jon stewart's bit on this yesterday was hilarious. leno chimed in as well... <iframe id="NBC Video Widget" width="512" height="347" src="http://www.nbc.com/assets/video/widget/widget.html?vid=1342118" frameborder="0"></iframe>
An update via TPM: Report: News Corp Hacked Gov't Secrets The Guardian reports that it’s likely News International’s hacking went beyond phone voicemail to government secrets. The Guardian reports: The former Northern Ireland secretary Peter Hain has been told by the Metropolitan police that they are investigating evidence that his computer, and those of senior Northern Ireland civil servants and intelligence agents, may have been hacked by private detectives working for News International.
Great Britain has this thing called The Official Secrets Act that Murdoch and his minions have to be fearful of. If this really happened, all hell could break loose soon.
Wonder if FOX will report on this? Rupert Murdoch admits phone-hacking 'cover-up' London (CNN) -- Rupert Murdoch admitted to a phone-hacking cover-up at one of his tabloid newspapers and apologized Thursday for not paying more attention to a scandal that has convulsed his media empire and rocked the British political establishment. "I also have to say that I failed," he said before a long pause. "And I am very sorry for it." Murdoch also admitted to a "cover-up" of phone hacking at his British Sunday tabloid The News of the World, but said his News Corp. had been a victim of it, not the perpetrator.
Because Jeremy Lin is a chink. Is it what you want to imply? If yes, gather your courage and say it out explicitly. Stop being a p***y.
It's awesome for Murdoch. Give up new of the world as a gesture. If he doesn't lose anything in this scandal, he takes a huge hit for being big bad wolf. If he gives up news of the world, he can say he lost something, people can say it's fair enough, and move on.
Mathloom, it is interesting. One of the interesting things to me in what you quoted is the caution still exhibited by Parliament in going after Murdoch. He isn't described as being the perpetuator of a plot to break nurmerous British and international laws (while spying on, and slandering, various citizens), he's described, instead, as having been shown "not to be a fit person" to run his media empire. Of showing "wilful ignorance," that he "did not take steps to become fully informed about phone hacking" and "turned a blind eye and exhibited wilful blindness to what was going on in his companies and publications". All descriptions that appear, at least to me, to be dancing around just how insanely wrong, and illegal, the actions were that he was responsible for. They leave an opening for Murdoch to walk away from where he belongs, in prison, while having various "fall guys" take the hit, while he pleads "ignorance" and "wilful blindness." If you are a billionaire who still has the power to turn your vast media operations against those who wrong you, you get treated with kid gloves. You and I would already be up the proverbial creek without a paddle. I'm hoping Murdoch won't walk away from this bruised, but intact, but rather walk into prison, where he belongs for the next several years. We'll see.
Totally agree, and I hope so too. I wonder though, on a larger scale, why the system does not get punished. It seems that when it comes time to pursue justice, we don't see systems and legal entities on trial, rather we see people only. I think this is a case where Mr Murdoch going to jail doesn't not entirely solve the original problem: why do organizations dare to abuse the dynamics of media? Why did this carry on so long? How much of this was merely a case of Murdoch's competitors seeking him out to increase their own market share? What has been done to deter the next Rupert Murdoch? Rupert Murdoch would not have to change his lifestyle even if he lost 75% of his wealth. How much of that wealth is built on circumstances where he wasn't caught? Why won't the winners of these cases be plastered all over the papers for ages to encourage more whistleblowing? IMO it all has roots in the modern day mythical version of "free media". Media is not free if it is seeking profit. It is captive to money and media money comes from businesses, which are naturally profit-seekers. While the media is seemingly free of human bias, it is still rife with avoidable bias. We all understand the need to NOT regulate media, but it fails to address the fact that some people seek profit by abusing the disadvantages of deregulated media, and some people are more powerful than others. Truly free media, i.e. media which has the least possible bias, can not co-exist with capitalism, because the pursuit of fairness, accuracy, transparency is not as profitable as the pursuit of "tailoring" media to the tastes of the highest bidder. Can we realistically expect media to change, given the circumstances we have created for it? Can we expect that Rupert Murdoch himself would not do the same thing all over again, given the overwhelming profit he will have generated after fines and settlements and whatnot?
Here we depart a bit. I agree that "the system" is deeply flawed, and needs reform (a hell of a lot of reform would take place without a new law being passed if Murdoch and his son were thrown in prison for several years. I still have a faint hope that we see that ultimate result), but I would never agree with this... "Truly free media, i.e. media which has the least possible bias, can not co-exist with capitalism, because the pursuit of fairness, accuracy, transparency is not as profitable as the pursuit of "tailoring" media to the tastes of the highest bidder." Painting the media with such a broad brush simply goes too far. So what would you suggest? Do other political systems that closely regulate, and often censor, the media be an improvement? If that's not what your saying, we're good, and I'd like to hear your ideas on the subject, but my own opinion is that not only does "truly free media" exist (by your definition), but it is impossible to prevent that existence in a democratic society that enjoys freedom of the press. Do you know what I think is one of the roots of this obvious problem? In the United States, we used to have regulations that limited a great deal the ability of one, or a few, individuals (or corporations, if there is still a difference, what with the current Roberts court) to own a massive media empire. We had regulations limiting how many TV and radio stations could be owned by one person, or one corporation, in a particular market. The result was a host of different sources, instead of what amounts to a few sources owned by a few, but not few in number. One reform would be to reregulate the ownership of the media to divest massive media holdings of much of their media outlets, resulting in a host of new companies taking advantage of a return to a more open media market. That would increase the variety of informaton available on TV, radio, and cable. Of course, I'm talking about the US. Other countries do what they do. As an American, my most avid interest resides here. All in my opinion, naturally.
I don't know of a great system somewhere else. Frankly, I think the solution is to stop benchmarking against other countries and start coming up with new ideas, real changes rather than incremental ones which take so long to plan and implement that the media magnates are able to stay ahead of the game and re-strategize. I think these problems have been exported to other countries and basically everyone is suffering from the same thing now. There are other types of problems, such as non-free media/press, and I'm sure that at some point in the distant future over-fragmentation will be a problem too. How sad that that the media may have actually regressed. As I'm reading up on it now, I wonder how much of those changes were timed to coincide with major international politics. What you've suggested sounds great theoretically. I'm trying to figure out a number of things. - Who (which entity or ex entity) was actually regulating this? - Were they monitoring shareholding as well as external or management influence? - Were they monitoring the involvement of politically exposed persons? - What stops people from setting up complex structures to hide ownership? - Are the regulators ex-media people? - Why did they stop? I agree with your idea. Those rules are better than the current rules for the purposes we're discussing, but I think they may be outdated and the world has already figured out various ways to circumvent those rules. In my mind right now, I can list out a whole bunch of ways to circumvent those rules, and my experience is with regulation, rather than media. There are entire countries created for the purpose of circumventing rules of other countries, and these rules wouldn't be an exception to that IMO. The key things I would consider so as not to fall into the trap of just having a regulator and spending the rest of its life trying to fix the same ol problems of regulators: - Regulatory nepotism. Cronyism. This comes mainly from ex-industry pros. - Insufficient wages. Your staff shouldn't envy media staff. - Insufficient technology. Regulators still believe in people, although their role is robotic data analysis. People are way more costly long-term, they will never be sufficiently motivated for these jobs, and their biases are so problematic in their supposedly anti-bias role. - Strong whistleblower protection, internal and external. - In this case, you may want to determine what is "too big to fail/regulate" and set a cap, with the option to make an IPO if they wish to exceed the size limit. Pubic and fragmented media - "Media" statements. Financial statements are swell, but insufficient IMO for non-financial entities. Reduce reliance on financial statement analysis, develop a framework for media-specific reports, and request independent regular reports to the regulator+public which highlight ownership, key individuals, accuracy, consistency, training, systems, controls. Some of these things are difficult to quantify, but entirely possible >> that's exactly what I mean when I say we need NEW measures, rather than existing ones based on benchmarking. - Etc Now that I think about it, lots to consider, but you get the picture. One thing we don't need is another one of these antique regulators which wait 3-4 years for some ex-industry people in an even more antique rule-making body to develop rules for a crisis, which is almost over for most of the population of the world, and for the world economy. That kind of regulator usually can not deal with the "regulatee" because the market has more skilled people (+better paid), better technology, more money and more flexibility. It's like an old dog trying to catch a coked-up cat.
