Phone hacking scandal deepens

[Jan Klimkowski]

The Murdoch crime family spin: "thousands of jobs at risk".

The development has caused pandemonium at the upper echelons of the Murdoch media empire. Shortly afterwards, executives in America ordered that the company dramatically scale back its co-operation with the Metropolitan Police.
A News Corp analysis of the effects of a corporate charge, produced in New York, said the consequences could "kill the corporation and 46,000 jobs would be in jeopardy".
Lawyers for the media behemoth have pleaded with the Met and the Crown Prosecution Service not to prosecute the company as it would not be in the "public interest" to put thousands of jobs at risk. Gerson Zweifach, the group general counsel of News Corp, flew in to London for emergency talks with the Met last year. According to Scotland Yard, he told police: "Crappy governance is not a crime. The downstream effects of a prosecution would be apocalyptic. The US authorities' reaction would put the whole business at risk, as licences would be at risk."

The simple solution: get the Murdochs out of journalism.

Tom Watson, the campaigning Labour MP, said: "This comes as no surprise. Parliament has already found Rupert Murdoch unfit to run an international company.
"He is responsible for the corporate culture that allowed this scandal to damage his global empire. I hope that other jurisdictions like Russia will begin to investigate the activities of News Corp around the world.
"The doom-laden internal analysis that the thousands of people who actually add value to the company may lose their jobs is bogus. If News Corp wants to clean up its act, it can easily do so by replacing the Murdochs with people who understand corporate social responsibility."