Thread: Phone Hacking scandal snowballs

Rebekah Brooks resigned according to BBC tv

methinks she knows where the bodies are buried. Wonder how much she is getting in severance comp for her "resignation". I reckon a fair bit seeing as it took a week for her to negotiate it.....

Phone hacking: Brooks steps down over phone hacking



Rebekah Brooks: Resigned after weeks of pressure


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

Her departure follows days of growing pressure for her to step down as the phone hacking crisis grew. News Corporation chairman Rupert Murdoch had been resisting the calls to remove her.

Ms Brooks was editor of the News of the World when murder victim Milly Dowler's phone was hacked.

She had agreed to attend Tuesday's hearing of the Commons media committee.
http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/image...01320503-1.jpg

Originally Posted by crippen

Phone hacking: Brooks steps down over phone hacking



Rebekah Brooks: Resigned after weeks of pressure


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

Her departure follows days of growing pressure for her to step down as the phone hacking crisis grew. News Corporation chairman Rupert Murdoch had been resisting the calls to remove her.

Ms Brooks was editor of the News of the World when murder victim Milly Dowler's phone was hacked.

She had agreed to attend Tuesday's hearing of the Commons media committee.
http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/image...01320503-1.jpg

No one left to shag except the DPP.

Originally Posted by spikebs4

the good old U.S.A. are looking into news corps dealings ,phone taps/ 911..

Originally Posted by StrontiumDog

AP source: FBI probing allegation that News Corp. sought to hack into phones of 9/11 victims

Originally Posted by harrybarracuda

However, the pressure intensified with the disclosure that the FBI has opened in inquiry into claims that News Corp journalists sought to hack the phones of the victims of the 9/11 terror attacks.

This is what can bring down the Newscorp empire. It'd be the best thing the US government has done in years... it'll be fun watching how Fox'news' reacts...

Europe
U.K. Newspaper Exec Rebekah Brooks Resigns Amid Phone-Hacking Scandal
Published July 15,



AP
July 10: This photo shows Chairman of News Corporation Rupert Murdoch, left, and Chief executive of News International Rebekah Brooks as they leave his residence in central London.
LONDON – Rebekah Brooks, a loyal lieutenant of Rupert Murdoch, resigned Friday as chief executive of his embattled British newspapers, becoming the biggest casualty so far in the phone hacking scandal at a now-defunct Sunday tabloid.
Murdoch had defended Brooks in the face of demands from politicians that she step down, and had previously refused to accept her resignation. He made an abrupt switch, however, as his News Corp. company struggled to contain a U.K. crisis that is threatening his entire global media empire.

Brooks was editor of News of the World between 2000 and 2003, including the time when the paper's employees allegedly hacked into the telephone of 13-year-old murder victim Milly Dowler when police were searching for her.
That allegation last week provoked outrage far beyond previous revelations of snooping on celebrities, politicians and top athletes, knocking billions off the value of News Corp. In quick succession, Murdoch closed News of the World tabloid, abandoned his attempt to take full control of the lucrative British Sky Broadcasting and Prime Minister David Cameron appointed a judge to conduct a sweeping inquiry into criminal activity at the paper and in the media.
Brooks said the debate over her position was now too much of a distraction for her company.
"I have believed that the right and responsible action has been to lead us through the heat of the crisis. However my desire to remain on the bridge has made me a focal point of the debate," Brooks said in an email Friday to colleagues that was released by News International. "This is now detracting attention from all our honest endeavors to fix the problems of the past."
Tom Mockridge, currently chief executive of News Corp.'s Sky Italia television unit but who happened to be in London Friday, was appointed to succeed Brooks immediately. Mockridge began his career at a paper in New Zealand and then served as a spokesman for the Australian government before joining News Corp. in 1991, the company said.
News Corp. also announced Friday it would run advertisements in all of Britain's national papers this week to "apologize to the nation for what has happened."


Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/world/2011/07...#ixzz1SAgGP4J4

The Democrats can sniff Fox News blood....

Prosecute News Corp.
The U.S. government should go after Murdoch's media company for its corrupt practices and revoke its TV licenses if it's found guilty.
By Eliot SpitzerUpdated Tuesday, July 12, 2011, at 4:09 PM ET

Bribery, illegal wiretapping, interference in a murder investigation, political blackmail, and rampant disregard for both the truth and basic decency. The behavior of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. in Britain has shocked even his closest allies and cynical British journalists. The Murdoch empire is falling apart—criminal behavior and disregard for basic ethics having permeated its highest ranks. News Corp. executives' claims of a full and thorough investigation and that there were only a few bad apples have been exposed as feeble and false. The pseudo-investigations conducted by Scotland Yard are likewise proving to be corrupt and unreliable. Meanwhile, Prime Minister David Cameron's government is running for cover, but it cannot escape the untoward relationship that it had with Murdoch.

So how does all this concern Americans? First, it is hard to believe that the misbehavior in Murdoch's media empire stopped at the water's edge. Given the frequency with which he shuttled his senior executives and editors across the various oceans—Pacific as well as Atlantic—it is unlikely that the shoddy ethics were limited to Great Britain.

Much more importantly, the facts already pretty well established in Britain indicate violations of American law, in particular a law called the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. The Justice Department has been going out of its way to undertake FCPA prosecutions and investigations in recent years, and the News Corp. case presents a pretty simple test for Attorney General Eric Holder: If the department fails to open an immediate investigation into News Corp.'s violations of the FCPA, there will have been a major breach of enforcement at Justice. Having failed to pursue Wall Street with any apparent vigor, this is an opportunity for the Justice Department to show it can flex its muscles at the right moment. While one must always be cautious in seeking government investigation of the media for the obvious First Amendment concerns, this is not actually an investigation of the media, but an investigation of criminal acts undertaken by those masquerading as members of the media.


What is the FCPA? Enacted after the scandals of the 1970s in which American corporations were bribing overseas officials in order to secure business deals, the FCPA was an effort to bring some baseline of ethics to international business. It prohibits any American company or citizen from paying or offering to pay—directly or indirectly—a foreign official, foreign political figure, or candidate for the purpose of influencing that person in any decision relating to his official duties, including inducing that person to act in violation of his or her lawful duty. Very importantly, even if all such acts occur overseas, the American company and citizen will still be held liable here. So acts in Britain by British citizens working on behalf of News Corp. create liability for News Corp., an American business incorporated in Delaware and listed on American financial exchanges.

The rampant violations of British law alleged—payments to cops to influence ongoing investigations and the hacking of phones—are sufficient predicates for the Justice Department to investigate. Indeed, the facts as they are emerging are a case study for why the FCPA was enacted. We do not want companies whose headquarters are here—as News Corp.'s is—or that are listed on our financial exchanges—as News Corp. is—polluting the waters of international commerce with illegal behavior. (News Corp. shareholders are also rising against the company, with a huge lawsuit filed Monday in Delaware by three institutional investors claiming that company executives failed to act quickly enough to stop the phone hacking.)

The other reason to investigate here is that there is serious doubt that this matter can be investigated properly in Great Britain. Scotland Yard is already implicated, as is Cameron's government. DoJ can and should fill the void.

If DoJ does investigate and if a court were to find News Corp. liable, the penalties should extend beyond the traditional monetary fine. News Corp. should also have its FCC licenses revoked. Licensure and relicensure by the FCC require that the licensee abide by the law and serve the public interest. News Corp. appears to have blatantly violated this basic standard. Its licenses should be pulled.

Phone hacking: Les Hinton, CEO of Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones, resigns
Les Hinton, the head of News Corp's flagship American newspaper and a trusted, long-serving executive, resigned on Friday over his role in the phone-hacking scandal that has rocked Rupert Murdoch's global media company.



Rupert Murdoch sits alongside Les Hinton (left) Photo: GETTY
By Alex Spillius, Washington11:13PM BST 15 Jul 201115 Comments
He became the first high profile casualty of the controversy in the United States, where he had been chief executive of the Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones, a financial news service, since Mr Murdoch's takeover in late 2007.
In his resignation letter, Mr Hinton, 67, apologised for the "pain caused to innocent people" by repeated illegal intrusions by News of the World reporters and private detectives.
Mr Hinton was in charge of News International, Mr Murdoch's British newspaper division, from 1997 to 2007, when most of the egregious cases of phone tampering that have come to light occurred.
Maintaining his insistence that he believed one reporter had been acting alone, he said: "That I was ignorant of what apparently happened is irrelevant and in the circumstances I feel it is proper for me to resign."
He continued: "When I left News International in December 2007, I believed that the rotten element at the News of the World had been eliminated, that important lessons had been learned and that journalistic integrity was restored.

"There had never been any evidence delivered to me that suggested the conduct had spread beyond one journalist. If others had evidence that wrongdoing went further, I was not told about it."
His resignation came hours after Rebekah Brooks, his successor as head of NI and a former News of the World editor, also stood down after intense pressure. The scandal earlier forced Mr Murdoch to drop his bid for total control of BSkyB, the pay-TV service.
Mr Murdoch said in a statement that he had accepted Mr Hinton's resignation with "much sadness" and that the two of them had "been on a remarkable journey together for more than 52 years". "That this passage has come to an unexpected end, professionally, not personally, is a matter of much sadness to me," he said.
"I vividly recall an enthusiastic young man in the offices of my first newspaper in Adelaide, where Les joined the company as a 15-year-old and had the rather unenviable task of buying me sandwiches for lunch."
Mr Murdoch added that "News Corporation is not Rupert Murdoch. It is the collective creativity and effort of many thousands of people around the world, and few individuals have given more to this company than Les Hinton."
Mr Hinton had worked continuously for Mr Murdoch since joining one of the Australian newspapers that were the foundation of the News Corps operation as at the age of 15.
Few people were closer to the tycoon, and he held a variety of senior posts, including leading the Fox television station network and the American newspaper division, which includes The New York Post, before the highly prized capture of the Wall Street Journal.
Given the industrial scale of phone-tapping, bribery and other misconduct now acknowledged by the company, media experts questioned how Mr Hinton did not know what was going on.
There was a risk that his continued presence at the Journal, which built its reputation on arduously researched news stories, would become a detriment to the 122-year-old title.
His departure will be designed to limit the damage to the US-based News Corps, which accounts for most of Mr Murdoch's business and profits. Phone hacking: Les Hinton, CEO of Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones, resigns - Telegraph

Jude Law is suing the Sun for phone hacking. News International have called his action "quite cynical".

You couldn't make it up!

It's quite amusing to see this stuff being "reported" on FOX. This morning they had some hack on there stating that Mr. Murdock (bless his soul) was handling this situation extremely well and that anyway it was not a real story.....just something that the British and US governmens were ramping up to distract from the "real" problems. .... ....the no-spin zone...

I doubt if anyone will do time
While if Sky share price falls a proxy will scoop it up

Originally Posted by Lostandfound

Rebekah Brooks resigned according to BBC tv

looks like that support tranche is bused, time for a go with the "senior" tranche

if this could be the end of the Murdoch empire, then along with the Arab spring, it would be the best news of the year

Originally Posted by koman

It's quite amusing to see this stuff being "reported" on FOX. This morning they had some hack on there stating that Mr. Murdock (bless his soul) was handling this situation extremely well and that anyway it was not a real story.....just something that the British and US governmens were ramping up to distract from the "real" problems. .... ....the no-spin zone...

I bet Limbaugh is apoplectic with rage and squeaking his outrage at a high pitch.

If Fox News went under, he'd have virtually no soundbites to snivel about.

Originally Posted by Butterfly

if this could be the end of the Murdoch empire, then along with the Arab spring, it would be the best news of the year

Followed by the yellow shirts to make the triple for the year!!

Originally Posted by harrybarracuda

I bet Limbaugh is apoplectic with rage and squeaking his outrage at a high pitch.

If Fox News went under, he'd have virtually no soundbites to snivel about.

Especially as the Manchester Guardian has not let this issue die for years now!

The way things are going, Murdoch will have to fire his son and then himself

Yes, it's all good.

Nice plays by some of the actors who've been slaughtered by the sun/noftw in the past; coming back to bite murdoch now... Let's hope he loses everything and does some jail time. (most unlikely though...)

Originally Posted by crippen

Originally Posted by Butterfly

if this could be the end of the Murdoch empire, then along with the Arab spring, it would be the best news of the year

Followed by the yellow shirts to make the triple for the year!!

heu, you must be a bit slow, the Yellow fall happened already, it was last year I believe

^
They got wiped out - this year.

Originally Posted by Tom Sawyer

They got wiped out - this year.

they may reborn from the ashes, they just need a new cause, and they might soon have it

the beginning of the End for Murdoch empire ?

Call to cut back Murdoch Empire
BBC News - Miliband calls for limit to News International's power

Originally Posted by Butterfly

the beginning of the End for Murdoch empire ?

Call to cut back Murdoch Empire
BBC News - Miliband calls for limit to News International's power

To be honest, the newspapers aren't really worth much anyway. And as he doesn't own Sky News, I can't see how they can use that against him.

The real kick in the balls is if the seppos go after him.