Fox News Accidentally Reports On News Corp Hacking Scandal

Fox News – July 5, 2010, BREAKING NEWS: AN ILLEGAL CAMPAIGN?

Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp has been battling to suppress reports about a scandal threatening to upend the conservative media empire. Their British tabloid, News of the World (NotW), was caught hacking into the cell phones of politicians, celebrities, royals, and others, in order to find or manufacture salacious stories. But now Murdoch’s own Fox News is reporting this about the illegal campaign waged by its sister company:


Fox News has assiduously avoided the embarrassing story. That would be consistent with their history of ignoring stories that reflect poorly on the company, no matter how relevant to the public interest. Are they now relenting and covering this major corporate scandal? Not on your life. The screen shot above is not actually from a story about the hacking scandal at all. It is from another assault in their current crusade against Media Matters. However, Fox inadvertently snapped a screen shot of the Media Matters web site that featured coverage of the hacking scandal. This is pretty much the only way the story will ever make it onto Fox News.

The headline from Media Matters, “Murdoch Tabloid Accused Of Hacking Murdered Schoolgirl’s Phone,” refers to a particularly despicable incident wherein NotW reporters hacked into the phone of a missing thirteen year old girl who was later discovered to have been murdered. They accessed her voicemail and even deleted messages after the mailbox became full to make room for more messages upon which they could eavesdrop. That action gave false hope to the girl’s family who assumed that she had deleted the messages herself and was therefore still alive. It also potentially destroyed evidence of the crime.

The new hacking allegations concerning the murdered girl have elevated the scandal to new and repulsive heights. In addition, new information is surfacing that reveals similar hacking into the phones of victims of London’s terrorist subway bombing. So while it funny that Fox News inadvertently posts this image that implicates them in a scandal, we must take seriously the threat that dishonest propagandists like Fox pose for our nation.

Advertisement:

17 thoughts on “Fox News Accidentally Reports On News Corp Hacking Scandal

  1. Conservative media and the government as a whole seems to have nothing but contempt for the American public.

    Is that an accurate assessment Mark?

  2. Rupert Murdock, Rebekah Brooks, David Cameron, Andy Coulson… yeah, they’re all in it together alright, and it gets more obvious every day.

  3. About time Evil Rupert and his minions get some comeupance. He has been known to manipulate news copy ever since the Malcom Frazier election in Australia was fanagled. Good to see the brits are finally waking up to what a lying manipulating sack of shit he truly is.

  4. Not relevant to this post, just posting for the sake of posting…

    Just finished a reading assignment, guy named Frances Fitzgerald.

    ‘…for some fixed stars in the universe. We may know journalists cannot be wholly unbiased and that “balance” is an imaginary point between two extremes, and yet we hope that Walter Kronkrite will tell us the truth of things.’

    Thought this should be on your site somewhere Mark. No point to it really, just thought it should be here.

    • Oh but for another Walter Cronlite to show ’em how it should be done. I can’t help but think thing s would be different were there others like him. Many others.

  5. FOX actually has covered this story fairly normally:
    http://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/2011/07/05/pressure-on-murdoch-over-new-hacking-allegation/
    http://www.foxnews.com/world/2011/07/08/ex-cameron-aide-arrested-in-uk-hacking-scandal/
    http://www.foxbusiness.com/industries/2011/07/09/could-murdoch-deputy-hinton-take-fall2/
    http://www.foxbusiness.com/industries/2011/07/10/news-corps-bskyb-takeover-under-scrutiny-as-scandal-shuts-paper/

    There are a dozen more links to stories run on FOX coverage of this story in the query I ran that I won’t type here.

    Did any one else here bother to do a search to see if FOX had covered it? Or is that too far from the narrative?

    • Every single one of those stories is dated after the date of this article and thus cannot be used as evidence that Fox was reporting on this at the time I wrote the article.

      What’s more, 3 of the 4 are not Fox stories at all, but Reuters or AP. The fourth was a DowJones News Wire.

      What’s more, 3 of the 4 were on FoxBusiness, not Fox News, which has a much smaller audience.

      So you’re right, Fox did cover this normally – for Fox. And let me note that I never said they didn’t cover at all in the first place, only that they tried to avoid it. But thanks for proving my point.

      • The first link is dated before. Can you folks not read?
        Stop frothing and parse! Parse! :^)

        • Oops. OK, but all the others are after.

      • So, if a news agency uses Reuters or AP, they aren’t covering the story? That is an interesting interpretation. If that were true, 90% of things out there are not covered at all.

        Also, your measure of whether FOX covered this is based on the relative measure by which their competitors did cover it. Since this is a relative measure, could it not be that the MMM is simply biased toward covering it while FOX isn’t so much so. Any network is going to cover a story damaging to their competitor more than normal after all.

        The idea that because it was on foxbusiness means it “doesn’t count” is ludicrous. It is business news! Only for the populist/cultist left would this be political rather than business news. Foxbusiness may (or may not) have a small audience, but it is certainly an influential one. Will that news increase or decrease purchase of FOX shares? Be real.

        Your TFB is far too tight.

        • Confining the story to FoxBusiness makes sure that that fewer people will see it. Do you think that wasn’t deliberate?

          • Why should they rush to judge just because everyone else is? If George Soros owned a tabloid that made a booboo you can bet PBS and NPR and CNN would sit on it for a day or two until it broke open and was unavoidable. And when they reported it, they wouldn’t even mention Soros until forced, they’d just mention the specific tabloid and the individuals directly involved. And folks on the left would defend that stance until the cows came home. If you expect to live in a world without self-interest, you are a utopian and will be sadly, repeatedly, disappointed. Even PBS has self-interest that gets in its own (and our) way. I just don’t get this “our crap don’t stink, but everyone else’s does and is completely unacceptable” jive/riff. It is old and broken.

            • OK then, you’re condoning Fox for spiking the story because it reflects badly on them. Thanks for your honesty.

              I would never condone such a thing from any media. Even the silly fake Soros Network you invented. And, by the way, this is no “booboo.” This involves criminality and the most disgusting behavior imaginable from the media. Even the conservative Prime Minister of England said so.

            • But they didn’t “spike” it. The reported it, just not fast enough for you. Spiking means they don’t report it at all. A reasonable person can’t be expected to deal with this hyperbole-driven nya-nya-nya-ism. I’m done. Have fun

      • I just did a quick survey of abcnews.go.com and by far most of their stories on this subject are *also* from AP or Reuters. Thanks for the straw man. I’ll burn it as an effigy with great delite. FYI: Thinking with the cerebral cortex is far more effect than “thinking” with the limbic system or the R-complex.

        • Telescoper, I thought you said you were “done.”

Comments are closed.