Rupert Murdoch's Untold Story PART 2

Rupert Murdoch The Untold Story of the world's greatest media wizard Rupert Murdoch

A British MP called Murdoch a mob boss

Critics Spot The 'Gaslighting' Line In Rupert Murdoch's 'Dishonest' Retirement Letter

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https://www.inltv.co.uk/index.php/media-freedom-is-a-downward-spiral

Over half a million Australians demand probe into Rupert Murdoch's media empire - EconoTimes

Rupert Murdoch 'Not Fit' to Run News Corp., U.K. Parliamentary Committee Finds

The Quest to End Rupert Murdoch's Australian Media Empire — IR Insider

The Murdochs Are Not The Mafia - But The Murdoch Family Firm Is In Meltdown

Rupert Murdoch The Untold Story of the world's greatest media wizard Rupert Murdoch

 

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Rupert Murdoch and Lachlan Murdoch News Corp Mafia Media Bosses 2018

Meet Fox News' new leader Lachlan Murdoch, who inherits a media empire now that his father is officially stepping down

lachlan rupert murdoch
Rupert Murdoch and his son Lachlan Murdoch (left) attend the 2018 tennis US Open on Arthur Ashe stadium at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center on September 5, 2018 in Flushing Meadows, Queens, New York City

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Media Monsters

The Transformation of Australia’s Newspaper Empires

Rupert Murdoch and Lachlan Murdoch News Corp Mafia Media Bosses 2018

James Murdoch, Rupert Murdoch and Lachlan Murdoch News Corp Mafia Media Bosses

Media Monsters

The Transformation of Australia’s Newspaper Empires

In 1941, the paper emperors of the Australian newspaper industry helped bring down Robert Menzies. Over the next 30 years, they grew into media monsters.

This book reveals the transformation from the golden age of newspapers during World War II, through Menzies’ return and the rise of television, to Gough Whitlam’s ‘It’s Time’ victory in 1972.

During this crucial period, twelve independent newspaper companies turned into a handful of multimedia giants. They controlled newspapers, magazines, radio and television stations. Their size and reach was unique in the western world.

Playing politics was vital to this transformation. The newspaper industry was animated by friendships and rivalries, favours and deals, and backed by money and influence, including from mining companies, banks and the Catholic Church.

Even internationally, Australia’s newspaper owners and executives were considered a shrewd and ruthless bunch. The hard men of the industry included Rupert Murdoch, Frank Packer, Warwick Fairfax’s top executive Rupert Henderson, and Jack Williams, the unsung empire builder of the Herald and Weekly Times.

In Media Monsters, Sally Young, the award-winning author of Paper Emperors, uncovers the key players, their political connections and campaigns, and their corporate failures and triumphs. She explores how the companies they ran still influence Australia today.

‘Essential reading for anyone with a serious interest in how power has been exercised in this country.’ — Frank Bongiorno

‘A masterful account of the rise and rise of Australia’s newspaper dynasties.’ — Bridget Griffen-Foley

‘Original and deep, Media Monsters provides a rich source of fresh information and analysis to the history of the Australian press.’ — Rodney Tiffen

‘An absorbing, if salutary, history lesson.’ — Julia Taylor, Books + Publishing

'This is a work that deserves to stand among the giants of academic research and authorship on Australian media and political history.' — Denis Muller, The Conversation

'Meticulously researched...An extraordinary tome, revealing the power of the press.' — PS News

'A clear picture emerges in the book of newspaper media proprietors who acted as a law unto themselves (Frank Packer), surveyed their territory with seigneurial indifference (Sir Warwick Fairfax) or energetically and inventively grew their holdings into a burgeoning empire (Rupert Murdoch).' — Matthew Richetson, Sydney Morning Herald and The Age

 Search Engine Manipulation Effect (inltv.co.uk)

The Australian Media Conspiracy

Click here to read more about the Australian Media Conspiracy

 The Australian Media Conspiracy is an extremely controversial book being published by the INL News and Australian Weekend News Publishing Group   based on a 30 plus year in depth INL News and Australian Weekend News Publishing Group Investigation Report into how immoral, unjust, devious, clandestine,  wrongful, and in many instances unlawful and illegal tactics and actions have been carried out by and/or for and on behalf of News Corp LLC, Keith Rupert Murdoch and his sons, Laughlan Murdoch and James Murdoch and the various directors and senior managers of News Corp LLC and its Australian controlled subsidiary publicly listed REA Group Limited ... which owns and controls the premium Australian Real Estate Advertising website

to make sure all of their print and web based media competitors are wiped out and destroyed ....

to protect their milti-billion dollar assets and income in their print and web based media and advertising businesses in Australia, which includes the multi-Australian multi-billion general classified and  real estate advertising market, commonly known in Australian Media Circles as

'The Rivers of Gold'

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James Murdoch, Rupert Murdoch and Lachlan Murdoch News Corp Mafia Media Bosses

James Murdoch, Rupert Murdoch and Lachlan Murdoch News Corp Mafia Media Bosses

James Murdoch, Rupert Murdoch and Lachlan Murdoch News Corp Mafia Media Bosses

James Murdoch Rupert Murdoch and Lachlan Murdoch News Corp Mafia Media Bosses

Lachlan Murdoch and James News Corp Mafia Media Bosses

Over half a million Australians demand probe into Rupert Murdoch's media empire - EconoTimes

Rupert Murdoch 'Not Fit' to Run News Corp., U.K. Parliamentary Committee Finds

The Quest to End Rupert Murdoch's Australian Media Empire — IR Insider

The Murdochs Are Not The Mafia - But The Murdoch Family Firm Is In Meltdown

Rupert Murdoch The Untold Story of the world's greatest media wizard Rupert Murdoch

Meet Fox News' new leader Lachlan Murdoch, who inherits a media empire now that his father is officially stepping down

lachlan rupert murdoch
Rupert Murdoch and his son Lachlan Murdoch (left) attend the 2018 tennis US Open on Arthur Ashe stadium at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center on September 5, 2018 in Flushing Meadows, Queens, New York City
 
Britney Nguyen,Lakshmi Varanasi,Sonam Sheth
21 September 2023
  • Rupert Murdoch is officially stepping down from his current role at Fox News and News Corp.

  • He's handing the reins to his son, Lachlan Murdoch.

  • Lachlan Murdoch was previously the executive chairman and CEO of both companies.

Rupert Murdoch announced Thursday that he's stepping down from his current role at Fox Corporation and News Corp.

He will hand the reins to his son, Lachlan, who will take over as sole chairman of both companies, Murdoch said in a memo to employees.

"My father firmly believed in freedom," Murdoch wrote, "and Lachlan is absolutely committed to the cause."

Lachlan, 51, was born in London in 1971. He was raised in New York with his older sister Elisabeth and younger brother James.

 

James, Elisabeth, Rupert, Lachlan Murdoch
From left: James, Elisabeth, Rupert, and Lachlan Murdoch (Photo by Tom Stoddart/Getty Images)Tom Stoddart/Getty Images

Lachlan was born to Rupert's second wife, Anna Torv. His older half-sister, Prudence, was born in 1958 to Rupert and his first wife, Patricia Booker.

Source: BloombergFinancial Times

According to a 1998 profile of Lachlan, he sometimes woke up before dawn as a child to have breakfast with his father before he left for business meetings.

Rupert Murdoch and his son Lachlan Murdoch (left) attend the 2018 tennis US Open on Arthur Ashe stadium at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center on September 5, 2018 in Flushing Meadows, Queens, New York City.Jean Catuffe/GC Images

He would also stay up late listening to Rupert talk business strategy at the dinner table "with famous guests," according to the profile.

Source: The New York Times Magazine

Growing up, Lachlan was educated at elite private schools like Trinity School in Manhattan, and Phillips Academy Andover in Massachusetts. He graduated from Aspen Country Day School in Colorado.

Lachlan was reportedly a member of the "Conservative Society" at Trinity, a club formed to address "a definite imbalance of political ideology in the school community," according to the school's yearbook.

Source: The Intercept

He attended Princeton and studied philosophy.

People walk through the Princeton University campus in Princeton, N.J., Thursday, April 5, 2018.
People walk through the Princeton University campus in Princeton, N.J., Thursday, April 5, 2018.AP Photo/Seth Wenig

Lachlan's senior thesis focused on German idealism, and was titled, "A Study of Freedom and Morality in Kant's Practical Philosophy."

Source: The Intercept

When Lachlan was 19, he went to London at his father's request to observe the British Sky Broadcasting merger.

 

Westminster Abbey in London on July 11, 2020.
Westminster Abbey in London on July 11, 2020.

Lachlan told The New York Times Magazine, "I wanted to put my arms around him and hold him up," about seeing his father stressed during the merger because of the debt hanging over News Corp.

His father successfully navigated the deal, and Lachlan reportedly never talked about the moment with Rupert again.

Source: The New York Times Magazine

After graduating from Princeton, Lachlan oversaw Murdoch media properties in Australia.

 

Lachlan Murdoch
 
21st Century Fox

Source: The Intercept

In 1997, Lachlan became deputy chief operating officer at News Corp.

Lachlan Murdoch
Business Insider

News Corp said that Lachlan was "directly responsible" for two-thirds of the company's global revenue, specifically from TV stations in the US.

Source: News Corp

Lachlan married Sarah O'Hare, a British-Australian model, in 1998. They have three children: Karan, Aidan, and Aerin.

lachlan murdoch sarah murdoch sun valley
Lachlan and Sarah Murdoch in Sun Valley, Idaho.Getty/Kevork Djansezian

Lachlan previously told Insider that marrying Sarah was the best decision of his life.

Source: PeopleInsider

In 2005, Lachlan resigned from his role as deputy chief operating officer of News Corp amid reported tensions between company executives and his family.

Lachlan Murdoc
Jon Kopaloff/WireImage

Source: InsiderNYT, and Reuters

He moved back to Australia where he launched the investment firm Illyria, through which he invested in media entities like Nova Entertainment, a radio station group.

Sydney, Australia
Murdoch moved to Sydney after resigning from News Corp.Vijay Anand/Getty Images

Source: FTBloombergNPR, and Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation

In 2014, after seeing some success and some failure after venturing out on his own, Murdoch returned to the family business as the non-executive co-chairman of both 21st Century Fox and News Corp.

lachlan murdoch
REUTERS/Rick Wilking Source: Reuters

 

Lachlan also helmed Fox Corp through tumultuous news cycles and long defended the controversial remarks of Tucker Carlson, anchor of the primetime Fox News show, Tucker Carlson Tonight.

Tucker Carlson.
Tucker Carlson.Fox News/YouTube.

Source: Insider

But earlier this year, in a surprising turn of events, Fox News fired Carlson. The decision was jointly made by Lachlan and Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott, Insider's Claire Atkinson confirmed.

lachlan murdoch
21st Century Fox co-chair Lachlan Murdoch in Sun Valley, Idaho.Drew Angerer/Getty Images

Carlson was axed from Fox News less than a week after the outlet settled a defamation lawsuit with Dominion Voting systems for $787.5 million over false claims made about election fraud during the 2020 election.

Prior to the settlement though, texts revealed through the discovery process showed Carlson disapproved of the company's news division and management, was skeptical of the network's coverage of the election, and had strong critiques of Donald Trump.

Shortly after Biden was declared the winner of the 2020 election, Carlson texted other employees saying, "Do the executives understand how much trust and credibility we've lost with our audience? We're playing with fire, for real."

Source: InsiderReuters, and Wall Street Journal

 

Lachlan's net worth isn't clear, but he received $21.7 million in total compensation as Fox Corporation CEO in 2022.

Rupert Murdoch and son Lachlan Murdoch.
REUTERS/Brendan McDermid

Lachlan's base salary for fiscal year 2022 was $3 million, according to Fox Corporation's public filings. Overall, his total compensation for fiscal year 2022 was $21,748,681. In 2021, his total compensation was higher, at $27,675,399.

Rupert Murdoch and his family have a combined net worth of $17.3 billion, according to Forbes.

A representative for Lachlan Murdoch did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment ahead of publication.

Source: ForbesSEC

Read the original article on Business Insider

A British MP called Murdoch a mob boss

Rupert Murdoch

Rupert Murdoch

A British MP called Murdoch a mob boss

Critics Spot The 'Gaslighting' Line In Rupert Murdoch's 'Dishonest' Retirement Letter

Over half a million Australians demand probe into Rupert Murdoch's media empire - EconoTimes

Rupert Murdoch 'Not Fit' to Run News Corp., U.K. Parliamentary Committee Finds

The Quest to End Rupert Murdoch's Australian Media Empire — IR Insider

The Murdochs Are Not The Mafia - But The Murdoch Family Firm Is In Meltdown

Rupert Murdoch The Untold Story of the world's greatest media wizard Rupert Murdoch

Critics Spot The 'Gaslighting' Line In Rupert Murdoch's 'Dishonest' Retirement Letter

Lee Moran  September 22, 2023
 

Billionaire media baron Rupert Murdoch angered critics with one particular part of his announcement that he was stepping down as Fox Corp. and News Corp. chair.

In a memo to colleagues on Thursday, Murdoch railed against so-called “elites” who he claimed “have open contempt for those who are not members of their rarefied class.”

“Most of the media is in cahoots with those elites, peddling political narratives rather than pursuing the truth,” he added.

Rupert Murdoch will serve as chairman emeritus from November, when his son Lachlan Murdoch will become the sole chair of News Corp.
Rupert Murdoch will serve as chairman emeritus from November, when his son Lachlan Murdoch will become the sole chair of News Corp
 

Billionaire media baron Rupert Murdoch angered critics with one particular part of his announcement that he was stepping down as Fox Corp. and News Corp. chair.

In a memo to colleagues on Thursday, Murdoch railed against so-called “elites” who he claimed “have open contempt for those who are not members of their rarefied class.”

“Most of the media is in cahoots with those elites, peddling political narratives rather than pursuing the truth,” he added.

Critics on X, formerly Twitter, accused Murdoch of gaslighting, self-delusion, dishonesty and obliviousness, given his vast wealth and decadeslong influence over global politics via his media empire that counts America’s top-rated cable news channel, Fox News.   

Related...

Mr Wijat and ERF The Worm Exposing Corrupt Search Engine Manipulation

"ERF ... how do you tell which search engines are corrupt and manipulated?.." asks Mr Wijat

"Wijat... when your 'Controversial' article/website is 'Missing' from the ranking search list ." replies ERF the Worm

 Search Engine Manipulation Effect (inltv.co.uk)

Over half a million Australians demand probe into Rupert Murdoch's media empire - EconoTimes

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 The Australian Media Conspiracy
The Hidden Truth Behind the Murdoch'Rothschild/MI6/CIA Mafia Style Stranglehold of the Australian Media

 The Australian Media Conspiracy is an extremely controversial book being published by the INL News and Australian Weekend News Publishing Group   based on a 30 plus year in depth INL News and Australian Weekend News Publishing Group Investigation Report into how immoral, unjust, devious, clandestine,  wrongful, and in many instances unlawful and illegal tactics and actions have been carried out by and/or for and on behalf of News Corp LLC, Keith Rupert Murdoch and his sons, Lachlan Murdoch and James Murdoch and the various directors and senior managers of News Corp LLC and its Australian controlled subsidiary publicly listed REA Group Limited ... which owns and controls the premium Australian Real Estate Advertising website

to make sure all of their print and web based media competitors are wiped out and destroyed ....

to protect their multi-billion dollar assets and income in their print and web based media and advertising businesses in Australia, which includes the multi-Australian multi-billion general classified and  real estate advertising market, commonly known in Australian Media Circles as

'The Rivers of Gold'

The book  The Australian Media Conspiracy and a film that is being made based on the book, shows how News Corp LLC, Keith Rupert Murdoch and his sons, Lachlan Murdoch and James Murdoch, their very silent behind the scenes Rothschild Partners,  and the various directors and senior managers of News Corp LLC and its Australian controlled subsidiary publicly listed REA Group Limited have carried out and/or ordered to be carried out, immoral. clandestine, unjust, devious, wrongful and in many instances illegal and unlawful activities to destroy their print and web based media competitors 

to protect their milti-billion dollar assets and income in their print and web based media and advertising businesses in Australia, which includes the multi-Australian multi-billion general classified and  real estate advertising market, commonly known in Australian Media Circles as

'The Rivers of Gold'

The book  The Australian Media Conspiracy and a film that is being made based on the book, shows how News Corp LLC, Keith Rupert Murdoch and his sons, Laughlan Murdoch and James Murdoch, their very silent behind the scenes Rothschild Partners,  and the various directors and senior managers of News Corp LLC and its Australian controlled subsidiary publicly listed REA Group Limited have used their absolutely powerful influence and unlimited deep financial pockets to obtain help from corrupt police, corrupt political and government staff magistrates, judges, court clerks, lawyers and barristers in the legal fraternity, corrupt financiers and bankers, corrupt people in the media, corrupted private investigators, criminals, corrupted politicians, corrupted people in government departments and large business organisations, corrupted real estate agents, corrupted real estate valuers, including the head of Queensland Valuation Control Board and others to help them carry out immoral. clandestine, unjust, devious, wrongful and in many instances illegal and unlawful activities to destroy their print and web based media competitors 

Historical INLNews.com Article

MurdochPapersOpenFireBBC (inlnews.com)

Murdoch Papers Open Fire BBC

  Murdoch papers open fire on BBC 
                  Why the Murdochs are wrong to blame BBC for media's woes
              
Mattoug" I'm sure this guy (Rupert Murdoch) has enough money, now go rest "

Mr Wijat and  ERF The Worm.  "James, how about true social justice, genuine love  and caring for your the people that share this earth with you, independent investigative journalism and the British culture, arts and life the BBC protects and maintains for the British people...how many more billions do you and your dad Rupert need to make...in your case the normal and acceptable profit motives to make a decent living to feed your family and have a decent life style have gone to the extreme and are turning into greed and extreme abuse of your power as the most powerful people the world with the most powerful media group iu the world that has the effectual power to appoint and dismiss governments and chance the way a whole nation thinks through what they read in your newspapers, and see on your TV channels and Internet websites.. me and EFR The Worm live in an organic farm, grow and own vegetables, have our own water from the rain and underground have our own electricity from the sun and wind power and still run an international media group, International News Limited, we have not need for money other than what it costs to run the websites  and other bills we have to pay as all businesses have...maybe you should take the friendly advice of Mattoug stated in the Telegraph on the 29th August, 2009, when he says,
                        
                                   " I'm sure this guy (Rupert Murdoch) has enough money, now go rest "

"Why doesn't he just be straight with us and say he wants to charge for online content, after all this is what he's lining us up for. If the licence fee goes, so does free online BBC content, which is one of the main threats to News Corp. I'm sure this guy already has enough money, now go rest"...Telegraph... Mattoug 29th August, 2008

Rupert and James please read this little poem by Bert E, Pratt of Perth Western Australia from the 2001 Australian Weekend News
http://www.inlnews.com/AustWeekendNews2001.html

                           Australian Weekend News Poem of the Month (2001)
                                                       God and Money:
God put us on this earth to make it a better place, All we have done is turn it into a rat race. We get up in the morning and drive our cars like mad, We pollute the air and kill the trees, which makes me very sad, No matter how much God gives us, We still want more and more, There does not seem to be a number that we will settle for, You ask people to help you, They look at you aghast, And walk quickly past, But when you go through the pearly gates, With your money in hand, God will gently take it off you, And whisper "everybody's equal in this land".
Bert E. Pratt

 Rothschild Family Net Worth in excess of $500 Trillion Dollars
The Rothschild Family are considered the Richest Family on earth by Forbes. It is a  common belief based on research and pure logic  that the Rothschild Family use their obscene wealth to secretly control the world economy and global events for over three centuries. Lord Jacob Rothschild has a net worth in excess of $5 Trillion USD  Dollars. The Rothschild Family helped the British during the Second World War, by providing finance to purchase weapons. Through their Rothschild owned and controlled banks, The Rothschild Family indirectly control major banks and Big Pharma  and other major companies around the world.
 
The Rothschild Family's Secret Power
Despite being Zionist Jews, The Rothschild Family in one of the biggest financial donors to the Vatican and the Catholic Pope.
The Rothschild Family has the political backing  of the Roman Catholic Vatican Church, which helps The Rothschild Family get clearance for construction projects in Africa and anywhere else in the world.
 
The Rothschild Family has the support of most governments in Central Africa, which helps The Rothschild Family plunder trillions of dollars of natural resources like Diamonds, Gold, Lithium, and other valuable minerals. Even the Prime Minister of Canada Justin Trudeau has received a Private Jet as a gift from The Rothschild Family.
 
The Rothschild Family has been secretly sponsoring the Catholic Pope and Vatican for the past 200 years, thereby wielding significant control over world events and wars. During the Second World War, the Vatican Church helped The Rothschild Family to move assets from Italy and Greece, by facilitating a temporary cease-fire between the Germans and the British.
During the British War with Napolean, The Rothschild Family provided all the financial help to England. Once the war was over, The British seized France's gold reserves and paid back The Rothschild Family double the amount that The Rothschild Family had lent the British Government.
 
Lachlan Murdoch , Rupert Murdoch and James Murdoch News Corp Mafia Media Bosses
 
 

Former Australian PM Kevin Rudd: Murdoch media “political equivalent of a mafia operation”, Hugh Grant accuses of Boris Johnson of lacking “the stomach” to stand up to Murdoch - Hacked Off

 

Rupert Murdoch and Lachlan Murdoch News Corp Mafia Media Bosses 2018

Rupert Murdoch and Lachlan Murdoch News Corp Mafia Media Bosses 2018

Rupert Murdoch's Media Mafia Organisation 

Tom Watson- UK Labour MP makes  Mafia Comparison with News International and its owner New Corporation LLC at the Phone Hacking Parliamentary Enquiry

James Murdoch Rupert Murdoch and Lachlan Murdoch News Corp Mafia Media Bosses

Tom Watson called Rupert  Murdoch "the first Mafia boss in history not to know he is running a criminal enterprise" 

Rupert Murdoch and Lachlan Murdoch News Corp Mafia Media Bosses

Former Australian PM Kevin Rudd: Murdoch media “political equivalent of a mafia operation”, Hugh Grant accuses of Boris Johnson of lacking “the stomach” to stand up to Murdoch - Hacked Off

 

Tom Watson- UK Labour MP makes  Mafia Comparison with News International and its owner New Corporation LLC at the Phone Hacking Parliamentary Enquiry

Tom Watson called Rupert  Murdoch "the first Mafia boss in history not to know he is running a criminal enterprise" 

James Murdoch, Lachlan Murdoch, Rupert Murdoch and Elizabeth Murdoch  who have control of the what has been publicly branded by the main stream media as

'the News Corp  Media Mafia'  ...

but what their owned and controlled by the main  stream media never like to talk abut is that they are all fronting for their silent partners, who are Lord Jacob Rothschild and the Rothschild Family, who have been silently backing Rupert Murdoch , the Murdoch Family, News Corp and Fox News to provide unlimited capital to purchase, develop and expand their media control around the world  ....  since the 1970's.

To Lord Rothschild and the Rothschild Family and their secret partners, the Vatican, controlled and  the Catholic Church. it has never been about money or profits  when they arranged the next few billion dollars to help the News Corp  Media Mafia  to purchase, develop and expand their media control around the world  ....  since the 1950's. ... as they own over 50% of the world's wealth and thus have more than enough money and assets ....it is all about power controlling what the average person reads, watches and thinks ... to help guide and shape the world into developing their long-term vision for Pant Earth and the way human live on Planet Earth

Former Australian PM Kevin Rudd: Murdoch media “political equivalent of a mafia operation”, Hugh Grant accuses of Boris Johnson of lacking “the stomach” to stand up to Murdoch - Hacked Off

Rupert Murdoch's Media Mafia Organisation 

Tom Watson- UK Labour MP makes  Mafia Comparison with News International and its owner New Corporation LLC at the Phone Hacking Parliamentary Enquiry

Tom Watson called Rupert  Murdoch "the first Mafia boss in history not to know he is running a criminal enterprise" 

https://en.vijesti.me/world/Europe/340714/the-British-MP-called-Murdoch-the-boss-of-the-mafia 

A British MP called Murdoch a mob boss

During the questioning, Labor MP Tom Watson suggested that the British newspaper was under "omerta" - a mafia law of silence.

James Murdoch, the head of the company "News International" and the son of media magnate Rupert Murdoch, answered in the English parliament the questions of deputies related to the affair of tapping mobile phones in the arrangement of the tabloid "News of the World", and one of the deputies called Murdoch Jr. a mafia the boss.

During the questioning, Labor MP Tom Watson suggested that the British newspaper was under "omerta" - a mafia law of silence.

Murdoch declared that he was quite angry and rejected such a possibility with disgust.

He blamed all the problems on the editors who, as he said, should have "avoided irregularities".

"The editors are the ones who need to clean things up, to give me insight into the situation. That's their job," Murdoch said and emphasized that he was not aware of everything that was happening, according to British media.

"Then you must be the first mob boss in history who didn't know he was running a criminal organization," replied MP Murdoch.

( FoNet )

 

Donald Trump Calls Rupert Murdoch As A Globalist and Lambasts Fox News September 2023

 

Rupert Murdoch Quits As Chairman Of Fox And News Corp And Hands Reins To Eldest Son Lachlan

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Rupert Murdoch's History About His Media Empire Part One

Rupert Murdoch Considers Combing Fox News And News Corp

Rupert Murdoch In 90 Seconds

Rupert Murdoch 1967 Media Monopolies Part Two 

'Rupert Murdoch's Toxic Legacy

Rupert Murdoch Succession Politics

Rupert Murdoch Talks About His 50 Years Old Australian Newspaper Media Empire Part One

Rupert Murdoch 1978

"The News Corp Board Did Nothing Despite The Harm To News Corp Resulting From NAM and NDS Misconduct ..."

 

An investigative report states that The Rothschild Family, their partners and associates effectively finance, run and control the major security agencies and networks around the world, such as Israel's Mossad, Five Eyes consisting of the British (GCHQ/MI5/MI60, Canadian (CSE), New Zealand (NZSIS), Australian (ASIO) and USA (CIA)Security Agencies and Networks, and the Russian Security agencies and networks... being silent partners with Rupert Murdoch, News Corp, Facebook, Twitter, Google, Wikipedia etc., and many other mainstream media outlets around the worlds they make sure there are a lot of MI6, CIA etc. staff working as double agents for the media outlets, as well as being paid by these security agencies and networks to do their bidding within these mainstream media groups...

CMS Committee inquired about whether anyone who had testified in the prior committee proceeding had lied ... Both Murdochs (Rupert and James) claimed that they had no knowledge on that issue. James Murdoch also testified that he had he had no knowledge of the recent evidence (primarily the "Fox Neville" e-mail) that expanded the hacking scandal beyond one rogue reporter until the end of December 2010....

Shortly after James Murdoch testified, two former News International senior executives, Crone and Myer, challenged James Murdoch's testimony, claiming that they had told him years ago about an email that showed that the wrongdoing at News of the World was much more widespread than News Corp and their subsidiary News International acknowledged.

A young Keith Rupert Murdoch backed by his  silent partners, Lord Jacob Rothschild and the Rothschild Family who agreed to provide  unlimited capital,  to help Rupert Murdoch take control of the Australian Newspapers and then the world newspapers.

Paul Carlucci, the chief executive of News America a fully owned subsidiary of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp, , was also quoted as having told Floorgraphics:
"If you ever get into any of our businesses, I will destroy you. I work for a man who wants it all, and doesn't understand anybody telling him he can't have it all."
Carlucci was referring to Rupert Murdoch, to whom Carlucci reported.
 
 
Rupert Murdoch Talks With Peter Robertson Uncommon Knowledge About His Media Empire Part One 
 
Rupert Murdoch Talks With Peter Robertson Uncommon Knowledge About His Media Empire Part Two 
 
Rupert Murdoch Jerry Hall Marriage Part One
 
 
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Over half a million Australians demand probe into Rupert Murdoch's media empire- EconoTimes

Fri, Nov 6, 2020

 Rupert Murdoch

Rupert Murdoch's media empire has been likened to the mafia.

Over 500,000 Australians petitioned the parliament to conduct an inquiry into Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, which threatens media diversity and encourages deliberate polarizing and politically manipulating news.

The petition, which was launched by former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd over three weeks ago, singled out Murdoch's News Corp as a potential threat to free speech and public debate, although it also raised other concerns, including Google and Facebook's relationship with the news media.

The petition expressed concern that News Corporation, which overwhelmingly controls Australia's print media, routinely attacks opponents in business and politics by blending editorial opinion with news reporting.

News Corporation, founded by Fox News billionaire Rupert Murdoch, controls around two-thirds of daily newspaper readership.

It owns major national newspaper The Australian and tabloids The Daily Telegraph and The Herald Sun.

Rudd considers the influence of Murdoch's media properties as "toxic" has dubbed the billionaire's news empire a "cancer on democracy" in the US, UK, and Australia.

In an interview with CNN chief media correspondent Brian Stelter, Rudd likened Murdoch's organization to the mafia.

Rupert Murdoch Most Dangerous Man In The World

Rupert Murdoch News Corp History ABC

Rupert Murdoch built a media empire that spanned the globe | Evening Standard

Rupert Murdoch built a media empire that spanned the globe

He became a dominant presence in newspapers, TV, films, books and the internet worldwide.
By 
Chris Moncrieff 21 September 2023

James Murdoch, Lachlan Murdoch, Rupert Murdoch and Elizabeth Murdoch  who have control of the what has been publicly branded by the main stream media as

'the News Corp  Media Mafia'  ...

Starting with two small Australian newspapers, Rupert Murdoch built a media empire that spanned the globe.

Through a combination of risk-taking, ruthlessness, a willingness to play the long game and a keen gut instinct, he became a dominant presence in newspapers, TV, films, books and the internet worldwide.

As a result, Mr Murdoch gained significant political influence, which he used to bolster his business interests and – on occasion – to prod governments in the direction he favoured.

Ambitious politicians such as Tony Blair courted his support, believing the backing of his papers could mean the difference between winning and losing elections.

Mr Murdoch’s critics accused him of dragging down media standards and abusing his power, but even they had to admit he was committed to investing in journalism.

In the UK alone he poured millions of pounds into his newspapers – The TimesThe Sunday Times, The Sun and the News of the World – and his Sky satellite television network.

He repeatedly employed the strategy of taking tabloid papers, turning them into money-spinners, then using the profits to prop up more prestigious but less lucrative projects.

Mr Murdoch twice transformed Britain’s media landscape, first by breaking the dominance of the print unions in the mid-1980s and then by developing hugely successful multi-channel pay TV.

But his influence stretched far wider, taking in leading American papers and television stations, Star TV in Asia, and the MySpace website.

His acquisition of the prestigious Wall Street Journal in 2007 was hailed as a major coup in the face of opposition from significant sections of the US media establishment.

And the tycoon’s announcement in 2009 that his newspapers would go against the consensus and start charging people to read them online was regarded by some as a bold move that could save quality journalism from extinction.

Ink flowed through Keith Rupert Murdoch’s veins from an early age.

He was born in Melbourne, Australia, on March 11 1931 to leading Australian newspaper proprietor Sir Keith Murdoch.

Mr Murdoch was educated at Geelong Grammar, one of Australia’s most prestigious private schools, and Oxford University’s Worcester College, before working as a reporter and sub-editor on the Daily Express in London.

He returned to Australia when his father died in 1952, leaving him the Adelaide News and Sunday Mail.

The tireless entrepreneur used the two titles as a springboard, building up their circulation and profits so he could buy up other papers, start new ones and move into TV and radio.

By the time he was 33, he had established Australia’s first national newspaper, The Australian, and owned other titles including the Daily Mirror and Sunday Mirror in Sydney, the Sunday Truth in Brisbane, the Sunday Times in Perth and the News in Darwin.

He was also chairman of the Southern Television Corporation and owned two radio stations.

Mr Murdoch’s first foray into the competitive British media scene came in 1969 after he was asked to help fight off Robert Maxwell’s bid for control of the UK’s top-selling paper, the News of the World.

This endeavour was successful and Mr Murdoch ended up owning 40% of shares in the Sunday tabloid. He soon bought up another 11% to become the controlling shareholder.

Later that year the Australian magnate bought The Sun, which was then dying on its feet, for the giveaway price of £250,000.

With his acute commercial acumen, and generous dollops of humour, sex and sport, Mr Murdoch transformed the ailing paper into one of the most popular and profitable tabloids in history.

The Sun rapidly put on sales and, under the editorship of Kelvin MacKenzie, from 1981 to 1994, it became the most talked-about paper in Britain.

Its headlines became famous, from the self-explanatory “Freddie Starr Ate My Hamster” to “Gotcha”, when the Argentine cruiser Belgrano was torpedoed during the Falklands War, and “It’s Paddy Pantsdown”, a reference to former Liberal Democrat leader Paddy Ashdown’s extramarital affair.

Some politicians used the term “Sun readers” as an insult – until they realised they were insulting 14 million potential voters.

The front page headline “It’s The Sun Wot Won It” after the Tories defeated Labour at the 1992 general election has been debated ever since, but at the very least it summed up the paper’s bullish self-confidence.

Mr Murdoch acquired a slice of the British establishment when he bought The Times and The Sunday Times in 1981. He added the now-defunct Today newspaper to his growing empire in 1987.

One of his most adventurous gambles was to move production of his London newspapers from their long-standing home in Fleet Street to Wapping in the East End.

Mr Murdoch negotiated with the print unions for some six years without success before staging an astonishing secret moonlight flit to the new plant at Wapping in January 1986.

His action provoked violent industrial action for a year and led to a Labour Party boycott of his papers.

Some of his journalists refused to work at “Fortress” Wapping, so named because it was surrounded by barbed wire and security cameras.

For months, the remaining employees had to be bussed in and out of the plant in vehicles with blackened windows as union pickets hurled abuse at them.

Mr Murdoch eventually won the fight, bringing up-to-date computer technology into the British newspaper industry and paving the way for the launch of The Independent in 1986.

In 1989 the entrepreneur launched Sky satellite TV, then offering just four channels, which merged with the rival British Satellite Broadcasting the next year to form BSkyB.

BSkyB proved a huge success, expanding to offer hundreds of channels and making large profits from subscribers drawn by popular offerings such as exclusive live Premier League football matches.

Mr Murdoch first entered the US media market in 1973 with the purchase of two papers in San Antonio, Texas.

His American ventures went on to include a new weekly tabloid, the National Star, as well as the New York Post, the Chicago Sun-Times, Village Voice and New York magazine.

Having taken US citizenship in 1985 to comply with the country’s media ownership laws, he built Fox TV into one of America’s major broadcast networks.

His media interests spread beyond the English-speaking world, growing to include Sky Italia, Sky Deutschland and Asia’s Star TV.

Mr Murdoch was a hands-on proprietor, frequently telling his editors how their papers should be organised and laid out.

He admitted to a British parliamentary inquiry in 2007 that he exercised editorial control at The Sun and the News of the World over “major issues” – such as who to back in a general election and policy on Europe – but insisted he never interfered with the lines taken by The Times and The Sunday Times.

Mr Murdoch also became famed for his plain-speaking defence of the way he ran his businesses.

When he was accused of lowering newspaper standards, he said he was reviving the newspaper-reading habit among millions of working-class people who had abandoned papers for TV.

When the UK’s Press Council censured him for publishing the memoirs of Christine Keeler, the call-girl at the centre of the John Profumo scandal, he retorted: “If the Press Council is going to behave like an arm of the Establishment, I’m not going to take any notice of it.”

His “predatory” policy of slashing the price of The Times angered his British newspaper rivals, notably The Independent, and even led to debates in Parliament.

If the Press Council is going to behave like an arm of the Establishment, I'm not going to take any notice of it

But criticism only made Mr Murdoch more determined to keep following his instincts and keep grinding away at regulators, unhelpful politicians and the competition.

He once explained: “I’m a catalyst for change. You can’t be an outsider and be successful over 30 years without leaving a certain amount of scar tissue around the place.”

The name of schoolgirl Milly Dowler, who was 13 years old when she was murdered by Levi Bellfield in south-west London in 2002, is one that may haunt the British newspaper industry in general and Mr Murdoch in particular.

The murdered teenager’s mobile phone voicemail was accessed by the News of the World newspaper and messages were deleted to free up space for new ones.

Celebrities, royals and politicians had claimed to be victims of newspaper phone-hacking but the increasingly damaging outrage and condemnation over the scandal led to Mr Murdoch closing down the 168-year-old tabloid in July 2011.

The paper’s royal editor and a private investigator had even been convicted of intercepting phone messages and spent time in prison.

A “humbled and very shaken” Mr Murdoch went on to apologise to the Dowler family in a meeting in London.

He wrote an apology for the paper’s “serious wrongdoing”, which stated: “We are deeply sorry for the hurt suffered by the individuals affected.

“We regret not acting faster to sort things out.”

Mr Murdoch admitted that mistakes were made over the scandal as he appeared before MPs on the Commons Culture, Media and Sport Committee.

He repeatedly apologised and declared: “This is the most humble day of my life.”

Milly’s parents told the government-appointed Leveson Inquiry on press standards that the phone-hack had led to false hopes that they might see their daughter again.

“I rang her phone,” recalled Sally Dowler. “It clicked through on to her voicemail, so I heard her voice and it was just like ‘She’s picked up her voicemail, she’s alive’.”

Inquiry chairman Lord Leveson said: “There have been too many times when, chasing the story, parts of the press have acted as if its own code, which it wrote, simply did not exist.

“This has caused real hardship and, on occasion, wreaked havoc with the lives of innocent people whose rights and liberties have been disdained.”

In 2023, it was Mr Murdoch’s US interests which came under the spotlight with a defamation claim brought by the voting machine company Dominion against Fox News over on-air allegations that the 2020 presidential election had been stolen from Donald Trump.

Mr Murdoch, who had, according to court papers, described the claims as “really crazy”, was spared having to give evidence in court after Fox agreed to pay Dominion 787.5 million dollars in a last-ditch settlement.

Mr Murdoch has been married four times and has four daughters and two sons.

His first marriage gave him his first child, Prue, before ending in divorce in 1966.

Mr Murdoch’s three children with his second wife – Elisabeth, Lachlan and James – were dispatched to various outposts of his corporate empire.

It was widely assumed that one of them would succeed him and there was endless speculation inside and outside his News Corporation holding company about who was the favourite at any one time.

Jesse Armstrong, the creator of hit TV series Succession, confirmed that the original script was based on Mr Murdoch, following many years of speculation by fans and media.

Scottish actor Brian Cox played foul-mouthed global media tycoon and family patriarch Logan Roy, whose children were vying for control of their father’s company.

Unlike the TV show which saw none of the children succeed, the real-life Murdoch drama has Lachlan winning through to take the top job.

 

News International: Britain's Mafia | openDemocracy

https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/news-international-britains-mafia/ 

News International: Britain's Mafia

Murdoch's hold over Britain over the last three decades has been nothing short of mafia-like. Much can be learned through a comparison between the Italian mafia the Comorra, and the media mogul's empire

Matthew Richmond 28 July 2011
 

The Camorra is the Neapolitan counterpart to the Sicilian Mafia. Its tentacles reach into and corrupt the work of every major institution, from local government, to the criminal justice system, to local businesses and communities in blighted urban neighbourhoods. It is known to many outside of Italy through the film Gomorrah, based on a book of the same name, which focuses in on one particular crime syndicate within the mafia, the Casalesi clan, and their influence in Naples in the mid-200s. The Camorra's money is invested in major industries, on which it has an equally corrosive impact. It famously runs Naples’ notorious waste disposal service, which has indiscriminately mixed and dumped waste on the cheap with total indifference to the public health implications. According to a report in 2007 it also controls not just drug-trafficking and prostitution, but the fish and milk industries, the coffee trade and thousands of bakeries across the Campagna region. The distortionary impact of the Camorra’s intervention in these markets is symbolised in the film Gomorrah by the bloody retribution meted out to a rival business that undercuts its interests in the garment trade.

11345-gomorra.jpg

A scene from the film Gomorrah

The Camorra is not all-powerful. Its members who are caught and cannot be defended go to prison. It does not, could not and would not want to control everything that goes on in Naples, and many inhabitants lead perfectly happy lives there without ever crossing its path. Those who do however, whether unavoidably or through carelessness or bad luck, soon feel a net closing around them. The weapons at the Camorra’s disposal are varied and potent, making it a ferocious and resilient force. There is the ability to lean on those in power who have already been compromised, a slick legal machine that can create innocence out of the faintest shadow of doubt, and a code of silence which allows the whole to survive the loss of individual parts. Most spectacularly there is the implicit threat of unanswerable force. Violence is used sparingly, but once a decision is made it is indiscriminate and brutal.

Be the change we're writing about. Support this article with Flattr. All proceeds are divided 50/50 between the author and openDemocracy

If a film were made about the same period in Britain, it would be about News International. Rupert Murdoch’s hold over British political and cultural life over the best part of three decades has been nothing short of mafia-like, as Anthony Barnett has argued. In fact, substitute physical violence for the metaphorical violence of character assassination and strategic political attack, replace omerta with the buying of silence, and they become hard to tell apart.

This is not to imply moral equivalence between organised crime and the ruthless wielding of enormous media influence, but to highlight the same distortionary impact they have on the institutions of a democratic state. For starters, a generation of ambitious politicians have learnt to see the Murdoch empire as an additional pillar of British democracy, and have internalised the requirement to court his favour or at least avoid his disapproval. In Murdoch’s Britain not just MPs, but police, journalists and representatives of other key institutions, if they are in any way compromised (or even if not,) are censored or self-censor to avoid career and health threatening trial by tabloid. Of course politics and policing continue as normal in those areas that are not of interest to News International. But in those that do clear lines are drawn in the sand, and are rarely overstepped by those who matter.

So what does the demise of the News of the World, and the possibility that News International may be further cut down to size mean for Britain’s Camorra? Although there is a long way to go there are positive signs that a single media group may never again be able to exercise such a stranglehold over democratic processes. This is less surprising than it currently feels. Organisations, even old and powerful ones, can suddenly collapse when the arithmetic of power shifts, whether through scandal and intrigue or the creative destruction of the market. (In this case the latter may be of equal importance to the former.) What changes far more slowly and less perceptibly is the social and cultural context within which organisations operate. On this front the picture is far less clear, but looking into the past may give some clues as to what the future may hold.

Red top class war

It may help to see Murdoch’s rise as the most recent attempt over more than 150 years to unite, politicise and mobilise Britain’s diverse working classes. He has come closer to achieving this elusive dream than all the others who have tried, from the Luddites, though Keir Hardie and Oswald Mosley to Arthur Scargill. This is because Murdoch, unlike those other dreamers, did not seek to mobilise the masses in pursuit of an ideological programme - that is, as an end in itself. Rather the means of becoming an intermediary between the masses and the political elite was his end. On this point a subtler and arguably more interesting parallel with the Camorra arises.

Although its roots are far older, the Camorra really grew to prominence following the failed continent-wide revolutions of 1848 (and, incidentally, not long after the News of the World first went to print). The Liberal opposition to the Monarchy, realising the need to mobilise popular support, turned to the Camorristi whom they saw as the leaders of the Neapolitan poor, and formalised the agreement through systematic bribery. In effect the extorters of the poor were able to sell their power to the political elite, thus positioning themselves as indispensable power brokers.

Those who see Rupert Murdoch as a right-wing ideologue intent on destroying welfare states, cutting taxes for the rich and launching neocolonial wars credit him with a utopian vision that he has never possessed, and overlook the political flexibility and business acumen that are the true source of his power. Murdoch himself has strong political leanings (many of which are about as far to the right as Genghis Khan’s,) but he would never let these get in the way of the role of power broker that he has carefully positioned himself into. He does not have a vision of a perfect society and can therefore casually mirror the swings of public mood, sometimes leading, sometimes following, but always shaping the debate for optimal impact. The Mail and Telegraph groups, weighed down by cultural and ideological baggage, should be so lucky.

It is a particular set of social and cultural conditions that have permitted his particular organisational model and business strategy to succeed so spectacularly, of which three are paramount. Firstly, Britain’s working classes have split along occupational lines. A shrinking number of manual workers and a fairly stable (since the 1980s) number of long-term unemployed, have been eclipsed by a large and increasingly diverse service class. This group spans the public and private sectors, varying income levels and job roles, and different living circumstances (for example between homeowners and social housing tenants.) At the same time there has been a decline in regional differences (although not identities) with the onset of national broadcasting and increased mobility. The Sun and News of the World (not to mention Sky Sports,) were very much designed to cater to - and mould - the tastes of a national, post-industrial working class.

Secondly, this changing class constellation has been accompanied by a general decline in class deference. This was born of the cultural radicalism of the 1960s, but has continued apace and expanded beyond the original vanguard of predominantly middle-class students to all sections of society. Despite a dramatic rise in inequality since the 1980s political radicalism within the working classes has retreated along with the manual trades. Instead, declining working-class deference has manifested (with the guiding hand of Murdoch and others) in a seething cultural resentment against a perceived metropolitan elite. The greater social and economic liberalism of the urban middle class and political elites is offset against an often more socially conservative working class, which - at least until now - has also been more vulnerable to the whims of the global free market. It was this tension that Murdoch was able to exploit to his own (and almost no one else’s) advantage.

A third key condition is the changing nature of news and our understanding of it. Television offered a more visual and emotional representation of events, which the print media, if it was to maintain its relevance, needed to adapt to. Out of the shrinking margins of newspaper sales, particularly for the tabloids where advertising revenues are notoriously low, a new business model was born. They sought to maximise sales through sensationalistic, and personality-based coverage of news, and eventually more or less abandoning news altogether in favour of idle gossip. Murdoch was simply the most successful and politically canny of several proprietors who took this path.

The many-headed Hydra

These three conditions are in flux and may not settle in a way that is favourable to Murdoch or aspiring Murdochs, dynastic or otherwise. As Ken Goldstein explores, newspaper margins are sinking beyond the point where scandal and sensation remain profitable. Indeed the depths to which News International (and in all likelihood other tabloid groups) have sunk is probably a symptom of a slow and undignified demise. A less concentrated and more chaotic online media, somewhat anchored by heavily regulated broadcasters and those newspapers that can become sustainable (or sustained), is likely to emerge. In this more fractured ecosystem individual organisations will probably not be able to manipulate mass opinion in the way that Murdoch has in the past. However, the human instinct for the witch hunt, which Murdoch once harnesssed but now finds himself the victim of, will continue. It will arise from more diverse sources, and occur less predictably but with equal ferocity via Facebook and Twitter.

The other question surrounds where the politics will go. There will be no return of deference nor of old-fashioned working-class radicalism, no matter how much Maurice Glasman and his Blue Labour movement, covered in depth on OurKingdom, would like it to. It also does not seem likely that the cultural resentment that has replaced older forms of class conflict will dissipate any time soon. Britain’s class divisions seem to run too deep to address the real causes of this: educational apartheid, polarised housing and labour markets and an individualistic culture, fuelled in part by consumerism and the cult of celebrity, which News International has contributed to but which can survive quite happily without it. The latter’s power is to hold individuals responsible for their personal successes and failures without seriously attempting to level the playing field, let alone narrow the outcomes.

The greatest hope in overcoming this seemingly unbridgeable gulf lies in the excesses of the class to whom Murdoch actually belongs. The wealthiest and most influential people in Britain, much like the Camorra, are rarely seen in the newspapers. It only happens (as for Murdoch now and for the bankers in late 2008), when they are in crisis. Ironically, despite the money that has been lost to the taxpayer via the bank bailouts and tax avoidance and evasion by the wealthy, both the middle and working classes have largely let the super rich off the hook. As it dawns on them over the coming decade of austerity quite how much of their wealth has been stolen a basis may emerge for a broad coalition to challenge today’s most important political division - that between the carefree financial speculators and their wealthy corporate accomplices, and everyone else. Such a development would require finding a way of moving beyond Britain’s entrenched class divisions - the inequalities of the past as they have been fossilised in our language, culture and institutions - and actually addressing the real key inequality of the present.

For a period in the 1970s a powerful Camorra boss was temporarily able to unite the clans under his rule, but before long conflict broke out and it splintered into several smaller, but equally deadly groups. The Camorra’s organisational structure may have changed over the years, but the underlying dynamic of extortionary patronage of the poor has remained intact since 1848. That is Naples’ inheritance. Ours is a culturally and politically stifling system of class resentment, mutual suspicion and lack of basic empathy. Unless we can find a way to liberate ourselves from it, for each of the Hydra’s heads we decapitate ten more will grow.

Who is bankrolling Britain's democracy?Which groups shape the stories we see in the press; which voices are silenced, and why?

 

Rupert Murdoch's Media Empire

The Quest to End Rupert Murdoch's Australian Media Empire

Apr 08, 2023 Written By Dominic Kwan
Rupert Murdoch
 

Rupert Murdoch’s hold over politics and the media is especially extensive in Australia, where he owns close to 60% of the country’s newspapers. Source: AP News

Malcolm Turnbull, the former prime minister of Australia, is leading the charge to curb Rupert Murdoch’s monopoly of influence around the world. Turnbull is heading a campaign that calls for a royal commission -- Australia's highest form of public inquiry -- into Murdoch's media dominance.

Murdoch's hold over politics and the media is especially extensive in Australia, one of the most concentrated media markets in the world, where Murdoch’s News Corp owns close to 60% of the country's newspapers. The size and influence of Murdoch’s media empire has led Turnbull to accuse him of undermining democracy, with a rigorous inquiry into Murdoch's News Corp deemed essential.

This is further exacerbated in the wake of a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News in the United States. Pressure is mounting on Murdoch after the 91-year-old conceded that some of his Fox News commentators knowingly spread falsehoods about the 2020 U.S. presidential election.

Turnbull believes that the Dominion lawsuit case against Fox news strengthens the case for a royal commission in his native Australia, which also has the power to subpoena documents and compel people to give evidence under oath. This is because the media magnate's influence on Australia's political landscape has critics blaming Murdoch for helping ousting several Australian prime ministers whose agendas he disliked, including Turnbull himself. There are also further accusations of Murdoch’s networks fuelling climate denialism and right-wing populism.

Turnbull will take over the campaign from another former prime minister, Kevin Rudd, who stepped down after he became Australia's next U.S. ambassador. Rudd has called Murdoch "an arrogant cancer" on Australian democracy who uses "mafia"-like intimidation tactics against dissenting voices.

This led Rudd to launch a petition calling for a royal commission into his empire in 2020, which generated so much interest over the weekend that it overwhelmed the website’s cyber-defences and shut down access to the document. It eventually attracted half a million signatures and prompted a parliamentary inquiry into media concentration in the country.

In essence, Turnbull will inherit Rudd’s role: chair of the Murdoch Royal Commission lobby group to urge advertisers to boycott the mogul's media outlets. This is consequential given the fear politicians have over the wrath of media organizations. If Fox News can be deemed to have an extraordinary political impact in the United States, Murdoch owns a much larger proportionality of the media in Australia. The stakes are simply that much higher.

Former US President Barack Obama tells Sydney audience that Murdoch’s media empire has fuelled polarization of society Source: The Guardian

At a sold-out address in Sydney last Tuesday, Barack Obama seemed to have a lot of agreements with Turnbull with regards to the media’s role of undermining democracy. He said the media empire has led to greater polarization in Western societies with news coverage designed to “make people angry and resentful,” with the Murdoch’s News Corp part of the “dissolution of the monopoly of a few arbiters of the news and journalistic standards that came out of the post-world war two era.”

Obama claims that we are in the realm of identity politics, and it would be very difficult to compromise around such issues. There needs to be an ability to really examine how News Corp is operating as a propaganda vehicle, with the United States capitol attack being an example of the severe consequences from this type of media operation. There is an undermining of democracy here, and in Obama’s exact words – “there’s a guy you may be familiar with, first name Rupert, who was responsible for a lot of this …”

Turnbull, who has just launched a podcast examining whether Western democracies are in decline, recently conducted an interview with the Nikkei Asian Review. In it, he states the profound impact of Murdoch’s media monopoly on the future Australian elections which are a "two-horse race" between his center-right Liberals and the center-left Labour Party.

After all, Australia's electoral system is designed to bring politics to the center. This sort of consensus building and compromises between coalitions are the lifeblood of parliamentary democracies. To have a news organization that is more propaganda than news and is pushing an extreme line brings about real danger. Turnbull’s attempt to challenge Murdoch's vast influence over the Australian media and political landscape can only be seen as favorable.

 

 

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https://abcnews.go.com/Business/murdoch-mafia-boss-parliament-member

 

Rupert Murdoch: How A ‘Zealous Laborite’ Turned Into A Tabloid Tsar

https://businessplus.ie/news/rupert-murdoch-tabl/ 

/ 23RD SEPTEMBER 2023 /
SUBEDITOR
Rupert Murdoch, 92, has announced he is stepping back from News Corp and Fox. Sally YoungThe University of Melbourne, recounts how it all started for the media tycoon.

In September 1953, Rupert Murdoch arrived in sleepy Adelaide to take up his inheritance of News Limited. He was only 22 and had little experience of working at a newspaper, let alone running one, but his family had inherited a majority stake in the company following the death of Rupert’s father, the well-known journalist, editor and media executive Keith Murdoch.

After Rupert had completed his matriculation at Geelong Grammar in 1949 with marks that had not impressed his parents, he had worked briefly as a cadet reporter at the Melbourne Herald under his father’s watchful eye, spending a few months at the police courts with a friend from school before heading off to the United Kingdom.

Keith had accompanied him to London in early 1950 and introduced Rupert to leading figures in Fleet Street, helping his son land a summer stint as a junior reporter on the Birmingham Gazette – where Rupert made an impression when he told the proprietor the editor was so incompetent he should be sacked.

Rupert had then studied at Worcester College, Oxford. Again, he did not excel academically, but his contemporaries noticed he was financially astute and a shrewd problem-solver and risk-taker.

Like Rupert Greene, his namesake grandfather on his mother’s side, Rupert dabbled in gambling and drinking beer more than his parents felt was good for him. And, like his father had been as a young man, Rupert was attracted to Labour politics. He famously kept a bust of Lenin in his room at Oxford.

KEITH MURDOCH WAS CONFIDENT SON RUPERT WOULD ‘OUTGROW HIS SOCIALIST IDEALS’. WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

Keith tolerated Rupert’s excursion into left-wing politics and, in earlier years, had put him in touch with Labor prime minister Ben Chifley, who always replied courteously to Rupert’s letters. Keith told Chifley his 18-year-old son “is at present a zealous Laborite but will I think (probably) eventually travel the same course of his father”.

In the last months of his life, Keith was confident that Rupert was on the right track and would outgrow his socialist ideals. After finishing his studies at Oxford, Rupert worked on the subeditor’s desk at Lord Beaverbrook’s Daily Express, edited by the legendary Arthur Christiansen, considered one of Fleet Street’s greatest editors.

Christiansen was obsessed with detail and worked up to 18 hours a day for more than 20 years. His memorable instructions to staff were handed down through the ages, including his exhortation to “always, always tell the news through people”.

The Daily Express was chosen for Rupert because it was one of the toughest and most prestigious schools in journalism. Keith had personally asked Beaverbrook to arrange this work experience for his son and Rupert trained as a down-table sub (a junior subeditor).

When Rupert took up the reins at News Limited, that was the extent of his experience – a few months each at the Herald, the Birmingham Gazette and the Daily Express, plus all he had picked up from his father’s shop talk at home and the detailed letters Keith sent Rupert during his school years.

As part of the grandeur surrounding his rise, it is often said that Rupert built an empire out of just one tired Adelaide newspaper. To be pedantic, that is not quite true. When he inherited a controlling interest in News Limited, it published the News (Adelaide’s afternoon newspaper), the (Sunday) Mail (also in Adelaide) and the Barrier Miner (in Broken Hill).

It also had a large stake in Southdown Press, which was housed in West Melbourne and published the national women’s magazine New Idea.

The company also controlled radio station 2BH Broken Hill and had a minor holding in 5DN Adelaide. Certainly, it was a small company by comparison with the then giant of the media industry, the Herald and Weekly Times, but it was still a substantial start for a 22-year-old.

It is true that the News was a tired and insignificant paper. It had a stagnant circulation and was drained of resources and revenue.

When Rupert arrived in Adelaide, he set about changing that and gave himself the unusual title of “publisher”. Old-timers raised their eyebrows and expected Rupert would sit in a corner at the News for a few years until he knew enough to contribute. They were misjudging him.

Rupert was a hands-on proprietor from the beginning. Editorially, he initially relied on, and gave a good deal of leeway to, Rohan Rivett, who had been editor of the News for almost two years.

Rupert and Rivett were already close friends because Keith had sent Rivett to report from London between 1949 and 1951, with a side instruction to keep an eye on the boss’s son. Rivett, the grandson of Alfred Deakin, had been a war correspondent, and for three and a half years a prisoner of war, including on the Burma–Thailand Railway.

From Keith’s perspective, Rivett had some radical views but he was satisfied that Rivett was no communist, and in the early 1950s he was a favourite Murdoch confidante. Rivett even named his son after Keith.

When Rupert arrived in Adelaide, Keith’s older protégé turned nemesis, Lloyd Dumas, chairman of the Advertiser, gave Rupert a memorable welcome by trying to push him out of business before Rupert even got started. On October 24 1953, the Advertiser launched the Sunday Advertiser.

It was designed to crush News Limited’s weekend paper, the Mail, which was the biggest-circulation paper in the state and a solid earner. The intention was to force Murdoch’s heirs to sell out so the Herald Weekly Times could reclaim the News.

Dumas was a knight, a pillar of society in Adelaide, a city renowned for its “luminous and eccentric” establishment, its British-style manored estates, and blue-blood Adelaide Club members.

But Rupert showed immediately that he was not going to play by the usual rules of conduct, including the unwritten rule that newspaper owners did not publish stories about each other. A month after the Sunday Advertiser launched, Rupert’s Mail published a front-page story airing some industry dirty linen.

It reported that, after Keith Murdoch’s death, Dumas had gone to his widow, bound her to secrecy so she could not consult anyone, and told her to sell the family’s controlling stake in the company to him.

When Elisabeth refused, he gave her an ultimatum: either sell him the Mail, or the Advertiser would start a new weekend paper and drive the Mail out of business. The article included excerpts from a private letter Dumas had sent to Elisabeth.

Dumas and Rupert fought a “nasty circulation war”. The challenger Sunday Advertiser was the better product but many of the Mail’s readers stayed loyal and it remained in front. As Adelaide was not large enough to support two Sunday papers, both companies bled money for nearly two years before the opponents called a truce and agreed to merge.

Both took 50% of the newly merged Sunday Mail from December 1955. With no competition, it was very profitable. Rupert considered this co-venture a great victory and let it be known that Dumas had backed down.

Liberalism and sensationalism

Rupert let Rivett develop the News into the most liberal daily paper in the country, one with a social conscience that published very different views to the establishment Advertiser.

Murdoch learned all he could by working in various roles at the paper and developed a reputation for his overwhelming energy and for rolling up his sleeves and observing every phase of the production process. He was also becoming known for criticising and trying to make constant changes. One overwhelmed staff member called them “Rupertorial interruptions”.

Rivett focused on editorial while Murdoch focused on increasing advertising revenue, improving circulation, cutting costs and making production more efficient. Murdoch was particularly good at gaining retail and some new classified advertising for the News. News Limited’s profits jumped from $62,000 when he began in 1953, to $432,000 in 1959.

Murdoch had his eye on expansion immediately. His first move was to expand News Limited’s interest in magazine publisher Southdown Press. His next move, in October 1954, was to acquire Western Press Ltd, publisher of Western Australia’s only Sunday paper, the Sunday Times, in Perth. (It also owned a Saturday publication called the Mirror, and 20 country newspapers.)

The Sunday Times was where Murdoch honed his tabloid techniques. The paper was “tawdry” even before Murdoch bought it, but he made it more “sparkily so”.

Murdoch began flying to Perth every Friday to personally hammer the paper into a more sensational style to increase its sales. Murdoch biographer, Thomas Kiernan, said the Sunday Times was the birthplace of Murdoch journalism, “the exaggerated story filled with invented quotes; the slavishly sensationalised yarns; the eye-shattering, gratuitously blood-curdling headline”.

An infamous early one was “LEPER RAPES VIRGIN, GIVES BIRTH TO MONSTER BABY”. He also used competitions and zealous promotion to sell the paper. These became some of the other hallmarks of Murdoch’s tabloid approach.

The Sunday Times purchase was funded by a loan. Rupert’s new bank was the Commonwealth Bank in Sydney. It was then relatively small and had become a trading bank only in June 1953. Its general manager, Alfred Norman “Jack” Armstrong, and Vern Christie, who later became a managing director, thought Murdoch was a good risk, commercially savvy and always met his repayments.

The Commonwealth Bank’s willingness to lend Murdoch huge sums would prove crucial to the growth of his media empire.

Rupert stayed in Adelaide for seven years, from 1953 to 1960. Aside from newspaper production, he was also learning everything he could about radio and television, including on trips to the United States.

It was a crucial turning point when Murdoch’s Southern Television Corporation Ltd (60% owned by News Limited) was granted one of two commercial television licences in Adelaide in 1958.

After a visit to the Philadelphia office of the popular US magazine TV Guide, Murdoch launched an Australian weekly television magazine. Southdown Press began publishing TV-Radio Week in December 1957, 14 months after Australian television had begun (it was called TV Week from 1958).

Murdoch was also buying up small papers in remote towns across the country. He acquired the Cold War–born NT News and the Mount Isa Mail at the end of 1959.

Murdoch would fly into town in a DC-3 and haggle with the owner. Former News Limited executive Rodney Lever said: "His technique was simple: he would bully the owner into selling his paper with a threat that he would start a competing paper in the town."

Murdoch soon turned the NT News into a tri-weekly, and the Mount Isa Mail into a bi-weekly. By 1965, both were daily papers.

Bold moves

Murdoch made two bold moves in Adelaide in 1958–59. One was political and the other commercial, and as journalist and author George Munster noted, these moves were not well coordinated; they ran in opposite directions.

The News took a strong stance on the trial of Rupert Max Stuart, an Indigenous carnival worker who had been convicted in 1958 of the rape and murder of a nine-year-old girl.

After a confession to police over which there hung significant doubt, Stuart was sentenced to death and his conviction was upheld by the Supreme Court of South Australia. Rivett was convinced Stuart had not had a fair trial and the News campaigned fiercely for the case to be reopened. The paper’s attacks on authorities in South Australia’s police force and courts were the talk of the city.

Murdoch supported Rivett “wholeheartedly” and saw the case as a way to attack both the Adelaide establishment and the conservative Playford government, which had been in office since 1938 as the beneficiary of a ruthlessly gerrymandered election system.

Labor politician Clyde Cameron, who was dining and socialising with Murdoch at this time, found Rupert “was much further Left than me”. When the case was at its height, Murdoch said to him: "I’m in a spot, Clyde. Myers have phoned to say that unless we drop our campaign in favour of Stuart, they are going to withdraw all of their advertising from the News and that means a lot to us … I told them to go to hell."

Playford was forced to set up a Royal Commission to examine the Stuart case and the News ran fierce attacks on it too, including lambasting royal commissioners for improperly sitting in judgement of their own earlier decisions. The News’ coverage landed Rivett, Murdoch and other employees in court on a string of charges, including the archaic, rarely used charge of seditious libel, which could have seen them imprisoned.

Rupert was said to be deeply shaken by the potential risks and how far matters escalated. Eventually, the charges were dismissed and the News ran an editorial apologising and disavowing criticism of the judiciary members. There was speculation that Playford had dropped the charges in return for the News halting its campaign against his government.

US PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY MEETS A YOUNG RUPERT MURDOCH (ON RIGHT) IN THE OVAL OFFICE IN 1961. WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

An old friend sacked

While the Adelaide establishment was still buzzing about the Stuart case, Murdoch made an audacious bid to gain control of the Advertiser. Backed by the Commonwealth Bank, Murdoch made an offer of more than £14 million in shares and cash to Advertiser Newspapers Ltd.

At a time when News Limited had less than £1.8 million in shareholders’ funds, it was one of the biggest corporate takeover bids in Australian history.

Dumas quashed the bid. The Advertiser announced in its pages that its board rejected the takeover bid and Dumas announced that the holders of more than 50% of Advertiser shares refused to accept Murdoch’s offer.

Dumas added tartly that the South Australian community and the paper’s shareholders have a “real pride in the Advertiser and would never agree to its being modelled on the News”, nor let Murdoch, as head of Cruden Investments, “a Victorian company”, exercise “complete individual control” over the Advertiser as he did with the News.

The Herald Weekly Times’ old hands had blocked Murdoch but he had made a strong impression and provided a bold declaration of his ambitions. He had also shown the business world he could muster significant capital and it was becoming obvious he would not easily be bought or driven out.

Five weeks after the last charges over the Stuart Royal Commission were withdrawn, Murdoch wrote a curt note from Sydney that “summarily dismissed” Rivett as editor.

This was a man Murdoch had considered “like the brother he never had”. Some speculated that Rivett’s sacking may have been part of the deal with Playford. Others believed it was inevitable because Murdoch was asserting himself more and his priorities were changing. Either way, it was strong evidence that Murdoch was not going to let friendship get in the way of business.

Media Monsters by Salle Young.... The transformation of Australia's Newspaper Empire 

 " ..Essential reading for anyone with a serious interest in how power has been exercised in the Australian Media ... "

The Stuart case had happened at a formative time for Murdoch, when his political views were still developing. Back in 1953, with a state election imminent in South Australia, he had written to Rivett, “I implore you not to speak out too loudly on either side.”

Personally, Rupert had strong views on Robert Menzies though. He was said to loathe the prime minister because he was part of the Melbourne business establishment that had rejected him after his father’s death. Menzies had essentially chosen Jack Williams at the Herald and Weekly Times over Murdoch. Murdoch also thought Menzies was holding Australia – and himself – back.

In 1958–59, Murdoch had tried taking on the establishment in Adelaide by bringing on a showdown with the premier and the Adelaide Club, but had to back down. The experience seemed to chasten him and turn him away from advocacy journalism for the moment, and toward safer forms that did not clash with his commercial goals.


This is an edited extract from Media Monsters: The Transformation of Australia’s Newspaper Empires by Sally Young (New South Publishing). Sally Young is Professor of Political Science at The University of Melbourne. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Photo: Rupert Murdoch at the Newscorp AGM, 26 October 2004. (Photo by Fairfax Media via Getty Images/Fairfax Media via Getty Images via Getty Images)

Rupert Murdoch 'Not Fit' to Run News Corp., U.K. Parliamentary Committee Finds

Murdoch Calls Mafia Comparison "Inappropriate"

Rupert Murdoch's son, James, testified at British Parliament again.

By ABC News November 10, 2011

r-tom-watson/story?id=14917571#:~:text=Asked%20if%20the%20had%20misled%20the%20committee%2C%20James,criminal%20enterprise%22%20to%20which%20Murdoch%20replied%2C%20%22that%27s%20inappropriate.%22

Nov. 10, 2011 — -- intro:

News Corp. chief operating officer James Murdoch, testified Thursday morning in front of a parliamentary select committee in London, saying he did not mislead the panel in his previous testimony on the phone hacking scandal that has rocked the company and the family of its leader, Rupert Murdoch.

At issue is whether he had seen an e-mail that included transcripts of 35 hacked conversations, intended for use by reporters in preparing stories at the defunct tabloid, News of the World.

"I want to be very clear. No documents were shown to me or given to me at that meeting or prior to it." Asked if the had misled the committee, James Murdoch replied: "No, I did not."

Parliament member Tom Watson said it appears James Murdoch and his staff were "all bound together by secrecy." He called Murdoch "the first Mafia boss in history not to know he is running a criminal enterprise" to which Murdoch replied, "that's inappropriate."

Shareholders and politicians have called for a shake-up on the News Corp. board, which includes Rupert Murdoch and two of his sons, James Murdoch and Lachlan Murdoch. The family owns 40 percent of the company.

Last month, shareholders re-elected the 13 News Corp. board members at the annual shareholder meeting to the dismay of outspoken shareholders, including Christian Brothers Investment Service (CBIS), which manages about $4 billion for Catholic institutions.

At the meeting, James Murdoch was re-elected with 65 percent of votes received, while Lachlan Murdoch received 66 percent support for re-election. More than 84 percent of votes were in favor of re-electing Rupert Murdoch.

"I think it was a clear and unmistakable message from shareholders not a part of the Murdoch family in favor of good corporate governance and strong independent leadership," Julie Tanner, assistant director of socially responsible investing at CBIS, told ABC News.

Not counting the 317 million shares of Rupert Murdoch, who presumably voted in favor of his sons, the votes against James and Lachlan Murdoch were 67 percent and 64 percent, respectively, Tanner said.

A spokeswoman for News Corp. declined to comment on whether James Murdoch's position with the company is in danger.

Tensions have been high within the Murdoch family since the phone-hacking scandal has attracted more attention, as reported in the December issue of Vanity Fair.

Sarah Ellison, author of "War at the Wall Street Journal: Inside the Struggle to Control an American Business Empire," detailed a dramatic family history and spats over the succession of News Corp. The following are eight secrets she revealed.

quicklist: category: title: James Murdoch may have been informed in 2008 about hacking by more than one journalist.

text:

 

Murdoch's mob-friendly environment; thugs stick together - Antony Loewenstein

POSTED ON AUGUST 10, 2011

Michael Woolf on The Family with a whole lotta scruples:

conspiracy was to keep Rupert from knowing.”

Freud’s convoluted formulation answered a question I hadn’t asked and suggests that 10 months before the Milly Dowler revelations and the bottom falling out of the scandal, Murdoch intimates were sensing how close this could come to the center and essence of their lives. Indeed, it’s not clear why you would have to conspire to keep someone from knowing what he did not know, nor why you would, unprompted, make admitting to a cover-up a main thesis of your defense.

You wouldn’t—except if you understood (and Freud is one of the people within the company to have a gimlet-eyed understanding of it) that everything that happens at News Corp. is systemic, that this is an organization predicated on a certain view of the world that fosters a certain behavior (that might turn weaker stomachs), that its nature runs from the top to bottom and bottom to top. And that the necessary and desperate and ultimate strategy has to be an effort to protect the man at the center of it all. Because there is nothing without him.

Rupert Murdoch made his own rules - what is the media mogul's real legacy?

Six experts on how the Australian-born entrepreneur’s newspaper titles and TV channels transformed the media landscape

Robert Thompson, Peter Hain, Barbara Ellen, Dominic Mohan, Claire Enders and Alice Enders
Sat 23 Sep 2023

Fox networks brought US primetime up to date … but upended TV news

The imperial doings of Rupert Murdoch over the past 70 years make for a story often told. Orthodoxy tells us that to grow and protect his empire he needed the support of political leaders, and to build their power some of those leaders needed the pulpits provided by the outlets that he controlled.

Under Murdoch, the Fox organisation upended the business and practices of journalism, irrevocably altered the rules of engagement for civic conversation, and played a role in the election of Donald Trump in 2016.

Murdoch presided over the creation of two networks in the US, one broadcast and one cable. The latter gets the most attention.

The Fox News Channel was born of a brilliant business model. CNN, launched in 1980, had the 24-hour TV news market pretty much to itself for more than 15 years. Operating mostly on traditional standards of broadcast journalism, it was the place to go for “breaking news”. Once that was over, though, most viewers returned to their regular entertainment.

Presenter O’Reilly sits at a desk in TV studio
Fox News viewers tuned in to see hosts like Bill O’Reilly on The O’Reilly Factor. Photograph: James Leynse/Corbis/Getty Images

In 1996, Fox News had another idea: to provide a channel that people wanted to watch all the time; to tune in not to see what was happening but to watch hosts like Bill O’Reilly or Sean Hannity.

unpredictably. Murdoch will be ringing, eager to hear the latest news from whichever particular time zone he chooses, keeping his executives across the planet on their toes. Except those nervous execs will now be unsure whether it’s Rupert – or Lachlan– calling.

  • Dominic Mohan is a former Sun editor and founder of Dominic Mohan Media. He asked for his fee for this article to go to the Teenage Cancer Trust charity

Retirement won’t be the end for ruthless entrepreneur who broke the unions and made billions

Murdoch dramatically transformed the UK media landscape in the half century since he bought the News of the World and the Sun in 1969 – reinventing the tone and increasing the impact of the tabloids – then buying the Times and Sunday Times in 1981. His reputation as an innovative – and ruthless – newspaper proprietor in the UK only grew when he broke the power of the unions in the shift of his printing operation to Wapping. Newspapers – the whole industry – were never the same again.

Posters protest against Murdoch’s move to shift his UK newspaper print sites from Fleet Street to Wapping, in east London. Photograph: Rick Colls/Alamy

world by so called “respectable” industry figures and celebrities.
Now, none of my story seemed to be a problem for Jack Malvern when he interviewed me, he was happy to publish what I said. After the interview I even checked to see if he was happy with what I said. The only issue was that later in the day he wanted to interview my mother about an incident when I was called into a casting for a major drinks company. I gave him my mother’s telephone number, he left two messages which she ignored as she didn’t want to talk to him. My mother never agreed to talk to Jack Malvern which is what I told him when I later informed him that she didn’t want to be interviewed as she’s a very private person and it was her choice. Jack Malvern didn’t seem to think it was an issue and left me with the impression that the article would run as planned on Saturday 20th October 2012.
Of course printed here are just a few stories of the many that I told him. He’d asked for names and I’d given them to him with details only one who was there would know. He even empathised at one point and told me that my story rang true for him as he’d experienced similar problems with predatory gay men when he was a young journalist or so he told me.
Little did I know that the next BBC person I named was the one that would stop the article from coming out. The person who I am referring to shall remain nameless in this article, however they are a new star of SKY Television.  It seems that Sky have a lot invested in this person and like the BBC stopping the Jimmy Savile Newsnight programme Murdoch et al. have withdrawn an explosive article in The Times that threatened to reveal a far seedier side of their new star than they would like. Drug taking, inappropriate sexual behaviour and child abuse isn’t something the Murdoch empire want revealed.
Now, Jack Malvern of The Times may say that I’m an unreliable person or that they couldn’t corroborate the accusations I was making. But isn’t that what child abuse is all about? There are laws preventing people from making false allegations so why would I lie. In any case they said they’d run the article either with or without the names. So, why didn’t it run? My theory is that they didn’t want to give me the platform of appearing in The Times, just in case I mentioned names at a later date.
The Murdoch empire and BBC are clearly safe havens for child abusers to operate.
A society that takes the position of not believing victims, hiding the truth and protecting abusers for their own personal gain is a sad state of affairs. It is typical of a society gone mad, set up to procure children and to protect paedophiles. In other words children’s well-being comes down to simply politics. If you accuse someone of abuse and they happen to be famous or powerful then tough luck you lose. You won’t be believed, regardless of the validity of your claims by either the state or mainstream corporate media seems to be the message.
The irony is that the Murdoch empire, who has always been quick to name and shame is curiously reluctant when it comes to naming one of its own stars. It appears that the empire is only prepared to expose child abusers and paedophiles as long as it doesn’t affect its own reputation.
We’ve moved on from just phone hacking.

his media outlets to support the Iraq War and to having tried to shape public opinion in favor of the war. That is the very definition of propaganda for war.
The propaganda is, also by definition, part of the public record. Although that record speaks for itself, Murdoch has not been shy about adding his commentary. The week before the world’s largest anti-war protests ever and the United Nation’s rejection of the Iraq War in mid-February 2003, Murdoch told a reporter that in launching a war Bush was acting “morally” and “correctly” while Blair was “full of guts” and “extraordinarily courageous.” Murdoch promoted the looming war as a path to cheap oil and a healthy economy. He said he had no doubt that Bush would be “reelected” if he “won” the war and the U.S. economy stayed healthy. That’s not an idle statement from the owner of the television network responsible for baselessly prompting all of the other networks to call the 2000 election in Bush’s favor during a tight race in Florida that Bush actually lost.

newspapers in Adelaide, South Australia, and a radio station in a faraway mining town. For some reason, Murdoch has always tried to hide the fact that his pious mother brought him up as a Jew…

And that, as I am sure you know, makes him a Jew according to the law of the Talmud, and indeed according to the present laws of Israel.
Spotlight [a rightwing Washington weekly published by Willis Carto] in fact examined Murdoch in considerable depth in no fewer than three issues, 30th January and 6th and 13th February [1984]. My friend Ivor Benson whom I regarded as a very judicious observer and commentator, reckoned, along with Spotlight, that his meteoric ascent was completely artificial, and that he was a front for far more powerful super-rich subversives, Michel Fribourg, Armand Hammer and Edgar Bronfman, “all of them part of a super-rich ‘Zionist Mafia’”, to quote Benson, who added: “By comparison with these three, Murdoch is just an ambitious midget who has been given the job of drawing all the public attention away from those who make the real decisions.” (Benson’sBehind the News, March 1984)
Could well be. Certainly I can confirm that at least part of his meteoric ascent was artificial. I remember my brother-in-law [a former editor of The Times] telling me, at the time of Murdoch’s acquisition of The Times, that it was a strange business. Murdoch was by no means the highest bidder.
For my part, I myself have always had good personal motives to take a favourable view of Murdoch, because my brother-in-law was easily his favourite editor of The Times, and, when my brother-in-law died (in office), Murdoch treated my sister completely fairly, from a financial point of view, without making the slightest difficulty. But, despite that reason for some prejudice in his favour, I have always been forced to the judgement that he has been a force for unspeakable evil.<

 

Is Rupert Murdoch the most evil media mafia man in the world? | Politics

https://beforeitsnews.com/politics/2015/05/is-rupert-murdoch-the-most-evil-media-mafia-man-in-the-world-2715372.html 

Rupert Murdoch: The evil empire, British politics, phone hacking and a murdered teenager

http://breakingdownthnews.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/is-rupert-murdoch-most-evil-media-mafia.html

On Sunday 10 July 2011 News of The World went on sale for the last time, bringing it’s 168 year history to an end. It was 42 years since Rupert Murdoch took control of the paper at a shareholder’s meeting in January 1969 beating Robert Maxwell in a bitter year long battle over the acquisition.

Murdoch had begun his life as a newspaper baron at an early age, inheriting his father’s Australian News Limited newspaper group in 1953 at the age of 22. After fifteen years of buying up newspapers across Australia and New Zealand he returned to the UK (where he had studied at Oxford University before his father’s death) and within a year had beaten Maxwell to get his hands on News of the World.

In the aftermath Maxwell famously described Murdoch as a “cynical maneuverer” that “plays by the laws of the jungle“, damning criticism from a man that went on to pilfer the pension schemes of his employees in order to maintain his life of luxury, allegedly worked as a double agent for the Israeli and British secret services and ended his life “falling off” his luxury yacht off the coast of the Canary Islands in 1991 shortly after the pensions scandal broke.

Later in 1969 Murdoch acquired his second British newspaper taking control of the mid-market daily broadsheet The Sun and immediately re-releasing it as the salacious sex filled tabloid it has remained until the present day. As the Sun and News of the World raced to the bottom of the British news market and Murdoch ruthlessly forced out anyone that got in the way of his agenda, it soon became clear that Maxwell’s warnings about Murdoch had been right, causing many amongst the British establishment elite to regard him as an immoral impostor.

The British establishment turned their backs on Murdoch
after the NOTW published sordid details about
John Profumo’s affair with Christine Keeler

Murdoch showed his ruthlessness by going back on his word that he would run News of the World alongside former owner Sir William Carr by forcing him out within three months of the takeover. He then outraged the British establishment by publishing the memoirs of the model Christine Keeler in the News of the World. She had played a large part in bringing down the Harold MacMillan government when her affair with minister John Profumo came to light in 1963. Following his resignation Profumo had been seen to have redeemed himself through years of charity work so Murdoch’s decision to publish the sordid details were seen as muck-raking of the lowest kind, done entirely for his own personal gain.

After repeated rejections from the British establishment Murdoch left the UK in 1973 to continue his empire building in the United States. His first acquisition was the San Antonio Express in 1973 followed by a stream of other newspapers. He liked to claim that it was him that chose to reject the British establishment and often justified the simplistic and sensationalist style of his newspapers by dressing it up as anti-elitism.

In 1981 he returned to the UK to buy out the Times group, a move that shocked both sides of the political spectrum. He was facilitated in his acquisition by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher who allowed the deal to go ahead without referring it to the Monopolies Commission as it should have been. The two remained close allies from that point onwards, Murdoch’s papers provided unrelenting support for Thatcher’s divisive regime while Thatcher allowed him to sack 6,000 striking print workers in 1986 and passed the merger between Murdoch’s loss making Sky TV and the only other major satellite broadcasting network BSB in 1990.

Murdoch and Thatcher had a number of shared ideologies, from hatred of trade unions to belief in the privatisation and the neoliberal economic model. They both also had a ruthless streak, would dispose of anyone that stood in their way and they both had management styles best described as “divide and conquer“. Murdoch’s relationship with Thatcher seems like one of the few genuine relationships he had with politicians rather than his usual modus operandi of exerting as much control over them as he could in order to increase his own wealth, power and influence.

Read More: http://anotherangryvoice.blogspot.co.uk/2011/07/rupert-murdoch-evil-empire-hacking.html

 

Ben Fellows: ‘Murdoch Newspaper Does a ‘BBC’ to Protect Pedophiles and Child Abusers’

The Jimmy Savile paedophile ring at the centre of the BBC has taken an interesting twist this week as this journalist has come to realise that accusations of child abuse and paedophilia only extend to the deceased.
If you’re a living, breathing human being in the entertainment industry mainstream media won’t expose you. If you are a paedophile or child abuser in the entertainment industry and are famous or powerful you can breath a sigh of relief – you won’t be exposed, at least not by the Murdoch empire.

 

The Times may have canned the story because of a name tied to SKY.

It all started when I was contacted by Ruth Lewy from The Times newspaper on October 16, 2012. She wanted me to do an exclusive interview about my experiences as a child actor when I had run the gauntlet of paedophiles in the entertainment industry. She wanted to “give this a great showing” but she would also “want to be the only people you speak to until it appears in print this weekend.” All I asked for in return for giving The Times an exclusive was that the story would definitely run. She agreed to the terms and said that senior Times journalist Jack Malvern would interview me and a photographer would take some pictures of me for the article, which would appear on Saturday the 20th October 2012. So we arranged a time and a place to meet.
Jack Malvern a tall, balding ex-public school boy complete with the uniform of his generation was late to the meeting. When he did eventually arrive he had to go shopping for a new pad! When he did eventually arrive proper, he sat down in front of me at the Novotel in Greenwich and asked me specifically to name names of people who, I alleged, were suspected paedophiles or had abused me in some way while I was a minor.
For the next two hours I sat in the Novotel being interviewed intensely and having only one cup of tea. The deal was that I was happy to name alleged paedophiles and child abusers in the wider industry, based on my own experiences but the story had to run.
What was good about the article, I thought, was that The Times were going to be brave and publish the names of actual living breathing people, rather than dead people like Jimmy Savile or Wilfred Brambell. Famous and powerful people who could argue back, perhaps call me a liar or fantasist in an attempt to clear their name.

Read More: http://anotherangryvoice.blogspot.co.uk/2011/07/rupert-murdoch-evil-empire-hacking.html

 

Ben Fellows: ‘Murdoch Newspaper Does a ‘BBC’ to Protect Pedophiles and Child Abusers’

The Jimmy Savile paedophile ring at the centre of the BBC has taken an interesting twist this week as this journalist has come to realise that accusations of child abuse and paedophilia only extend to the deceased.
If you’re a living, breathing human being in the entertainment industry mainstream media won’t expose you. If you are a paedophile or child abuser in the entertainment industry and are famous or powerful you can breath a sigh of relief – you won’t be exposed, at least not by the Murdoch empire.

 

The Times may have canned the story because of a name tied to SKY.

 

It all started when I was contacted by Ruth Lewy from The Times newspaper on October 16, 2012. She wanted me to do an exclusive interview about my experiences as a child actor when I had run the gauntlet of paedophiles in the entertainment industry. She wanted to “give this a great showing” but she would also “want to be the only people you speak to until it appears in print this weekend.” All I asked for in return for giving The Times an exclusive was that the story would definitely run. She agreed to the terms and said that senior Times journalist Jack Malvern would interview me and a photographer would take some pictures of me for the article, which would appear on Saturday the 20th October 2012. So we arranged a time and a place to meet.
Jack Malvern a tall, balding ex-public school boy complete with the uniform of his generation was late to the meeting. When he did eventually arrive he had to go shopping for a new pad! When he did eventually arrive proper, he sat down in front of me at the Novotel in Greenwich and asked me specifically to name names of people who, I alleged, were suspected paedophiles or had abused me in some way while I was a minor.

For the next two hours I sat in the Novotel being interviewed intensely and having only one cup of tea. The deal was that I was happy to name alleged paedophiles and child abusers in the wider industry, based on my own experiences but the story had to run.
What was good about the article, I thought, was that The Times were going to be brave and publish the names of actual living breathing people, rather than dead people like Jimmy Savile or Wilfred Brambell. Famous and powerful people who could argue back, perhaps call me a liar or fantasist in an attempt to clear their name.

I talked about cabinet minister Ken Clarke MP, groping my penis through my trousers in political lobbyist Ian Greer’s office. How he gave me alcohol in an attempt to get me drunk. I explained to Jack Malvern that there was even video evidence of the incident as we’d filmed it during our “cash for questions” sting operation for The Cook Report, we had a camera in a briefcase which captured the sordid event.
I talked about a senior female BBC producer who likes to have sex with teenagers. Or I should say have sex with me when I was a teenager.  I continued with a long list of names of extremely well known actors, casting directors, producers, directors, writers and executives who had all abused me or attempted to abuse me sexually while I was a child actor.
I explained to Jack Malvern of The Times, that I only ever had sexual relations with women however that didn’t stop predatory gay men from attempting to get into my pants. As a child actor you are not responsible for your actions, you’re naïve, vulnerable and quite frankly an idiot, well I was. So, saying no when powerful industry people are telling you to take drugs with the implication that if you don’t – you won’t be hanging around for long, is highly unlikely. It’s one of the oldest tricks in the book and works really on children, now add sex, money and power into the mix and you’re lucky if you don’t spend life after being a child actor in rehab and therapy – of course some do.

So, from the age of 15 I was a regular at Stringfellows, Cafe De Paris and The Atlantic Bar and Grill. I attended many celebrities parties and private functions.
One party was in a house in the New Forest and I must have been around sixteen at the time. At the party was a certain founder of a child protection charity. I was given drugs, alcohol and was propositioned by men and women all night until I ended up passed out in the garden. I eventually got a cab back to my digs in a terrible state. You’d think that for someone who is known for their charitable works protecting children she might insist that this party was for adults only and make me go home or at least keep an eye on me and stop me from drinking – recognising the fact that I looked and was very young.
For consenting adults there is nothing wrong with sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll. However, I was a teenager and was being introduced to a very murky world by so called “respectable” industry figures and celebrities.
Now, none of my story seemed to be a problem for Jack Malvern when he interviewed me, he was happy to publish what I said. After the interview I even checked to see if he was happy with what I said. The only issue was that later in the day he wanted to interview my mother about an incident when I was called into a casting for a major drinks company. I gave him my mother’s telephone number, he left two messages which she ignored as she didn’t want to talk to him. My mother never agreed to talk to Jack Malvern which is what I told him when I later informed him that she didn’t want to be interviewed as she’s a very private person and it was her choice. Jack Malvern didn’t seem to think it was an issue and left me with the impression that the article would run as planned on Saturday 20th October 2012.
Of course printed here are just a few stories of the many that I told him. He’d asked for names and I’d given them to him with details only one who was there would know. He even empathised at one point and told me that my story rang true for him as he’d experienced similar problems with predatory gay men when he was a young journalist or so he told me.
Little did I know that the next BBC person I named was the one that would stop the article from coming out. The person who I am referring to shall remain nameless in this article, however they are a new star of SKY Television.  It seems that Sky have a lot invested in this person and like the BBC stopping the Jimmy Savile Newsnight programme Murdoch et al. have withdrawn an explosive article in The Times that threatened to reveal a far seedier side of their new star than they would like. Drug taking, inappropriate sexual behaviour and child abuse isn’t something the Murdoch empire want revealed.
Now, Jack Malvern of The Times may say that I’m an unreliable person or that they couldn’t corroborate the accusations I was making. But isn’t that what child abuse is all about? There are laws preventing people from making false allegations so why would I lie. In any case they said they’d run the article either with or without the names. So, why didn’t it run? My theory is that they didn’t want to give me the platform of appearing in The Times, just in case I mentioned names at a later date.
The Murdoch empire and BBC are clearly safe havens for child abusers to operate.
A society that takes the position of not believing victims, hiding the truth and protecting abusers for their own personal gain is a sad state of affairs. It is typical of a society gone mad, set up to procure children and to protect paedophiles. In other words children’s well-being comes down to simply politics. If you accuse someone of abuse and they happen to be famous or powerful then tough luck you lose. You won’t be believed, regardless of the validity of your claims by either the state or mainstream corporate media seems to be the message.
The irony is that the Murdoch empire, who has always been quick to name and shame is curiously reluctant when it comes to naming one of its own stars. It appears that the empire is only prepared to expose child abusers and paedophiles as long as it doesn’t affect its own reputation.
We’ve moved on from just phone hacking.
One of News International’s slogans on their Website is “We’re delivering more news, to more people, more often, in more ways than ever”. If the Murdoch press is willing to deny the public vital information which is in their interest to know, like exposing paedophiles and child abusers, then the question has to be – Are News International’s titles worth the paper they’re written on? Or more importantly are the Murdoch’s responsible enough to run a media empire influencing millions of people all around the world.
If they’re hiding child abuse then the answer is no.

Rupert Murdoch: Key figure in 9/11 and the 9/11 wars?

 

 

Question:  Kevin Barrett sent me an email asking, “Rupert Murdoch: Key figure in 9/11 and the 9/11 wars?” 


Steve Bell’s cartoon from The Guardian depicts Murdoch as a man who takes orders.  Who would be giving Rupert Murdoch orders?  Who controls the biggest Zionist media mogul?

 

Rupert Murdoch, Zionist propagandist, with Shimon Peres, master of Israeli terrorism.

Murdoch’s 20th Century Fox (News Corp.) distributed blatantly anti-Muslim propaganda films like The Siege (1998) which were clearly designed to prepare the public mindset for the false-flag terrorism of 9/11.  Lawrence Wright, one of the writers of the film, claimed that The Siege was the most-rented film in the aftermath of 9/11.

The Lone Gunmen “Pilot” episode in which a passenger airliner is hijacked by an external computer program and flown into the World Trade Center was another Murdoch production.  The “Pilot” episode, which bore an uncanny resemblance to the 9/11 attacks, aired on Murdoch-owned FOX TV on March 4, 2001.  Arnon Milchan, Murdoch’s Israeli business partner and senior Mossad agent in Hollywood, was most likely the real author of the plot for “Pilot”.

MOSSAD’S MAN IN THE MIDDLE – Murdoch’s business partner Arnon Milchan is a close friend of Israel’s president Shimon Peres (left), Defense Minister Ehud Barak, and Likud Party leader Binyamin Netanyahu (right).

KILLING THE MESSENGER – Sean Hoare, the key whistleblower behind the scandal at News of the The World was found dead the day before Rebekah Brooks, Rupert and James Murdoch faced questions about the phone hacking.

Bollyn Responds:  Kevin, why do you use a question mark?  Murdoch is obviously ”the key figure” in spreading the 9/11 deception propaganda to the public. The current Murdoch scandal about phone hacking is just the tip of the iceberg, of course.  When Ed Miliband of the Labour Party calls for the break-up of News Corp., you know there are much bigger fish to be fried.  Rupert Murdoch has evidently served his purpose – the global deception of 9/11 – but his son of an Estonian mother will certainly not do for the Zionist masters behind Murdoch. This is exactly what I had in mind when I wrote this last year:

“The global Murdoch media empire was created with Rothschild funding and exists to spread Zionist propaganda among the English-speaking populations of the world. Murdoch’s son James is in line to take over at the helm of their media empire although it is quite likely that the empire will not survive very long after Rupert Murdoch passes away.”
“Eric Hufschmid and Rupert Murdoch – Agents of Deception”, October 21, 2010

Selling Wars–The Blood on Murdoch’s Hands

Nailing Rupert Murdoch for his employees’ phone tapping or bribery would be a little like bringing down Al Capone for tax fraud, or George W. Bush for torture. I’d be glad to see it happen but there’d still be something perverse about it.
I remember how outraged Americans were in 2005 learning about our government’s warrantless spying, or for that matter how furious some of my compatriots become when a census form expects them to reveal how many bathrooms are in their home.
I’m entirely supportive of outrage. I just have larger crimes in mind. Specifically this:
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights:
Article 20
1. Any propaganda for war shall be prohibited by law.
The Fox News Channel is endless propaganda for war, and various other deadly policies. As Robin Beste points out,
“Rupert Murdoch’s newspapers and TV channels have supported all the US-UK wars over the past 30 years, from Margaret Thatcher and the Falklands war in 1982, through George Bush Senior and the first Gulf War in 1990-91, Bill Clinton’s war in Yugoslavia in 1999 and his undeclared war on Iraq in 1998, George W. Bush’s wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, with Tony Blair on his coat tails, and up to the present, with Barack Obama continuing the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and now adding Libya to his tally of seven wars.”
In this video, Murdoch confesses to having used his media outlets to support the Iraq War and to having tried to shape public opinion in favor of the war. That is the very definition of propaganda for war.
The propaganda is, also by definition, part of the public record. Although that record speaks for itself, Murdoch has not been shy about adding his commentary. The week before the world’s largest anti-war protests ever and the United Nation’s rejection of the Iraq War in mid-February 2003, Murdoch told a reporter that in launching a war Bush was acting “morally” and “correctly” while Blair was “full of guts” and “extraordinarily courageous.” Murdoch promoted the looming war as a path to cheap oil and a healthy economy. He said he had no doubt that Bush would be “reelected” if he “won” the war and the U.S. economy stayed healthy. That’s not an idle statement from the owner of the television network responsible for baselessly prompting all of the other networks to call the 2000 election in Bush’s favor during a tight race in Florida that Bush actually lost.
Murdoch’s support for the Iraq War extended to producing support for that war from every one of his editors and talking heads. It would be interesting to know what Murdoch and Blair discussed in the days leading up to the war. But knowing that would add little, if anything, to the open-and-shut case against Murdoch as war propagandist. Murdoch had known the war was coming long before February 2003, and had long since put his media machine behind it.
Murdoch has been close to Blair and has now published his book — a book that Blair has had difficulty promoting in London thanks to the protest organizing of the Stop the War Coalition. Yet Murdoch allowed Mick Smith to publish the Downing Street Memos in his Sunday Times. Murdoch’s loyalty really seems to be to his wars, not his warmakers.
John Nichols describes three of those warmakers:
“When the war in Iraq began, the three international leaders who were most ardently committed to the project were US President Bush, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Australian Prime Minister John Howard. On paper, they seemed like three very different political players: Bush was a bumbling and inexperienced son of a former president who mixed unwarranted bravado with born-again moralizing to hold together an increasingly conservative Republican Party; Blair was the urbane ‘modernizer’ who had transformed a once proudly socialist party into the centrist ‘New Labour’ project; Howard was the veteran political fixer who came up through the ranks of a coalition that mingled traditional conservatives and swashbuckling corporatists.
“But they had one thing in common. They were all favorites of Rupert Murdoch and his sprawling media empire, which began in Australia, extended to the ‘mother country’ of Britain and finally conquered the United States. Murdoch’s media outlets had helped all three secure electoral victories. And the Murdoch empire gave the Bush-Blair-Howard troika courage and coverage as preparations were made for the Iraq invasion. Murdoch-owned media outlets in the United States, Britain and Australia enthusiastically cheered on the rush to war and the news that it was a ‘Mission Accomplished.’”
Bribery is dirty stuff. So is sneaking a peak at the private messages of murder victims. But there’s something even dirtier: murder, murder on the largest scale, murder coldly calculated and played out from behind a desk, in other words: war.
Murdoch is a major crime boss being threatened with parking tickets.
I hope he’s brought down, but wish it were for the right reasons.
The U.S. House Judiciary Committee chased Richard Nixon out of town for the wrong reasons. The full House impeached Bill Clinton for the wrong reasons. And the worst thing the U.S. government has done in recent years, just like the worst thing News Corp. has done in recent years, has not been spying on us.
It’s no secret what drove public anger at Nixon or what drives public anger at Murdoch. But, for the sake of historical precedent, it would be good for us to formally get it right.
Charge the man with selling wars!
David Swanson is a writer in Charlottesville, Va.

Bill O’Reilly: Murdoch creation attacking 9/11 victim’s son

 

 One of the charges against Murdoch and Company is that they paid a private detective to hack into the voice mail of 9/11 victim family members to get access to their private communications both on the day of the attack and after. My guess is that the very efficient Murdoch money-delivery (i.e. bribery) system is already at work trying to head off US Congressional hearings – and may well succeed. But lest we forget…Murdoch and Company did in fact target at least one family member of 9/11 victim. 

See more at: http://www.brasschecktv.com/videos/spin/bill-oreilly-murdoch-creation.html#sthash.XD0d3oiT.dpuf

Rupert Murdoch’s Jewish origins: a matter of controversy

A well placed correspondent with connections to the newspaper world (who has asked to remain anonymous) reports to us:
“I shall quote exactly what Candour [a rightwing British journal edited by A K Chesterton] said in its June 1984 issue (vol. XXXV, no. 6):

 

 BIOGRAPHICAL details of [Rupert] Murdoch’s past are sketchy and often contradictory. One reads that his grandfather was an impoverished Presbyterian minister who migrated to Australia from England, that his father was a low-paid reporter for a British newspaper in Australia, and yet, young Rupert divided his time between his family’s suburban home near Melbourne and the family’s sheep ranch in the country. He was educated first at the fashionable Geelong private school, and went on to the elitist and aristocratic Oxford University in England.“Rupert’s father Sir Keith Murdoch [see below] attained his prominent position in Australian society through a fortuitous marriage to the daughter of a wealthy Jewish family, néeElisabeth Joy Greene. Through his wife’s connections, Keith Murdoch was subsequently promoted from reporter to chairman of the British-owned newspaper where he worked. There was enough money to buy himself a knighthood of the British realm, two newspapers in Adelaide, South Australia, and a radio station in a faraway mining town. For some reason, Murdoch has always tried to hide the fact that his pious mother brought him up as a Jew…

And that, as I am sure you know, makes him a Jew according to the law of the Talmud, and indeed according to the present laws of Israel.
Spotlight [a rightwing Washington weekly published by Willis Carto] in fact examined Murdoch in considerable depth in no fewer than three issues, 30th January and 6th and 13th February [1984]. My friend Ivor Benson whom I regarded as a very judicious observer and commentator, reckoned, along with Spotlight, that his meteoric ascent was completely artificial, and that he was a front for far more powerful super-rich subversives, Michel Fribourg, Armand Hammer and Edgar Bronfman, “all of them part of a super-rich ‘Zionist Mafia’”, to quote Benson, who added: “By comparison with these three, Murdoch is just an ambitious midget who has been given the job of drawing all the public attention away from those who make the real decisions.” (Benson’sBehind the News, March 1984)
Could well be. Certainly I can confirm that at least part of his meteoric ascent was artificial. I remember my brother-in-law [a former editor of The Times] telling me, at the time of Murdoch’s acquisition of The Times, that it was a strange business. Murdoch was by no means the highest bidder.
For my part, I myself have always had good personal motives to take a favourable view of Murdoch, because my brother-in-law was easily his favourite editor of The Times, and, when my brother-in-law died (in office), Murdoch treated my sister completely fairly, from a financial point of view, without making the slightest difficulty. But, despite that reason for some prejudice in his favour, I have always been forced to the judgement that he has been a force for unspeakable evil.

  • His was the “breakthrough” which made the tabloids genuinely pornographic.
  • In my opinion at least, his policy with The Times completed its collapse from its position as the most respected newspaper in the world.
  • And his republicanism makes me sick — it is not for the purpose of creating a better world, but quite obviously purely destructive. And I could go on.

PS: QUITE recently, a Times correspondent actually resigned because he was not allowed to report properly what was going on in Israel, or even to use accurate words to describe facts which were undisputed. He stated: “Murdoch’s executives were so scared of irritating him that, when I pulled off a little scoop by tracking, interviewing and photographing the unit in the Israeli army which killed Mohammed al-Durrah, the 12-year-old boy whose death was captured on film and became the iconic image of the conflict, I was asked to file the piece ‘without mentioning the dead kid’. After that conversation, I was left wordless, so I quit.” Unusually courageous for a modern journalist.

 

MURDOCH’S MOB-FRIENDLY ENVIRONMENT; THUGS STICK TOGETHER

Michael Woolf on The Family with a whole lotta scruples:

https://antonyloewenstein.com/murdochs-mob-friendly-environment-thugs-stick-together/

The British establishment turned their backs on Murdoch after the NOTW published sordid details about John Profumo’s affair with Christine Keeler

In my biography of Rupert Murdoch, I referred to News Corporation as Mafia-like, provoking the annoyance of my publisher’s libel lawyers. I explained to them that I did not mean to suggest this was an organized crime family, but instead was using “mafia” as a metaphor to imply that News Corp. saw itself as a state within a state, and that the company was built on a basic notion of extended family bonds and loyalty.

But just because it’s a metaphor doesn’t mean it isn’t the real thing, too.

Well-sourced information coming out of the Department of Justice and the FBI suggests a debate is going on that could result in the recently launched investigations of News Corp. falling under the RICO statutes.

RICO, the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, establishes a way to prosecute the leaders of organizations—and strike at the organizations themselves—for crimes company leaders may not have directly committed, but which were otherwise countenanced by the organization. Any two of a series of crimes that can be proven to have occurred within a 10-year period by members of the organization can establish a pattern of racketeering and result in draconian remedies. In 1990, following the indictment of Michael Milken for insider trading, Drexel Burnham Lambert, the firm that employed him, collapsed in the face of a RICO investigation.

Among the areas that the FBI is said to be looking at in its investigation of News Corp. are charges that one of its subsidiaries, News America Marketing, illegally hacked the computer system of a competitor, Floorgraphics, and then, using the information it had gleaned, tried to extort it into selling out to News Corp.; allegations that relationships the New York Post has maintained with New York City police officers may have involved exchanges of favors and possibly money for information; and accusations that Fox chief Roger Ailes sought to have an executive in the company, the book publisher Judith Regan, lie to investigators about details of her relationship with New York police commissioner Bernie Kerik in order to protect the political interests of Rudy Giuliani, then a presidential prospect.

Partly, the company has escaped legal scrutiny because this is a boys-will-be-boys sort of story. News Corp.’s by-any-means aggressiveness has become so much a part of its identity that it seemed almost redundant to find fault with it. Everybody knew but nobody—for both reasons of fear and profit—did anything about it; hence its behavior has become, however unpleasant, accepted.

And partly, it’s because the fundamental currency of the company has always been reward and punishment. Both the New York Post and Fox News maintain enemy lists. Almost anyone who has directly crossed these organizations, or who has made trouble for their parent company, will have felt the sting here. That sting involves regular taunting and, often, lies—Obama is a Muslim. (Or, if not outright lies, radical remakes of reality.) Threats pervade the company’s basic view of the world. “We have stuff on him,” Murdoch would mutter about various individuals who I mentioned during my interviews with him. “We have pictures.”

Similarly, the Post and Fox News heap praise and favors on partisans, who in turn do them favors (the police, in New York as well as London, receive and return the favors).

This reward and punishment has translated into substantial political power, both in terms of regulatory advantages and, too, in the ability of the company to shield itself from the kind of scrutiny that it has taken a perfect storm of events to have it now receive.

It’s all about the organization. It’s an organization all about doing what Rupert wants you to do, or doing what you imagine Rupert wants you to do, or doing what you imagine your boss imagines Rupert wants done. There are few companies as large as News Corp. that are so devoted and in thrall to one man. There are few companies which, over so long, have so assiduously hired the kind of people who would be in thrall to one man. Indeed, News Corp. can be quite a disorganized and scattered company, and yet its driving premise, what unites and motivates this oft-times gang-that-couldn’t-shoot-straight enterprise, is to do as Rupert would have you do.

“You don’t get it,” Rupert’s son-in-law, Matthew Freud, the infamous London PR man, told me almost a year ago. “If there was a conspiracy in the company, the conspiracy was to keep Rupert from knowing.”

Freud’s convoluted formulation answered a question I hadn’t asked and suggests that 10 months before the Milly Dowler revelations and the bottom falling out of the scandal, Murdoch intimates were sensing how close this could come to the center and essence of their lives. Indeed, it’s not clear why you would have to conspire to keep someone from knowing what he did not know, nor why you would, unprompted, make admitting to a cover-up a main thesis of your defense.

You wouldn’t—except if you understood (and Freud is one of the people within the company to have a gimlet-eyed understanding of it) that everything that happens at News Corp. is systemic, that this is an organization predicated on a certain view of the world that fosters a certain behavior (that might turn weaker stomachs), that its nature runs from the top to bottom and bottom to top. And that the necessary and desperate and ultimate strategy has to be an effort to protect the man at the center of it all. Because there is nothing without him.

 

1971: The Times Features Vivien Neves, The First Nude To Appear In A British Newspaper

“A whole page? Wheeee! Imagine all those men in bowler hats grumbling ‘What’s this country coming to?’"

In 1971, The Times featured the first nude to ever appear in a British newspaper. She was Vivien Neves (20 November 1947 – 29 December 2002).

Modern readers might suppose the honour of being first newspaper to host an image of a naked women to be the Daily Star’s or The Sun’s.

In 1971, the Daily Star was not yet in existence. The Sun had become a tabloid on 17 November 1969, with a front page headlined “HORSE DOPE SENSATION” – an ‘exclusive’ in which a racing trainer admitted he was doping his horses.

https://flashbak.com/1971-the-times-features-vivien-neves-the-first-nude-to-appear-in-a-british-newspaper-25069/

e picture, dated 17/11/1969, Rupert Murdoch looks at one of the first copies of The Sun newspaper, at the News of the World building , in London.
 

e picture, dated 17/11/1969, Rupert Murdoch looks at one of the first copies of The Sun newspaper, at the News of the World building , in London.

William Rees Mogg, who has been appointed the new editor of The Times, in his office at Printing House Square archive-F2568-30.jpg Ref #: PA.4557075 Date: 13/01/1967

William Rees Mogg, who has been appointed the new editor of The Times, in his office at Printing House Square
Ref #: PA.4557075. Date: 13/01/1967

 

Neves’ own mother, Iris, was surprised by her daughter’s showing in the Times:

“We’ve got used to her modelling now, but it is still a bit of a shock, especially to see it in that paper.”

Vivien was delighted:

“A whole page? Wheeee! Imagine all those men in bowler hats grumbling ‘What’s this country coming to?’”

 

vivien neves nude

 

Neves was famous.

 

Vivien Neves Tony Curtis The Persuaders

 

In October 1971 she appeared briefly in small role in an episode of the Tony Curtis/Roger Moore series The Persuaders in an episode written by Daleks creator Terry Nation. Subsequently, she appeared with Curtis on the prestigious Parkinson chat show on 1st July 1972.

1973 Neves announced her retirement. Fans were bereft, one writing:

“Could you please inform the delectable Viv Neves that even if she walked down the middle of Oxford Street, wearing a pair of wellingtons, a boiler suit and a balaclava, every hot-blooded male in the vicinity would still think she is the sexiest bird in the business. Please don’t go, Viv.”

Vivien Neves, model: born Brighton, Sussex 20 November 1947;  died Guildford, Surrey 29 December 2002.

Former Australian PM Kevin Rudd: Murdoch media “political equivalent of a mafia operation”, Hugh Grant accuses of Boris Johnson of lacking “the stomach” to stand up to Murdoch

https://hackinginquiry.org/rudd-grant/ 

December 21, 2020   Press Releases

 

Kevin Rudd, the 26th Prime Minister of Australia, has exclusively spoken to Hacked Off in a revealing 40 minute interview about the influence and power of Rupert Murdoch & his media empire. The interview also includes exclusive comments from Hugh Grant.

Remarks below. Please get in touch for a full transcript.

The interview can be watched in full here:

For press enquiries contact: sara@hackinginquiry.org / 07554 665 940

Commenting on Murdoch’s media power, KEVIN RUDD said,

Murdoch uses his media power to “silence” and “make an example of” those who stand up to him

 

Murdoch’s power gives rise to “political equivalent of a mafia operation, whereby you fear the evisceration of your personal reputation [for standing up to him]”

 

The Murdoch media is pushing a “denialist agenda” on climate change.

 

Murdoch’s influence is a “cancer on democracy… it is withering away the vitality of the body politic”

 

The extent of Murdoch’s dominance “produces corruption”

 

“In America, I doubt we would have seen Trump, in the absence of Murdoch’s Fox News”

 

On his time in office:

“We delivered zero policy concessions to Murdoch… that’s probably why he turned on me and my Government so viciously”

“Instead of taking a tough stand on crime and corruption, the Government buckled to appease Mr Murdoch and other press owners and executives.”

 

On the Government’s decision to direct advertising funding to large publishers instead the independent press:

“Earlier this year, it was no surprise when the Government funnelled £35 million pounds into the coffers of the largest newspapers in a COVID advertising deal, including Murdoch’s titles of course, while their independently-owned competitors were left to rot”

 

On IPSO, the complaints-handler controlled by the press:

“Instead of implementing the Leveson recommendations for an independent regulator, the Prime Minister has done nothing while Murdoch’s papers persist with IPSO – a sham complaints-handler controlled by press executives, with close links to the Government… Its closeness to Government is more befitting of a dictatorship than a liberal democracy.”

 

Rupert Murdoch 'Not Fit' to Run News Corp., U.K. Parliamentary Committee Finds

Brent Lang  1 May 2012
Rupert Murdoch 'Not Fit' to Run News Corp., U.K. Parliamentary Committee Finds
 
The 121-page report examined whether or not News Corp. executives had lied to the committee during its 2009 investigation into phone-hacking and found that both the corporation and three of its former executives had misled parliament.

It paints a picture of a dangerously detached collection of executives, extending all the way up to the Murdoch family, that were more concerned with brushing thorny legal and ethical issues under the rug than they were with rooting out the people engaging in hacking and bribery.

 

"Corporately, the News of the World and News International misled the Committee about the true nature and extent of the internal investigations they professed to have carried out in relation to phone hacking; by making statements they would have known were not fully truthful; and by failing to disclose documents which would have helped expose the truth," the report reads.

"Their instinct throughout, until it was too late, was to cover up rather than seek out wrongdoing and discipline the perpetrators, as they also professed they would do after the criminal convictions," it adds.

In a statement, a spokesman for News Corp. said that the company was currently reviewing the report and would respond shortly, but offered an apology to the hacking victims.

Also read: Can Chase Carey Steer News Corp. Out of Scandal?

"The Company fully acknowledges significant wrongdoing at News of the World and apologizes to everyone whose privacy was invaded," News Corp. said.

The executives cited for misleading the committee were Les Hinton, who oversaw News International from 1995 to 2007; Colin Myler, editor of News of the World from 2007 to its closure in 2011; and Tom Crone, legal manager of News Group Newspapers for 20 years.

The 10 person committee approved the report by a vote of six to four. Conservatives on the committee reportedly disapproved of language saying that Rupert Murdoch was unfit to lead News Corp.

Related Articles:

James Murdoch Out at BSkyB: News Corp. Succession Slips Away

James Murdoch Denies Lying to Parliament, Refutes Mafia Comparison (Video)

A Rupert Murdoch Peer: He's 'Dead Money'; A New Police Resignation in London

 
 
The Shit Palace Demands Cleanliness: Murdoch's mafia, Daniel Morgan, and British Media's dangerous hypocrites

Bashir is good box office for the British press, but its complicity with corrupt police officers is the story that we should be focused on.

MIC WRIGHT  23 MAY 2021
 

Previously:
Glasshouses all the way down: As the British press throws rocks over Bashir and Princess Diana, the BBC hands them more

The Phoneys War: The British media's worst bastards bash the BBC... and ignore 25 years of their own bullshit


Of all the hypocritical cant published since the release of Lord Dyson’s report on how Martin Bashir secured his 1995 interview with Princess Diana — and the British media is full of hypocritical cants — the examples tripping from the keyboards of columnists employed by Rupert Murdoch are arguably the worst.

I woke up at 4.30 am and the first newspaper headline I read was on a piece by the pompous ping-pong player Matthew Syed — The BBC, the NHS and Oxfam have a bad case of institutional narcissism. It took enormous effort not to sit up and exclaim loudly, “You. Work. For. Fucking. Rupert Murdoch.” I managed it though, predominantly through fear of waking up my partner, who would not have looked kindly on this interruption. As I type, she’s still soundly asleep.

But I’m wide awake and, as is so often the case when I write these newsletters, I am Howard Beale-style mad as hell. As I wrote on Friday, I’m not here to praise or even defend Martin Bashir and the BBC. He was a liar then and he’s a liar now. The issue comes when employees of the Murdoch empire — an organisation that produces lies and distortion on an industrial scale — present themselves as the moral guardians of all that is good and true about journalism.

Syed opens his column by quoting Oscar Wilde. I suppose we should be grateful he’s not reached for Orwell yet again but it’s equally as route one. He writes…

Oscar Wilde, a man who knew a thing or two about the contradictions of human nature, penned an article in 1891 that I have been thinking about a lot in recent days. In it he wrote: “Charity creates a multitude of sins.” His point was that while bodies set up for the public good are often admirable, good intentions alone are not sufficient to inoculate them against the dangers of vice, nor to obviate the need for checks and balances. Indeed, sometimes the quest for moral purity can exaggerate human frailty.

Wilde’s point is a subtle one, but it has deep echoes in recent psychological research. A 2017 paper by economists at Chicago University found that working for a socially responsible company increased the tendency of people to act unethically…

Nothing says respect for the reader like explaining the quote you have chosen to them like you’re teaching philosophy to a class of 8-year-olds. And what do the Chicago University economists have to say about socially irresponsible companies like News UK?

Twitter avatar for @davidallengreen
davidallengreen @davidallengreen
The whole of the phone hacking scandal *only* came to light because phones of royals were hacked - and so were investigated by the diplomatic police rather than the parts of Met where the press had a better 'relationship' The problem was media-wide - not just BBC, not just press
9:48 AM ∙ May 22, 2021
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Elsewhere in The Sunday Times, Rod Liddle — a former Today programme editor and current writer of offensive things for money, says:

The BBC’s claims to a moral high ground have always been false and are now demonstrably so. Why should we still pay for it?

Rod Liddle not only does not occupy the moral high ground but cannot even glimpse the moral high ground from the earth’s core-touchingly deep cesspit where he dwells. Liddle is the man who…

  • Began a Spectator column by asking, “So — Harriet Harman, then. Would you? I mean after a few beers obviously, not while you were sober."

  • Wrote in another Spectator column that he was offering readers “a quick update on what the Muslim savages are up to…”

  • Became the first journalist to be censured by the Press Complaints Commission over a blog post after distorting crime stats in a piece that included the line, “The overwhelming majority of street crime, knife crime, gun crime, robbery and crimes of sexual violence in London is carried out by young men from the African-Caribbean community… in return, we have rap music, goat curry and a far more vibrant and diverse understanding of cultures which were once alien to us. For which, many thanks.”

  • Opined that “my own view is that there is not nearly enough Islamophobia within the Tory party”.

  • Posted antisemitic and racist ‘jokes’ on a Millwall forum and later said he didn’t regret doing it.

  • Breached reporting restrictions by claiming that the trial of two men accused and later convicted of the murder of Stephen Lawrence would not be fair. The Spectator didn’t contest the case and was required to pay a derisory sum of £5,625 in compensation and costs.

  • Was censured by ISPO over two Sun columns in which he made jokes about a blind, transgender electoral candidate.

  • Wrote “I would have thought that the requirement for amyl nitrate to relax the sphincter muscle and lube to accommodate entry was God's way of telling you that what you're about to do is unnatural and perverse…” in homophobic a Spectator column castigating the gay Tory MP Crispin Blunt which was published not in 1986 or 1996 but 2016.

  • Was arrested for common assault against his partner who was 20 weeks pregnant at the time. He admitted the offence and accepted a caution but later claimed he only did so because it was the quickest way to be released.

… and that’s just a partial list of reasons why Rod Liddle is a howling embodiment of moral emptiness, bigotry and spite. It also serves as a list of reasons that he fits in so well as a News UK employee.

Sir Harold Evans wrote in the 2012 preface to his book Good Times, Bad Times about watching Rupert Murdoch as he gave evidence to a parliamentary committee in 2011 — the “most humble day of my life” appearance. Evans worked up a beautiful metaphor inspired by the name of the venue where the proceedings took place — Portcullis House:

A portcullis is a defensive latticed iron grating hung over the entrance of a fortified castle. It’s a perfect metaphor for News Corporation, which perpetually sees itself as beset by enemies. The company’s normal style is to soak assailants in boiling oil, but this time Murdoch, its chairman and only begetter of the giant multimedia enterprise had little choice between defending the indefensible and denying the undeniable. He chose humility, the honest man betrayed by vassals.

Evans was a giant of true campaigning public interest journalism — his efforts on behalf of the Thalidomide victims and their families would have been enough to secure his place in history — and he pins down Murdoch’s modus operandi with the precision of a lepidopterist:

Of course, [Murdoch’s] direct competitors have hardly been free of the excesses typical of tabloid circulation battles — invasions of privacy with not a shred of justification in the public interest; entrapment, fabrication, malicious gossip; and the occlusion of facts that may stand in the way of a good story.

But News International [the News Corp subsidiary

] practiced the worst of these vices on an industrial scale, invented new ones in bribery and intimidation, and came to consider itself above the law.

 

When Syed correctly writes in his column that…

… the institutional reflex of the BBC was to disbelieve that somebody so vile could have risen so high in an institution so pure.

… I can help but reply that the institutional reflex in the News Corp world has often been to promote the vilest people as they are the ones willing to do ‘whatever it takes’ to get the scoop.

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Taru @taru_sisko
While Murdoch, Johnson and their gang are "shocked" about BBC and 25year old Diana interview, shall we see how shocked everyone else are when Daniel Morgan's murder report is released?
8:51 AM ∙ May 22, 2021
1,193Likes304Retweets

The BBC is a bureaucratic beast beset by arse-covering, blame-shifting, and corporate cowardice, but when it gets caught out, its journalists — usually the ones not guilty of any failure — indulge in orgies of self-flagellation. The aim seems to be for the BBC to be crueller to itself than even its many critics can conceive of being.

But as Evans wrote, when News Corp is on the ropes, a very different and dangerous instinct kicks in:

… only when cornered did the company start offering damage money for its intrusions. In the meantime, it did not confine itself to rebuttals. It hired private investigators to build a dossier on its pursuers.

Confronted by a critic, the cry in News International seems not to have been ‘is there anything to this allegation?’ but ‘what have we got on him?’

 

At a subsequent parliamentary committee session where James Murdoch appeared without his father, Tom Watson indulged in a piece of theatre that’s worth revisiting:

Tom Watson (TW): You’re familiar with the word ‘mafia’…

James Murdoch (JM)Yes, Mr Watson.

TWHave you ever heard the word ‘omerta’, a Mafia term they use for the code of silence? …would you agree that it means a group of people who are bound together by secrecy, who together pursue their groups business objectives with no regard for the law using intimidation, corruption, and general criminality?

JM: I… err.. again, I’m not familiar with the term particularly, I’ve heard it vaguely.

TWWould you agree with me that this is an accurate description of News International in the UK?

JM: Absolutely not. I frankly think that’s offensive and it’s not true.

TWThere are allegations of phone hacking, computer hacking, conspiring to pervert the course of justice, perjury facing this company… and all this happened without your knowledge?

JMAs I’ve said to you, Mr Watson, and to this committee on a number of occasions: It is a matter of regret that things went wrong at the News of the World in 2006. The company didn’t come to grips with those issues fast enough, I think we all recognised that.

And I’ve also acknowledged that evidence to this committee was given without full possession of the facts. And that’s something I’m very sorry for. What I can tell you though is that when evidence came to light and when we finally achieved the transparency that is appropriate, we have acted and the company has acted with great zeal and diligence to get to the bottom of issues, to improve the processes to make sure they don’t happen again…

… and to make sure with the police, with this committee, and the like is such that we can bring any wrongdoers — if they are proven to be so — to account.

TWMr Murdoch, you must be the first mafia boss in history that didn’t know he was running a criminal enterprise…

There was a category error at the heart of Watson’s rhetoric; James Murdoch who has now left the family business and is attempting to rehabilitate himself by speaking out about its coverage of climate change was not the mob moss. He was his father’s fall guy, the world’s most unconvincing consigliere.

The News of the World was closed in July 2011 as Murdoch Snr. attempted to move on from the scandals like a rogue government concreting over a nuclear waste dump. But the radiation is still there and it seeps out from every crack in the edifice of the Murdoch empire.

This week, as The Sun, The Times, and The Sunday Times were luxuriating in the Bashir story, Home Secretary Priti Patel demanded to review the report by the independent panel investigating the murder of Daniel Morgan before it is allowed to be published. The panel has subsequently refused to hand over its 1,000-page report — which was at the printers when the Home Office made its unexpected and suspect intervention.

Twitter avatar for @Bynickdavies
Nick Davies @Bynickdavies
The Morgan inquiry had to check claims that Murdoch journos colluded w bent detectives and even organised surveillance of the straight detective investigating Morgan's death; and that Murdoch execs knew this. Why is Priti Patel 'reviewing' the report?
11:11 AM ∙ May 19, 2021
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As detailed in the book Who Killed Daniel Morgan? by Daniel’s brother Alastair Morgan and Peter Jukes, Rupert Murdoch’s newspapers were intimately connected with the case and made extensive use of private detectives. Morgan and Jukes recount early in their book:

Murdoch himself was heard to admit that, when he took over the News of the World in 1969, he was told that the company safe was full of cash to pay off police officers on Saturdays before the paper went to press. ‘We’re talking about payments for news tips from cops: that’s been going on a hundred years, absolutely,’ Murdoch told Sun journalists in 2013.

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Byline Times Podcast @BylineTimesPod
"The cover-up has been going on 34 yrs. The longer it goes on, the more corruption taints. Now, it laps around the Government..." @peterjukes @Hardeep_Matharu from @BylineTimes discuss the #DanielMorgan murder @BylineTimesPod @GoldbergRadio
pod.foBYLINE TIMES PODCAST
8:05 PM ∙ May 22, 2021
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Raju Bhatt, solicitor to the Morgan family, told The Guardian:

The failure is not just the police, the Home Office is complicit in these failures. We are suspicious about the motives for the Home Secretary’s unwarranted and late intervention…

And they have good reason to be suspicious. Patel attended Rupert Murdoch’s 2016 wedding to Jerry Hall and listed her last publicly declared meeting with him on September 14 20202 as “a private dinner [with] the Executive Chairman of News Corp”.

The Home Office has reached for the government’s usual excuse for bringing the gears of justice to a grinding halt — “national security concerns” — but a source with knowledge of the five Metropolitan police inquiries into Morgan’s murder again told The Guardian:

There are no national security issues involved. There are national embarrassment issues.

Jonathan Rees, Daniel Morgan’s partner in Southern Investigations — the private detective agency that Nick Davies called “the cradle of the dark arts” in his book Hack Attack — was one of three men tried and acquitted of Morgan’s murder in 2009. In 2011, it was revealed that he earned £150,000 a year from the News of the World alone for supplying illegally obtained information.

Rees used a network of corrupt police officers to get hold of confidential data like bank records, telephone logs, and car registration details. He’s also alleged to have commissioned burglaries on behalf of journalists.

Rees was jailed for perverting the course of justice after he planted cocaine on a woman to discredit her during divorce proceedings. When he was released, he was immediately rehired by News of the World editor, Andy Coulson — David Cameron’s future comms chief, who was later jailed for conspiracy to intercept voicemails aka phone hacking.

Twitter avatar for @Bynickdavies
Nick Davies @Bynickdavies
It is very hard to think of any innocent reason why Priti Patel has decided to delay and potentially censor a report about corruption in the Met police and the Murdoch press.
Twitter avatar for @adavies4
Andy Davies@adavies4
NEW: Extraordinary statement from Daniel Morgan Independent Panel [set up 8 yrs ago to investigate, inter alia, police conduct re one of Britain’s most notorious unsolved murders] - accuses Home Office of ‘unnecessary’ intervention effectively in breach of Panel’s independence https://t.co/HL0vUJeDxE
6:38 PM ∙ May 18, 2021
1,296Likes777Retweets

What possible reason could Priti Patel, Murdoch wedding guest and private dining companion, have to sit on a report that digs into the tightly wound connections between corrupt police officers and News Corp journalists? I’m sure she’s just doing her best, just like Matt Hancock was when, as Culture Secretary, he scrapped plans for ‘Leveson 2’ — an inquiry which would have explored the relationships between public officials, especially the police.

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Byline TV @BylineTV
After Priti Patel delayed the long-awaited report into the murder of Daniel Morgan, @Bynickdavies explains what we know so far about the case and the uncomfortable connection between Rupert Murdoch's News of the World and police corruption in the UK ⬇️⬇️
Image
12:02 PM ∙ May 22, 2021
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Watch the moralising and grandstanding by Murdoch employees very carefully now, because they will go very silent when the Daniel Morgan inquiry panel’s work is finally made public. News UK will find ways to distract and deflect from the depths of depravity that Murdoch’s newspapers have sunk to time and time again to get their ‘scoops’. Bashir was bad, but the murkiest corners of Rupert Murdoch’s empire make him look like a particularly devout choirboy.

Don’t look to people on the Murdoch payroll like Syed and Liddle to tell you what is wrong in the British media. Read the words of Daniel Morgan’s son, also called Daniel, who was 3 at the time of his father’s murder:

In 34 years we have never had anywhere near a satisfactory level of closure on the events before, during and after my father’s death.

What remains most sickening is the failure of the institutions of the state to do what was required of them: the failure to address the police corruption that has protected those responsible for the murder from justice; and the repeated failure to confront that corruption over the decades; a failure of the police hierarchy at the highest ranks; the failure of the Home Office which is supposed to be responsible for the police.

My family have been collateral damage in this. Our pain and suffering seems to count for nothing. A generation of grief.

What should be the bigger story — the underhand and unethical way a hack got an interview that Princess Diana was always going to give 25 years ago? Or the continuing efforts of the establishment to deny a family justice 34 years on?

 

The Cover-Up, Not the Crime, Brings Down James Murdoch | Media | FRONTLINE | PBS

 
Photo: James Murdoch (left) and Rupert Murdoch giving evidence to the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee in the House of Commons in central London on the News of the World phone-hacking scandal. James Murdoch is to step down as executive chairman of News International to focus on expanding international TV businesses, the company announced today. Issue date: Wednesday February 29, 2012. See PA story CITY Murdoch. PA Wire URN:12923472 (Press Association via AP Images)
 
March 1, 2012, 3:30 pm ET by Gretchen Gavett Zachary Stauffer and Hannah Mintz
 

FRONTLINE’s Lowell Bergman appeared on The Takeaway this morning to reflect on the news that James Murdoch, son of media titan Rupert, stepped down from his role as CEO of News International, the British press arm of News Corporation. The younger Murdoch has slowly been transitioning to the company’s New York offices.

“I don’t think it’s really that significant a move, he’s been back in the United States for quite a while,” says Bergman. “He’s never really expressed, apparently, that much interest in the newspaper business. His real interest is in BSkyB TV and other broadcasting … aspects of News Corporation.” 

This move doesn’t mean James is going to disappear into the Manhattan streets. Investigations into his role covering up crimes at News International are ongoing. “Revelations that keep coming out of this Leveson Inquiry … continue to show that the cover-up, as usual, is worse than the crime,” notes Bergman.

For years, in public and in testimony to British Parliament, James and other executives claimed that phone hacking and other illegal behavior was limited within the company. Revelations in the last year have undercut those claims.

The question remains: who knew what, and when? While neither James nor Rupert Murdoch have given in-depth interviews to the press (“I’m holding my breath,” jokes Bergman, after an extended radio silence), questions swirl: Did James tell the truth to parliament in July about his lack of knowledge about the widespread phone hacking? What about the 2008 “for Neville” email, in which a News of the World editor told James that one particular case looked bad?

“Unfortunately, it’s as bad as we feared,” Myler wrote.  “No worries,” James replied.

In that case, James reportedly approved a settlement of over $1 million not long after reading the e-mail. Business continued as usual at News International until last July, when it was revealed that News of the World hacked into the voicemails of Milly Dowler, a missing schoolgirl who was later found murdered.

It goes way beyond, James, Bergman notes — and it’s shaking up Britain’s core. “We’re talking about the involvement of every prime minister in Britain for the last quarter century,” says Bergman. “Equivalent of the White House, the FBI and the largest press organization or media organization in the country, all colluding, money changing hands, cover-up and all kinds of black arts in between.”

These arts are the subject of Lowell Bergman’s upcoming FRONTLINE film Murdoch’s Scandal, slated to air March 27.

Rupert Murdoch's American Scandals

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Rupert Murdoch would like you to believe that the voicemail-hacking scandal at the News of the World “went against everything that I stand for.” In his recent testimony before Parliament, the 80-year-old billionaire insisted that the criminal wrongdoing at the London tabloid betrayed the 53,000 “ethical and distinguished professionals” he commands from the pinnacle of News Corp. — the world’s second-largest media empire. Besides, he claimed, the scandal at the News of the World involved “a tiny part of our business,” which he helpfully quantified as “less than one percent of our company.”

At first glance, the systemic campaign of bribery and wiretapping at the News of the World certainly does seem extraordinary. Reporters and editors at what was the largest-circulation Sunday paper in the English-speaking world stand accused of bribing police, hacking the private voicemails of everyone from the royal family to the parents of soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, and paying more than $2 million in gag settlements to victims — allegedly with the full knowledge of Murdoch’s son and heir apparent, James.

But the corruption exposed at the News of the World is not the work of a “rogue” element within News Corp. — it’s a reflection of the lawless culture that defines the company. As CEO, Murdoch not only tolerates employees and executives who push the boundaries of legality and good taste, he celebrates them — at least until the cops show up. “There’s a broader culture within the company,” Col Allan, editor of Murdoch’s New York Post, crowed in 2007. “We like being pirates.” Whatever veneer of integrity News Corp. may have accrued after its purchase of The Wall Street Journal the very same year masks an ingrained corporate ethos that believes integrity is for suckers. The attitude passed down from the top, says one veteran of Murdoch’s tabloids, is aggressive and straightforward: “Anything we do is OK. We’re News Corp. — so fuck you and fuck your mother.”

Indeed, an examination of Murdoch’s corporate history reveals that each of the elements of the scandal in London – hacking, thuggish reporting tactics, unethical entanglements with police, hush-money settlements and efforts to corrupt officials at the highest levels of government – extend far beyond Fleet Street. Over the past decade, News Corp. has systematically employed such tactics in its U.S. operations, exhibiting what a recent lawsuit filed against the firm calls a “culture run amok.” As a former high-ranking News Corp. executive tells Rolling Stone: “It’s the same shit, different day.”

HACKING AND HUSH MONEY 

News America Marketing, a News Corp. subsidiary based in Connecticut, has been accused of engaging in “illegal computer espionage,” repeatedly hacking a rival firm’s computer system between 2003 and 2004 — a period that happens to coincide with NOTW‘s voicemail hacking in London. According to a lawsuit against News America, which dominates the lucrative market for ads on supermarket shelves and shopping carts, the Murdoch subsidiary grew alarmed when a competitor called Floorgraphics Inc. entered the market in the late 1990s with a novel concept — ad decals pasted on supermarket aisles. Paul Carlucci, the CEO of News America, responded by convening a meeting with FGI executives and allegedly delivering a Mafia­like ultimatum: Sell to Murdoch or be destroyed. “I work for a man who wants it all,” Carlucci warned, “and doesn’t understand anyone telling him he can’t have it all.”

When FGI rebuffed the takeover bid, according to a lawsuit the company filed in 2004, News America embarked on a campaign of “illegal, anti-competitive and unfair business practices.” After hacking into FGI’s database, the suit alleged, News America used the information to steal away top clients like Safeway, effectively destroying its rival’s business. FGI petitioned Chris Christie, then a U.S. attorney, to launch a criminal investigation into the alleged hacking, but the future governor of New Jersey refused to file charges. By then, the damage was done. News America was able to snap up FGI for $30 million — not only achieving Murdoch’s original goal of market domination but also quashing FGI’s lawsuit in the process.

News Corp. shareholders have paid far more to hush up other complaints about News America’s monopolistic abuses. To box out two more rival firms, Valassis Communications and Insignia, News America used its market position to hike ad rates for supermarket clients who refused to also advertise in Murdoch newspaper circulars. “It feels like they are raping us and they enjoy it,” an executive at Sara Lee complained. In 2009, a Michigan court awarded Valassis $300 million for News America’s illegal attempt to corner the market. News Corp. eventually silenced the affair with a $500 million payment to Valassis that blocked the threat of further litigation. It also reached a $125 million settlement with Insignia. The combined settlements of $655 million more than wiped out the profits News Corp. reaped from its record box-office smash Avatar.

THUGGISH REPORTING 

Instead of firing the man responsible for the legal and financial fiasco at News America, Murdoch promoted him. In addition to serving as CEO of News America, Carlucci was tapped in 2005 to become publisher of Murdoch’s flagship American tabloid, the New York Post. Under Carlucci’s leadership, the two businesses appear to have drawn inspiration from a similar source: organized crime. Carlucci reportedly encouraged teamwork at News America by showing his salesmen a clip from The Untouchables in which Al Capone brains a disloyal deputy with a baseball bat. And shortly after Carlucci arrived at the Post, the newspaper was rocked by a scandal in which a star Page Six reporter allegedly attempted to shake down billionaire Ron Burkle for “protection” from the gossip sheet, telling him, “It’s a little like the Mafia.”

Burkle secretly recorded Page Six reporter Jared Stern offering to go easy on him in the gossip sheet in exchange for a hefty payoff. “We know how to destroy people,” Stern reportedly threatened. “It’s what we do.” To shield himself from character assassination, Stern allegedly suggested, Burkle could make a one-time payment of $100,000, followed by monthly installments of $10,000.

News Corp. axed Stern, dismissing him as a rogue reporter and calling his behavior “highly aberrational.” But according to a 2007 affidavit by a fellow Post veteran, the alleged shakedown was an integral part of the company’s culture. “The spineless hypocrites in senior management at the New York Post and News Corp. have always used ‘expendable’ employees as scapegoats for the misdeeds of its senior executives,” Post reporter Ian Spiegelman testified. Spiegelman revealed that Page Six’s top editor Richard Johnson and two others had accepted cash from a restaurateur whose business had received a positive mention the day before. Johnson also allegedly accepted a $50,000 all-expenses-paid bachelor party to Mexico from Joe Francis, the founder of Girls Gone Wild, whom the Post subsequently hyped as “the next Hugh Hefner.” Spiegelman further charged that Col Allan, the Post‘s top editor, received free lap dances at the strip club Scores in return for favorable coverage by the paper.

News Corp. conceded that Johnson had accepted a $1,000 “gift,” but Murdoch let the editor off with a reprimand. Indeed, as Murdoch biographer Michael Wolff later observed, the incident only served to enhance Johnson’s reputation. “The bribery business actually seemed to confirm Johnson’s status for Murdoch as an old-time, walk-on-the-wild-side, dangerous, rule-bucking, proudly cynical newsman,” Wolff concluded. Insiders make clear that the worst impulses exhibited by the Post and other News Corp. publications come directly from the top. “Murdoch tries to wash his hands of everything when it’s convenient and pretend he has no involvement in the day-to-day running of the paper — which is just nonsense,” says a former Post reporter. “He’s always been very hands-on. There were no major decisions taken, even at Page Six, where Murdoch’s interests would not be considered.”

POLITICAL CORRUPTION Murdoch has built News Corp. into a media empire second only to Disney by horse-trading editorial support for political favors, repeatedly persuading officials at the highest levels of government to bend, break or rewrite rules meant to safeguard the public interest. “Murdoch has made himself almost a partner of certain political movements,” says Reed Hundt, who tried to rein in monopolistic practices by media giants like News Corp. as chairman of the Federal Communications Commission. “Politicians believe he’s going to win in the end, so why tangle with him?”

Long before the rise of Fox News, Murdoch used News Corp. to influence friends in high places. Shortly after purchasing the Post in 1977, he plucked Ed Koch out of obscurity and used the tabloid to propel him into Gracie Mansion. “I couldn’t have been elected without Rupert Murdoch’s support,” Koch said later. “Suddenly I was mayor of New York.” In 1980, when Jimmy Carter was battling Ted Kennedy for the Democratic nomination and badly needed a primary win in New York, the Post endorsed the president. Six days later, Murdoch received a $290 million loan from the federal government to bail out one of his Australian companies. News Corp. received an even bigger payoff after it gave House Speaker Newt Gingrich a $4.5 million book deal in 1994 — just as Congress began debating a new law that removed federal restrictions on Murdoch’s media holdings. Under George W. Bush, who owed his election in large part to the inaccurate and biased reporting of Fox News, the FCC blocked the sale of DirecTV to a News Corp. rival, then rubber-stamped its acquisition by Murdoch.

But Murdoch’s coziest political bond has been with Rudy Giuliani. In 1994, Giuliani was elected mayor of New York by a narrow margin, thanks largely to the full-bore support of the Post. With Giuliani in office, the Post continued to back the mayor so slavishly that Rep. Charlie Rangel took to calling it the City Hall Post. News Corp. even hired Giuliani’s wife, Donna Hanover, as a Fox television reporter, quickly quadrupling her salary to $123,000.

Giuliani was not shy about rewarding his media patron. When Murdoch moved News Corp. into its current Midtown headquarters, the mayor secured the company a tax break worth more than $20 million. Then, when Time Warner tried to keep Murdoch out of the New York market in 1996 by refusing to give Fox News a spot in its cable lineups, Giuliani threatened to revoke Time Warner’s cable franchise and offered to air Fox News on one of the city’s public-access channels. A federal judge blocked the move, upbraiding the mayor for acting “to reward a friend and to further a particular viewpoint.” But the rank political favoritism paid off: During Giuliani’s first term, according to a study by researchers at the University of Southern California, not a single negative editorial about him appeared in the Post.

POLITCAL ENTANGLEMENTS Just as the News of the World scandal toppled the head of Scotland Yard, News Corp. also brought down one of America’s top cops. In 2001, one of Murdoch’s publishing chiefs, Judith Regan, signed New York Police Commissioner Bernie Kerik to a book advance worth six figures. In an affair worthy of Page Six, the News Corp. executive was soon literally in bed with the police czar, meeting for sex in an apartment overlooking Ground Zero that was intended to house exhausted recovery workers. Before long, Kerik was tasking NYPD officers as if they were Regan’s personal bodyguards, at one point reportedly dispatching them to track down the publisher’s lost cellphone.

According to a source familiar with details of the affair, the relationship soured when Regan tried to break it off. Unable to call the cops, she confided in fellow News Corp. executive Roger Ailes, the head of Fox News, hoping he could get Giuliani to rein in Kerik. But Ailes was more concerned about the political fallout. According to legal filings by Regan, Ailes anticipated the damage the scandal could cause the mayor and personally confronted Murdoch, telling him that Regan was “out of control.” Ailes grew even more concerned in 2004, when President Bush nominated Kerik — by then a senior vice president in Giuliani’s national security firm — to head the Department of Homeland Security. If Regan disclosed her tawdry ties to the former commissioner, Ailes feared, it might harm Kerik’s nomination and “more importantly, Giuliani’s planned presidential campaign.”

To keep the affair hush-hush, Ailes “advised Regan to lie to and withhold information from investigators,” and even coached her on limiting her disclosures “as is typically done when Fox News on-air talent receive their ‘talking points.'” The alleged obstruction of justice by Ailes has since made headlines, but Regan also fingered “another News Corp. executive,” whom she claimed advised her “not to produce clearly relevant documents in connection with a governmental investigation of Kerik.”

Regan laid these allegations bare in a wrongful-termination lawsuit she filed in 2007. As it did with its accusers in London, News Corp. moved to paper over the matter by reaching a settlement with Regan worth more than $10 million. The only one punished in the Kerik affair was Kerik himself, who was sentenced to four years in prison for lying to federal investigators and failing to report income from a News Corp. book advance to the IRS.

Murdoch may soon find himself in even deeper trouble for his dealings with New York police. The Justice Department is currently investigating allegations that News Corp. reporters tried to bribe a New York cop, seeking to hack the phones of 9/11 victims — a charge that has outraged even the staunchest Fox News Republicans. “It is revolting to imagine that members of the media would seek to compromise the integrity of a public official for financial gain in the pursuit of yellow journalism,” Rep. Peter King of New York wrote in a letter to FBI director Robert Mueller, demanding that any wrongdoing be met with the “harshest sanctions available under law.”

But the “revolting” practice that King describes is actually at the core of Murdoch’s business model. Until the News of the World scandal became public, deplorable judgment and even outright criminal behavior have not been firing offenses for Murdoch’s top deputies, either in London or New York. A willingness to push the boundaries of the law and common decency, in fact, is what has made Murdoch a billionaire nearly eight times over. Murdoch himself has bragged of possessing files, replete with photographs detailing the sexual escapades of prominent liberals. You know, for leverage. All of which makes laughable Murdoch’s claim before Parliament that “I’m the best person to clean this up.”

The phone-hacking scandal engulfing News Corp. has led members of the extended Bancroft clan that sold The Wall Street Journal to Murdoch to repent of their decision — even though they received what amounted to a $3 billion overpayment from News Corp. for the paper. “Murdoch thinks he is completely above the law, as he always has,” former top shareholder Bill Cox III recently told ProPublica. “We made a deal with the devil.”

The sharks are already circling in England, where politicians long cowed by Murdoch’s bullying now appear determined to curb News Corp.’s influence. Labor Party leader Ed Miliband, decrying Murdoch for having “too much power over British public life,” has called for a breakup of his U.K. holdings. Here in the United States, institutional shareholders filed suit in July, seeking to change News Corp. from the inside by reforming its board of hand-appointed cronies. The board, the suit claims, has “abdicated its fiduciary duties” by enabling Murdoch to run the publicly-traded News Corp. “without any restraints on his pursuit of his political and personal agendas, which has led the company to engage in improper and illegal conduct.”

The lawsuit highlights Murdoch’s outrageous pay: He’s pocketed $75 million in compensation over the past three years, even as News Corp.’s stock has yielded a negative return. It also blasts his “rampant nepotism,” noting the extravagant overpayment he made to acquire his daughter Elizabeth’s production company, Shine — a deal that made her $250 million richer at the expense of the company. But even as Murdoch’s children have come back into the News Corp. fold, his dreams of creating a media dynasty have never been more troubled. As the fallout from the hacking scandal continues in London, the News of the World’s former editor is accusing heir apparent James Murdoch of lying to Parliament about his knowledge of the hush money paid to hacking victims.

As each News of the World revelation exposes the root and branch of corruption at News Corp., the increasingly desperate Murdoch has responded by hacking off branches. In removing Les Hinton, the publisher of The Wall Street Journal, he cut off an executive he once said he would trust his life to. In getting rid of Rebekah Brooks at News of the World, he abandoned a deputy he favored like a daughter. Son James now looks like the next branch to go. But until Rupert Murdoch sees fit to remove himself, the root of all that’s vile at News Corp. will remain the same.

This story is from the August 18, 2011 issue of Rolling Stone.

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‘The emperor lost his clothes’: Rupert Murdoch, News of the World and journalistic boundary work in the UK and USA

‘The emperor lost his clothes’: Rupert Murdoch, News of the World and journalistic boundary work in the UK and USA - Matt Carlson, Dan Berkowitz, 2014

Abstract

Episodes of journalistic deviancy become moments of reflection for the journalistic interpretive community, at times assuming international proportions. This study examines the construction of appropriate journalistic norms through reactions to the phone hacking scandal that led to the abrupt closure of the British Sunday tabloid the News of the World on 10 July 2011. A comparison of reactions in US and UK newspapers reveals how boundary work articulates appropriate practices through defining deviant behavior. Rather than isolating the troubles to a single newsroom, what emerges is a form of synecdochic deviancy in which the significance of the scandal expands to larger normative questions among journalists in both nations.

 
 

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Biographies

Matt Carlson is Assistant Professor of Communication at Saint Louis University. He is the author of On the Condition of Anonymity: Unnamed Sources and the Battle for Journalism (University of Illinois Press, 2011). His research examines the discursive construction of journalism in a changing media landscape.
Dan Berkowitz is Professor of Journalism and Mass Communication and Associate Dean in the Graduate College at the University of Iowa. His research interests are in cultural approaches to the study of news production, including aspects of mythical narratives and collective memory. He is editor of two readers, Social Meanings of News and Cultural Meanings of News.
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Biographies

Matt Carlson is Assistant Professor of Communication at Saint Louis University. He is the author of On the Condition of Anonymity: Unnamed Sources and the Battle for Journalism (University of Illinois Press, 2011). His research examines the discursive construction of journalism in a changing media landscape.
Dan Berkowitz is Professor of Journalism and Mass Communication and Associate Dean in the Graduate College at the University of Iowa. His research interests are in cultural approaches to the study of news production, including aspects of mythical narratives and collective memory. He is editor of two readers, Social Meanings of News and Cultural Meanings of News.
 
‘The emperor lost his clothes’: Rupert Murdoch, News of the World and journalistic boundary work in the UK and USA - Matt Carlson, Dan Berkowitz, 2014