Non Fiction

First Review of Fall of the House of Murdoch

pdjukes@gmail.comv15 (Peter Jukes) — Tue, 31 Jul 2012 00:00:00 +0000

WHEN Peter Jukes let it be known last year that he was writing a book called The Fall of the House of Murdoch, a senior Sun editor emailed him to say: "Is this a joke?"

But with Rebekah Brooks and Andy Coulson both now facing charges over phone-hacking, and Rupert Murdoch slowly stepping back from his British newspaper holdings, it looks like a prescient title.

The old adage – "Never pick a fight with someone who buys ink by the barrel" – no longer fits. Much ink has been expended on the Australia media baron, from Michael Wolff's acidic biography to Tom Watson's plodding account of the phone-hacking scandal. The Fall of the House of Murdoch is refreshing as it examines the ideas that have driven the modern western world to its current crisis.

Referencing widely, from Adam Smith and George Orwell to the author's mentor, historian Tony Judt, Jukes argues that Murdoch managed to elide two seemingly uncontroversial ideas, those of freedom of the markets and freedom of the press, to toxic effect.

The early signs of his freedom-loving spirit were there in 1969. Just after buying the News of the World, Murdoch printed the diaries of Christine Keeler, the call girl at the centre of the Profumo scandal. It marked out Murdoch as an outsider, happy to push the boundaries, in this case to embarrass the Establishment. With the British elite on the wane by the Eighties, he found another closed shop to take on the print unions – and so became a standard bearer for the neo-liberal agenda of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan and, as his international holdings grew, a poster-boy for Tony Blair's globalisation project.

In an ambitious argument, it is suggested that Murdoch's brand of news even mirrored the expansion of the financial sector. Stories about politicians and celebrities were akin to derivative markets in which futures could be ramped or dumped for one's own ends, as John Major s government and stars such as Charlotte Church found to their cost, and David Cameron perhaps to his benefit. (What's a little phone-hacking and horse-riding to achieve these goals compared with Libor manipulation?)

Capitalism was indulged up until the 2007-8 financial crisis. Murdoch-style journalism took a bit longer to break because, as Jukes puts it neatly, "News International is not only too big to fail but also, with its government connections, too big to jail".

Many an economic liberal still admires Murdoch's business style, but this is part of the ideological mist. While he presents himself as a free marketeer, Murdoch's newspaper and television interests in Britain and Australia have verged on monopolies. And despite his republican stance, Murdoch runs News Corporation as a dynasty, with three children, Lachlan, James and Elisabeth, all at one time groomed as potential successors.

The Fall of the House of Murdoch was written in haste to catch the tail-end of the Leveson Inquiry and, as a result, is a little unpolished. Yet it is an impressive treatise on how media, money and power in the past 30 years became so locked into mutually supporting agendas that they failed to interrogate each other. If that's not enough, it is worth reading just for Jukes's account of Rebekah Brooks's flirtation with him at a party in 2006

Scotsman 11th August

26 Jul 2012
London Evening Standard (West End Final B)
JOY LO DICO

A Year On: How Milly Dowler Shook the World, and Ended a Media Dynasty: FOTHOM XLIV

pdjukes@gmail.comv15 (Peter Jukes) — Thu, 05 Jul 2012 00:00:00 +0000

It's hard to believe, but at 4pm BST today it will be exactly a year since Nick Davies and Amelia Hill published online a leak from Operation Weeting, the newly recreated (third) investigation into phone hacking, and revealed that the News of the World had hacked the phone of a missing 13 year old schoolgirl, who was found dead six months later, murdered by Levi Bellfield.

That headline changed the political scene here in the UK. Within days the News of the World had closed, and New Corp were forced to withdraw their takeover bid for Britain's most lucrative broadcaster, BSkyB. Within two weeks James and Rupert Murdoch were summoned to appear before a Parliamentary select committee, and David Cameron was forced to set up the Leveson Inquiry.

Over the next year, the hacking scandal expanding to a corruption and bribery scandal at the News of the World's sister paper, the best selling Sun. Over 50 people have now been arrested. An internal News Corp inquiry, the MSC - set up under pressure from the FBI, SEC and DOJ - has now handed over thousands of emails suggesting bribery of public officials. The scandal expanded to include allegations of TV piracy at News Corp's pay-TV encryption services in Australia, the UK, Italy and the US.

But more than anything, for the UK, the Leveson Inquiry has shone a light into the dark corners of the political media class, and revealed such extensive back door lobbying between the Murdochs and the last five prime ministers, that it was almost like discovering a state within a state. And of course, with Rebekah Brooks, Andy Coulson and James Murdoch meeting virtually every day with David Cameron, George Osborne and Jeremy Hunt, the convergence over the last few years has been almost seamless. As a senior News International journalist expressed it to me:

The Court of Cameron and the Court of Murdoch have become almost totally enmeshed.

This last year has been an amazing journey for our country, and for me personally, as I became inextricably caught up in the coverage of the affair. My book, which explores those 14 days in July which ended a media dynasty - and the 50 years leading up to it - is in the final stages and due for publication at the end of the month.

Below I might share some of the book, particularly the reality of the Milly Dowler story, but mainly this diary is to share YOUR memories, to hear your thoughts about this momentous year

This is from an unedited, unproofed section of Chapter One; The Fall of the House of Murdoch

Accessing mobile voicemail messages without permission has been illegal in the UK since the Computer Misuse Act 1990, which carries a two-year prison sentence as a maximum penalty and has no ‘public interest’ defence. However, throughout the early nineties when mobile phones became ubiquitous, several newspaper scoops were derived from some kind of interception and recording of analogue phone signals. The two most famous are a six-minute bedtime ‘Tampon’ conversation between Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles on a mobile phone (recorded December 18 1989 and published by the Sunday Mirror and the Sunday People in 1993) and the Squidgygate tape of a private conversation between Princess Diana and a close friend (published by the Sun in 1992).
In 2000 the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) made intercepting a message while ‘in the course of transmission’ illegal. Around this time mobile telephony shifted from analogue to digital and intercepting encrypted signals required expensive technology, generally only available to the security services. However, a back door was left open: voicemails could be accessed remotely through a pin number. Much like the default admin passwords left on computers in the eighties, these pins were often left unchanged from their defaults. One of the first to discover this loophole was Steve Nott who alerted various newspapers to the security breach. As he claimed under oath to the Leveson Inquiry, the newspapers decided to use the security breach for ‘their own purposes’ rather than publish the story. Even phone users who changed their pin codes were still vulnerable to simple password attacks, with data such as dates of birth culled from other sources. If that failed, a bit of social engineering could solve the problem; dedicated investigators could ring the mobile phone service provider, either pretending to be the customer or an employee, and get the pin code set to default.

On the evening of 21 March 2002 after their thirteen-year-old daughter Milly failed to return from school, Bob and Sally Dowler rang the police. Within twenty-four hours a nationwide search for Milly was launched, and soon videos and photos of the missing teenager were broadcast on prime-time television. The News of the World which, under the editorship of Rebekah Brooks and her deputy editor Andy Coulson, had built a reputation for covering child murders, began a furious campaign.

Three weeks after Milly’s disappearance, in the first edition of NoW on Sunday April 14th, a major story by-lined by Robert Kellaway, has some interesting details.

To any casual reader the details of the messages, not only their content, timing and more importantly the tone of the callers, indicate that these have been listened to by the journalist. It’s not even concealed. There’s no suggestion of a police source. The News of the World, arrogating command of the investigation and trying to sell up a scoop, seems to know more about Milly than the police.

We now know that Milly was already dead, murdered by Levi Bellfield and dumped in Hampshire woodland where her body would not be found for two years.

We also know now that senior editors of the News of the World were at that time ‘110 per cent’ convinced they knew where Milly was on the basis of hacking her voicemail. One of these was a message from a ‘recruitment caller’ offering a job and (according to the Wall Street Journal) the Sunday paper had sent out eight reporters and photographers to stake out an ink-cartridge factory in Epson for three days. When Milly failed to turn up, and investigations proved that Milly wasn’t even on the factory’s books, the News of the World – stumped for any story – came up with a new scandal: that some hoax caller had rung the factory impersonating a recruitment agency.

Later editions of the News of the World changed the original story, removing some of the more incriminating detail, adding some minimal fact checking. The recruitment company wasn’t a hoax caller, they’d just come up with the wrong number for a client seeking work. But still the tabloid persisted in churning the non-story into a lurid smear: someone mentally disturbed had now called the recruitment agent impersonating Milly.

The hunt for missing Milly Dowler took a shocking twist last night when it emerged a deranged woman has been posing as the missing youngster.

Police believe the sick hoaxer called into a recruitment agency pretending to be Milly.

Staff at the Midlands bureau failed to recognise the name as that of the missing girl and took the woman on their books.

It is thought the hoaxer even gave the agency Milly's real mobile phone number. Police believe she may have got it by gaining the trust of people who knew the schoolgirl.

The agency used the number to contact Milly, real name Amanda, when a job vacancy arose and left a message on her voicemail AFTER the 13-year-old vanished at 4pm on March 21.

It was on March 27, six days after Milly went missing in Walton-on-Thames, Surrey that the employment agency appears to have phoned her mobile.

News is a rough draft of history and a breaking story is like a series of jotted notes, but this scribbled nonsense covers old errors with new: the paper had missed the simple explanation of a wrong number call. A police investigation of this would have quickly discounted the red herring. But the News of the World wanted its sensational exclusive and didn’t want to divulge its illegal source, so clumsily tried to cover its tracks. It would continue to pepper its pages with useless speculation for the next two weeks. When their persistent interference with a missing person investigation failed, and they were eventually ignored by Surrey Police, the newspaper sought retribution by suggesting in print the investigating officers were incompetent.

In the past, tabloid newspapers have been accused of acting like judge and jury during criminal trials, but here we have them acting like the leading investigators during a major murder inquiry (the concatenation of errors, followed by bluster and threats toward the police are forensically documented by Tim Ireland on his Bloggerheads site). Most disturbingly, the paper used its access to illegal information to encourage Milly’s parents that she was still alive and even pressure them into delivering an exclusive interview.

For those who have eyes to see, it’s clear that even ten years ago the Sunday tabloid considered itself better than the police and above the law, which of course they were in more ways than one. It also must have been blindingly obvious to any journalist, police officer or senior News International management at the time that Milly’s voicemail had been hacked by News of the World.

snip about 20 pages of the non-reporting of this story over 9 years

How a family’s grief over their missing daughter could become the stuff of ‘entertainment’ is the subject of the next chapter, but forgetting the near obscene outcome, depraved motives, or illegal means of the News of The World’s hacking, the inescapable fact is that journalists will always intrude and that the reality for any individual involved in a big story will nearly always be a form of misrepresentation and intrusion – at least on a personal emotional level.

There has always been, and always will be, an element of callousness in journalistic investigation. To paraphrase one the first great British press barons, Lord Northcliffe, news is public information which usually someone wants to keep private. Depending on the story, this may involve deceiving witnesses or targets, or indeed threatening them with non-accuracy if they don’t disclose. Such were the tactics of Woodward and Bernstein, and any legitimate journalist covering a big important story will tell you this. Most journalists protect their sources for reasons of trust, loyalty and continued information, but ultimately you’re just a piece in a jigsaw – a ‘source’ – and if you’re more than that, then the journalism is compromised. The individual has to be subordinate to politics in this instance. In the words of Peter Mandelson, ‘You can be friendly with journalists, but journalists are never your friends.’ If a story is in the public interest then the private relationship is always secondary.

The clear difference between the News of the World and the investigative discoveries of the Washington Post in the seventies, the Guardian in the nineties, or indeed the Daily Telegraph when it revealed the scandal of MPs’ expenses, is precisely this justification of a wider public interest: the bigger political picture is the exposure of unseen corruption and – eventually – an assurance of more accuracy and transparency in public life.

Just looking at the three different versions of the News of the World’s coverage of Milly Dowler on 14 April 2002, you can see very little public interest in terms of informing the public, or indeed helping the police. Instead there are several degrees of obfuscation and obstruction. Not only did News of the World journalists (ineptly) try to conceal the hacking of Milly’s phone, they consistently lied to witnesses about their identities. Having got the initial story of a runaway wrong, they first blamed the recruitment agency and then whoever called the recruitment agency as a ‘sick hoax’. This is not ground-breaking journalism. This is clumsy and bullying covering of tracks.

The same habits of intrusion, deception and bullying counter accusation would characterise the attitude of many News International journalists for the next decade. Right up to the Leveson Inquiry in 2012, News of the World’s former senior reporter Neville Thurlbeck suggested – until refuted by a Surrey Constabulary investigation – that the Surrey police had given his paper access to the Dowler messages.

Two senior officers in charge of the original missing person probe at the time – one of whom is now the deputy chief constable of Surrey Police – were placed under investigation by the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) in June 2012 for allegedly failing to explore the News of the World’s blatant phone hacking.

In this instance of phone hacking the contrast with Watergate journalism couldn’t be clearer. During Watergate the Nixon administration blocked Woodward and Bernstein wherever they went. Faced with a wall of silence from those in power, the two American journalists had to occasionally dissemble and divert to secure a bigger story in the public interest. But behind the walls of fortress Wapping, the News of the World journalists pulled rank and power, dissembling and diverting in order to conceal the bigger story from the public interest.

The book is partly about the decline of the press, the hollowing out of the main stream media, and of course gives big thanks to my fellow Kossacks and Murdochgate investigators who have helped to end the media dynasty. As an example of the great collaboration I've had - especially from illustrious illustrator ericlewis, edifying editor and fact-checker Bluestateredhead - here's a version of Ceebs database on 'Leveson Forgetfulness' which forms appendix One of the book.

Just so you know, the median amnesia of politicians and senior News International execs in module 3 of the Leveson Inquiry was around 4 per cent

For the victims of the press in module 1, the median amnesia was 0.3 per cent

7:51 AM PT: Great. Got the dummy of the book cover - in full tabloid style

BREAKING: Senior NI Execs Arrested for Conspiracy Coverup: James Next?

pdjukes@gmail.comv15 (Peter Jukes) — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 00:00:00 +0000

The Net Closes In

Just as it seems some kind of legal injunction managed to stop the broadcast of last night's much anticipated BBC Panorama documentary on Murdoch's spying activities on other rivals, the police leap into action with the biggest number of arrests since the Hackgate scandal begun. Six people were arrested this morning in early morning raids on the very serious charge of perverting the course of justice, a common law offence which can carry a life imprisonment sentence.

Rebekah Brooks was due to answer bail this week for her previous (prearranged) arrest for phone hacking and suborning police officers. This time the raid was much more brutal. It's speculation at the moment, but the fact her husband, the race horse owner Charlie Brooks, was arrested too, suggests it might have something to do with this strange incident of the binned laptop last July, on the night of the Lulzsec hack of The Sun. But apparently one has to be careful speculating here, because of British Contempt of Court Act 1981. I draw no inferences and will remove any quotations. But I wonder if linking to the many easily accessible reports about this is also a breach. Seeking more advice. In the meantime, paras 35-36 of this legal submission from the phone hacking victims who have settled are also very interesting in terms of a potential coverup.

This is very significant, not just because of the gravity of the charges, but because it now puts the hackgate scandal right into the highest circles of power. Charlie Brooks is one of David Cameron's oldest and closest friends, and their riding trips together on an old police horse leant out from the Met, source of the Horsegate hilarity - one of the funniest ever newspaper live threads on the subject at the Telegraph website.

By cruel irony, Charlie Brooks' horseracing column, celebrating the opening of the Cheltenham races, was published this morning. The title and subhead is some somewhat unfortunate.

Cheltenham Festival 2012: this meeting is a war of attrition on many fronts The happiest moment of my year is about three hours before the first race at Cheltenham on Tuesday;

Rebekah Brooks was until July, Chief Executive of News International. Also arrested is Mark Hanna, head of security at News International. Both were answerable to News International's Chairman, James Murdoch.

The Dynasty Falling

But by far the biggest news would be the arrest of James Murdoch. Over the weekend I heard that a senior Fleet Street editor thought this was on the cards. There is also the intriguing fact that one of the six arrested this morning was 39 year old man in Hampshire. Several people online noticed James was 39. My valiant co-reporter Ceebs managed to track down several James Murdochs in Hampshire. According to Reuters:

One of the descriptions of those arrested - police declined to name them - also fitted the description of James Murdoch, but two sources said he was currently in the United States.

News Corp declined to comment on the arrests.

But even if he's not arrested yet, as the Chair of News International, he is now powerfully in the frame.

This is not only a personal catastrophe for James, but for the Rupert himself. The whole strategy of News Corp (James still sits on the board there and at BSkyB) was to sacrifice anyone (proteges like Brooks, old retainers like Les Hinton who had served Murdoch for 50 years) to protect the family. But though he wasn't chair of News International when Mulcaire's hacking was at its height, he was during the huge cover up at News International, which implied attempts to delete huge swathes of email evidence, not to mention legal threats, and even surveillance and intimidation of lawyers, police officers and members of Parliament.

James is a victim here of his legacy. By all accounts, he was a more enlightened chairman at BSkyB than his father, and - though inevitably arrogant and entitled - still a better manager. The truth is, he would probably never be in this position, for good and ill, without the family name.

Live by inheritance. Die by inheritance. In every gift there is a curse.

The hackgate scandal has, like the Dreyfus scandal in France 100 years ago, shone a torch beam into the collusions and corruptions of British society, as an overweening media monopoly inserted itself in public life, and suborned the Met police, cowed journalists, and crept its way into the heart of government. The arrest of senior News International, apart from symbolising the Fall of the House of Murdoch, finally proves that some people aren't beyond the law, and encourages everyone who has been intimidated and silenced by Murdoch's money and influence can now speak out, without fearing press intimidation and police collusion.

Whether crimes have been committed or not, is for a judge and jury to answer once charges have been brought. But some very powerful people are now subjected to the full scrutiny of the law. For this alone, it's a great moment for British society, and I hope gives Americans who object to the perverting nexus of money, media power and politics, to hope for more justice there.

6:51 AM PT: LibDemFop has more details in an excellent diary on the rec list

http://www.dailykos.com/...

8:07 AM PT: The Labour Shadow Minister for Culture and Media has now asked the Leveson inquiry to investigate the full relationship between Rebekah and Charlie Brooks, and the Prime Minister David Cameron

It is important that the police are continuing to pursue the investigation into phone hacking.
Rebekah and Charlie Brooks are, on the prime minister's own account, close friends of his.

The Leveson Inquiry – when looking into the relations between the press and politicians – will need to investigate the full extent of the relations between the prime minister and senior News International executives at the time when hacking was rife and at the time his government was considering News Corp's bid for BSkyB.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/...

12:24 PM PT: Great compliment from the great Heather Brooke

Can't wait to read this MT @peterjukes: After today's arrests, my book (pub in July) Fall of the House of Murdoch unbound.co.uk/books/the-fall…
— Heather Brooke (@newsbrooke) March 13, 2012

1:02 PM PT: I appear here briefly on a Channel 4 package around 1.40, but check out the video of Charlie Brooks that follows

http://bcove.me/...

Original posted on Daily Kos

FOTHOM XXXIII: Smoking Guns Confirmed! Corporate Coverup and Phone Hacking on US Soil

pdjukes@gmail.comv15 (Peter Jukes) — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 16:37:00 +0000

Today in the High Court, News Group Newpapers, the News Corp subsidiary responsible for the defunct News of the World and The Sun, is settling dozens of hacking and surveillance claimsin an attempt to avoid a high court case on Feb 13th which could result in punitive damages.

There are over 60 hacking victims with ongoing cases, and at least another 800 confirmed and subject to litigation. Financially, this could be very costly for News International. But in terms of the hacking saga, it could be devastating for the Murdochs

Two Smoking Guns

1. In terms of the legal statements now being made in court, perhaps the most important is the admission of corporate cover-up. David Leigh at the stellar Guardian has the most incisive analysis

The most significant new element of Thursday's hacking settlement announcements is the accusation by the hacking victims' lawyers that Murdoch company directors tried to destroy evidence.
Although the lawyers' statement does not name names, it specifically accuses directors of News Group Newspapers Ltd, the Murdoch subsidiary which controlled the News of the World, of seeking to conceal the wrongdoing by "deliberately deceiving investigators and destroying evidence".

The directors of NGN were headed, from April 2008, by James Murdoch, Rupert Murdoch's son. James has already been at the centre of public allegations that he first authorised a cover-up in June 2008, by agreeing to buy the silence of Gordon Taylor, one of the hacking victims, with a lavish £700,000 secret pay-off.

The following year, former News of the World editor Rebekah Brooks joined the NGN board. This was on 23 July 2009, a few days after the Guardian revealed the existence of the cover-up at the News of the World. Brooks, who by now had been promoted by Rupert Murdoch to head his entire UK newspaper operation, responded by claiming: "The Guardian coverage, we believe, has substantially and likely deliberately misled the British public."

This takes the whole phone hacking scandal right to the top of the tree. Who knows what will unfold, but I wouldn't be surprised to see more resignations.

2. But for US readers - and for News Corp which is incorporated in the US - perhaps the most significant revelation in the welter of admissions today is with the Jude Law Case, where NGN's lawyers have admitted that - in line with news reports months ago - they hacked his phone while he was on US soil at JFK. From the Telegraph in June

The News of the World allegedly hacked into the mobile phones of Jude Law and his personal assistant while they were in New York, opening the way for News International to be prosecuted in the United States.
In the first specific example of a case of hacking on US soil, it has emerged that the actor and his assistant, Ben Jackson, were allegedly targeted shortly after arriving at New York's JFK airport.

Their mobile telephones were operating on American networks, meaning that regardless of where the alleged hacker was based, American law would apply.
It would leave News International open to claims that it broke US federal laws and also pave the way for costly lawsuits.

The allegation comes after it was announced that the FBI has opened a preliminary investigation into allegations that Rupert Murdoch's company tried to hack into the phones of victims of the September 11 attacks.

So where does this leave the FBI investigation? The DOJ is still looking at violations Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, and potential RICO violations. But this is a clear cut admission of intercepting wireless telephony on US soil.

I'm looking to fellow Kossacks for legal clarification on this and - if possible - to push the DOJ into action.

UPDATE: looks like this is getting some traction stateside. From Vanity Fair contributor and Murdoch Biographer, Michael Wolff:

Be part of the FOTHOM book: Bad Press: Fall of the House of Murdoch

5:38 AM PT: Also, for those interested, today's admissions extend beyond phone hacking

alan rusbridger @arusbridger Close

John Prescott's emails "unlawfully accessed" as well as phone hacked #Leveson #hackgate

That's the editor of the Guardian by the way, talking about the former Deputy Prime Minister having his computer hacked. Operation Tuleta is looking at allegations senior police and counter terrorism officers, as well as other serving ministers, were hacked by NI.

It's like a corporate version of East Germany's STASI.

6:01 AM PT: In the comments below Kossacks have asked me about the legal history of these cases, and I've given a brief sketch of background in this comment here. But more importantly as Brian Cathcart of the Hacked Off campaign writes, we should honour the victims - celebrity or otherwise - who took the grave risk of taking on News International.

A whole industry of deception, in other words, has crumbled thanks to the people compensated today and thanks to their predecessors who settled earlier, notably Sienna Miller.

And pathetic though News International’s legal defence has been lately, suing was never easy for the claimants. Think of the risks they exposed themselves to.

Back in 2010 when many of these cases began life, every politician knew that the Sun and the News of the World could wreck their reputations, and that these papers had more access to the Prime Minister (and his two predecessors) than any backbencher and most ministers. Suing probably looked like political suicide to most MPs.

Across television, cinema and sport, from Hollywood to India, New International owns or controls far more than any other company, so if you were an actress, a sportsman, a football agent or a PR person you risked much more than your time and money by suing — you risked your livelihood.

As for ordinary people whose phones had been hacked, you might think they had nothing to lose by suing, but think again: this is a company that employed private investigators on an industrial scale. Would you be happy to have every aspect of your private life secretly investigated, and if the slightest blemish was found — perhaps involving a vulnerable relative — to have that exposed in the press?

So it took courage for these people to sue, and collectively they made the difference between News International escaping scot free and what we have now: substantial police investigations, a couple of dozen arrests, and the historic and far-reaching Leveson Inquiry.

Originally posted to Brit on Thu Jan 19, 2012 at 12:23 PM GMT.

FALL OF THE HOUSE OF MURDOCH XXVII: James Recalled, lacks Recall - Police Stop My Protest

pdjukes@gmail.comv15 (Peter Jukes) — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 21:12:44 +0000

Today in Parliament

As expected, the appearance of James Murdoch, the Chief Executive of News International (and related to some other famous people) before the DCMS Committee today failed to produce any huge bombshells. Let's remind ourselves that the Parliamentary Committee has no real powers of subpoena, witnesses are not obliged to testify on oath, is not run by trained lawyers, and is not allowed to investigate anything that could prejudice the three ongoing police investigations.

C-Span has the whole proceedings here

James is smart, lawyered up, and left no hostages to fortune in terms of his evidence. Tom Watson had some stellar moments, challenging James over various contradictory testimonies, naming three or four other private investigators working for News International (adding some cryptic reference to Operation Millipede), and at least landing a rhetorical blow by calling James

'the first mafia boss in history who didn't know he was running a criminal enterprise.'.

(This latter remark has caused some consternation among Watson's enemies and Murdoch's apologists - but my American friends will know that the Department of Justice IS looking at potential RICO violations by Newscorp)

All in all, another day in the ongoing Murdoch saga. As Britover puts it in an excellent rec-listed diary: Some top line people really need to face jailtime. The most senior executive of the sixteen so far arrested has been Rebekah Brooks: but though James might not feel the hand of the law on his shoulder, the media scrutiny of his performance could be just as damaging in the long run.

Unanswered Questions

But however evasive and well trained James is at avoiding direct questions ("I have no knowledge of that... I don't recall") there are three glaring contradictions that this appearance has underlined.

1. Someone has Misled Parliament over the information provided to James when he authorised an extraordinary 700,000 GBP payment to Gordon Taylor in a civil suit over his phone being hacked by News of the World. James' claim in his previous appearance in July that he had no knowledge of phone hacking beyond the rogue reporter Clive Goodman had been directly contradicted by evidence given by the editor of NOTW at the time, Colin Myler, and News International's chief legal adviser, Tom Crone. They claim they informed James when he made that settlement. James now claims they didn't tell him, and that they misled Parliament rather than him.

TW: Did you mislead this committee?
JM: No I did not

TW: If you didn't who did?

JM I believe his committee was given [evidence] by people without full possession of the facts or...it was economical. My own testimony has been consistent. I testify to this committee with as much clarity and transparency as I can.

TW: Was it Mr Crone [who misled the committee?]
JM: I thought it was inconsistent and

TW: So you agree he misled the committee
JM: It follows that I do. I believe their testimony was misleading and I dispute it

This is a kind of either/or argument that the Committee will comment on: both accounts cannot be true.

2. How can an Effective Chief Executive be so ineffectual? James consistent response to the mounting evidence of extensive phone hacking, blagging and other borderline illegal activities by his staff was 'how am I supposed to know that level of detail'. Fair enough. But when you're making multimillion pound payouts to Gordon Taylor and Max Clifford, with dozens of other suits pending, surely it's your corporate duty to find out.

This is now being called the Asda Moment - 'Asda' is the UK equivalent of Walmart.

After explaining that he used to work for the supermarket chain (owned by the giant US company, Walmart) Davies registered his incredulity that Murdoch could have authorised the payment of more than £500,000 (to Taylor) without inquiring deeply into the reasons.
"It all seems so cavalier to me," said Davies. "You agree to settle cases with no real cap but a ballpark figure. You agree that a company should have a legal opinion, but you don't even ask to see the opinion when it is written."

3. A Fit and Proper Person? Next month is the shareholders meeting of BSkyB, Britain's largest pay-for-TV operator, 39.14% owned by Newscorp. Though the public outcry and online petitioning (by groups such as Avaaz) effectively stopped the full takeover of the company this summer, James still chairs the board. Our broadcast regulator, Ofcom, has a statutory duty to make sure that owners of licensed broadcasters are 'fit and proper' and can revoke a license if a director fails that test.

By the time BSkyB meets next, the DCMS committee will have ruled whether James has deceived Parliament or not.

Is being either/or a 'liar' or completely incompetent enough? Or even better - both.

In other News

Your intrepid reporter made ~~a fool of himself~~ an appearance outside Parliament for James' testimony. Bedecked like a human press pack, Brit decided to protest about the 30 years of Murdoch influence by sporting a sandwich board illustrated by fellow Kossack Eric Lewis, bearing the understated message:

Murdoch Ruined my Life.

Above you can see him above talking to a French journalist. Tonight he will appear on Al Jazeera. Below he joins members of the Avaaz campaign also picketing parliament.

When it's processed, I'll also post a video of him picketing Portcullis House where James was supposed to arrive, only to be stopped by a policeman and told (much to his shock and amazement) that no protests or placards are allowed within a kilometre of Parliament without prior approval, and I could be arrested. I told the very polite and helpful officer that I wasn't protesting, merely advertising the book I'm writing with Eric Bad Press: Fall of the House of Murdoch. The policeman said he didn't hear that, because advertising without a licence could also earn me a night in the cells.

I'm not as brave as many in the Occupy Movement, and rapidly removed my billboards.

There will be more about the book in later posts. It will be loosely based on my Kossack series of diaries, and focus on the stellar 'crowd sourced' journalism, reportage and activism of my fellow bloggers. It will also be crowd sourced in funding, so we'll be hitting back at the command and control modus operandi of the main stream media both in form and content.

Meanwhile join me below to discuss what you make of this latest chapter in the FOTHOM saga. And do contribute to the dedicated Bad Press: Fall of the House of Murdoch website if you can

The Dynasty is Over: FALL OF THE HOUSE OF MURDOCH XXVI: BREAKING:

pdjukes@gmail.comv15 (Peter Jukes) — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 19:59:48 +0000

{jb_dropcap}No, there is no major news about the three major investigations into multiple phone and computer hacking, bribing police officials, or perverting the course of justice by News International in the the UK. Nor is there any major development in the DOJ investigation into the parent company Newscorp, for violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, or other examples of systemic criminality (RICO violations) like the Floorgraphics case. No, the simple stunning verdict on the Murdoch Dynasty has been delivered by Newscorps Shareholders

Shareholders Deliver a Damning Verdict on James and Lachlan Murdoch

As handsomely diaried by Ceebs, last Friday's Newscorp shareholders meeting, held in high security in LA rather than in New York, was still a tumultuous affair, with many of independent shareholders calling the management to task over issues of corporate governance, probity, possible further legal actions, and of course the underlying complaint that Rupert Murdoch treats the public corporation like a 'family candy store'. Usually as Murdoch's biographer Michael Wolff explains in a tellingly titled piece: Rupert Murdoch: News Corp's great dictator on the brink

Under normal circumstances, Rupert Murdoch doesn't have much patience for the annual shareholders' meetings that are required by law of American public companies. He regards them as a farce, because they cannot change the outcome in a company where a voting majority is secure, and as an exercise in liberal corporate law designed to put him personally on the spot.

This time it was different. This time the voices couldn't be ignored, and they were joined by the stalwart British Parliamentarian, Tom Watson, initially a victim and now a persistent campaigner against both the industrial scale phone hacking in the UK (among other illegal practices) and the coverup. The vote was supposed to be delivered here last week. Now you can see the reason for the delay. Pegasus Corporate Governance has just tweeted the independent votes:

2011 AGM James Murdoch: For 59,297,033 (19.23%), Against 232,013,203 (75.24%) Abstain 494,831 Non-Votes 16,564,060

2011 AGM Lachlan Murdoch: For 67,175,479 (21.78%), Against 224,151,616 (72.69%) Abstain 477,972 Non-Votes 16,564,060

It doesn't constitute a majority since, though only owning 10 percent of the shares, the Murdoch family have 40 percent of the voting rights. But this is like Thatcher winning the first round of the votes in 1990 - not by a big enough margin. She was holed in the water. The vote of non confidence is resounding. As the Guardian puts it:

James Murdoch's future at News Corporation looks increasingly precarious as shareholders delivered a damning verdict on his tenure amid widespread criticism of his handling of the hacking scandal. Following a contentious meeting in Los Angeles last week News Corporation shareholders lodged a massive protest vote against James and his brother Lachlan Murdoch. A majority of independent shareholders voted against the re-election of chairman Rupert Murdoch's sons James and Lachlan Murdoch. James Murdoch received the largest vote against his re-election at 35%. James, 38, faces a second grilling in the Parliament next month over phone-hacking at The News of The World, one of News Corp's UK newspapers. Some 34% of shareholders voted against Lachlan Murdoch 40. After subtracting the shares controlled by Rupert Murdoch, 67% of the votes went against James Murdoch and 64% against Lachlan, said Julie Tanner, assistant director of News Corp investor Christian Brothers Investment Services (CBIS), who last week called for Rupert Murdoch to step down as chairman after the "extraordinary scandals" at the company. "Shareholders are saying loud and clear that this board has failed as a group," she said.

A Family at War: the Rift between Generations

So that's it. In case you missed it, last week there was a well substantiated New York Times storysaying the father was blaming the son for the debacle of the phone hacking coverup:

It was the newspaper business that would ultimately prove the point of deepest fissure between father and son. After taking control of News International, the company’s British newspaper subsidiary that publishes The Times of London, The Sun and News of the World until it was shuttered this summer, James made some abrupt course corrections. SNIP - fascinating aside about Murdoch and Gordon Brown It was in his role as head of the newspaper division that James approved a 2008 settlement with Gordon Taylor, head of an organization representing Britain’s professional soccer players, over allegations of voice mail hacking. That settlement is now at the center of a significant public dispute between James and two former News Corporation executives in London, who offer a conflicting account of events leading to the payment. The executives claim that they had informed James that the voice mail hacking went beyond the work of a lone “rogue” reporter and a private investigator that the company had acknowledged at the time. If that was the case, then law enforcement could argue that the settlement was intended as an attempt to buy the silence of victims, which legal experts say could provide the basis for British prosecutors to pursue criminal charges. James has forcefully denied their assertion, saying the men did not tell him about a broader pattern of phone hacking. Some who know him have suggested that the most he is guilty of is listening to advisers who told him the settlement would be less costly than a court fight.

With James Murdoch due to return to parliament in just over a week to answer more questions about how he could have possibly conceived it was a sole reporter involved in phone hacking, his days are clearly numbered. With both sons now discredited, and Elisabeth leaving the board, the dynastic control over Newscorp is over but in name. Poetic justice really, since Rupert, who inherited millions and the newspaper business from his father, has always claimed to be a buccaneering self-made man, and an enemy of the Royal Family because of their inherited privilege. But the story isn't over. Michael Wolff predicts last week was Rupert's shareholder's meeting. The police investigations are far from finished, and the evidence of corporate malfeasance and coverup is rife both sides of the Atlantic.

An Obloquy to End All Obloquies

But I'll leave the best recent tirade against Murdoch to one of his former colleagues: the Canadian born former newspaper proprietor, Conrad Black, who still languishes in jail because of his crimes and misdemeanours. It seems prison time has actually done wonders for his sense of probity. As he fulminates in the Huffington Post

For decades, Murdoch has smeared, lied, double-crossed his political benefactors, including Jimmy Carter, Margaret Thatcher, John Major, a long sequence of Australian leaders, and the democratic forces of Hong Kong. When the extent of his skullduggery finally oozed out, sluggish and filthy, including the details of the British government's dotage on him, this summer, Murdoch's old possum routine didn't play as convincingly as it had in its many previous auditions, when he purported to be contrite over the shortcomings of errant employees. Bumbling into a parliamentary hearing in London, supported on each arm like a centenarian semi-cadaver, mumbling about humility, trying to represent News Corporation's board as independent when it is public corporate America's most docile board of directors and is composed entirely of hacks, retainers, and ex-employees; scrambling and whimpering and paying millions to victims of his outrages; putting his name on a Journal op-ed piece about education; it's all of a piece and none of it resonates anymore. SNIP My admiration for his boldness and acumen and our previous 25 years of more than civil relations make it unpleasant, despite his unspeakable assault on me, to have to conclude that he is, in my personal belief, a psychopath. I think behind his nondescript personality lurks a repressed, destructive malice. His is, and has been proved to be, in some measure, a criminal organization. This, apart from weaknesses of leadership, was always the greatest vulnerability of post-Reagan America's conservatism: its reliance on a man who would put anyone over the side and hoist any colours when the wind changed. SNIP In the extreme winter of his days, Rupert Murdoch's failing hands have dropped the mask; he is a malignant force and it would be a good thing for the world to be done with him.

Wow. So Rupe's off his Christmas Card list I bet. 2011 was a year when dictators fell. Let's ensure that Murdoch joins Ben Ali, Muburak and Gaddafi in the list of toppled tyrants.

FOTHOM XXV: BREAKING: Wall Street Journal Scam Exposed

pdjukes@gmail.comv15 (Peter Jukes) — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 21:57:45 +0000

Over the course of these diaries, both myself and other FOTHOM aficianados have tried to stress that the UK hacking scandal is just one indication of the corrupt and anti-competitive practices that characterise the modal monopoly of Newscorp. Now another scandal is breaking which, like the looming shareholder rebellion, allegations of satellite card hacking in Italy and the Floorgraphics case prove once again that - like Watergate - the current scandal being investigated by no less than three large scale police operations in the UK, is only the tip of the iceberg, and that RICO violations are the best way for the current DOJ investigation to go.

Now the Wall Street Journal has news of the resignation of one of its chief executives:

LONDON—Dow Jones & Co.'s top European executive resigned Tuesday following an internal investigation into two articles published in The Wall Street Journal Europe that featured a company with a contractual link to the paper's circulation department.
Andrew Langhoff, managing director of Dow Jones & Co. in Europe, Africa and the Middle East, and publisher of The Wall Street Journal Europe, stepped down after an internal probe showed two articles in the paper's Special Reports section had been prompted by an agreement the circulation department struck with Executive Learning Partnership, or ELP, a Netherlands-based consulting firm.

"That relationship, overseen by a now-former employee, is no longer in place," Mr. Langhoff said in an internal email to employees. "Because the agreement could leave the impression that news coverage can be influenced by commercial relationships, as publisher with executive oversight, I believe that my resignation is now the most honorable course," Mr. Langhoff said.

Dow Jones is a unit of News Corp., which owns all editions of The Wall Street Journal.

Of course, this didn't happen by accident, and once again it seems to be the result of crusading investigative journalism by the Guardian:

One of Rupert Murdoch's most senior European executives has resigned following Guardian inquiries about a circulation scam at News Corporation's flagship newspaper, the Wall Street Journal.
The Guardian found evidence that the Journal had been channelling money through European companies in order to secretly buy thousands of copies of its own paper at a knock-down rate, misleading readers and advertisers about the Journal's true circulation.

The bizarre scheme included a formal, written contract in which the Journal persuaded one company to co-operate by agreeing to publish articles that promoted its activities, a move which led some staff to accuse the paper's management of violating journalistic ethics and jeopardising its treasured reputation for editorial quality.

Internal emails and documents suggest the scam was promoted by Andrew Langhoff, the European managing director of the Journal's parent company, Dow Jones and Co, which was bought by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation in July 2007. Langhoff resigned on Tuesday.

RICO: A Pattern of Criminal and Anti Competitive Behaviour

As I pointed out in a previous diary, the anti-competitive and completely unjournalistic standards of Newscorp now constitute a modal monopoly in much of the English speaking world:

Now we know that financially, Newscorp has paid much more than $200 million in the past to settle lawsuits, and indeed has paid out three times as much as that to settle various lawsuits against its profitable marketing division, News America. Apart from the hacking allegations and the FCPA violations (suborning foreign officials) there is now ample evidence, in the US and elsewhere (cf Italyand Australia) that Newscorp has a standard modus operandi when dealing with the 'free market'.
1. Establish leverage over politicians to change anti monopoly legislation
2. Dumping - artificially lowered prices to destroy competitors (cf News America, London Times)
3. Industrial espionage against competitors using a variety of means including phone hacking (Floorgraphics, Daily Mirror etc.)

For those following this story in Newscorp's home country, the US, there is now ample evidence of a sustained pattern of behavior liable to a RICO violation.

So now we have two more elements to add to the Newscorp strategy for media dominance

4. Churnalism: information paid for by sponsors, contributors or PR agencies.

5. Massaging Circulation Figures to deceive advertisers.

As I've said before, Newscorp the Standard Oil of the Information Age, and exposing its abuse of power is a key part in breaking up this uncompetitive trust.

As American activists continue to occupy Wall Street, don't forget The Wall Street Journal, both as a mouthpiece for deregulated markets and unaccountable globalised finance, and as a living demonstration of how it works.

Cross posted at Daily Kos.

FOTHOM XXIV: 64 Lawsuits Already - Will be 'Thousands'

pdjukes@gmail.comv15 (Peter Jukes) — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 18:32:56 +0000

yes, the Murdoch story may be flying under the mainstream media radar, but with three British police investigations ongoing, two Parliamentary committees, a televised public enquiry with full powers of subpoena starting tomorrow, a DOJ enquiry stateside, and other investigations and legal cases in the US, Australia and Italy into Newscorp anti-competitive and/or criminal behaviour, this is not about to go away any time soon.

Hackgate: A Pattern of Criminal Behaviour

As an early indication of this, it has just been announced that over sixty separate claims (some filed in multiple names) have been filed in the UK civil claims court against News International: these include dozens of celebrities and prominent politicians, but also the families or partners of murder victims, or casualties of other high profile incidents such as the 7/7 London bombings. These weren't people who thrust themselves into the limelight - but people who had already been violated by some awful event, only to have their own privacy violated by illegal means by a company whose only interest was profit and using press exposure to exert political power. According to The Guardian

The overwhelming majority of the writs have been issued jointly against News Group Newspapers, the News International subsidiary that published the now defunct News of the World, and Glenn Mulcaire, the private investigator who worked under contract for the Sunday tabloid. However, one – by singer Cornelia Crisan – also names the former News of the World chief reporter, Neville Thurlbeck, and another of the paper's former reporters as defendants in her claim. It is the first phone-hacking lawsuit to target Thurlbeck. He was arrested and bailed in April for alleged phone hacking but has not been charged. He is suing News International for unfair dismissal. Thurlbeck said: "As I said last week, the truth will out. But this will be in the law courts and at a public tribunal." The number and range of the claims has taken some legal observers by surprise. One source said it suggests that News International's £20m contingency fund to deal with legal claims will not be anywhere near enough to cover the final total.

Now this is all based on the files of Glynn Mulcaire, but as the Mark Lewis, the lawyer who broke the current storm with news of the hacking of the phone of Milly Dowler (a teenage murder victims) explains:

"So far, fewer than 5% of the victims of Glenn Mulcaire have been notified," said Mark Lewis, a lawyer for some phone-hacking victims in an email. "He was just one agent used by one paper. When the final tally takes place, we will see thousands of claims and more than one paper." SNIP Mr. Lewis said that, as the number of plaintiffs grows, his own estimate that the New York-based company would need at least £100-million to settle such claims looks like "a serious underestimate." News Group agreed to pay one of Mr. Lewis's clients, the family of murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler, £3-million, a person familiar with the matter said last month. Mr. Lewis said that the rash of suits may have been triggered by a deadline set by Judge Geoffrey Vos to consider claims ahead of a January trial to determine how much News Corp. should pay in damages to five of the victims.

So this is just phone hacking, and just the UK. But let's be clear. This is still just the tip of the iceberg. .

RICO: A Pattern of Criminal and Anti Competitive Behaviour

Now we know that financially, Newscorp has paid much more than $200 million in the past to settle lawsuits, and indeed has paid out three times as much as that to settle various lawsuits against its profitable marketing division, News America. Apart from the hacking allegations and the FCPA violations (suborning foreign officials) there is now ample evidence, in the US and elsewhere (cf Italy and Australia) that Newscorp has a standard modus operandi when dealing with the 'free market'.

1. Establish leverage over politicians to change anti monopoly legislation

2. Dumping - artificially lowered prices to destroy competitors (cf News America, London Times)

3. Industrial espionage against competitors using a variety of means (Floorgraphics, Daily Mirror etc.)

For those following this story in Newscorp's home country, the US, there is now ample evidence of a sustained pattern of behavior liable to a RICO violation. My firm belief is that the heart of this problem is an abuse of power which comes from a monopoly position in cross platform ownership. It is at it's worst in Australia, only marginally better in the UK, but the US is where both the power lies, economically and politically, and where Murdoch's combination of tabloid blackmail, highly leveraged acquisitions (Miliken is a good friend of his) and ultimate commercial and political power ultimately resides. And it's only there he will be defeated.

So keep digging. Keeping on adding your own comments and sources. Just like the Wall Street occupations, this is an example whete the power elites can be held to account: by occupying their channels of communication and spin.

Originally posted at DailyKos.

FALL OF THE HOUSE OF MURDOCH XXIII: Bernstein on Murdoch and Nixon: Floorgraphics Smoking Gun

pdjukes@gmail.comv15 (Peter Jukes) — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 16:59:32 +0000

Bernstein on the Watergate Analogy and the Culture of Lawlessness

If you think the Watergate analogy is hyperbolical or fanciful, don't forget it was first made by Carl Bernstein himself in The Daily Beast nearly three months ago

The circumstances of the alleged lawbreaking within News Corp. suggest more than a passing resemblance to Richard Nixon presiding over a criminal conspiracy in which he insulated himself from specific knowledge of numerous individual criminal acts while being himself responsible for and authorizing general policies that routinely resulted in lawbreaking and unconstitutional conduct. Not to mention his role in the cover-up. It will remain for British authorities and, presumably, disgusted and/or legally squeezed News Corp. executives and editors to reveal exactly where the rot came from at News of the World, and whether Rupert Murdoch enabled, approved, or opposed the obvious corruption that infected his underlings.

And here he is, in a Guardian interview today where he makes the same point

The parallels with Watergate... Had to do with the culture itself that made this possible. In the Nixon Whitehouse Nixon was responsible for the sensibility that permeated the place, that had to do with unconstitutional acts with a cynicism about the political process and how it was practised, and a disregard for the law. And it became apparent to me, as I read more and more what was happening here, that really at bottom what this hacking furore is about, {jb_quoteleft}it's about a culture in the newsroom that has nothing to do with real journalism, real reporting (which is very simply put the best obtainable version of the truth){/jb_quoteleft} but rather has to do with serving up both the lowest common denominator of information and calling it news, and obtaining it through a methodology which is outrageous, whether you're talking about hacking or other kinds of invasions of privacy, and that the atmosphere in that newsroom is a product of the culture that Murdoch in the News of the World .

I've always said that Murdoch's Wizard of Oz like appearance before the House of Commons Select Committee this summer - the first time the most powerful man in my country had faced the people's elected representatives - was the crucial moment. Murdoch ruled by fear, by politicians self censoring and second guessing his movements. The revelation that he was a rather frail crank oldy man suddenly undermined the fear, and frankly did much to diminish his effective power. As Bernstein says:

I think his power as it were is diminished, because I don't think he's held - as a result of what we've heard and seen - in the same kind of awe by both his peers and those who feared. At the same time I think it's a mistake to oversimplify any of this. Is his power over? Is he all good or all bad. I think that's much too simple.

Let me state for the record. I have no personal opinions of Rupert himself. I've never met him. I've heard he can be a deeply loyal father and boss. However, the empire he has accumulated , the modal monopoly it deployed to create a 'market in news' which was corrupt, was used to game legislation, blackmail politicians, intimidate opponents and destroy the lives of innocent people through tabloid exposure using illegal mean...

That was unequivocally bad, and we should keep campaigning for that empire to be dismantled.

Quiet Intensity: The Raft of Ongoing Investigations

So, while things may seem to be quiet on the Murdoch scandal front, but with three police investigations ongoing in the UK (into phone hacking, computer hacking and payments to police), a public inquiry and two parliamentary committees, it won't stay like that for long in the UK. Like all criminal scandals, the onus on investigators is to compile evidence - and much more is coming to light.

Just this week it's been revealed the James Murdoch's senior PR advisor has resigned: one of the arrested journalists is joining Andy Coulson in suing News International; continued threats to Tom Watson who tirelessly campaigned on this issue in Parliament, the revelation of 11 million emails, and details of illegal practices in other Murdoch tabloid titles, apart from the now defunct News of the World.

So the culture Bernstein talked about extended to Murdoch's other titles. What is the chance it didn't extend to the US too?

Ad has been diaried before, there are now three prongs to the ongoing DOJ investigation into Newscorp: the most salient being the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (it's illegal to bribe foreign officials as Newscorp seems to have done with British police officers), rumours still of hacking victims on US soil, and by far the least known, but potentially the most deadly, an investigation into an old anti-trust suit from a few years ago, the Floorgraphics case, which could leave Newscorp vulnerable to RICO statutes.

U.S. investigators are looking into potential antitrust activities of Murdoch's News America Marketing Group, which specializes in producing in-store ads, coupons, advertising inserts and other promotional materials for supermarkets and retail outlets worldwide.
Investigators reportedly are seeking documents relating to a 2009 trial of a suit against News America by a New Jersey advertising company, Floorgraphics, which had accused News America of, among other things, hacking into its computer systems and lying to its customers. The case was settled for an undisclosed sum, and News America subsequently acquired Floorgraphics.

All told, News America has shelled out $655 million to settle suits against competitors alleging unsavory business practices.

As Crains put it two days ago (hat tip to the ever watchful Ceebs)

Investigations of News Corp.'s illegal conduct initially involved just News of the World, which represented only 1% of annual revenue for the New York-based media company, publisher of The Wall Street Journal and operator of the Fox television networks.

The marketing unit, which promotes products through supermarket coupons, accounted for four times that revenue and about 12% of profit for fiscal 2011.

Rivals of News America Marketing have claimed in court papers that it prospered by violating antitrust laws. It also hacked into a Floorgraphics password-protected website, one of its own lawyers told the jury at the 2009 trial.

“There is a pattern of anticompetitive behavior by News Corp.,” said Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a government watchdog group. “We've seen it in Britain, and we've seen it in America.”

Remember, News America Marketing provides 12% of Newscorp profits. That's a really compared with the 1% provided by the biggest English language paper, the News of the World, before it was closed.

So though it seems quiet, that doesn't mean a lot isn't going on under the surface. Indeed the 'unnamed source' regularly talking about Newscorp affairs is either a whistleblower, or some desperate damage limitation..

Remember all the Presidents Men? The movie ends with Bernstein and Woodward filing more stories: it took two years before Nixon resigned, and another year or two after that for the final criminal indictments to be handed down.

Don't despair: watch this space

Originally posted on DailyKos