News Corp Gearing Up For Scandal Spreading To US?

News Corp is busy hiring big-name lawyers to represent different portions of the company in the US against possible legal action from the hacking scandal that threatens to overtake the company in the UK.

The company's nine independent directors hired former Manhattan U.S. Attorney Mary Jo White and former Attorney General Michael Mukasey, who served under President George W. Bush.

The directors are said to be increasingly concerned about Rupert Murdoch's stewardship of the firm and appear to be bracing for new U.S. legal trouble.

By denying knowledge of the phone hacking, bribery and hush money rampant at News of the World, experts said Rupert Murdoch and his son James may have left themselves open to shareholder charges of incompetence.

Separately, The Wall Street Journal reported News Corp. hired Washington lawyer Mark Mendelsohn, a top expert in the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.

These are prudent moves that any corporation would have to take, but it also signals just how serious the company is considering the possibility of charges in the US. They're worried about shareholder suits and criminal investigations.



At the same time, there are reports that there are still other news outlets in the UK that engaged in similar behavior, including ones that aren't affiliated with News Corp. They include The People (operated by The Mirror Group) and even Piers Morgan was accused of such tactics before coming to CNN.

On Tuesday, a member of Parliament accused the CNN anchor Piers Morgan of phone hacking when he was the editor of The Daily Mirror. Mr. Morgan strenuously denied the accusations and demanded an apology. And last week, news reports showed that the actor Jude Law has brought a hacking lawsuit against The News of the World’s sister newspaper, The Sun.

Five former journalists at The News of The World’s rival Sunday newspaper, The People, run by the Mirror group, said in interviews that they regularly witnessed hacking in that newsroom in the late 1990s to early 2000. “I don’t think anyone quite realized the criminality of it,” said one former reporter at The People, who spoke on condition of anonymity. A former reporter for the Sunday Mirror, another News of the World rival, described the extensive use of private detectives to obtain personal information. A former senior News of the World editor, Neil Wallis, who has been arrested on unspecified accusations of phone hacking, left The People in 2003 to join the Murdoch tabloid.

Nick Fullagar, director of communications for Trinity Mirror, the parent company of The Daily Mirror and The People, said, “Trinity Mirror’s position is clear. Our journalists work within the criminal law and the P.C.C. code of conduct,” referring to Britain’s press regulatory body, the Press Complaints Commission. Within Mr. Murdoch’s empire, the flagship daily tabloid The Sun has also been accused of hacking phones. The lawsuit by Mr. Law, filed last month, says that four articles published in 2005 and 2006 were based on intercepted voice mail.

It also comes as no surprise that News Corp affiliates are soft-pedaling the news coverage; the Fox News Network has devoted a fraction of the coverage that CNN or MSNBC has done, and the NY Post has all but buried the scandal as compared to either the Daily News or the NY Times. The Wall Street Journal has covered the story prominently, but that's the exception rather than the rule.

The scandal is also threatening to take down the British government as new revelations about the hiring of former News of the World editor Andy Coulson as Prime Minister David Cameron. Apparently, he didn't undergo the usual top level background checks of others up for similar positions.

FBI Opens Investigation Into News Corp. At Behest of Bipartisan Political Pressure

The noose is tightening around News Corporation and Rupert Murdoch's media empire. Rep. Peter King (R-NY) has penned a letter to the FBI demanding that it open an investigation into whether any of News Corporation's affiliates engaged in wrongdoing, including wiretapping or hacking into voice mail accounts of victims of the 9/11 attacks.

The inquiry was prompted in part by a letter from Representative Peter T. King, Republican of New York, to Robert S. Mueller III, the F.B.I. director, in which he asked that the bureau immediately open an investigation of News Corporation, citing media reports that journalists working for its subsidiary, The News of the World, tried to obtain the phone records of 9/11 victims through bribery and unauthorized wiretapping, the people said.

The decision to open a case in New York stemmed from the mushrooming hacking scandal that has wracked Britain for days, ever since The News of the World admitted that it had illegally intercepted the voice mail of Milly Dowler, a 13-year-old girl abducted and murdered in 2002. It also follows a decision by the News Corporation chairman, Rupert Murdoch, to withdraw from the biggest media takeover bid in British history.

The investigation was expected to be handled jointly by two F.B.I. squads in the bureau’s New York office, one that investigates cybercrimes and another that focuses on public corruption and white collar crimes, one of the people said. They all spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the case.

That follows similar calls from Senators Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ), Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) and Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-NY) among others.

The British Daily Mail had alleged that the News of the World attempted to access the voice mails of victims of the 9/11 terrorist attacks or other Americans but thus far the Guardian has been unable to verify that report. With the FBI entering into the fray, this matter is going to come to a head.

If the FBI finds that one of News Corporation's outfits engaged in this kind of action, the gig will be up for the company and puts everyone associated with those media outlets in jeopardy - particularly editors and reporters who used that information or knew or had reason to know how such information was obtained, or condoned those kinds of activities.

The Coming Downfall of News Corp.

News Corporation, which owns the likes of Fox News, the Wall Street Journal, New York Post, and British Papers such as the Sun and now-shuttered News of the World, and film and publishing companies is on the ropes following disturbing revelations about its improper conduct at several of its British papers over the past decade including hacking of voice mail accounts, bribing public officials, and a whole laundry list of other malfeasance.

As a result, Rupert Murdoch has abandoned his efforts to take over the British BSkyB television network.

A company statement quoted Chase Carey, News Corporation’s Deputy Chairman, President and Chief Operating Officer, as saying “We believed that the proposed acquisition of BSkyB by News Corporation would benefit both companies but it has become clear that it is too difficult to progress in this climate.”

“News Corporation remains a committed long-term shareholder in BSkyB. We are proud of the success it has achieved and our contribution to it,” the statement said.

The development also seemed to end what, for years, had been a close, cozy and influential relationship with the British establishment.

Only hours before the announcement, Prime Minister David Cameron had sought to distance himself from Mr. Murdoch and had urged him to drop the bid for BSkyB. The announcement came just before Parliament was set to approve a cross-party call for Mr. Murdoch to abandon his long-cherished desire to take full control of the lucrative satellite broadcaster.

The scandal has also convulsed the British politicians, press and police, forcing them to contemplate unheard-of scrutiny of their ties with each other.

On Wednesday, Mr. Cameron offered details for the first time of a broad inquiry into those relationships to be led by a senior judge, Lord Justice Leveson. Mr. Cameron told Parliament that it would have the power to summon witnesses to testify under oath. The announcement came as Mr. Cameron fought to recover the initiative in a scandal that has turned into potentially the most damaging crisis of his time in office.

That was after the British parliament united in its call for him to drop the takeover bid. News Corp's got to fight a rearguard action to keep the mess from spreading, but because so many within the organization have switched jobs within the company - going from one of the British papers to a US outlet, or vice versa (including those at the heart of the scandal in the UK), trying to contain this is like a wildfire that is splitting out in hundreds of different directions at once and can't be controlled.

If it turns out that Americans, including 9/11 victims, were among the victims of a hacking effort by News Corporation affiliates, the company and Murdoch would be finished. The FCPA (Foreign Corrupt Practices Act) is just the tip of the iceberg, and considering that there are inklings that they may have tapped phones, hacked accounts of 9/11 victims families, or otherwise engaged in illegal activities you're going to see prosecutors opening up cases in New York City and elsewhere.

Trooferism Madness Overruns Fox News; Right Wing Silent

Fox News has become little more than an outlet for Alex Jones and his conspiracy theories about the 9/11 attacks. Major figures on the network seem to have no problem issuing asinine statements about how the federal government was somehow in on the 9/11 attacks.

The latest to jump on board the crazy train is Andrew Napolitano, who was a former federal judge and has been a Fox News legal consultant. There are few things that get under my skin, but trooferism is one (having been in Lower Manhattan on 9/11 and walking through the dust cloud later that day to get out of Manhattan). Napolitano is a frakking ass who is an ignorant slut - and is more than willing to shill for conspiracy theorists in pursuit of his own agenda.



For years, the right wing would go after Loose Change and the 9/11 Truther conspiracy mongers as treasonous bastards. Now, Fox News is the loudest shill for these asinine theories that disrespect the memories of the nearly 3,000 people who were murdered in the attacks.

I'd say that Fox News should be ashamed to associate with this nonsense, but they feel no shame. We're now in a situation where Fox has no problem being on the same page as Jones' Prison Planet and the Loose Change nuts. They aren't pushing news - they're substituting their own fantasies on cable television so as to reach the widest audience possible.

These assholes disrespect the memories of the nearly 3,000 people who were murdered on 9/11 and do so in pursuit of a political agenda that does not comport with reality - or the facts.

Where are those on the principled right to stand up against this nonsense and demand an end to Fox peddling this crap on their network? After all, Glenn Beck has repeatedly said that troofers were disturbed individuals. Is Beck going to stand up against this madness or is he going to simply ignore it? I'm betting on ignoring it.

The network is too busy peddling its brand of crazy to care.