UK lawmakers to give verdict on Rupert and James Murdoch Phone-hacking Scandal

[Samstwitch]

UK lawmakers to give verdict on Rupert and James Murdoch Phone-hacking Scandal

LONDON (Reuters) April 30, 2012 - Newspaper magnate Rupert Murdoch and his son James will be in the firing line on Tuesday when a British parliamentary committee issues its verdict on a phone-hacking scandal that has made the family name politically toxic.

Committee members have said they were obstructed and put under surveillance by Murdoch's News Corp during their five year investigation into the hacking of the phones of celebrities, murder victims, politicians and soldiers for newspaper stories.

Their report could force James Murdoch to sever his last ties with Britain's biggest satellite TV firm BSkyB, which News Corp had sought to take over before the scandal broke.

It will also embarrass Prime Minister David Cameron, who acknowledged again on Monday that politicians were in thrall to the Murdochs and whose Conservative Party faces local elections across much of Britain on Thursday.

The committee was likely to criticize James Murdoch for failing to get to the bottom of the scandal, and Rupert Murdoch for the wider culture at the company, a source familiar with the situation told Reuters, adding that Conservative members on the committee were reluctant to criticize James Murdoch any further.

Cameron was summoned to parliament on Monday to explain why he would not investigate emails revealing that a ministerial aide had assured News Corp its bid for BSkyB would be approved.

He insisted there was no need to refer the case to his independent adviser on ministerial conduct, noting the emails had been handed to a judicial inquiry into press ethics, but did concede that politicians had been too keen to please the media.

"I am perfectly prepared to admit that the relationship between politicians and media proprietors got too close," he said during a rowdy debate, blaming politicians of both main parties for the failing.

PARLIAMENT MISLED

Committee Chairman John Whittingdale opened its hearing of James and Rupert Murdoch last year saying his committee found it inconceivable that only one reporter at News Corp's News of the World weekly had been involved in the hacking scandal.

"In the last few weeks, not only has evidence emerged that I think has vindicated the Committee's conclusion, but abuses have been revealed that have angered and shocked the entire country," he said. "It is also clear that Parliament has been misled."

Audiences around the world witnessed the 81-year-old Rupert Murdoch - whose newspapers could make or break British politicians - saying it was the most humble day of his life and saw him hit with a foam pie at the height of the scandal last July.

He answered many of the questions in monosyllables, sometimes flummoxing the committee members, while James Murdoch infuriated them at times with lengthy management-speak.
The committee is expected to say that James Murdoch was incompetent at best for asking few questions about a payoff he approved of more than half a million pounds ($800,000) to a hacking victim who had evidence the practice was widespread.

Its report, which may run to 100 pages, is also expected to criticize Rupert Murdoch, the chief executive of the News of the World's parent company News Corp, for allowing a culture of illegality to flourish. Murdoch shut down the paper last year.

Les Hinton, the former head of News Corp's British newspaper arm, Tom Crone, a legal executive at the News of the World, and the paper's former editor, Colin Myler, will also come under the spotlight, the source said.

Media regulator Ofcom will take the report's findings into consideration in its continuing assessment of whether BSkyB's owners and directors are "fit and proper" persons to hold a broadcast license.

James Murdoch resigned last month as chairman of BSkyB, saying he did not want to be a "lightning rod" for damage from the phone-hacking scandal, but remains a director of the broadcaster, in which News Corp owns 39 percent.

He admitted last week he had raised the issue of the takeover with Cameron at a Christmas dinner in 2010.

The committee will present its report to parliament, which is likely to hold a debate on its findings, and the government then has 60 days to respond.

A previous critical report by the committee came before last July's revelation that people working for the News of the World had hacked into the voicemail of murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler, which fuelled public anger and led to more revelations.

Relations between News Corp and Cameron, who once employed an ex-News of the World editor as his spokesman, will face more scrutiny in the coming months when Rebekah Brooks, a former Murdoch confidante and News Corp executive, reveals her text messages and emails with Cameron, a neighbor and former friend.

As the committee has to be careful not to prejudice any criminal trials of figures involved in the scandal, it has focused more on the Murdochs and others who have not been arrested. [End Article]

SOURCE: UK lawmakers to give verdict on Murdochs - Yahoo! News

VIDEO: Here's an excelllent parody of "It's A Wonderful Life" starring Hugh Laurie as Rupert Murdoch and Stephen Fry as Clarence (angel, second class).

 

[Samstwitch]

A bit of justice...

Rupert Murdoch not fit to run business, UK lawmakers rule

London (CNN) -- Global media tycoon Rupert Murdoch is "not a fit person" to run a major international company, British lawmakers investigating phone hacking at his tabloid News of the World reported Tuesday. The ruling could prompt British regulators to force him to sell his controlling stake in British Sky Broadcasting, a significant part of his media empire.

The damning report accused Murdoch and his son James of showing "willful blindness" to phone hacking at News of the World, and said the newspaper "deliberately tried to thwart the police investigation" into the illegal activity. The paper's publisher, News Corp. subsidiary News International, "wished to buy silence in this affair and pay to make the problem go away," the Parliament's Culture, Media and Sport Committee found.

Ofcom, the British media regulator that could force Murdoch out of BSkyB, said it is "reading with interest" the report from Parliament. The agency noted that it "has a duty under the Broadcasting Acts of 1990 and 1996 to be satisfied that any person holding a broadcasting license is, and remains, fit and proper to do so."

Allegations of widespread illegal eavesdropping by Murdoch journalists in search of stories have shaken the media baron's News Corp. empire and the British political establishment, up to and including Prime Minister David Cameron.

Police have arrested dozens of people as part of investigations into phone hacking, e-mail hacking and police bribery, while two different Parliamentary committees and an independent inquiry led by Lord Justice Brian Leveson are all probing aspects of the scandal.

Testifying before the Leveson Inquiry last week, Rupert Murdoch admitted that there had been a "cover-up" of phone hacking at News of the World. But Murdoch, who owns the Sun and the Times in London, as well as controlling The Wall Street Journal, New York Post and Fox News, said his News Corp. had been a victim of the cover-up, not the perpetrator. "Someone took charge of a cover-up, which we were victim to and I regret," he said Thursday at the Leveson Inquiry. He apologized for not paying more attention to the scandal, which he said had been "a serious blot on my reputation."

Tuesday's report by the Culture, Media and Sport Committee is based partly on earlier testimony by Rupert and James Murdoch.
John Whittingdale, the chairman of the committee, said Tuesday that while there is "no definitive evidence to prove whether or not James Murdoch was aware of ... evidence which indicated that phone hacking was widespread, the committee was nevertheless astonished that he did not seek to see the evidence."

Tom Watson, the Labour lawmaker who has long been one of the fiercest critics of Murdoch, was blistering in a news conference announcing the Parliamentary findings.

"These people corrupted our country. They have brought shame on our police force and our Parliament. They lied and cheated -- blackmailed and bullied and we should all be ashamed when we think how we cowered before them for so long," he said.
But Louise Mensch, a Conservative member of Parliament who is on the committee with Whittingdale and Watson, said the report had gone too far. She was one of the four Conservative MPs who dissented from the amendment to the report finding that Murdoch was not a fit person to run a company. She called the amendment "faintly ridiculous" given Murdoch's decades in the business, and accused the Labour members of the committee of pushing through a "nakedly political" statement. "The amendments were so far out of left field they made a mockery of the whole thing," she said.

The section declaring Murdoch "not fit" passed by a vote of 6 to 4, with support from Labour and Liberal Democrat lawmakers, over opposition from Conservatives. Committee chair Whittingdale, a Conservative, did not vote. The report did not accuse either Murdoch of misleading Parliament, but said three of their underlings had done so when they testified before the committee.
Longtime Murdoch right-hand man Les Hinton was criticized, as were Colin Myler, the last editor of News of the
World, and Tom Crone, who was the paper's lawyer for decades. The full House of Commons will have to rule on whether the three committed contempt by misleading the committee, "and, if so, what punishment should be imposed," the report says. "It is effectively lying to Parliament," Whittingdale said. "Parliament at the end of the day is the supreme court of the land. It is a very serious matter."
News Corp. said it was "carefully reviewing the Select Committee's report and will respond shortly. "The company fully acknowledges significant wrongdoing at News of the World and apologizes to everyone whose privacy was invaded," its statement said.

BSkyB shares were up slightly in London on the news. News Corp. is traded in New York, where the markets were not open when the report was published.

Rupert Murdoch said last week that if he had known the depth of the problem in 2007, when a private investigator and a Murdoch journalist were sent to prison for phone hacking, he "would have torn the place apart and we wouldn't be here today. But that's hindsight." But he also suggested last week that key parts of the scandal have been overblown.

"The hacking scandal was not a great national thing until the Milly Dowler disclosure, half of which has been somewhat disowned by the police," Murdoch said. He was referring to the revelation that people working for him had hacked into the voice mail of a missing 13-year-old who later turned out to have been murdered.

The Guardian newspaper originally reported that the hackers had also deleted some of the girl's voice mails, leading to false hopes that she was still alive and deleting them herself. In fact, the messages may have expired automatically.

Murdoch was also grilled over his media empire's back-channel lobbying of the British government, and said he learned of the existence of one of the key lobbyists only "a few months ago."

Murdoch said he was "surprised" by the extent of the contact by the employee, Fred Michel, with the British government as it considered a bid by News Corp. to take full ownership of British Sky Broadcasting. That bid collapsed because of the phone-hacking scandal.

The scandal has forced News Corp. to pay hundreds of thousands of pounds in compensation to the victims of phone hacking.
Murdoch and his son James have been hammered over the past year about what they knew about phone hacking by people working for them. They have always denied knowing about the scale of the practice, which police say could have affected thousands of people, ranging from celebrities and politicians to crime victims and war veterans.

SOURCE: Rupert Murdoch not fit to run business, UK lawmakers rule - CNN.com

 

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Rupert Murdoch spoofed on 'Saturday Night Live'

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