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Why This Murdoch Scandal Won't Disappear
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An angry parliament and hungry lawyers are likely to keep Rupert Murdoch’s phone-hacking scandal in the headlines and, Richard Heller writes, force Britain’s pols to stand up to the media baron.
If any story could strike terror into the leaders of Britain’s two major political parties, it would be: MURDOCH NEWSPAPERS ACCUSED OF CRIME SPREE.
And it happened last week, when The Guardian revealed a £1 million ($1.54 million) legal settlement by News International (Murdoch’s U.K. newspaper company) for illegally intercepting telephone voicemails of Gordon Taylor, head of England’s Professional Footballers' Association, and of his legal adviser. The Guardian also accused Murdoch’s newspapers—the weekday Sun and its Sunday stablemate The News of the World—of obtaining information by criminal means from 3,000 other people.
The terror of Rupert Murdoch has dominated British politics for around 25 years. Even Margaret Thatcher, famous for her resolute defense of free enterprise, personally refused to enforce anti-monopoly laws in newspapers and television for the benefit of the owner of The Sun, News of the World, The Times, and Sunday Times. Since then, every leader of each major party has been Murdoch’s eager courtier. Tony Blair set the style of the relationship in his first year as leader of the Labour Party, when he dashed halfway across the world to speak to Murdoch’s executives on a holiday island in Australia. (In return, Murdoch was gracious enough to praise Blair for his courage.) In his first year as prime minister, Blair made a personal call to then-Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi to help Murdoch’s bid for Mediaset—the first time in history that a British prime minister has helped a non-British company to make a non-British acquisition.
Gordon Brown followed suit by courting Murdoch’s economic guru, Irwin Steltzer, nervously awaiting the latter’s verdicts on his handling of the British economy like a schoolboy hoping for a good report card from the principal. It was most clearly seen when both Brown and the Conservative Party opposition leader, David Cameron, were desperately eager to attend the recent wedding of Sun editor Rebekah Wade, who is shortly to become chief executive of Murdoch’s British newspaper empire.
As a belated wedding present for the blushing bride and her boss, Cameron suddenly promised to strike down Ofcom—the body which regulates Murdoch’s British operations, and which, a few days before, had told him he was charging too much for the rights to British football and Hollywood movies.
In this political context, neither of the major parties wants to be forced into action against Rupert Murdoch as a result of the Guardian story.
Two years ago, when the News Of The World’s royals editor, Clive Goodman, went to jail for hacking royal telephone calls, both party leaderships were happy to buy the story that this was a one-off case and that Goodman was a “rogue operator,” whose methods were unknown to his editor, Andy Coulson, and to senior Murdoch executives.
Now the Guardian has established that Goodman’s was not a one-off case and alleges that senior Murdoch executives knowingly approved, authorized, and even directed the use of methods that are potentially criminal. Although the Guardian story is much more embarrassing in the short term to Cameron, who chose Coulson as his spin doctor, it is just as hot a potato for Gordon Brown. If any of the Guardian’s allegations stand up, the prime minister might see his attorney general deciding to prosecute Murdoch’s senior executives.
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Lloyd Grove is editor at large for The Daily Beast. He is also a frequent contributor to New York magazine and was a contributing editor for Condé Nast Portfolio. He wrote a gossip column for the New York Daily News from 2003 to 2006. Prior to that, he wrote the Reliable Source column for the Washington Post, where he spent 23 years covering politics, the media, and other subjects.
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Martin Jacques is the cofounder of the UK think tank Demos, writes a regular column for The Guardian, and is a visiting research fellow at the London School of Economics Asia Research Centre. His new book, When China Rules the World, is available now.
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Christopher Buckley's books include Supreme Courtship, The White House Mess, Thank You for Smoking, Little Green Men, and Florence of Arabia. He was chief speechwriter for Vice President George H.W. Bush, and is editor-at-large of ForbesLife magazine. His new book is Losing Mum and Pup, a memoir. Buckley's Daily Beast column is the winner of an Online Journalism Award in the category of Online Commentary.
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Richard Heller is a British author and journalist and former chief of staff to Denis Healey, Deputy Leader of the British Labour Party.
"Mark Stephens, a leading London media lawyer, has suggested that each individual litigant could win around £500,000 ($770.000): "
Sweet
"Brown is therefore secretly delighted that the police have decided to make no investigation of the Guardian claims"
-it was nice of Brown to give out his secret thoughts for this story.
I can't believe R. Murdoch actually let them use his personal tape recorder- stupid move.
It would be a pleasant surprise if his Rupertship had to pay uber large settelments to all who have been harmed by phone tapping by his employees. His Rupertship tacitly authorized & encouraged all of these wire taps. His Rupertship should face criminal charges in the UK & elsewhere, be convicted, be sentenced & serve time an an UK slammer, aka goal.
Who knows? His Rupertship could emulate Conrad Black by writing interesting stories while he is confined. Don't bet on it, any of it.
People who contend that Rupert's influence in the world of book publishing is less overtly a form of beastiality are wrong. Publishers, editors, the lower minions, old imprints that overnight become new imprints, pop culture consultants from Rolling Stone bedazzled by any imprint at all, and the little gnomes who oil the printer's ink machine I mean mimeograph, all shake with unmitigated fear in their Manolo's and cower and scrape and sweat profusely and leave the throne room backwards from Kangabookloo to Judith Regan's bodyguard's Homeland Security Carwash and Wax Job. All the Little People who are mortified their cellphone ringtones have been tapped by spies from Fox Newsorama Carwash and Wax Job Limo Inc. Can't you just see Rupert sitting in some little soundproof room, hands cupped to ears, translating the secret amusements of Roger Ailes.
Tim Barrus
Kangabookloo, Australia
Murdoch wouldn't give a job to anyone who spells Manolos (more than one shoe) with an apostrophe, unless they were referring to something that belonged to Manolo. Could that be your problem?
Most disappointing of all is what Murdoch's people did with the illegally obtained information. Good grief, if you're going to sink to eavesdropping for 'scoops' the least you can do is get them right. Why go to all the trouble if you're just going to publish whatever BS you feel like anyway? BTW, awfully generous of Guardian to refer to the Sun and the News of the World as "newspapers."
Holy Crap!! If someone had told me this as a conspiracy theory last week, I wouldn't have believed it. Newspapers tapping phones for stories - never thought they had that kind of pull, but then again a guy like Murdock has the power to ruin almost anyone with scandal especially in the U.K. with their awful tabloids. I'm sure everyone is terrified of him. I hoped he is brought down like Conrad Black.
About time !!!
Murdoch is absolutely scum.
This comment has been removed by The Daily Beast's editors.
Didn't Google get harassed by Viacom which is also owned by Murdoch, they went through some serious legal loopholes and screwed Youtube over, obtaining personal information and ruining some artists business- it was declared completely unconstitutional, but who cares. .then there's Myspace also a Murdoch venture I believe which went from a safe haven for independent artist to a free for all and file sharing site. MTV also a big dump- owned by Viacom-Murdoch- the music video station plays about 10% of its viewing as video's...is that some complete B.S. or hunh, a music television station that doesn't play music video's? Actually its way for a select few of the major labels to get their artists played a few times a day and stamp out the rest...those are my assumptions/deductions.
This guy is a leech to this planet. He's the king of tabloids and pretty much everything he touches turns to shit. He's even managed to turn the WSJ into one big op-ed full of self centered egomaniacs that don't even have a clue what journalism is.
Thank you.
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