News of the world to close

[Timbuk2]

No, it's not "lame" at all. It is, after all, a Murdoch empire. Rupert's son was in charge of UK operations, and he testified on behalf of the company years ago when the hacking scandal first came to light. Rupert's daughter is also in charge of some operations, so it's a Family Affair.

If CEO's and corporate owners aren't where the buck ultimately stops, then what's that mean---they're just paying others to be the fall guys?

Agreed.

I'd also be surprised to learn that James or Rupert Murdoch didn't know about the hacking at the time it took place, either through sanctioning it in the first instance, or allowing it to continue and approving its being covered up when they first learnt of it.

[Timbuk2]

Phone hacking: MPs summons Murdochs



News Corporation's Rupert and James Murdoch have been summonsed to appear before MPs to answer questions on the phone-hacking scandal on Tuesday.

But as US citizens, Rupert Murdoch, who has declined a request to attend the Commons media committee, and his son James, who has offered to go on another day, cannot be forced to appear.

News International chief executive Rebekah Brooks has agreed to attend.

Rupert Murdoch has said he will appear before the judge-led public inquiry.

Good news. Never for a moment thought the man himself would appear before an inquiry.

[Hazir]

It's lame how people are referring to all of this as "Murdoch" crimes.

Why? He always claims the success of his enterprises as his personal successes. İt also could not escape anybody he has an accute interest in the way his media outlets are run.

[earthJoker]

Come on guys, Dread is right, the managers only gave orders, they didn't actually do anything bad, and the journalists only did what they have been told, as you see there is actually no one responsible here.

[GGT]

Well, the US has laws against bribery that extends to internationals. Murdoch's empire could find itself in a "New World" of trouble.

[Hazir]

Come on guys, Dread is right, the managers only gave orders, they didn't actually do anything bad, and the journalists only did what they have been told, as you see there is actually no one responsible here.

You made me see the light, it must have been a different Murdoch who infested his media with just so much jingoist tripe that we mistakenly thought the CEO Murdoch had anything to do with it.

In an ideal world the whole NewsCorp construct would come crashing down, after which the asshole that built it dies a gruesome death.

[GGT]

That's just mean, Hazir. Rupert Murdoch will eventually die, and he's already an old man. He doesn't have to die a gruesome death in order to realize his mistakes in life.

[LittleFuzzy]

Well I think it's my fault not to clear up things, but it was LF who put the EU into this. So if you replace pan-EU with pan-European (that meaning all countries that have ratified the ECHR) the statement actually holds.

I was trying to GET you to clear things up for me. I asked you and asked you and you point-blank refused to give me any answers.

[Hazir]

That's just mean, Hazir. Rupert Murdoch will eventually die, and he's already an old man. He doesn't have to die a gruesome death in order to realize his mistakes in life.

İ know it's mean, but an honest expression of what İ feel towards the man and his ilk.

[Timbuk2]

Wahoo, she's finally taken responsibility and stepped down.

Phone hacking: News International chief Brooks quit

Rebekah Brooks, chief executive of News International, has resigned, the company has confirmed.



Her departure follows days of increasing pressure to step down as the phone hacking crisis grew.

In a statement, she said she felt a "deep responsibility for the people we have hurt".

News Corporation is to take out national press adverts this weekend to apologise for what it described as "the wrongdoings at the News of the World".

Prime Minister David Cameron thinks that Rebekah Brooks's resignation was "the right decision", his official spokesman said.

Rebekah Brooks was the paper's editor between 2000 and 2003, during which time murder victim Milly Dowler's phone was hacked.

She said she wanted to "reiterate how sorry I am for what we now know to have taken place".

Her statement went on: "I have believed that the right and responsible action has been to lead us through the heat of the crisis. However my desire to remain on the bridge has made me a focal point of the debate.

"This is now detracting attention from all our honest endeavours to fix the problems of the past."

Ms Brooks, 43, who had been with News International for 22 years, bowed to the international pressure piling up on the company.

She has been replaced by Tom Mockridge, who was in charge of News Corporation's Italian broadcasting arm.

In a message to News International staff, News Corporation's chief executive in Europe, James Murdoch, hailed Ms Brooks as "one of the outstanding editors of her generation" who "can be proud of many accomplishments as an executive".

"We support her as she takes this step to clear her name," he said.

Mr Murdoch revealed that News Corporation was planning to use national press adverts this weekend to apologise to the nation for wrongdoing at the News of the World.

"We are also sending letters to our commercial partners with an update on the actions we are taking.

"The company has made mistakes. It is not only receiving appropriate scrutiny, but is also responding to unfair attacks by setting the record straight."

Mr Murdoch praised new chief executive Tom Mockridge as "a highly respected and accomplished media executive", who had shown "leadership and integrity" in creating the Sky Italia 24-hour TV news channel in Italy.

The leader of the Labour Party, Ed Miliband, welcomed her resignation and said that no-one should exercise power without responsibility.

"It is right that Rebekah Brooks has finally taken responsibility for the terrible events that happened on her watch, like the hacking of Milly Dowler's phone," Mr Miliband said.

"But as I said when I called for her resignation 10 days ago, this is not just about one individual but about the culture of an organisation.

"Rupert Murdoch says that News Corp has handled these allegations 'extremely well'. He still hasn't apologised to the innocent victims of hacking. He clearly still doesn't get it."

John Whittingdale, chairman of the Commons Culture, Media and Sport Committee, said he believed her resignation had been "inevitable".

"I think many people expected it to come rather sooner, but I think her position was extremely difficult," he said.

"I think the most shocking revelation of all, perhaps, was the hacking of Milly Dowler's phone, which took place when she was the editor of the paper and there has obviously been a stream of revelations since then."

Ms Brooks is still expected to appear alongside Rupert and James Murdoch at Tuesday's sitting of Mr Whittingdale's committee.

Mark Lewis, the solicitor representing Millie Dowler's family, told the BBC: "She should have gone ages ago. It happened on her watch.

"The Dowler family shouldn't have had to wait for this moment. We can't gloat on this position but it's right, it's what should have happened."

~

And in other news, the FBI are now investigating allegations of phone hacking by News Corp into the families of 9/11 victims.

[Steely Glint]

Rebecca Brooks has been arrested.

[Ominous Gamer]

^News link

and here is Fox's spin on the hacking


All that complaining about the media spending to much time on this, and Casey Anthony was the next story

[Hazir]

Brooks appears to have been arrested? That must be arkward for the asshole in charge.

[coinich]

Yep, and according to the headlines, the head of the Scotland Yard has stepped down as well.

[GGT]

Man, they're dropping like flies. James Murdoch is out now? Head of Dow Jones and WSJ, too.

[earthJoker]

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/...76H08120110718

So who's next?

[GGT]

House of Commons takes a six week vacation?

[CitizenCain]

So?

As loathe as I am to defend tabloid "journalists," a few things come to mind:

1) It's the most popular UK newspaper for a reason... ostensibly because millions of Brits are willing to pay money to known slimeballs for the latest celebrity gossip, and don't care how that gossip was obtained. If we're going to lynch them, let's lynch them all - the executives, the rank-and-file workers, the readers, all of them. They all knew who they were doing business with, and no one's hands are clean. So, no, I don't feel the least bit sorry for all the workers who are going to lose their jobs - my only regret is that their millions of readers won't see any justice at all.

2) So what? They hacked phones and invaded people's privacy, yes. Which is different from what every tabloid journalist does... how? Is hacking a phone somehow worse than trespassing on someone's private property to get juicy celebrity snaps? For that matter, it's not fundamentally different from what most **actual** journalists do either. If you're reporting more than press releases, you're trying to access private, protected information in order to spread it to the masses. Real journalists have a good reason that we call "public interest," but at the end of the day, they break the same laws on privacy and data theft that these guys did.

3) It's painful to see everyone and their dog jumping on this particular bandwagon, acting shocked, as if they were too stupid to know that this was what tabloid reporters do for a living and outraged, as if they weren't chomping at the bit for the latest bit of celebrity gossip themselves. It's like a perfect storm of hypocrisy and stupidity, albeit with a much smaller body count than I'd like to see.

Anyway...

As far as Google street view goes, I find it somewhat.. interesting that people like you are horrified of the government having any trace whatsoever about where you have been, but you're completely okay with a company like Google having pictures of where you were at a certain time, online, for everybody to access.

The difference between the government and Google (aside from one being a competent force for good and the other being an incompetent manifestation of hell here on Earth) is that when I do something the government doesn't like, they send men with guns to kill or kidnap me. When I do something Google doesn't like, they have a software engineer refine their marketing algorithms. That's why I don't care if a corporation has private data about me - the worst they'll do is use that information to convince me to buy something, not to try to kill me. The government, on the other hand, very well might use my private data to try to kill me (and certainly would, if they had "all" the information about me).

Look up the Google street view cases, those in Yurope are based on complaints, no-one has sued Google because of street view (at least not in the cases I heard of).

Plenty of people have sued Google over street view, even in the US. European governments have sued Google over street view, some have even banned it. Given that, I find it hard to believe that not a single individual in Europe has filed a lawsuit. Whether those complaints have any merit whatsoever or are just whiny bitching by brainless twits is a different matter, but there are plenty of civil cases concerning Google's Street View vehicles grabbing information someone didn't want them to have.

[GGT]

Yeah, but when gummint politicians and police are in cahoots with a private corporation that's supposedly a news organization, that's the problem. Then you have corporations with private data that can be sold or traded to those gummint goons you hate.

[RandBlade]

Amusing how even with an open-goal Brown can still miss. I didn't see Steely print the Grauniads apology and retraction regarding Brown. Interesting how the Brown allegations were the only ones News Corp or its affiliates bothered to refute.



LOL:

[earthJoker]

LOL @ Colin Firth is Hugh Grant

[Wraith]

Is hacking a phone somehow worse than trespassing on someone's private property to get juicy celebrity snaps?

Yes. If you're going to try to make this analogous to a physical crime, the right one to pick would be breaking and entering, not trespassing. AFAIK reporters don't get a free pass on that just because they're reporters. They can only sometimes get away with trespassing because that can be hard to prosecute and it's only a slap on the wrist anyways.

I get how one could say that people are making too big of a deal out of this, and maybe that's so, but I don't understand how you could say that such breaches of privacy are somehow okay.

[Ziggy Stardust]

So?

As loathe as I am to defend tabloid "journalists," a few things come to mind:

1) It's the most popular UK newspaper for a reason... ostensibly because millions of Brits are willing to pay money to known slimeballs for the latest celebrity gossip, and don't care how that gossip was obtained. If we're going to lynch them, let's lynch them all - the executives, the rank-and-file workers, the readers, all of them. They all knew who they were doing business with, and no one's hands are clean. So, no, I don't feel the least bit sorry for all the workers who are going to lose their jobs - my only regret is that their millions of readers won't see any justice at all.

2) So what? They hacked phones and invaded people's privacy, yes. Which is different from what every tabloid journalist does... how? Is hacking a phone somehow worse than trespassing on someone's private property to get juicy celebrity snaps? For that matter, it's not fundamentally different from what most **actual** journalists do either. If you're reporting more than press releases, you're trying to access private, protected information in order to spread it to the masses. Real journalists have a good reason that we call "public interest," but at the end of the day, they break the same laws on privacy and data theft that these guys did.

3) It's painful to see everyone and their dog jumping on this particular bandwagon, acting shocked, as if they were too stupid to know that this was what tabloid reporters do for a living and outraged, as if they weren't chomping at the bit for the latest bit of celebrity gossip themselves. It's like a perfect storm of hypocrisy and stupidity, albeit with a much smaller body count than I'd like to see.

Does this defence include the deletion of private information (voicemail inbox), with all the consequences that went along with it in this case?

[RandBlade]

Does this defence include the deletion of private information (voicemail inbox), with all the consequences that went along with it in this case?

Not a single person anywhere has even attempted to defend the deletion of the voicemails.

Its worth noting however that Cain is accurate. This story has been rumbling on for FIVE YEARS now and nobody really cared all that much. Then it comes out (following the conviction of Milly Dowler's murderer) that a freelancer who sold stories to the NOTW had deleted her voicemails and that crossed the rubicon. When it was Sienna Miller's voicemails being listened to, nobody cared.

At the time of all this happening a decade ago, Piers Morgan was then editor of The Sun's arch-rival the Daily Mirror. He wrote in his diary which was subsequently published as a book about this "neat little trick" of how to listen in to voicemails. Piers Morgan who published this "neat little trick" in his book now works for CNN. Don't see them or him getting lambasted.

As far as hacking goes, what would happen is that if someone hadn't changed their voicemail password and left it on the default one, then journalists (from more papers than just News International even though everyone's glossing over the non-Murdoch press having been involved) would just enter the default password and see if it worked.

[LittleFuzzy]

Yes. If you're going to try to make this analogous to a physical crime, the right one to pick would be breaking and entering, not trespassing. AFAIK reporters don't get a free pass on that just because their reporters. They can only sometimes get away with trespassing because that can be hard to prosecute and it's only a slap on the wrist anyways.

I get how one could say that people are making too big of a deal out of this, and maybe that's so, but I don't understand how you could say that such breaches of privacy are somehow okay.

Huh, so someone getting your private information electronically, information that you didn't sufficiently secure, is actually B&E, but someone shutting down your e-business is, at worst, vandalism. Anyone else see this remarkable disconnect in reactions from a set of posters on here, on two somewhat analogous set of events? Isn't it interesting how those different reactions happen to cleave along their political and social biases?

[Wraith]

Huh, so someone getting your private information electronically, information that you didn't sufficiently secure, is actually B&E, but someone shutting down your e-business is, at worst, vandalism. Anyone else see this remarkable disconnect in reactions from a set of posters on here, on two somewhat analogous set of events? Isn't it interesting how those different reactions happen to cleave along their political and social biases?

Are you maybe confusing me with somebody else? I think the server attacks are serious crimes too, even though I didn't really enter that discussion.

[Steely Glint]

As far as hacking goes, what would happen is that if someone hadn't changed their voicemail password and left it on the default one, then journalists (from more papers than just News International even though everyone's glossing over the non-Murdoch press having been involved) would just enter the default password and see if it worked.

Yeah, but don't think they weren't prepared to go beyond that if that didn't work. Angus Deayton had a listening device put on a junction box in his street after the various "scandals" about his private life. And, yes, this clearly goes much further than News International owned papers, as I've been saying from the very beginning. It's almost certain true of every single tabloid, and possibly the broadsheets as well (though they'd do it to get proper stories, not just the latest blah blah about people's private lives).

It's not clear to me whether or not the targeting of non-celebrities (e.g. murdered school girls, dead solders, victims of terrorists attacks) goes beyond News International, or even beyond the News of the World - it does seem to have been a uniquely intense & remorseless paper.

[Ominous Gamer]

Huh, so someone getting your private information electronically, information that you didn't sufficiently secure, is actually B&E, but someone shutting down your e-business is, at worst, vandalism. Anyone else see this remarkable disconnect in reactions from a set of posters on here, on two somewhat analogous set of events? Isn't it interesting how those different reactions happen to cleave along their political and social biases?

I haven't yet made a direct comment comparing the 2 threads, but I will point out that there is a huge difference between a group of people stalking someone's personal life, attacking it at multiple angles, trying to dig up every ounce of juicy profitable information; and a group of people who attack single points of interest to show how unwillingly, or badly, those points of interest are at protecting said private information.

[CitizenCain]

Yes. If you're going to try to make this analogous to a physical crime, the right one to pick would be breaking and entering, not trespassing.

I'm not so sure about that, given the state of electronic security and the fact that paparazzi trespassing often involves scaling walls or fences. Seems like a roughly analogous situation - bypassing what are generally very weak security measures in order to access something private.

I get how one could say that people are making too big of a deal out of this, and maybe that's so, but I don't understand how you could say that such breaches of privacy are somehow okay.

I'm not saying it's OK, I'm saying it happens all the time and everyone else seems to think it's OK, except in this case. Which is hypocritical bullshit. I don't remember this kind of outrage and backlash the last time a paper published documents from a "hacked" computer system, or even the last time a "news" organization "hacked" the private communications of a European government's parliament. Maybe it's because Assange is a hipster idol and as a result of his wealth and power, Murdoch's hip to hate, rather than any fundamental difference between what the two did... except that, as far as I know, Murdoch's never been accused of rape via potentially intentional condom breakage.

Does this defence include the deletion of private information (voicemail inbox), with all the consequences that went along with it in this case?

What consequences were those? I honestly don't know anything about the specifics there, but if it helps ease your mind, messages from the types of asshats who call famous numbers are only "information" is the loosest sense of the term, and police investigators are often forced into the same action - deleting crap from morons who need to attach themselves to something famous in order to allow space for new, potentially useful communications. Seems to me like much ado about nothing, honestly. The hacking and breach of privacy aside (which are only outrageous, unconscionable abuses when Murdoch's tabloid does it... oops, I mean when some freelancer does it all sells the information to Murdoch's tabloid), I don't see any real harm in deleting voicemails from cranks who call famous numbers to feel special. It's what happens to those kinds of voicemails anyway, right?

[Ominous Gamer]

What consequences were those? I honestly don't know anything about the specifics there, but if it helps ease your mind, messages from the types of asshats who call famous numbers are only "information" is the loosest sense of the term, and police investigators are often forced into the same action - deleting crap from morons who need to attach themselves to something famous in order to allow space for new, potentially useful communications. Seems to me like much ado about nothing, honestly. The hacking and breach of privacy aside (which are only outrageous, unconscionable abuses when Murdoch's tabloid does it), I don't see any real harm in deleting voicemails from cranks who call famous numbers to feel special. It's what happens to those kinds of voicemails anyway, right?

Didn't they delete the messages while the investigation was still ongoing into the disappearance? Causing people to believe she was still alive?

EDIT:
Found this via wikipedia