Rupert Murdoch Publishes Apology In
Newspaper Ad Campaign
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Congressman calls for Hill investigation of Murdoch hacking
... charges By: CNN Wire Staff
July 14, 2011 WASHINGTON (CNN) - Pressure mounted for a federal
investigation into Rupert Murdoch's media empire Thursday as a key member of a
House oversight committee called for Congress to look into allegations that one
of Murdoch's U.S.-based companies possibly broke anti-bribery and other laws. Rep. Bruce Braley,
D-Iowa, told CNN that "Congress has important oversight
responsibilities" in responding to the charges and "getting to the
bottom of this evolving scandal." Rupert's
News Corp. - the parent company of Fox News - may have engaged in
"political espionage or personal espionage," Braley
said.
FULL STORY http://www.cnn.com/2011/POLITICS/07/14/us.hacking.fcpa/index.html
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9/11 families call for U.S. probe of Murdoch
By ELIAS GROLL | 7/13/11 Politico
Angry family members of victims of the 9/11
attacks and a growing number of lawmakers on Wednesday called for a U.S.
investigation into allegations that journalists at the British News of the
World tabloid sought to hack the phones of their lost love ones.
“Someone should look into it to see if their
rights were violated – the family members I’ve talked to are appalled, they’re
disgruntled, they have to relive the pain all over again,” Jim Riches, a former
deputy chief in the New York Fire Department whose 29-year-old fireman son was
killed in the attacks, told POLITICO.
“I think they crossed the line. They’re trying
to get messages from loved ones in the last moments of their lives. It’s
horrible, and they should be held accountable. It’s despicable and unethical,”
Riches added.
Sally Regenhard,
vice chairwoman of 9/11 Parents and Families of Firefighters & World Trade
Center Victims, said that she also supports an American probe and added that
the latest allegations come at a particularly hard time for victims’ families..
“It’s hard enough for people to deal with the
10th anniversary and now this – it just adds more salt to the wounds,” said Regenhard, who lost her 28-year-old firefighter son, on
Sept. 11.
“If it’s true, then it’s an egregious
violation of decency and respect. Whether it’s 9/11 victims or the British
victim – the child who was kidnapped – I think we really need to look at
national and international standards for security for privacy for this type of
thing,” Regenhard added. “We need to put a hold on
this no matter who it is.”
Meanwhile, an increasing number of lawmakers
on Capitol Hill are now pushing for an investigation.
With many of the 9/11 victims having been New
Jersey residents, Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) called on the Department of Justice
and the Securities and Exchange Commission to look into the conduct of Rupert
Murdoch’s media empire.
“The limited information already reported in
this case raises serious questions about the legality of the conduct of News
Corporation and its subsidiaries under the [Foreign Corrupt Practices Act],”
Lautenberg wrote. “Further investigation may reveal that current reports only
scratch the surface of the problem at News Corporation.”
Sens. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va)
and Barbara Boxer (D-CA) sent a letter Wednesday to U.S. Attorney General Eric
Holder and Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Mary Schapiro
urging their respective agencies to probe whether employees of News Corp.
subsidiaries attempted to bribe British police and whether Americans’ phones
may have been hacked.
“The reported allegations against News
Corporation are very serious, indicate a pattern of illegal activity, and
involve thousands of potential victims. It is important to ensure that no United States laws were broken and no United States
citizens were victimized,” the senators wrote in the letter.
In a separate letter, Robert Menendez (D-N.J.)
also called for a DOJ investigation.
Laura Sweeney, a DOJ spokesperson, said that
the department would review the letters but declined further comment.
The 9/11 hacking allegations first surfaced in
a report in the British newspaper, the Daily Mirror. The paper said journalists
at the News of the World approached a New
York private investigator and tried to buy phone
records of victims from him. The investigator, who had been a cop, allegedly
declined to provide the records. http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0711/58887.html
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Click
to read …. Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. drops bid for BSkyB
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James Murdoch 'could face prosecution' in US and UK over
hacking ... scandal James Murdoch, the
chairman of News International, has been warned he could face prosecution in
the US and Britain in the wake of the News of
the World phone hacking scandal.
By Christopher Hope,
Katherine Rushton, and Raf Sanchez
10:49AM BST 10 Jul 2011 Rupert Murdoch's embattled son could
face criminal charges after he acknowledged approving out of court settlements
to hacking victims and admitted misleading parliament, although he insisted he
did not do so deliberately. Allegations
that News of the World journalists also made payments to police officers could
also leave Mr Murdoch exposed to prosecution in the
US, where Mr Murdoch is listed as deputy chief
operating officer of his father Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, the parent company of
paper publishers News International. Under
American law, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) makes it a crime for
American companies to offer corrupt payments to foreign government officials. If the allegations of payments to police
officers are proven, Mr Murdoch could face an
American prosecution in his role as deputy chief operating officer the
US-listed News Corp. In 2009, the former
Hollywood producer Gerald Green was jailed for
six months after being prosecuted under the FCPA for making $1.8m (£1.1m) in
bribes to a Thai government official. Full story at
….
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/phone-hacking/8628424/James-Murdoch-could-face-prosecution-in-US-and-UK-over-hacking-scandal.html
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Hacking scandal exposes secrets at Murdoch's tabloid
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July 06, 2011|By Peter
Wilkinson, CNN
In 2005, the best-selling weekly UK tabloid News
of the World published a seemingly mundane story about Prince William injuring
his knee.
It was just another exclusive for a
newspaper that had made its reputation on hard-hitting exclusives, often
exposing the embarrassments of celebrities and politicians.
Britain's newspaper culture which developed
around London's Fleet Street, nicknamed the "Street of Shame" by
satirical magazine Private Eye, has long been based on cut-throat competition
and dirty dealings -- anything goes if you can land the big story.
But this scoop was different from the
others. Royal officials realised that it could only
have been sourced by the illegal interception of Prince William's mobile phone
voicemail, and complained to the police.
This started a chain reaction of
allegation and scandal that enveloped not just members of the royal family and
celebrities, but also murder victims and those injured in terrorist attacks. It
is linked to the office of UK
Prime Minister David Cameron whose judgement has been
called into question by opposition lawmakers including Labour
leader Ed Milliband for later employing the editor of
the paper as his press spokesman. The growing scandal implicates London's police force and
now threatens one of the biggest assets of Rupert Murdoch's media empire.
News of the World, the world's
top-selling English-language newspaper, is owned by News International, which
also owns the Sun, the Times and the Sunday Times in Britain. Murdoch's
News Corps media empire also encompasses Fox News, the Wall Street Journal, the
New York Post
and Harper Collins publishers.
The initial complaint led to the arrest
of News of the World's royal editor Clive Goodman and private investigator
Glenn Mulcaire. Both were convicted in 2007 of
conspiracy to intercept phone messages and jailed.
The paper's editor Andy Coulson also resigned, saying he knew nothing about the
hacking of phones but accepted "ultimate responsibility." But he
continued to attract flak after his resignation, especially when he became
Cameron's media spokesman.
A series of investigations by police
and the country's newspaper watchdog followed the arrest of Goodman and Mulcaire, all of which concluded that phone hacking was not
widespread at the Sunday tabloid, and there was no evidence executives knew
about the practice.
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UK soldiers targeted in Murdoch phone-hacking scandal-media
Wed Jul
6, 2011 10:59pm EDT
* Outrage as list of phone-hack victims grows
* Mother of soldier killed in Iraq says "totally
disgusted"
* Murdoch keeps low profile at Sun Valley
LONDON, July 7 (Reuters) - A phone-hacking scandal engulfing Rupert
Murdoch's media empire grew on Thursday with claims that Britain's top-selling
tabloid may have listened to the voicemail of relatives of soldiers killed in
Iraq and Afghanistan.
News International, the parent company of the News of the World
tabloid, said it would be contacting the Defence
Ministry after a report in the Daily Telegraph that the phone numbers of
British soldiers were found in the files of a private investigator jailed for
hacking phones.
"If these allegations are true we are absolutely appalled and
horrified," it said in a statement.
Rose Gentle, the mother of fusilier Gordon Gentle, killed by a
roadside bomb in Iraq's oil port of Basra in 2004, told the BBC she was
"totally disgusted" by the allegations.
"I'd never buy that paper again, if this is true, they need to
be brought to justice for this, they need to pay for this," she said.
In a further twist to the affair, a spokesman for Finance Minister
George Osborne said police had told the minister his name and home phone number
were in notes kept by two people jailed for phone hacking.
The scandal, which has cast an unflattering light on the way
British tabloid newspapers work, dominated the front pages of almost every
major British newspaper on Thursday.
The main allegation is that
journalists, or investigators hired by them, took advantage of often limited
security on mobile phone voicemail boxes to listen to messages left for
celebrities, politicians or people involved in major stories.
The disclosure that the phone
hacking involved victims of crime came when it emerged that a private detective
working for the News of the World hacked into voicemail messages left on the
mobile phone of a murdered schoolgirl while police were searching for her. That
allegation caused outrage among Britons and prompted an emergency debate in
parliament on Wednesday.
The list of those whose phones may have been hacked continued to
grow. It includes victims of the July 7, 2005 London transport bombings, when
Islamist suicide bombers killed 52 people, and the parents of Madeleine McCann,
a British girl who disappeared in Portugal four years ago.
The Independent carried the headline "Murdoch empire in
crisis", while the left-leaning Guardian ran with "The day the prime
minister was forced to act on phone hacking."
Prime Minister David Cameron said on Wednesday he was
"revolted" by allegations that News of the World investigators
eavesdropped on the voicemail of victims of crimes and said he would order an
inquiry.
But he resisted calls to put an end to attempts by Murdoch to buy
out BskyB
, a news and entertainment broadcaster, in which he has a minority
stake.
Murdoch, whose News International group is being boycotted by some
advertisers and outraged readers, kept a low profile at a Sun
Valley conference on Wednesday.
He said earlier he found the allegations of hacking, and reports
that journalists also bought information from police, "deplorable and
unacceptable". He has appointed News Corp executive Joel Klein to oversee
an investigation.
The News of the World's royal correspondent and an investigator
were jailed in 2007 for hacking into the phones of royal aides. After
campaigning by celebrities and politicians who suspected they too had been
spied on, police launched a new inquiry in January.
The News of the World is Britain's best-selling Sunday
newspaper, read by some 7.5 million people on sales of 2.6 million. Sales of
its daily sister paper the Sun never recovered in Liverpool
after it offended the city's football fans in the wake of the 1989 Hillsborough
stadium disaster.
(Reporting by Karolina Tagaris; Editing by Janet Lawrence)
(karolina.tagaris@thomsonreuters.com; +44 207 542 4878))
***********************************
Murdoch calls allegations against his paper 'deplorable'
Reports say the bereaved victims of July 7, 2005 bombings in
London were
targeted by phone hackers.
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July 06, 2011|By Richard Allen
Greene, CNN
Media baron
Rupert Murdoch broke his silence on a scandal swirling around his flagship
British tabloid newspaper Wednesday, calling allegations that journalists
illegally hacked into the voice mails of murder and terrorism victims
"deplorable and unacceptable."
The head of
News Corp. issued the statement after the father of a bombing victim said his
phone may have been hacked. allegations that Prime
Minister David Cameron called "absolutely disgusting."
Graham Foulkes, whose son was killed in a 2005 London terrorist
attack, said Wednesday his phone number and home address were found in the files
of a private investigator working for the News of the World, a Sunday tabloid.
The accusation
came after allegations that journalists also hacked into the phone messages of
missing teenager Milly Dowler,
who was later found to have been murdered.
Police
launched a special investigation this year into accusations that News of the
World engaged in widespread phone hacking targeting politicians and
celebrities.
Actor Hugh
Grant told CNN Wednesday that police had visited him as part of their
investigation.
Now, following
allegations this week that the paper also illegally eavesdropped on murder
victims and the families of people killed in terrorist bombings, Cameron said
an independent inquiry was needed.
"We are
no longer talking about politicians and celebrities but murder victims,
potentially terrorist victims. It's absolutely disgusting what has taken
place," Cameron said in the House of Commons. "I think everyone in
this house and country will be revolted by what they've heard and seen on their
TV screens."
But Cameron
said the inquiry could not begin until after the police investigation was done,
for fear of interfering with it.
News Corp.
subsidiary News International, which owns News of the World, said it welcomed
"calls for a broad public inquiry into standards and practices in the
industry."
The list of
possible victims widened further Wednesday, when the British Press Association
reported that relatives of soldiers killed in Iraq
and Afghanistan
may have been victims of the hacking scheme.
"The
Ministry of Defence was seeking clarification from
Scotland Yard as sources said families of dead servicemen were being contacted
by detectives over the scandal," the report said. http://articles.cnn.com/2011-07-06/world/uk.phonehacking_1_murder-victims-hacking-scheme-bombing-victim?_s=PM:WORLD
Who's Who
in scandal at heart of Murdoch empire
By Jodie Ginsberg
LONDON |
Tue Jul 5, 2011 3:41pm BST
(Reuters) - A scandal over phone hacking by
the biggest selling newspaper escalated on Tuesday after it emerged police were
investigating whether the News of the World hacked the phone of a missing
schoolgirl who was later found murdered.
That moved the affair, in which the paper has already admitted some
staff accessed the voicemails of public figures, close to the heart of the
Murdoch empire since one of his top executives was
editor at the time the girl was abducted.
Below are some of the key figures in the saga.
RUPERT MURDOCH
Chairman and Chief Executive of News Corporation, the world's
largest news conglomerate, which he founded.
News Corp's operations span television, film, newspapers and
advertising. Businesses include U.S.
cable network Fox, and The Wall Street Journal newspaper, as well as some of Britain's
best-selling papers: The Sun, News of the World and The Times.
Australian-born Murdoch was ranked by Forbes magazine as the 13th
most powerful person in the world in 2010 and the 117th richest in the world,
with a net worth of over $6 billion.
He became a U.S.
citizen in 1985 so that he could buy American television stations.
Murdoch's News Corp is currently seeking to buy out British
satellite broadcaster BSkyB, a deal expected to cost
at least $15 billion, and final government approval for the deal is expected
shortly.
A man who easily commands audiences with world leaders, Murdoch's
newspapers in particular are believed to wield enormous political influence. In
1992, The Sun declared "It's the Sun Wot Won
It" after it campaigned vigorously against Labour
leader Neil Kinnock in an election that delivered an unexpected Conservative
victory.
REBEKAH BROOKS
Chief executive of News International, the
British newspaper arm of News Corp.
Born Rebekah Wade, the 43-year-old has
worked for the Murdoch empire since the age of 20,
joining Sunday tabloid the News of the World as a secretary before moving to
The Sun daily. In 2000, she was appointed editor of the News of the World,
making her, at the time, the youngest ever editor of a British national
newspaper.
She moved on to edit The Sun in 2003, becoming its first female
editor, and spent six years at the helm before her appointment as chief
executive of News International.
Brooks rarely gives interviews. In 2003, she told a parliamentary
committee her newspaper had paid police for information although News
International later said this was not company practice.
Brooks, formerly married to a star of television soap opera "Eastenders," is considered one of Rupert Murdoch's
most trusted executives and is politically well-connected. She and her second
husband, a former racehorse trainer, are reported to be regular guests at Prime
Minister David Cameron's Oxfordshire home.
On Tuesday, she said she was "sickened" at allegations
the News of the World had hacked into the voicemail messages of missing
schoolgirl Milly Dowler,
later found murdered, in 2002. The Guardian newspaper said an investigator for
the paper had also deleted some messages to make room for more, misleading
police and the girl's family into thinking she was alive.
"I hope that you all realise it is
inconceivable that I knew or, worse, sanctioned these appalling
allegations," she wrote in a memo to staff, adding that she would not
resign.
DAVID CAMERON
The prime minister became linked to the scandal after he appointed
as his director of communications Andy Coulson, who
had been News of the World editor during the time that most phone-hacking is
alleged to have taken place at the tabloid.
Cameron said that if allegations were true that a private
investigator hacked into the phone of missing teenager Milly
Dowler, "this is a truly dreadful act."
ANDY COULSON
Coulson
resigned as News of the World editor in 2007 after one of his reporters and a
private investigator were convicted of hacking into phones of members of the
royal family, although Coulson insisted he knew
nothing about the phone hacking.
He then resigned as Cameron's communications director earlier this
year after fresh allegations surfaced that connected journalists at the paper
to a spate of other attempts to hack the voicemail of politicians and
celebrities. He said media coverage of the scandal made it impossible to do his
job.
JEREMY HUNT
Hunt is the Secretary of State for Culture,
Olympics, Media and Sport. He has final say over
whether News Corp should be allowed to buy out BSkyB
after Business Secretary Vince Cable was stripped of the decision-making power
late last year.
Cable lost the right to adjudicate on media deals after he was
taped "declaring war" on Rupert Murdoch.
Hunt last week rejected complaints the News Corp buyout of BSkyB would give Murdoch too much power and influence,
effectively clearing the way for the multi-billion-dollar deal.
However, he announced a final consultation period until July 8 to
consider further undertakings designed to guarantee the editorial independence
of Sky News.
CLIVE GOODMAN and GLENN MULCAIRE
Clive Goodman, who reported on the royal family for the News of the
World, was jailed for four months after writing stories based on illegal phone
taps carried out by private detective Glenn Mulcaire
for which he paid with cash.
Mulcaire,
who was jailed for six months, was also paid an annual retainer of 100,000
pounds ($160,000) by News of the World for other investigative services.
MILLY DOWLER
Aged 13, she went missing on her way home from school in the London suburb of Walton
on March 21, 2002. Despite a huge police hunt and massive publicity, her body
was found only six months later. This year, convicted killer Levi Bellfield was tried for and, on June 23, found guilty of
the teenager's murder.
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