cause our democracy, can no longer run unchecked. With clear eyes we need to examine the power distribution such entities have, and what must be done to bring ethics and standards back into our public sphere. We need to do this now and with the seriousness a fight for the survival of democracy requires.

A Hippocratic Oath for Journalists
July 11, 2011

What do we do about the power of the corporate media? Here’s one answer.

By George Monbiot. Published in the Guardian 12th July 2011

Is Murdoch now finished in the UK? As the pursuit of Gordon Brown by the Sunday Times and the Sun blows the hacking scandal into new corners of the old man’s empire, this story begins to feel like the crumbling of the Berlin Wall. The naked attempt to destroy Brown by any means, including hacking the medical files of his sick baby son, means that there is no obvious limit to the story’s ramifications(1).

The scandal radically changes public perceptions of how politics works, the danger corporate power presents to democracy, and the extent to which it has compromised and corrupted the Metropolitan police, who have now been dragged in so deep they are beginning to look like Murdoch’s private army. It has electrified a dozy parliament and subjected the least accountable and most corrupt profession in Britain – journalism – to belated public scrutiny.

The cracks are appearing in the most unexpected places. Look at the remarkable admission by the rightwing columnist Janet Daley in this week’s Sunday Telegraph. “British political journalism is basically a club to which politicians and journalists both belong,” she wrote. “It is this familiarity, this intimacy, this set of shared assumptions … which is the real corruptor of political life. The self-limiting spectrum of what can and cannot be said … the self-reinforcing cowardice which takes for granted that certain vested interests are too powerful to be worth confronting. All of these things are constant dangers in the political life of any democracy.”(2)

Most national journalists are embedded: immersed in the society, beliefs and culture of the people they are meant to hold to account. They are fascinated by power struggles among the elite but have little interest in the conflict between the elite and those they dominate. They celebrate those with agency and ignore those without. But this is just part of the problem. Daley stopped short of naming the most persuasive force: the interests of the owner and the corporate class to which he belongs. The proprietor appoints editors in his own image, who in turn impress their views on their staff.

Murdoch’s editors, like those who work for the other proprietors, insist that they think and act independently. It’s a lie exposed by the concurrence of their views (did all 247 News Corp editors just happen to support the invasion of Iraq?(3)), and blown out of the water by Andrew Neil’s explosive testimony in 2008 before the Lords select committee on communications(4).

The papers cannot announce that their purpose is to ventriloquise the concerns of multi-millionaires; they must present themselves as the voice of the people. The Sun, the Mail and the Express claim to represent the interests of the working man and woman. These interests turn out to be identical to those of the men who own the papers.

So the right-wing papers run endless exposures of benefit cheats, yet say scarcely a word about the corporate tax cheats. They savage the trade unions and excoriate the BBC. They lambast the regulations that restrain corporate power. They school us in the extrinsic values – the worship of power, money, image and fame – which advertisers love but which make this a shallower, more selfish country. Most of them deceive their readers about the causes of climate change. These are not the obsessions of working people. They are the obsessions thrust upon them by the multimillionaires who own these papers.

The corporate media is a gigantic astroturfing operation: a fake grassroots crusade serving elite interests. In this respect the media companies resemble the Tea Party movement, which claims to be a spontaneous rising of blue-collar Americans against the elite, but was founded with the help of the billionaire Koch brothers and promoted by Murdoch’s Fox News(5).

Journalism’s primary purpose is to hold power to account. This purpose has been perfectly inverted. Columnists and bloggers are employed as the enforcers of corporate power, denouncing people who criticise its interests, bullying the powerless. The press barons allowed governments occasionally to promote the interests of the poor, but never to hamper the interests of the rich. They also sought to discipline the rest of the media. The BBC, over the past 30 years, became a shadow of the gutsy broadcaster it was, and now treats big business with cringing deference. Every morning at 6.15, the Today programme’s business report grants executives the kind of unchallenged access otherwise reserved for God on Thought for the Day. The rest of the programme seeks out controversy and sets up discussions between opponents, but these people are not confronted by their critics.

So what can be done? Because of the peculiar threat they present to democracy, there’s a case to be made for breaking up all majority interests in media companies, and for a board of governors, appointed perhaps by Commons committee, to act as a counterweight to the shareholders’ business interests. But even if that’s a workable idea, it’s a long way off. For now, the best hope might be to mobilise readers to demand that journalists answer to them, not just their proprietors. One means of doing this is to lobby journalists to commit themselves to a kind of Hippocratic Oath. Here’s a rough stab at a first draft. I hope others can improve it. Ideally, I’d like to see the National Union of Journalists encouraging its members to sign.

‘Our primary task is to hold power to account. We will prioritise those stories and issues which expose the interests of power. We will be wary of the relationships we form with the rich and powerful, and ensure that we don’t become embedded in their society. We will not curry favour with politicians, businesses or other dominant groups by withholding scrutiny of their affairs, or twisting a story to suit their interests.

“We will stand up to the interests of the businesses we work for, and the advertisers which fund them. We will never take money for promulgating a particular opinion.

“We will recognise and understand the power we wield and how it originates. We will challenge ourselves and our perception of the world as much as we challenge other people. When we turn out to be wrong, we will say so.”

I accept that this doesn’t directly address the power relations which govern the papers. But it might help journalists to assert a measure of independence, and readers to hold them to it. Just as voters should lobby their MPs to represent them and not just the whips, readers should seek to drag journalists away from the demands of their editors. The oath is one possible tool that could enhance reader power.

If you don’t like it, suggest a better idea. Something has to change: never again should a half a dozen oligarchs be allowed to dominate and corrupt the life of this country.

[Harvey]

Just watched an hour or so of BBC One and these are the memes, themes and quotes that struck me.

Half way into Torchwood, never seen the show before, don't know the characters or the storys too well:

Episode called Miracle Day.

The dead won't die and the few immortals are now mortal.

Complete reversal.


How to escape from total surveillance.

Acess to private phones, addresses. Hacking phones


The secret society, Torchwood agents, are arrested and ‘renditioned.’

BBC program announcement. The Apprentice:

Brassy, show off, young things, brazenly owned by the idea of corporate bitchery are shot down by Allan Sugar, "You're fired!"

Cut to: Another bitch wannabe

Sugar: "You're fired!"

Etc.

Followed by News at Ten:

Obligatory collage of guilty Murdoch & co against Righteous Politicians, all low level figures, untainted...or just un-anointed.

"...theatre..."

"...9/11 victim hack may be untrue."

Then a piece on Syria, uplifting story of daring to rebel against authority, it's a long road...

Then off to Egypt:

"...fed up with regimes... the difference is that this year, they can do something about it."

"...a new beginning for a new era"

"...taking on the deep state might be the most difficult step..."



Aw, shit, I think I just may be too stoned.

[Harvey]

Is it possible this really is a tectonic shift, a high stakes power struggle. If so what really are the stakes?

[gnosticheresy_2]

Is it possible this really is a tectonic shift, a high stakes power struggle. If so what really are the stakes?

If it stays a little local UK difficulty, the power struggle will remain significant but ultimately inconsequential (what a lovely word to type that is!)

If the power struggle spreads to the US in any significant way I think we'll see various opposed factions seek to take advantage of News Corps weakness, trying to dismember its still warm corpse before it hits the floor. So lawsuits, press feeding frenzy against Murdoch etc etc

[Pele'sDaughter]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/ju ... eil-wallis

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 Wallis, a former executive at the News of the World, as 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."

[AhabsOtherLeg]

- Can anyone with computer knowledge less minimal than mine tell me: How easy will it be for NI to delete IRRETRIEVABLY all their journalists' emails from the last year? Is it even technically possible? And surely Microsoft are obliged to keep records for a substantial period of time, especially in the Age of Global Terror?
.

IRRETRIEVABLY? Sandblast/ burn/ run through a very powerful magnet then shred the email servers. All software deletion methods are recoverable to some or all extent afaik

Realistically, no-one without a supercomputer is getting anything off a zeroed hard drive.

There's a company in Germany, called Convar, who can do that sort of work, but there seems to be a clause in their contracts whereby they can't complete the work until Buzzy Krongard and his family are dead down to the fourth generation. Shame that.

If it wasn't for that specific restriction they'd probably come up with the real answers, just like the Chilcot Inquiry would if it wasn't sworn in advance to protect American interests, thereby excluding three-quarters of the evidence it is supposed to be evaluating.

I joke, of course, but not really. And I joke with at least a million corpses in my mouth. Tastes rank. Wonder how Blair copes with it. Judging by his eyeballs these days, a mixture of fanatical sanctimony, clinical self-delusion, and sheer animal panic keeps him going. It might not keep him going much longer. All this is getting to be like the last few chapters of "The Ghost", except it's bigger, wider, and in a way more serious. A lot of hardcore Atlanticists would be able to claim, somehow, that there was nothing wrong with a series of weak Prime Ministers being run from Langley. To have them run from Fleet Street by a bunch of scabby-faced reprobates and revealed morons is a whole different thing. Not that it's a surprise.

Gordon Brown made the best and bravest speech of his career today. Which isn't saying much, really, and he still hasn't found anyone to iron his shirts for him, but it was still something. He looked and sounded like a man. Haven't seen that kind of intelligence in him since the pictures from his old CND and Independence days. Must be the usual "retirement wisdom" surfacing. If only people had it while still in office.