[Don't Panic]

http://www.crikey.co...street-journal/

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Markets know best and News Corp shares resumed their decline today as investors fret that they are being led by a delusional dictator who has blundered on every key decision over the past 10 days.

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Elisabeth Murdoch has reportedly gone to war with Rebekah Brooks, telling friends she has “f-cked the company”. Indeed, Rupert’s decision to stand by the odious character known in Private Eye as the Wicked Witch of Wapping was a monumental error of judgment.

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If Rupert was going to dramatically fly into London, it should have been to fire Brooks, force favoured son James Murdoch to stand aside as chairman of BSkyB and immediately give at least $2 million dollars to Milly Dowler’s family.

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News Corp has traditionally exerted much control over British politicians and senior police. Now it is at war with both and cannot possibly avoid widespread convictions responding to fundamental institutional corruption that has degraded Britain’s democracy.

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Surely News Corp’s independent directors and Rupert’s adult children can’t sit back and do nothing as Rupert’s continues with his steady stream of catastrophic strategic blunders.

[Don't Panic]

Pure entertainment
http://www.businesss...ocument&src=rot
Robert Gottliebsen, Eureka Report

Published 4:35 PM, 15 Jul 2011 Last update 4:21 PM, 15 Jul 2011

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Make no mistake, there is no greater admirer of Rupert Murdoch and his achievements than myself. I have worked for News Corporation and have found it to be an excellent company.

[Don't Panic]

Sometimes we just don't realise what sort of a beast we are working for.
http://www.guardian....one-hacking-now

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A mighty, wealthy family-run organisation that can effectively buy up politicians and police officers: we feel we have a word for that, and it originates in Sicily rather Sydney.

Don, on 15 July 2011 - 07:30 AM, said:

Pure entertainment
http://www.businesss...ocument&src=rot
Robert Gottliebsen, Eureka Report

Published 4:35 PM, 15 Jul 2011 Last update 4:21 PM, 15 Jul 2011
Make no mistake, there is no greater admirer of Rupert Murdoch and his achievements than myself. I have worked for News Corporation and have found it to be an excellent company.

[Don't Panic]

With News Ltd firing one across the bow of Fairfax today with
http://www.theaustra...f-1226095577892
don't expect to have been even partly informed on what was going on in the UK media over the last decade or more. Here's a good one for starters
http://www.guardian....tigator-tabloid

A Panorama expose on UK hacking (computer and phone)
http://www.youtube.c...h?v=nB-Q33zLFP4
Journalists and Media bosses thinking it sometimes is within the law to pay police for information. Bye Bye David Cameron. Pity, seemed like such a nice chap.

Thank God this sort of thing does not and has not and WILL NEVER occur in Australia.

What no comments? Everyone too sh*t scared that they might get hacked, their real persona exposed, or worse if they dare raise their head on these issues?

[staringclown]

Don, on 16 July 2011 - 12:32 AM, said:

With News Ltd firing one across the bow of Fairfax today with
http://www.theaustra...f-1226095577892
don't expect to have been even partly informed on what was going on in the UK media over the last decade or more. Here's a good one for starters
http://www.guardian....tigator-tabloid

A Panorama expose on UK hacking (computer and phone)
http://www.youtube.c...h?v=nB-Q33zLFP4
Journalists and Media bosses thinking it sometimes is within the law to pay police for information. Bye Bye David Cameron. Pity, seemed like such a nice chap.

Thank God this sort of thing does not and has not and WILL NEVER occur in Australia.

What no comments? Everyone too sh*t scared that they might get hacked, their real persona exposed, or worse if they dare raise their head on these issues?

I can't see this bringing down Cameron. It was a major lack of judgement to employ Coulson.

It is no surprise that this hacking has gone on, it happens everywhere. We just don't see it very often. Look at the number of corrupt police enquiries in this country. The organisation I am employed by has regular hacking attempts by criminal organisations. We also have "plants" from criminal organisations attempting to join the organisation. The overwhelming majority are clean. It's the amounts of money involved that will always lead to corrupt behaviour especially given the relatively low wages of cops. The trick is nipping it in the bud early and remaining vigilant. Thorough vetting of employees is absolutely necessary. Penalties for corrupt cops/public servants should be harsher as they are in positions of trust.

The terms of reference for the enquiry announced by Cameron seem fairly broad which is good. We'll see some heads roll and then when it quietens down for a while then it will start over again.

It is the eternal question of Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? or "Who guards the guardsmen?" (A bit of latin thrown in always makes me feel more intelligent )

Edit: superflous 'but'

This post has been edited by staringclown: 16 July 2011 - 01:27 AM

[Don't Panic]

Surely control the organisation, and you have a right to decide who to destroy and who to support, and your staff have an obligation to follow orders, no matter how illegal or unethical they are?

http://www.thedailyb...-york-post.html

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In a 2007 affidavit, Spiegelman said “accepting freebies, graft and other favors was not only condoned by the company but encouraged as a way to decrease the newspaper’s out-of-pocket expenses…and that News Corp. attorneys had been instructed to ‘look the other way.’” There was a policy of “favor banking,” the affidavit said, “practiced on a much larger scale by Rupert Murdoch.”

When celebrities criticized the Iraq War, Spiegelman added, he was told to remind readers of their show-business projects “in case they feel like boycotting.”

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In similar fashion, Stern says the troops regularly received marching orders. “For a long time the Clintons were targets,” he said. “You couldn’t get enough dirt on the Clintons. Then Bill Clinton made a rapprochement with Murdoch, sucked up to him in the run-up to Hillary running” for the Senate in 2000.

“Then one day it was, ‘You can’t write anything bad about the Clintons.’ We had to kill stuff all the time. It filtered down from Murdoch. In the meetings we’d be told, ‘No way, mate.’”

Some Australians who were friendly with the Murdoch family, such as actress Nicole Kidman, “had a free pass,” Stern said.

http://www.newsweek....-watergate.html

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But now the empire is shaking, and there’s no telling when it will stop. My conversations with British journalists and politicians—all of them insistent on speaking anonymously to protect themselves from retribution by the still-enormously powerful mogul—make evident that the shuttering of News of the World, and the official inquiries announced by the British government, are the beginning, not the end, of the seismic event.

News International, the British arm of Murdoch’s media empire, “has always worked on the principle of omertà: ‘Do not say anything to anybody outside the family, and we will look after you,’ ” notes a former Murdoch editor who knows the system well. “Now they are hanging people out to dry. The moment you do that, the omertà is gone, and people are going to talk. It looks like a circular firing squad.”

News of the World was always Murdoch’s “baby,” one of the largest newspapers in the English-speaking world, with 2.6 million readers. As anyone in the business will tell you, the standards and culture of a journalistic institution are set from the top down, by its owner, publisher, and top editors. Reporters and editors do not routinely break the law, bribe policemen, wiretap, and generally conduct themselves like thugs unless it is a matter of recognized and understood policy. Private detectives and phone hackers do not become the primary sources of a newspaper’s information without the tacit knowledge and approval of the people at the top, all the more so in the case of newspapers owned by Rupert Murdoch, according to those who know him best.

As one of his former top executives—once a close aide—told me, “This scandal and all its implications could not have happened anywhere else. Only in Murdoch’s orbit. The hacking atNews of the World was done on an industrial scale. More than anyone, Murdoch invented and established this culture in the newsroom, where you do whatever it takes to get the story, take no prisoners, destroy the competition, and the end will justify the means.”

[Don't Panic]

Bring down, as in he won't be leader going to the next election, or if he is, his party will lose the next election.

staringclown, on 16 July 2011 - 01:26 AM, said:

I can't see this bringing down Cameron. It was a major lack of judgement to employ Coulson.

[staringclown]

Don, on 16 July 2011 - 01:52 AM, said:

Bring down, as in he won't be leader going to the next election, or if he is, his party will lose the next election.

Yeah maybe. Depends how he handles it from here (and barring any further revelations). My guess is that he will start wailing on News for a while like everybody else. There are no friends in politics.

It should be a bit of fun watching parliament next week

[Don't Panic]

The live comments section at the Guardian is firing tonight.
http://www.guardian....art-of-comments
Unsubstantiated allegations and all sorts of crap including the following.

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I made a post a couple of days after this broke, that put forward that what we are really watching here is the "edited highlights" for public consumption of an MI5/6 Op thats been running a while. <br style="padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; border-collapse: collapse; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; ">It still strikes me as likely.

Hopefully the buggers are buggered and were being bugged by those who serve the National Interest and rightly so have a licence to bug anyone. God save the Queen.

[Don't Panic]

Rupert was just 9 years old at the time in 1940. He must have been really pissed when his father was compared to Goebbels and then the subsequent chain of events resulting in his fathers resignation. The effects of the war and all of these events on his brain, beliefs and personability during this crucial stage of childhood development must have been huge

Lets see how long it takes any of the MSM in any country to explore potential father son events which for now we will assume are fact on the basis that if they were not, they would have been removed from the internet long ago.

http://en.wikipedia....i/Keith_Murdoch

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In June 1940 Murdoch was appointed to a newly-created Australian Government post, Director-General of Information, and on 18 July he obtained authorisation to compel all news media to publish Government statements as and when necessary. Comparisons were made with Goebbels, press co-operation was swiftly withdrawn, politicians protested, and despite agreements to modify the regulation, in November he was obliged to resign the post.^[6][7]

Returning to the newspapers (from which he had agreed to distance himself while serving the Government) he spent the rest of the war encouraging a patriotic spirit, and attacking the Labor Prime Minister, John Curtin (who led a minority government in 1941, and was re-elected with a dramatic majority in 1943).

http://dl.nfsa.gov.au/module/163/

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Control & Censorship
The Government used its influence over radio, newsreel and the print media during World War II (1939-45), in an attempt to control the way in which the war was reported. Information was carefully used by the media as a tool for managing public opinion and boosting morale.

In some instances reports distorted the truth by, for example, minimising the number of casualties or the extent of damage. Sometimes significant current events were not reported at all, such as the death of approximately 243 Australians following the Japanese bombing of Darwin.

Much of the news and commentary was prepared or directly influenced by the Commonwealth Department of Information (DOI). The DOI used what people read in the newspapers, listened to via radio, and watched on newsreels at the cinema to ‘heighten the war effort’. (Inglis 79)

Sir Keith Murdoch, the Managing Director of the Herald and Weekly Times Ltd. (and father of Rupert Murdoch), was made Director-General of Information, with the power to control 'every avenue of publicity’.

http://www.myplace.e....html?tabRank=3

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In June 1940, prime minister Robert Menzies appointed newspaper owner Keith Murdoch as director-general of information. Murdoch owned a chain of newspapers across the county and the government wanted to ensure that, through him, they controlled the release of sensitive wartime information and propaganda. Murdoch, with (Sir) Richard Boyer, set up a US division of his department, aiming to entice the USA into the war. He was the founder of the Australian–American Association, of which he remained president until 1946.

http://www.time.com/...,795134,00.html

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Sydney's press feuds bitterly with Melbourne's. When Sir Keith, as Director of Information, issued decrees requiring newspapers to print anything the Ministry gave them, Sydney's press howled. It accused Sir Keith of using his official powers to muzzle rival newspapers. Cried the Sydney Telegraph in a page 1 editorial: "He is so used to getting a docile 'Yes, Sir Keith' from those who trot at his beck and call in Melbourne . . . that he expected the whole Australian people to bow down humbly and submit in the same way."

Astonished by the uproar was Sir Keith. Said he stiffly: "I should think that we would use these powers little if at all. . . ." Nevertheless, 48 hours after Sir Keith announced his decrees, they were withdrawn by Prime Minister Menzies. Sir Keith decided he had better resign and look after his own interests.

[staringclown]

staringclown, on 16 July 2011 - 02:23 AM, said:

Yeah maybe. Depends how he handles it from here (and barring any further revelations). My guess is that he will start wailing on News for a while like everybody else. There are no friends in politics.

It should be a bit of fun watching parliament next week

Everybody is sorry, shocked and disappointed. Unnamed disloyal employees damn their filthy hides... We'll get them (and pay their legal fees at the same time)

One dead reporter. Two resigned coppers. Still the questions mount. Wendi is the kind a woman you'd like to have though. Man did you see her nail that guy? Ruperts a lucky man in some ways. Funny, it took all attention from the proceedings and elicited some sympathy for Rupe.

[staringclown]

It's been a ride. The cozy relationship between the pollies and news. The OP asked how high it would go? We're at the PM and now the editor. Rupert the old fox will escape unscathed.

Rebekah Brooks to face charges