Day: 6/11/2013

Rupert Murdoch Seeking Billion Dollar Payoff To Avoid Criminal Prosecution In Hacking Scandal

Posted by on June 11, 2013 at 2:09 pm. 6 Comments :

In what may be the biggest scandal in the history of journalism, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation was caught hacking into the phones, emails, and computers of thousands of people, including private citizens, royals, celebrities, politicians, and even a kidnapped schoolgirl who was later found dead. It’s a story that got international attention everywhere but on Fox News, where Murdoch explicitly refused to discuss it with his sycophantic anchorman.

The fallout from that affair has been wide-reaching with dozens of News Corp. employees arrested and/or fired. Murdoch’s CEO of the UK publishing division is currently awaiting prosecution. The “News of the World,” at the time England’s largest circulation paper, was shut down. And today the Telegraph is reporting that Murdoch’s News Corporation expects that it…

“…will pay to put an end to the [U.S. Department of Justice’s] investigation into the company’s UK newspaper arm, News International, before it goes to a full trial.

“The DoJ is investigating News Corp for potential breaches of America’s Foreign And Corrupt Practices Act, which outlaws police bribery and can result in major penalties.”
[…]
“It has been reported that it could agree a settlement of $850m or more.”

If Murdoch is willing to shell out nearly a billion dollars to make this go away, he is in effect admitting guilt. That is not exactly a figure consistent with a nuisance suit. To be sure, Murdoch has a lot riding on this. His son James is in the legal line of fire. The recent corporate split dividing his news publishing division from the entertainment group will put more pressure on the news side to be profitable, and a criminal investigation won’t advance that goal. (Side note: Fox News was placed in the entertainment group when the companies split).

Fox News Murdochalypse

It is still somewhat surprising that news of these shenanigans have not been covered in much detail here in the U.S. Particularly in light of the near hysteria over the NSA’s collection of the phone records of Americans not suspected of any wrongdoing. This disparity in reporting reveals an egregious hypocrisy. Why is Fox News so outraged over the privacy violations of a government agency that justifies its actions as necessary to obstruct terrorists, but they aren’t the least bit concerned about privacy violations by a corporation whose only justification is greed?

Obviously, the answer is that Fox News has a vested interest in suppressing news that reflects poorly on itself. But just as much, they have a partisan interest in hyping news that damages their political enemies. And for both of these reasons, Fox should never be referred to as a “news” network. They are an ultra-rightist PR agency. They should not be allowed to buy their way out of legal jeopardy. Those responsible for the hacking deserve to be tried, convicted, and punished. And that includes Murdoch.

Fox Nation vs. Reality: Surveillance Flip-Flops A One-Sided Phenomenon

Posted by on June 11, 2013 at 10:23 am. 5 Comments :

One of the few encouraging aspects of the current controversy over the privacy intrusions of the NSA is that civil libertarians from across the political divide are in agreement that government is overstepping its authority. When both Michael Moore and Glenn Beck say that whistleblower Edward Snowden is a hero, there seems to be a ray of hope that something might be done about rolling back the invasive policies of George Bush’s Patriot Act Doctrine.

Of course, it is way too much to expect the serial liars at Fox Nation to embrace a moment of bipartisanship and parlay it into constructive action for the betterment of America. Their headline this morning mutilates the substance of a new poll by the Pew Center and the Washington Post:

Fox Nation vs. Reality
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By declaring that “Dems Flip-Flop on Surveillance When Obama in WH,” the Fox Nationalists ignore the fact that Republicans flipped also. In fact the Democrats’ flip was almost identical to the Republicans’ flop. The Washington Post, whose headline (“Who loves surveillance? It depends who’s in the White House”) was accurate, reported the poll’s results showing that Democrats’ approval for national security over privacy increased by 27 percentage points since the Bush years. On the GOP side such approval dropped by 22 points. The plain conclusion is that approval is often a function of who’s doing the snooping. But Fox read these poll results and deliberately misrepresented the facts to show only a flip-flopping Democratic position.

Additionally, there is some nuance to the variations in the poll questions asked. In 2006, Democrats expressed their disapproval of Bush’s policy because it eavesdropped on the actual phone conversations without obtaining a warrant. Today Democrats are expressing approval of a policy that does not listen in on the calls, but only stores information like phone numbers and dates. Plus, Obama’s NSA gets a court’s OK to do even that. This mitigates to some extent the degree of flipping that can be attributed to the Democrats.

What does not change is the fact that no administration should be permitted to broadly collect private data on American citizens who are not under investigation for some criminal activity. That principle is being advanced by conscientious Americans of all political stripes. It’s unfortunate that Fox is so obsessed with partisan animus that they cannot fairly report a story that unites the nation. Rather than being honest and responsible, Fox is being divisive and is creating barriers to moving the nation in a positive direction that even their own viewers would support.