Rupert Murdoch: The Man Who Won't Apologize

Rupert Murdoch showed his arrogant self at the News Corp shareholder's meeting and did not alleviate the fears of some of the stockholders.  If those pension funds were smart they would dump News Corp stock with all that is about to come out from further investigations.

Murdoch was out control at the meeting he chaired as witnessed in this paragraph:

Shortly after the shareholders had begun demanding he step down, he showed his contempt for them by announcing that, debate or not, the voting was now open. To silence a particularly virulent Australian critic, Murdoch peremptorily brought the meeting to an end, only to be advised that he had not followed protocol so must open the meeting again before closing it according to the rules

What this article says in a nutshell is that no one dares to take on Rupert Mudoch and his family because they are always right.  Murdoch may have won this battle, but he may have lost the war.  Next year the stockholders will have more time to get prepared or just pull out of investing in News Corp.  Now we know why he sold 8% to the Saudi Prince so he could maintain control of News Corp.  There is something wrong when you think about a Saudi Prince owing 8% share in a cable news network.  How can Fox News be fair and balanced when one of their stockholders, a Saudi Prince, made sure Murdoch was reelected with his sons to the Board?

How much influence does the Saudi Government have in our Government with our dependence on OPEC and foreign oil.  Is this one reason the establishment is so against Governor Perry because he wants the Country energy independent.  When a Saudi Prince can determine that the Murdoch Family maintains control of News Corp, what else are they doing?  Food for thought on this Saturday morning!

The Man Who Won’t Apologize
Oct 22, 2011 10:35 PM EDT 

If anyone was wondering how conciliatory the News Corp. head would be when he faced the first stockholders meeting since the phone-hacking scandal broke, the answer was not long in coming: not at all.

Rupert Murdoch must have hoped that by closely controlling the News Corp. annual general meeting, the first since the widespread criminal activity by his employees hit the world headlines, he would draw a line under the scandal that has engulfed his company. The meeting was switched to the gloom of the Darryl Zanuck Theater in the locked down Fox movie studio, where security guards inside and out outnumbered the 40 or so shareholders by 10 to one.
But if that was his plan, it soon went awry. No sooner had Murdoch repeated what has become his mantra, “There is no excuse for such unethical behavior,” than Tom Watson, one of the British lawmakers who has called the Murdochs to account, pointed out that the big-screen backdrop behind the board members on the dais did not merely celebrate such notable News Corp. achievements as American Idol. It also sported a London Times front page marking the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton. 

Did the company not realize, asked Watson, that it was the hacking of the royal couple’s intimate voicemails by Murdoch private eyes that had lifted the lid on what was described by one shareholder as the “industrial strength criminality” going on under his nose? Despite the worldwide brouhaha, it seems that no one in News Corp. has been paying much attention to what another shareholder described as “the pervasive and value destroying scandal,” either before it broke or since. 

And so it transpired. Representatives of California pension funds, Christian investors and Australian shareholders took it in turns to demand that Murdoch step down as CEO and chairman and make way for a truly independent figure who would improve the ethics of the company. Even before the debate began, Murdoch told the meeting he would be voting against the motion, and as his friend Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal would be joining him, the motion would be defeated, so there was no need for discussion. 

For all the solemn declarations of remorse, Murdoch appears to have no intention of living up to his belief that when it comes to newspapers, “The buck stops with the owner, whether the presses break down, whether there are libels in the papers, or anything else.” 

To deflect attention from Murdoch’s son James, who stands accused of perjuring himself before the British Parliament and who must return to be quizzed again next month, he and his brother Lachlan, exiled to Australia, sat in the front row of the theater in an area cordoned off by velvet ropes and policed by guards. Neither James Murdoch, nor the deputy chairman Drew Carey, whom many News investors hope will succeed the old man before long, found it in themselves to say a word to shareholders. 

But it was the strange behavior of Rupert Murdoch himself that attracted attention. Before opening the meeting he recited from a script his regret that the scandal had broken without quite apologizing for what had been done in his name or accepting responsibility for the ethos in his company that led so many to believe he would approve of such activity. No sooner had he formally opened the meeting, however, than it became clear he was not chairing it unaided. To his left, in the gloaming, was a man staring straight at the crowd like a secret serviceman looking for assassins. Before long it was this shadowy figure who was not only telling shareholders their time was up but, in one extraordinary outburst, telling “Rupert,” as he called him, to stop talking. 

Whether it is because he has enjoyed total control over News Corp. for so long that he has forgotten, or whether he has simply lost the ability to chair a formal meeting, Murdoch made error after error in trying to keep the meeting from sliding into chaos. At times he added to it himself, announcing after a barely whispered prompt and long after debate had begun the conditions on which he would allow the floor to ask questions. 

An event that might have put at ease some of the nagging doubts about whether Murdoch had really learned the hard lessons of the last year and was up to reforming morality in the battered company has only delayed the reckoning. 

(snip)

So an event that might have put at ease some of the nagging doubts about whether Murdoch had really learned the hard lessons of the last year and was up to reforming morality in the battered company has only delayed the reckoning. By next year’s annual general meeting, the federal investigation into whether his employees broke American law will be well advanced, as will the lawsuit claiming News Corp. overpaid for his daughter Elizabeth’s film company Shine. 

Meanwhile, as Watson warned the meeting, a second wave of civil suits in England will soon erupt from News Corp. employing a convicted felon to hack personal computers. There are also civil suits in Britain arising from the hacking of the phones in 2002 of two murdered 10-year-old girls; the parents of murdered schoolgirl Miller Dowler cost $3.2 million to settle. The key question, however, remains whether 12 months from now Rupert Murdoch will still be at the helm at 1211 Avenue of the Americas. 

Excerpt:  Read More at The Daily Beast 

                                   

News Corp Hacked Ad Company in 2003

Move on -- nothing to see here or that is what Fox News would like us to do.  After the Fox News debacle of a debate in Florida dubbed the Roger (Ailes) Reality Show there is nothing I wouldn't put past Roger Ailes and Fox News today or in the past that is underhanded that I wouldn't put past Ailes and Fox News.

Fox News switched polling companies this spring to a more liberal leaning pollster which now makes their polls as worthless as their debate hosting.

How many small business' has News Corp put out of business due to their tactics over the years.  We have a hunch that Floorgraphics is the tip of the iceberg.

News Corp. Hacked Ad Company 

It’s not just News Corp.’s tabloids that allegedly used hacking to get what they want. In 2003 News Corp.’s News America Marketing division hacked into the computers of Floorgraphics, its competitor in the market for floor-based advertising. In its ultimately successful attempt to break into the floor-billboard market, News Corp. hired a disgruntled former Floorgraphics employee to orchestrate the company’s efforts, which included hacking into Floorgraphics’ computers and viewing its future ad campaigns. When Floorgraphics sued News America, the company admitted to the hacking, but said it had been unable to locate who was responsible. 

The FBI and U.S. Attorney’s Office are now taking a new look at the Floorgraphics case. 

Read it at New York Magazine

September 29, 2011 12:46 PM            

Hacking Testimony of James Murdoch is Disputed

We were hard on the Wall Street Journal several days ago when they did their attack piece on other news agencies while defending News Corp which we thought was over the top and not something we would have expected out of the Wall Street Journal.  Today we are extremely happy to report the Journal is back on track with this in-depth report.  On their site they have background information that goes with this article including the connections that have not been included in other stories on the scandal.

Makes you wonder if the former owners speaking out have made a difference at The Journal since they are not the least bit happy with Murdoch.  With this latest revelation, seems that the most logical conclusion to save News Corp would be to have the Murdoch's hand over control.  This is only going to get worse as more keeps coming out.  Personally would like to see The Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones sold so the Journal can go back to being the business paper everyone wants to read in the morning before starting the work day.

The reporters at the WSJ have done an excellent job with this article and it starts to gain credibility bacl.

Hacking Testimony Is Disputed

By CASSELL BRYAN-LOW, PAUL SONNE and STEVE STECKLOW  

July 22, 2011 

Two former executives broke ranks with News Corp. for the first time on Thursday over whether James Murdoch knew in 2008 that the phone-hacking scandal at the company's now-defunct U.K. tabloid likely involved more than just one rogue reporter, as the company had long maintained. 

The rupture in the ranks comes as News Corp. is under pressure over a key piece of its defense against phone-hacking allegations: a 2007 internal investigation by an outside law firm. That inquiry appears to have been less rigorous than company executives have said. 

On Thursday, Colin Myler, former editor of the News of the World tabloid, and Tom Crone, a former lawyer for the paper, said in a joint statement that in 2008 they informed Mr. Murdoch, now News Corp.'s deputy chief operating officer, about a crucial email suggesting that phone hacking went beyond one reporter. Mr. Murdoch on Tuesday said before a parliamentary committee in the U.K. that he had never been made aware of the email—even though he had approved a roughly £700,000 settlement ($1.1 million) in the matter.

In a statement, Mr. Murdoch said, "I stand by my testimony." The settlement was one of his first major decisions after becoming head of News Corp.'s Europe and Asia operations in 2007. He didn't work at News Corp. at the time of the alleged hacking.

The two executives' statement amounts to an unusual public rebuke by long-serving allies of News Corp. Chairman and Chief Executive Rupert Murdoch, who is the father of James. Mr. Myler edited the New York Post before returning to the U.K. to run the News of the World in 2007. Mr. Crone had made his name defending the company's racy tabloids in court. 

Separately, the Justice Department is preparing subpoenas as part of preliminary investigations into News Corp. relating to alleged foreign bribery and alleged hacking of voice mail of Sept. 11 victims, according to a government official. While the company has sought to isolate the legal problems in the U.K., it has been bracing for increased scrutiny from both the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission, according to people familiar with the company's strategy. Final approval to issue the subpoenas hasn't yet happened, the official said.
A person close to News Corp. said the preparation of subpoenas is "a fishing expedition with no evidence to support it." 

Meantime, News Corp. and its former U.K. law firm are increasingly at odds. 

As recently as last week, in an interview with The Wall Street Journal, News Corp. founder Rupert Murdoch said the company had hired "the best lawyers in London" to investigate the hacking claims in 2007, providing them with "thousands of documents." Mr. Murdoch said Harbottle & Lewis LLP was hired "to inquire into the whole situation" and that "it was their major mistake in reporting that there was nothing further to worry about." 

However, the law firm's inquiry was limited—not a full-blown investigation but rather a narrow inquiry related to an employment dispute—according to public evidence submitted to parliament and people familiar with the matter. It was based on a review of at least 300 emails forwarded to the law firm by two executives at News International, the media company's U.K. newspaper unit, according to the parliamentary committee evidence. The law firm's remit was limited to whether or not five staffers at the News of the World tabloid knew about one reporter's illegal hacking activities or had engaged in similar activities, according to evidence submitted by News International to a parliament committee.

Furthermore, the batch of emails also contained evidence of police bribery, according to a lawyer recently hired by News Corp. to review some of them. The indications of bribery weren't reported to the police until last month, according to News Corp.; it isn't clear why. The recently hired lawyer, a former U.K. prosecutor and current News Corp. adviser, Ken MacDonald, on Tuesday told a parliamentary committee that the nine or 10 emails he reviewed contained "blindingly obvious" evidence of bribes. 

Lord MacDonald and other legal specialists said British lawyers generally don't have a duty to report crimes to authorities because advice to clients is privileged. But lawyers said it would be typical to alert a client if evidence of serious wrongdoing were found.  

Excerpt:  Read more at The Wall Street Journal and follow the web of connections that the WSJ  has laid out for readers.

News Corp's Wall Street Journal Defends Murdoch and News Corp

Starting with the first paragraph that the Wall Street Journal rank and file welcomed the new owner left me going, 'are you kidding me' because that is not how most people remember what happened.  The Wall Street Journal who was the premier business newspaper now has 12% business news on the front page as Murdoch bought the paper to take on the New York Times.  We covered this in an earlier blog post last week.

The last paragraph of the article should have been the first one if they hope to gain any credibility back for Murdoch and News Corp:

Phone-hacking is deplorable, and we assume the guilty will be prosecuted. More fundamentally, the News of the World's offense—fatal, as it turned out—was to violate the trust of its readers by not coming about its news honestly. We realize how precious that reader trust is, and our obligation is to re-earn it every day.

This scandal that this Wall Street Journal editorial talks about misses this:

A rival newspaper reported last week that the company's News of the World had hacked into the phone of U.K. teenage murder victim Milly Dowler, 13, in 2002 and may have impeded a police investigation into her disappearance. 

More possible victims soon emerged - other child murder victims, 2005 London bombing victims, the families of dead soldiers and former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

and then we learn this:

 Earlier this week a former New York policeman now working as a private investigator alleged he was contacted by News of the World journalists wanting 9/11 victims' phone numbers and details of the calls they had made and received in the days leading up to the attack.

A source said: 'This investigator is used by a lot of journalists in America and he recently told me that he was asked to hack into the 9/11 victims' private phone data. 

'He said that the journalists asked him to access records showing the calls that had been made to and from the mobile phones belonging to the victims and their relatives. 

'His presumption was that they wanted the information so they could hack into the relevant voicemails, just like it has been shown they have done in the UK. 

'The PI said he had to turn the job down. He knew how insensitive such research would be, and how bad it would look. 

'The investigator said the journalists seemed particularly interested getting the phone records belonging to the British victims of the attacks.'

and then we find out what the former owners have to say:

FORMER WSJ OWNERS: 'We wouldn't have sold Journal to Murdoch if we'd known'

Members of the family which used to control the Wall Street Journal have said they would not have voted to sell the newspaper to Rupert Murdoch if they had realised the full extent of News International's phone-hacking scandal. 

Murdoch bought the newspaper in August 2007, six months after the News of the World's royal editor, Clive Goodman, was jailed for voicemail hacking - but at the time News International said the practice was confined only to Goodman. 

Today Christopher Bancroft, part of the family that used to control Dow Jones and Company, the Journal's publishers, said: 'If I had known what I know now, I would have pushed harder against [the bid].' 

Mr Bancroft, who at the time had sole voting control over a trust which represented 13
per cent of Dow Jones shares, said he would have 'held out' if he'd known.

Read more from the previous owners at The Daily Mail 

With all of this, someone wrote an editorial basically going after anyone who dares to go after News Corp and talking old news.  Bad timing is all I can say and maybe some of the media might want to take back their comments the Wall Street Journal has done a good job of covering this scandal.

Who did write this editorial from the Wall Street Journal?

July 18, 2011 

News and Its Critics
A tabloid's excesses don't tarnish thousands of other journalists. 

When News Corp. and CEO Rupert Murdoch secured enough shares to buy Dow Jones & Co. four years ago, these columns welcomed our new owner and promised to stand by the same standards and principles we always had. That promise is worth repeating now that politicians and our competitors are using the phone-hacking years ago at a British corner of News Corp. to assail the Journal, and perhaps injure press freedom in general. 

*** 

At least three British investigations into phone-hacking and payments to police and others by the now-shuttered News of the World tabloid are underway, with 10 arrests so far. News Corp. and its executives have apologized profusely and are cooperating with authorities. Phone-hacking is illegal, and it is up to British authorities to enforce their laws. If Scotland Yard failed to do so adequately when the hacking was first uncovered several years ago, then that is more troubling than the hacking itself. 

It is also worth noting the irony of so much moral outrage devoted to a single media company, when British tabloids have been known for decades for buying scoops and digging up dirt on the famous. Fleet Street in general has long had a well-earned global reputation for the blind-quote, single-sourced story that may or may not be true. The understandable outrage in this case stems from the hacking of a noncelebrity, the murder victim Milly Dowler. 

The British politicians now bemoaning media influence over politics are also the same statesmen who have long coveted media support. The idea that the BBC and the Guardian newspaper aren't attempting to influence public affairs, and don't skew their coverage to do so, can't stand a day's scrutiny. The overnight turn toward righteous independence recalls an eternal truth: Never trust a politician. 

Which brings us to Friday's resignation of our publisher and CEO, Les Hinton, who ran News Corp.'s British newspaper unit during the time of the alleged hacking. In his resignation letter, Mr. Hinton said he knew nothing about wide-scale hacking and had testified truthfully to Parliament in 2007 and 2009. We have no reason to doubt him, especially based on our own experience working for him. 

In nearly four years at the Journal, Mr. Hinton managed the paper's return to profitability amid a terrible business climate. He did so not solely by cost-cutting but by investing in journalists when other publications were laying off hundreds. On ethical questions, his judgment was as sound as that of any editor we've had.

In the specific case of Singapore, he allowed the company to defend one of our journalists against a defamation claim through the appellate stage, despite the historically faint prospect of success. This is more than can be said for other British and American publications. In doing so, Mr. Hinton forced the Singapore judiciary to address significant changes in the law protecting honest journalism elsewhere in the former British commonwealth that the judges could have otherwise ignored. 

Our readers can decide if we are a better publication than we were four years ago, but there is no denying that News Corp. has invested in the product. The news hole is larger. Our foreign coverage in particular is more robust, our weekend edition more substantial, and our expansion into digital delivery ahead of the pack. The measure that really matters is the market's, and on that score Mr. Hinton was at the helm when we again became America's largest daily. 

We also trust that readers can see through the commercial and ideological motives of our competitor-critics. The Schadenfreude is so thick you can't cut it with a chainsaw. Especially redolent are lectures about journalistic standards from publications that give Julian Assange and WikiLeaks their moral imprimatur. They want their readers to believe, based on no evidence, that the tabloid excesses of one publication somehow tarnish thousands of other News Corp. journalists across the world. 

The prize for righteous hindsight goes to the online publication ProPublica for recording the well-fed regrets of the Bancroft family that sold Dow Jones to News Corp. at a 67% market premium in 2007. The Bancrofts were admirable owners in many ways, but at the end of their ownership their appetite for dividends meant that little cash remained to invest in journalism. We shudder to think what the Journal would look like today without the sale to News Corp. 

In braying for politicians to take down Mr. Murdoch and News Corp., our media colleagues might also stop to ask about possible precedents. The political mob has been quick to call for a criminal probe into whether News Corp. executives violated the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act with payments to British security or government officials in return for information used in news stories. Attorney General Eric Holder quickly obliged last week, without so much as a fare-thee-well to the First Amendment. 

The foreign-bribery law has historically been enforced against companies attempting to obtain or retain government business. But U.S. officials have been attempting to extend their enforcement to include any payments that have nothing to do with foreign government procurement. This includes a case against a company that paid Haitian customs officials to let its goods pass through its notoriously inefficient docks, and the drug company Schering-Plough for contributions to a charitable foundation in Poland. 

Applying this standard to British tabloids could turn payments made as part of traditional news-gathering into criminal acts. The Wall Street Journal doesn't pay sources for information, but the practice is common elsewhere in the press, including in the U.S. 

The last time the liberal press demanded a media prosecutor, it was to probe the late conservative columnist Robert Novak in pursuit of White House aide Scooter Libby. But the effort soon engulfed a reporter for the New York Times, which had led the posse to hang Novak and his sources. Do our media brethren really want to invite Congress and prosecutors to regulate how journalists gather the news? 

*** 

Phone-hacking is deplorable, and we assume the guilty will be prosecuted. More fundamentally, the News of the World's offense—fatal, as it turned out—was to violate the trust of its readers by not coming about its news honestly. We realize how precious that reader trust is, and our obligation is to re-earn it every day. 

Source:  Wall Street Journal

What I find astounding about this opinion piece is that it goes on the attack I have a hard time believing.  The Wall Street Journal has had their own problems in the past as Murdoch has molded them into more of a Fox News light then a business journal.  In doing research this morning ran into something I find unethical on the part of a board member of the Wall Street Journal and have to wonder if he is behind this puff piece for Murdoch.   Something about a member of the Board, Stephen Moore, getting involved with the Koch Brothers and their Americans for Prosperity group and agenda, is not right.  He has spoken all over the country and been paid to push their agenda but yet sits on the board of The Wall Street Journal. 

People on the right will say in defense of Moore that people on the left at the NY Times do the same.  This time they are most likely wrong as members of the board of the NY Times do not do paid speeches to push an agenda of a specific group -- they just write very liberal editorials and allow opinions in some of their news articles or use press releases for articles which is also not very ethical.  

If they do have board members pushing agenda in paid speeches, then someone needs to send us the info because we cannot find anything.  We can only find their denial which is believable.  Their editorial board may be very liberal but editorials are always someone's opinion who I can agree with or reject.  When the media becomes part of the story that is wrong.  There are way too many people who confuse the editorial pages with the front page including some reporters who put their opinions in news articles.  

Could the media do a better job of reporting?  Absolutely by giving us facts not reporting spin they have been given by talking point papers.  I don't care if you are right or left if you give me the facts and can make my own determination.  

In recent months, I have started to read the LA Times once again for their news stories because I know I am getting the facts as they check out time and time again.  Yet there are some conservatives who continue to trash them and don't bother to read their articles.  I know their editorial pages are mostly liberal but that doesn't bother me as long as their articles are factual.  Having lived in Southern California and taken the LA Times while we were there, I have enjoyed reading some of their articles once again like the one about gridlock which didn't happen with the I-405 being shut for the weekend.

Murdoch destroyed the reputation of The Wall Street Journal as the business paper everyone needed to read by wanting to use it to take down the NY Times.  With this editorial, the editors are out to destroy their credibility as well by defending Murdoch.  Now they whine others are out to get News Corp.  Excuse me but the day Murdoch bought the Journal to take on the NY Times, is the day he deserves to get everything that is thrown at him.  After what he did to the papers in San Antonio, I have no respect for Murdoch and no sham editorial is going to change that fact.  

As a former reader of The Wall Street Journal, I can answer it is not a better business paper than before Murdoch took over the paper.  It still cannot compete with the NY Times and now with knowing that a member of their board is going around the Country for the Koch Brothers and Americans for Prosperity, I even question what I read more.

The calls for the FBI investigation is bi-partisan and I think necessary to determine if News Corp reporters tried the same thing with the 9-11 tragedy or other events that have been alleged by a former New York City policeman now turned investigator.

When our local cable company did not have Fox News, I became a pest along with some others to get them on our cable system.  With a few exceptions, Bret Baier's news show, I watch very little of Fox News and regret at times like during the Gulf War after they hired Geraldo that I had any part in getting them on our cable system.

The Board of News Corps needs to clean house because frankly right now their credibility has been badly damaged.  Since we have MSNBC who leans very left, and CNN who tries to be down the middle but leans left, we need a news network that reports the news not becomes the news like Fox News did in the Tea Party movement along with Americans for Prosperity the arm of the Koch Brothers which they failed to report of if they did it was buried.

What was the real reason that Glenn Beck and Fox News separated?  Don't think we have the full story yet.

Fox News breaking news is a joke in most instances and why a lot of people turn to CNN.  The American people deserve a down the middle news channel that isn't right or left but deals with the facts not hysteria like CNN Headline News today.

Isn't there some honest billionaire out there that wants to do a real cable news program not fluff and hire reporters they know are going to give facts not spin?  First two people hired should be Jake Tapper of ABC News and Chip Reid of CBS News -- start it out with two of the most honest reporters at the White House and you have the start of a real news channel!

Wall Street Journal Covers Parent Company, News Corp, and Murdoch 's Scandal with Facts

Since Murdoch and his News Corp was allowed to buy The Wall Street Journal (WSJ), their coverage of corporate  news has been sinking into more general news and less in-depth business articles we had come to expect on the front page.  Then we learn the facts from The Daily Beast that since 2007 only 12% of articles on The Wall Street Journal front page were about corporations.  The first question that pops in your mind is WHY?

 "Did Murdoch Costs The Wall Street Journal the Scoop on the Goldman-Sachs/SEC Story?"  According to the linked Daily Finance article it did.  Turns out that Murdoch bought the WSJ to compete with the New York Times for local news and politics which ended up bitting the WSJ on this story when the New York Times broke the full story and 20 minutes later the Journal went with a bare bones story.

Why would Murdoch have WSJ sit on the story?  Was Murdoch's purchase of the WSJ meant to help Obama when he took office with Murdoch's switch of the WSJ to more political news and less business news?  With only 12% front page stories being about corporate America, it left a big hole for those stories how corporate America was affected by the Obama Administration.  That may be a reach but in hindsight, that looks to be a possibility.   Makes sense with the bad economy that Murdoch, who supported Obama, would make the Journal into more of a regular newspaper ignoring what was happening in corporate America for the most part.

Murdoch's support of Obama was largely ignored by the loyal supporters of Fox News who turned even more on McCain.  If Fox News told them to jump off the Brooklyn Bridge, some of them would probably do just that.




There you have it -- Murdoch supporting Obama and the Wall Street Journal goes more mainstream news and less corporate.  Connect the dots.

Why have most of the conservative pundits from the beginning been ignoring this huge story out of London on News Corps which has now reached inside the United States with the FBI investigation opened?  This should be big news to everyone.  It made our local papers and the broadcast news.

Murdoch Scandal Roils WSJ

Faced with sleazy corporate cousins, reporters at the august Wall Street Journal are grappling with how to cover their boss’s scandal—and their own survival 

By Nick Summers
Jul 14, 2011 10:24 PM EDT

On Tuesday, July 5, bureau chiefs and editors at The Wall Street Journal dialed into a conference call organized by Dennis Berman, the newspaper’s new editor in charge of corporate coverage. He trotted out some numbers: of the more than 1,200 front-page stories the Journal had run in the previous year, only 12 percent had been about corporations—formerly the paper’s bread and butter. 

Since its 2007 sale to Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., the Journal had been steadily devolving, old-timers thought, into a general-interest daily—still a fine newspaper, but no longer the essential first read of corporate America. “We have to raise our ambitions,” Berman said, according to someone who listened to the call. And it wasn’t hard to believe that the Journal would. A week earlier, it had won three Gerald Loeb Awards, the highest honors in business journalism, after being shut out in 2010 for the first time in decades. 

At that moment, though, a long-simmering story in the British press was exploding, dictating that the next major corporation the Journal would be covering would be its own parent.
The bombshell admission by the News Corp.-owned tabloid News of the World that its reporters had hacked the voicemail of a murdered teen, giving her parents false hope that she might still be alive, has made the Murdoch company one of the most reviled on the planet, as more allegations of unethical practices at its various properties have surfaced. News Corp.’s hasty decisions to shutter the tabloid, as well as scuttle a $12 billion bid for complete ownership of a lucrative British satellite broadcasting company, have done little to stanch the outcry. In the sprawling story’s latest developments, the FBI opened an investigation into whether News Corp. outlets violated the privacy of 9/11 terror victims in America; Murdoch himself consented to testify before Britain’s Parliament; and Rebekah Brooks, the CEO of his U.K. newspapers, resigned. 

In the last week and a half, reporters and editors at the august Journal have had to come to terms with the fact that they share corporate DNA with publications that have paid police for news, paid large settlements to keep phone-hacking victims quiet, and provided Parliament with incomplete information, among other sins against journalism. The Journal's publisher, Les Hinton, has been widely discussed as a possible fall guy for their malfeasance. For the Journal, covering it all has been an awkward and frustrating challenge. 

“It stinks. It makes our stomachs churn, to be bizarrely held accountable for some dipshit tabloid guys from eight years ago. It’s absurd,” said a staffer who has been at the Journal since before Murdoch bought the paper. Another reporter, also speaking anonymously, described an end to the era of pretending away the Murdoch taint: “This slightly naïve notion that nobody really knows that we’re part of News Corp., that what they do, what Fox News does, what Rupert Murdoch does, doesn’t affect us—when something like this happens, it forces people to recognize that it does.” 

In covering the story, the Journal has walked a fine line. After running articles on page B1 and B3 on its first two days, the News of the World closure made the front page last Friday. The story was then relegated back inside—although Journal reporters Jessica Vascellaro and Russell Adams broke news Wednesday with a report that News Corp. was contemplating the sale of its remaining British newspapers. As the scandal has continued to explode anew each day, the Journal has, indeed, upped its game. Murdoch’s decision to revoke his bid for British Sky Broadcasting was fronted again Wednesday, and yesterday, the paper published the first extensive interview with Murdoch. 

It hasn’t been an entirely smooth process, especially because Journal staffers are acutely aware of who among their ranks might be termed “AM” and “PM”: after Murdoch and pre-Murdoch. Gossip flows freely in a newsroom, and spreading through the Journal grapevine now is the tale of a contentious moment last week between No. 2 editor Gerard Baker—a Murdoch hire—and Bruce Orwall, a longtime bureau chief now in London. During a conference call to plan stories, the journalists were discussing Rebekah Brooks, the News of the World editor at the time of the hacking of the teen murder victim’s phone. Baker, murmuring a word of support for the vilified Brooks, noted that she had been on vacation when the offense occurred. Orwall shot back quickly: “The last I checked, cell phones still work in Italy.” Orwall declined to comment; Baker, through a spokesperson, did the same. Journal Editor-in-Chief Robert Thomson also declined to comment. 

The Journal's competitors say the paper is performing admirably, under the circumstances. “We all know how tricky it is to cover your own company. I think the Journal has played it pretty much down the middle,” Bill Keller, the executive editor of The New York Times, emailed The Daily Beast. One Times reporter, who did not wish to be named discussing a competitor, agreed. “I think they’re doing the most they can with a very unpleasant and uncomfortable situation. No one ever wants to write about their boss,” he said. “And when you do, there’s always a degree of self-editing that goes on. Knowing that, it’s pretty impressive how they have been very tough on Murdoch and News Corp. at times.” 

Excerpt:  Read More at The Daily Beast

First time we heard of Rupert Murdoch was when we lived in the San Antonio area and he bought the San Antonio Light which was a very good newspaper -- lot of military news and facts.  The San Antonio Express at that time was more fluff.  Murdoch then got approval behind closed doors to buy the Express News promising the Light employees there would be little change.  That was one big fat lie.  Next thing we know we are down to one paper as he merged the papers and the Light employees were in the unemployment line.  Why was he allowed to buy the Express News to put the Light out of business is a question that was never answered.

Now in NYC he owns the cable Fox News, The New York Post, and now The Wall Street Journal.  The question remains of why he was allowed to buy different venues in the same city.  His aim is to put The New York Times out of business using The Wall Street Journal is failing miserably.  Journal reporters are not too happy being part of News Corp either.

If I don't like what a newspaper has to say, I don't read it and certainly will not buy it. There is Freedom of the Press along with my right to not read a particular paper if I don't agree with them.  The very idea that Murdoch bought the WSJ to put the NY Times out of business goes against everything I believe.  Don't want one sided news and that is what Murdoch seems to be after.  How long would it take him if he could buy the NY Times to merge the WSJ and lay off Journal employees in favor of the Times?  He has a track record that is not good.  Conservatives who buy into Murdoch are setting themselves up for an eventual fall because he is not conservative.  No conservative would hire Geraldo.

Very black eye for News Corp but since it is Rupert Murdoch, I am shedding no tears and consider it the beginning of payback for the San Antonio Light employees and their readers.