So, Murdoch is taking a more proactive approach
to stop the bleeding. But will it work? His first big test will be on
July 19, when he and his son James appear before the Select Committee in
Parliament to answer questions related to the phone hacking
controversy. We expect the usually-abrasive Murdoch to be on his best
behavior doing whatever is required to put the flap behind him.
But the crisis won't end with these preliminary
hearings. In fact, there's little Murdoch can do to stop the drip,
drip, drip of new revelations. Already there's talk of "break ins" and
"phone tapping", although, so far, the claims have not been
substantiated. What is certain, though, is that Murdoch Inc. is going to
be under a microscope for a long time to come. And, that's going to be
very bad for advertising revenues and stock prices.
So what will the investigation uncover?
Well, first of all, there's the question of criminal wrongdoing. Is there proof? This is from Reuters:
"News International chief executive Rebekah
Brooks was warned by police in 2002 about serious malpractice and
possible illegal activities by reporters at a newspaper she edited,
former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said on Wednesday....
"As early as 2002 senior police officers at
Scotland Yard met the now chief executive of News International and
informed her of serious malpractice on the part of her newspaper staff
and criminals undertaking surveillance on their behalf," Brown told
parliament on Wednesday." ("Police told News Corps Brooks of
malpractice: Brown, Reuters)
Okay, so who knew the phone hacking was going
on and how high up the chain of command does it go? All the way to
Murdoch?
If so, then was phone hacking company policy? These questions have to be answered.
Here's a tidbit from the Hindustan Times:
"....a steady stream of revelations over the
last few years suggest that reporters at the News of the World illegally
hacked into the phones of up to 4,000 people, checking on their
voice-mails and perhaps, listening to their conversations. The list of
those whose phones were hacked (often by private detectives working on
behalf of the paper) included politicians, sports stars, actors, other
journalists and anybody else who happened to be in the news at the
time.....
If it is wrong to hack or tap phones or carry
transcripts of the private conversations (as the current mood of outrage
suggests) then let’s also accept that this is a fairly common and
widespread practice. Reporters often tap phones or secretly tape
conversations. Newspapers hack into computers and obtain access to bank
data and personal financial information. They carry taped conversations
without verifying their accuracy or testing the tapes for evidence of
tampering....
In Britain, there is also a little discussed
kind of journalism called the ‘dark arts’ in which journos hire actors
to impersonate people on the phone to obtain information or pretend to
be somebody else to con people into talking to them...." ("When the whip
comes down on tabloids", Hindustan Times)
So, Murdoch is just the tip of the iceberg?
Apparently so. But if that's the case, then
isn't time the public found out how widespread these intrusions into
their privacy really are? And don't people have the right to know
whether the media is gathering information legally or not? That seems
pretty basic.
There's an interesting article in The Nation
titled "Has Roger Ailes Hacked American Phones for Fox News?" by Leslie
Savan that brings these questions more into focus. Here's an excerpt:
Dan Cooper was one of the people who helped
create the Fox News channel with Roger Ailes, and was fired in 1996. In
2008, Cooper wrote on his website that David Brock (now head of Media
Matters) had used him as an anonymous, on-background-only source for an
Ailes profile he was writing forNew York magazine. Before the piece was
published, on November 17, 1997, Cooper claims that his talent agent,
Richard Leibner, told him he had received a call from Ailes, who
identified Cooper as a source, and insisted that Leibner drop him as a
client--or any client reels Leibner sent Fox would pile up in a corner
and gather dust. Cooper continued:
“I made the connections. Ailes knew I had given
Brock the interview. Certainly Brock didn’t tell him. Of course. Fox
News had gotten Brock’s telephone records from the phone company, and my
phone number was on the list. Deep in the bowels of 1211 Avenue of the
Americas, News Corporation’s New York headquarters, was what Roger
called the Brain Room. Most people thought it was simply the research
department of Fox News. But unlike virtually everybody else, because I
had to design and build the Brain Room, I knew it also housed a
counterintelligence and black ops office. So accessing phone records was
easy pie.” ("Has Roger Ailes Hacked American Phones for Fox News?"
Leslie Savan, The Nation)
If Savan is right, then the other major media
are probably involved in similar activities. But doesn't that suggest
that media is not really a "watchdog of power" at all, but rather a
threat to the public interest? After all, no one knows how this
information is being used. It could be that ownership is using the
information to blackmail politicians or to eliminate political enemies.
Is that why so many congressmen have decided not to run for another term
in the 2012 elections, because someone in the media has dirt on them
that would turn them into the next Anthony Wiener or John Edwards?
Lastly, here's a blurb from another article in The Nation titled "Sky Falls on Rupert Murdoch":
"...widening revelations of the phone-hacking
scandal show, News Corporation is not an ordinary commercial enterprise.
Through his journalists and gossip columnists and the network of former
and current police officers and law enforcement officials on his
payroll, Rupert Murdoch has been operating what amounts to a private
intelligence service. And the threat of personal exposure—on the front
page of the Sun or Page Six in the Post—gives News Corporation a kind of
leverage over inquisitive regulators or troublesome politicians wielded
by no other company on earth.
English already has the expression “para-state”
to describe the kind of shadowy forces that operate beneath and behind
legitimate authority. Is it really unreasonable to suggest that in News
Corporation, Fox, News International, Sky and the rest of Murdoch’s
empire, we are witnessing the exposure of the para-corporation?" ("Sky
Falls on Rupert Murdoch", D.D. Guttenplan, The Nation)
Repeat: "Rupert Murdoch has been operating what amounts to a private intelligence service."
Uh-huh.
The firestorm in the UK is not really about
phone hacking at all. It's about Corporate fiefdoms and unelected
oligarchs who control the flow of information and use that power to
their own advantage. The longer the investigation goes on, the better
for everyone. Transparency is the best disinfectant.
