Murdoch empire in crisis

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James is getting really pissed off.

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Rupert likes to go in the backdoor.
 
Was it just me, or when they were asked just then about plans for another Sunday tabloid did James start saying "absolutely not--" before Rupert cut him off going "we've made no decision on that".
 
He's getting snappier now, but the whole senior act early on, the long pauses blah blah - he's well sharp. Plus, he's famously all over it. So both claiming a lack of knowledge about all of these events until recently + him just saying he hardly checks in with editors is bullshit. Strategy is clearly to completely distance himself as Big Manager, too big to be involved in the details (pretty much his opening line was that NOTW was 1% of business + he employs 50K people), while also playing up to a bit of sympathy - old man getting picked on.
 
A disgraceful breach of security which must be properly investigated.

'Jonnie Marbles', apparently, is part of the same collective that protested U2's performance at Glastonbury, though they have disowned him:

The man who attacked Rupert Murdoch during his parliamentary appearance has been identified as Jonathan May-Bowles, a protester and standup comedian.

May-Bowles dramatically intervened in the committee hearing when he tried to throw a plate of white foam into Murdoch's face at close range.

He was quickly identified by friends in the UK Uncut network of activists. Although the activist group quickly distanced themselves from the protester, he is known to have been a key figure in their campaign.

"This was a lone-wolf, solitary action," said a key organiser in UK Uncut, a tax-avoidance campaigner group. "None of us knew anything about this. This has got nothing to do with UK Uncut."
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'Jonnie Marbles': the comedian and activist who attacked Rupert Murdoch | Media | The Guardian
 
I have to admit, its fun to watch that video of Wendi Deng smacking that guy. I understand she once played volleyball?
 
r-SARAH-PAYNE-large570.jpg


The News of the World hacked into the phone of Sara Payne, the mother of Sarah Payne, an abducted and murdered 8-year-old girl, the Guardian reported Tuesday.

It was the hacking of 13-year-old Milly Dowler's phone that turned the long-simmering phone hacking scandal into a full-blown crisis for the News of the World, Rupert Murdoch and News Corp. Yet the news of Payne's hacking is, in some ways, even more shocking, because it was her daughter's murder by a pedophile in 2000 that led News of the World editor Rebekah Brooks to launch a crusade for a sex offender's law in Britain known as "Sarah's Law." Brooks repeatedly mentioned the campaign in her testimony to Parliament, calling it an example of the good that the News of the World had done.

Payne grew so close to the paper, and to Brooks, that she wrote a column for its final issue, paying tribute to its campaign.

"The NOTW team supported me through some of the darkest, most difficult times of my life and became my trusted friends," she wrote. "One example of their support was to give me a phone to help me stay in touch with my family, friends and support network, which turned out to be an absolute lifeline."

According to the Guardian, it is that phone—personally given to Payne by Brooks—which may have been hacked. The disclosure raises, yet again, the question about what Brooks knew or did not know about the extent of phone hacking. Though she has claimed to have been in the dark about the extent of criminal activity at her newspaper, Brooks has already resigned as head of News International and is under a criminal investigation.

Scotland Yard reportedly found materials referring to Payne in the notes of Glenn Mulcaire, the private investigator who was jailed for phone hacking in 2007.

In response, Rebekah Brooks issued this statement:

"For the benefit of the campaign for Sarah's Law, the News of the World have provided Sara with a mobile telephone for the last 11 years. It was not a personal gift. The idea that anyone on the newspaper knew that Sara or the campaign team were targeted by Mr Mulcaire is unthinkable. The idea of her being targeted is beyond my comprehension. It is imperative for Sara and the other victims of crime that these allegations are investigated and those culpable brought to justice."
 
Guardian, Aug. 16
Rupert Murdoch, James Murdoch and their former editor Andy Coulson all face embarrassing new allegations of dishonesty and cover-up after the publication of an explosive letter written by the News of the World's disgraced royal correspondent, Clive Goodman.

In the letter, which was written four years ago but published only on Tuesday, Goodman claims that phone hacking was "widely discussed" at editorial meetings at the paper until Coulson himself banned further references to it; that Coulson offered to let him keep his job if he agreed not to implicate the paper in hacking when he came to court; and that his own hacking was carried out with "the full knowledge and support" of other senior journalists, whom he named.

The claims are acutely troubling for the prime minister, David Cameron, who hired Coulson as his media adviser on the basis that he knew nothing about phone hacking. And they confront Rupert and James Murdoch with the humiliating prospect of being recalled to parliament to justify the evidence which they gave last month on the aftermath of Goodman's allegations. In a separate letter, one of the Murdochs' own law firms claim that parts of that evidence were variously "hard to credit", "self-serving" and "inaccurate and misleading".
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Goodman's letter is dated 2 March 2007, soon after he was released from a four-month prison sentence. It is addressed to News International's director of human resources, Daniel Cloke, and registers his appeal against the decision of Hinton, the company's then chairman, to sack him for gross misconduct after he admitted intercepting the voicemail of three members of the royal household. Goodman lists five grounds for his appeal. He argues that the decision is perverse because he acted "with the full knowledge and support" of named senior journalists and that payments for the private investigator who assisted him, Glenn Mulcaire, were arranged by another senior journalist. The names of the journalists have been redacted from the published letter at the request of Scotland Yard, who are investigating the affair. Goodman then claims that other members of staff at the News of the World were also hacking phones. Crucially, he adds: "This practice was widely discussed in the daily editorial conference, until explicit reference to it was banned by the editor." He reveals that the paper continued to consult him on stories even though they knew he was going to plead guilty to phone hacking and that the paper's then lawyer, Tom Crone, knew all the details of the case against him. In a particularly embarrassing allegation, he adds: "Tom Crone and the editor promised on many occasions that I could come back to a job at the newspaper if I did not implicate the paper or any of its staff in my mitigation plea. I did not, and I expect the paper to honour its promise to me." In the event, Goodman lost his appeal. But the claim that the paper induced him to mislead the court is one that may cause further problems for News International.
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The company also faces a new claim that it misled parliament. In earlier evidence to the select committee, in answer to questions about whether it had bought Goodman's silence, it had said he was paid off with a period of notice plus compensation of no more than £60,000. The new paperwork, however, reveals that Goodman was paid a full year's salary, worth £90,502.08, plus a further £140,000 in compensation as well as £13,000 to cover his lawyer's bill. Watson said: "It's hush money. I think they tried to buy his silence." Murdoch's executives have always denied this.
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New York Times, Dec. 13
An e-mail chain released Tuesday by a parliamentary panel investigating the phone hacking scandal shows that Rupert Murdoch’s son James received and responded to messages in 2008 that referred to widespread phone hacking at The News of the World tabloid, the first documentation that he may have been notified of the wider problem long before he has admitted. James Murdoch responded to the panel in a letter, saying that he had opened the e-mails on his BlackBerry and had not read their full contents at the time or since.

The e-mail chain was sent to the panel as part of an internal investigation by News International, the tabloid’s parent company. The e-mails contain warnings from lawyers that the phone hacking was more widespread than previously thought. The messages were passed on to the editor of The News of the World at the time, Colin Myler, who forwarded them to Mr. Murdoch, who replied within minutes, saying he would be available to discuss the matter.
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Earlier this year, News International admitted that employees routinely hacked the cell phones of celebrities, royals and other people in the news after a cascade of revelations followed by dozens of lawsuits. At least 18 former News of the World employees have been arrested, and the 168-year-old newspaper itself was shuttered this summer. In several intense and dramatic sessions of the Parliamentary committee this year, Mr. Murdoch, the head of his father’s European and Asian businesses, and his former executives have engaged in a war of words over the crucial question of what he knew, and when. The executives have said he was informed in 2008 that the company line—that phone hacking was the work of one “rogue reporter” — was not true. They say Mr. Murdoch approved an unprecedentedly large settlement of £725,000 in a phone hacking lawsuit that year with full knowledge that others were involved. Mr. Murdoch has consistently countered that he knew nothing and that the settlement, which included a confidentiality clause, just made financial sense.

The e-mail chain, from Saturday, Jun. 7, 2008, discusses that lawsuit, brought by a British soccer union boss, Gordon Taylor. One lawyer says the case is a “nightmare scenario,” because it might uncover other voicemail interceptions and names other journalists implicated, the other notes that Mr. Taylor wants to demonstrate that hacking was “rife throughout the organization.” As he forwarded the chain to Mr. Murdoch, Mr. Myler warned that the situation was “as bad as we feared” and requests a meeting to discuss the matter further. Mr. Murdoch’s reply offering to talk came two minutes later.
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In some situations I might actually give an "I didn't read the whole thing" excuse some credence, since it's been my experience that a startling number of otherwise smart and competent people routinely fail to absorb or retain more than maybe a quarter of the contents of emails sent to them. Doesn't seem credible at all in this instance though, and in any case given those stakes would still be an unacceptable "mistake."
 
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