I don’t plan on writing much about the News Corporation scandal unless and until it becomes more of an American story, but things are really heating up in the United Kingdom and investigations have begun here in the States. We could discover some troubling corruption if the FBI has been penetrated in the same way that Scotland Yard was compromised.
The testimony and evidence that emerged last week, as well as interviews with current and former officials, indicate that the police agency and News International, the British subsidiary of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation and the publisher of The News of the World, became so intertwined that they wound up sharing the goal of containing the investigation.
Basically, employees of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. empire bribed people in their equivalent of the FBI, which caused Scotland Yard to sit on mountains of evidence, lie to parliament, and fail to prosecute widespread violations of people’s privacy.
Attorney General Eric Holder has announced that the “appropriate agencies” are investigating claims that News Corp. employees hacked into the phones of people who died on 9/11 in order to listen to their voicemail. There’s also a new allegation from actor Jude Law that his phone was hacked by News Corp. employees shortly after he arrived at JFK Airport in New York.
My primary interest in this story is in its potential to disrupt or destroy Murdoch’s evil empire. His ability to aggressively misinform and weaponize the stupidity of our citizenry could be seriously threatened. With the arrest of Rebekah Brooks, people like Roger Ailes must be nervous. Unless, of course, Ailes hasn’t been involved in any similar illegal activity. So far, the evidence seems to be contained to the print side of Murdoch’s operation, but it seems pretty widespread.
If you ask me whether or not I think Fox News broke privacy laws during the Bush/Cheney era, based on what I’m seeing from England, I’d have to say the chances are pretty good that they did.
Either way, it seems likely that Murdoch will lose control of News Corp. It’s a big, successful company with tons of assets all around the world. The question is whether or not a new ownership would want to continue using the same format for Fox News, and whether they’d be quite so in bed with the Republican Party.
