27 June 2014 — WSWS
The trial of former News of the World (NotW) editors Rebekah Brooks and Andy Coulson and others connected with phone hacking has ended with Coulson, former head of communications of Prime Minister David Cameron, found guilty of conspiracy to intercept voicemail messages. Brooks, the former head of billionaire oligarch Rupert Murdoch’s media-empire in Britain, was acquitted.
2 September 2011 — New Left Project
I have written elsewhere that the aftermath of the phone hacking scandal and the establishment of the Leveson Inquiry, ‘is a hugely significant moment both for the British media and for British democracy’ and that ‘the spell of media power is facing its most serious challenge to date’. Given that official inquiries rarely generate genuinely radical proposals and we have seen no evidence that press proprietors and media executives are willing to give up their privileged positions, was this simply wishful thinking? The evidence, I would suggest, is mixed.
14 September 2011 — New Left Project
The Leveson inquiry has been launched to investigate phone hacking and the culture, practices and ethics of the press; there is a Lords Select Committee on the future of investigative journalism; a joint Select Committee on privacy and injunctions; all of which will feed into a Communications Review leading up to the New Communications Act in 2013 and bring with them unprecedented opportunities to interrogate contemporary news. So what questions should we be asking?
30 July 2011 — WSWS
On Friday, members of Parliament’s Commons Culture Select Committee voted against recalling News Corporation Chairman James Murdoch to give more evidence on phone hacking and police corruption. Labour MP Tom Watson had called on Murdoch, the son of international media mogul Rupert Murdoch, and two ex-News of the World executives, former editor Colin Myler and the newspaper’s ex-legal manager Tom Crone, to appear.
29 July, 2011 — Media Lens
When Rupert and James Murdoch appeared before the House of Commons media select committee on July 19, not one of the MP inquisitors demanded accountability for News International’s biggest moral crime – its shameful role as a facilitator of war. Robin Beste, of the Stop the War Coalition, put it succinctly: Continue reading
19 July 2011
An interesting document and worth plowing through.
From the document’s introduction:
Background
1. In 2005-06, the Metropolitan Police investigated claims that a private investigator, Mr Glenn Mulcaire, had been employed by News International to hack into the Voicemail accounts of certain prominent people, including members of the Royal Household in November 2005, in particular to obtain information on them. This case led to the prosecution and subsequent imprisonment of Mr Mulcaire and Mr Clive Goodman, the royal correspondent for the News of the World. The charges brought against Messrs Mulcaire and Goodman cited a limited number of people whose phones were alleged to have been hacked. However, papers taken from Mr Mulcaire in the course of the investigation indicated that journalists —not necessarily all from the same newspaper — had asked him to obtain information on a number of other people: it was not always clear who the subjects of the inquiries were (a number were identified only by initials or a forename), nor whether the request involved hacking or some other means of obtaining information.
28 July, 2011 — Belfast Telegraph
Socialist journalist explains how the assault on newspaper unions helped pave the way for the scandal engulfing Rupert Murdoch’s media empire.
Strikers and their supporters march against Murdoch's union-busting
NINETEEN-YEAR-OLD Michael Delaney died after being run over by a truck in east London on a Saturday night in January 1987. An inquest jury found that he had been a victim of unlawful killing. But nobody has ever been prosecuted.
Michael had been among trade unionists picketing the News International plant at Wapping against the sacking of more than 5,000 workers and the de-recognition of unions. The dispute lasted almost a year.
25 July 2011 — williambowles.info
25 July 2011
What’s New: Sleaze of the world
Socialist Project Today at 09:00
Good riddance to bad rubbish. That’s what many in Britain are saying after the shutdown of the notorious tabloid News of the World following revelations about how low the Rupert Murdoch-owned paper sank in its drive for salacious scoops.
23 July 2011 — williambowles.info
Hacking In Brief: 23/07/2011
The Independent – Media RSS Feed Today at Midnight
News Corp executive ‘leaked Cable story’
Ian Burrell
Kroll, the global corporate investigations company, has named a top News Corp executive as the strong suspect in ‘orchestrating’ the leak of a tape which led to the downfall of Business Secretary Vince Cable, who claimed he had ‘declared war’ on Rupert Murdoch.
23 July 2011
For well over a century the British state has relied on its professional civil service (known as the Establishment and for reasons I hope that become apparent) to maintain the status quo and whilst the state has had to make concessions over time (eg, universal suffrage, legalize trade unions and eventually establish the ‘welfare state’) the Establishment’s primary function is to preserve the rule of Capital, regardless of the party in power. Thus continuity is preserved through the role of a permanent and unelected elite run by the ‘Whitehall Mandarins’.
20 July, 2011 — Global Research
As eavesdroppers go, next to Uncle Sam and John Bull, Rupert Murdoch, the moral force behind Fox News, is an amateur.
22 July 20111 — wsws.org
David Cameron: Yet another shameless liar and poseur. The system does not produce any other kind.
21 July 2011 — williambowles.info
James Murdoch evidence questioned
BBC News Today at 20:27
News International chairman James Murdoch’s evidence to MPs on phone hacking is called into question by two former company executives.
21 July 2011 — RT
The London-based team investigating phone-hacking by journalists at News Corp has been expanded from 45 to 60 police officers and staff. The scandal now haunts not only the Murdochs, but also PM David Cameron, with chances of his resignation rising.
Meanwhile Russian billionaire Aleksandr Lebedev says he may be interested in relaunching Rupert Murdoch’s scandalous News of the World tabloid. He already owns other two British papers – the London Evening Standard and the Independent.
21 July 2011 — RT
The London-based team investigating phone-hacking by journalists at News Corp has been expanded from 45 to 60 police officers and staff. The scandal now haunts not only the Murdochs, but also PM David Cameron, with chances of his resignation rising.
Meanwhile Russian billionaire Aleksandr Lebedev says he may be interested in relaunching Rupert Murdoch’s scandalous News of the World tabloid. He already owns other two British papers – the London Evening Standard and the Independent.
13 July 2011 — The Real News Network
Leo Panitch: Murdoch used sex scandal journalism to attack left-wing of the Labor Party and later helped create Tony Blair
Bio
Leo Panitch is the Canada Research Chair in Comparative Political Economy and a Distinguished Research Professor of Political Science at York University in Toronto. Panitch is also the author of ‘Global Capitalism and American Empire’ and his most recent release ‘American Empire and the Political Economy of International Finance’. In addition to his university affiliation he is also a co-editor of the Socialist Register the latest volume of which is The Crisis This Time
20 July 2011 Updated: 21:05:34 — williambowles.info
20 July 2011
Murdoch Empire Sinking Beneath The Sands
By George Galloway
Since becoming prime minister just fifteen months ago, Cameron has had 26 meetings with Murdoch’s executives. Cameron’s wife was likely the only person to get more meetings with the PM than Murdoch’s executives.
20 July, 2011 — Democracy Now!
British PM David Cameron, Media Mogul Rupert Murdoch Face Parliament on Phone-Hacking Scandal
British Prime Minister David Cameron is facing questions from lawmakers today on his handling of the widening News International phone-hacking scandal implicating the British police and top government officials. Cameron’s appearance comes one day after an unprecedented hearing that saw media mogul Rupert Murdoch testify before British lawmakers for the first time, expressing regret for what he called “sickening and horrible invasions” of privacy committed by his company, but refusing to accept responsibility. Watch/Listen/Read
Murdoch’s Denials Are Tough to Believe, Former Wall Street Journal Reporter Sarah Ellison Says
To discuss the phone-hacking scandal engulfing the Rupert Murdoch media empire from Britain to the United States, we are joined by longtime journalist Sarah Ellison. She is a Vanity Fair contributing editor and author of the book “War at the Wall Street Journal: Inside the Struggle to Control an American Business Empire,” which chronicled the sweeping changes at the publication after Murdoch acquired the newspaper in 2007. Ellison spent 10 years working at the Wall Street Journal. Watch/Listen/Read
20 July 2011
The political/corporate class must be rueing the day email arrived, it is proving to be the undoing of many a powerful individual and perhaps even the downfall of the government? But only if the media do the job they claim to be doing, investigating malfeasance at every level.
20 July 2011 — Craig Murray
For all those complaining that the Murdochs had been carefully coached in presentation before the Select Committee, I say this is much worse. You do have to watch to the end to understand what I mean:
The New Dark Age 
