Murdoch

[David Guyatt]

The Indy is now running the Tony Blair shagged (oops, sorry, 'had a "close friendship" with') Wendi Deng story too:

Relations between Tony Blair and Rupert Murdoch 'collapse' after claims of meetings with ex-wife Wendi Deng




Newspaper claims Blair and Deng stayed overnight at Murdoch's mansion in California on two occasions without his knowledge



OLIVER WRIGHT

WHITEHALL EDITOR

Sunday 24 November 2013

To a tabloid connoisseur the story had everything: celebrities, money, politics and more than a whiff of scandal.
It was, without doubt, the kind of tale that Rupert Murdoch, the famously hands-on proprietor of The Sun, would have wanted his newspaper to have had first. Apart from one small problem: the story was about him.
Today, what had been political gossip for some time, was splashed across the front page of The Mail on Sunday under the headline "Murdoch's feud with Blair over Wendi".
The paper reported that relations between Mr Murdoch and Tony Blair had "collapsed" because of Mr Blair's close friendship with the media mogul's ex-wife, Wendi Deng.
It claimed Mr Blair and Ms Deng had stayed overnight at Mr Murdoch's mansion in California on two occasions in without his knowledge. And it added that Mr Blair and Ms Deng had "multiple encounters" of which Mr Murdoch was unaware in both London and New York.
While the paper stressed it was making "no suggestion" of any impropriety by the former prime minister or Ms Deng it nevertheless quoted a friend of Mr Murdoch saying "Rupert Murdoch will have nothing more to do with Tony Blair. Not ever."
If so, it would be a remarkable end to a remarkable friendship which, over the years, has had very real impact on the political process in the UK. And oddly one that also started with sexual innuendo. When Mr Blair shrugged off criticism from his own party and travelled halfway around the world to woo Murdoch at a News Corporation summit in Australia in July 1995 the magnate introduced Mr Blair to his staff with the words: "If the British press is to be believed, today is all part of a Blair-Murdoch flirtation."
He then added: "If that flirtation is ever consummated, I suspect we will end up making love like two porcupines very carefully."
Over the years, much to the unease of many of the left, they were more passionate than that. The Sun backed Labour in every election campaign Mr Blair fought and while not always uncritical his papers were none the less supportive of the New Labour project. Mr Blair claimed, to some incredulity, when he gave evidence to the Leveson Inquiry that when he was Prime Minister the relationship was always "professional" rather than a personal friendship. "It was a relationship about power," he said. "I find these relationships are not personal; they are working [relationships], to me." But he went on to add: "After I left office I got to know him. Now it's different. It's not the same." He also admitted he had become godfather to Murdoch and Deng's daughter Grace in 2010.
Mr Blair's friends told The Mail on Sunday that the relationship between him and Ms Deng was "entirely innocent and above board". Mr Blair's office has also categorically denied an affair. A spokesman for Mr Murdoch declined to comment, as did Ms Deng's spokesman.

Cheri will not be pleased either. I wonder if Tony hard earned millions are about to be divided into two?

[David Guyatt]

The Indy has a Comment piece on this too, including these tasty morsels"

A Murdoch spokesman tells the MoS that "Rupert Murdoch will have nothing more to do with Tony Blair. Not ever". Another chips in with: "If you think Rupert made a decision to end his marriage and a long term friendship without just cause, you are sorely mistaken."

[Magda Hassan]

The Indy is now running the Tony Blair shagged (oops, sorry, 'had a "close friendship" with') Wendi Deng story too:


Cheri will not be pleased either. I wonder if Tony hard earned millions are about to be divided into two?

No divorce for Catholics. Though I suppose Cheri could ask Frankie for an annulment.

[Magda Hassan]

I always thought Tony was a pretty straight sort of guy. Straighter than I thought it appears.

[Magda Hassan]

Any chance someone else fathered the children and that is why he is not leaving them anything like his other spawn?

[Keith Millea]

"Well,she would,wouldn't she?"...::

[Magda Hassan]

Fox News' Favorite Investigator Was Paid to Smear Murdoch's Wife


Here's a story. On the afternoon of Friday, November 21, 2008, an email bearing the subject header "confidential information" turned up in Gawker's tips inbox. The sender's email address was "harveydent701@yahoo.com," a dummy account. The only text in the email itself was "please consider the attached information." Attached was a Microsoft Word document with the filename "MediaMogul.doc."
The Word document began: "What media mogul billionaire's wife has been guilty of so many sexual escapades that she is the talk of LA?" It went on to claim that Wendi Deng, the then-wife of Rupert Murdoch, was a "vicious...hustler," "licentious...whore," and "nymphomaniac" whose whose "path to [Murdoch's] board room and bed room is paved with betrayal, infidelity, adultery and continuous scandalous affairs." While it didn't directly name any men Deng was alleged to be carrying on with, the document said "the mogul's wife is having an affair with an executive from the media moguls own company."


At the time, rumors were swirling in New York media circles about Deng's alleged infidelities, specifically about a purported relationship with MySpace co-founder Chris DeWolfe, whose company Murdoch had bought in 2005 in a $580 million deal that turned out to be as catastrophically ill-considered as his marriage to Deng. And of course, Deng and Murdoch's marriage did eventually fall apart last year amid another round of rumors about Deng's relationship with Murdoch's waterboy, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

Gawker's then-editor Gabriel Snyder mentioned the tipand a number of other unsolicited rumors about Deng that had been sent our waya few days later in an item wondering, "Who's Behind the Campaign to Smear Wendi Deng?"
Palace intrigue was beginning to brew throughout the House of Murdoch at the time the dirt was circulating. The vaunted MySpace deal was quickly becoming a turd, the economy was tanking around him, and Barack Obama had just been elected over loud protestations from Fox News. Tidbits from The Man Who Owns the News, Michael Wolff's biography of him, were just beginning to surface, including claims that Murdoch was "embarrassed" by Fox News' festival of white rage, which Murdoch hotly denied. On November 20, 2008, right as an excerpt from the book was hitting stands in Vanity Fair and the day before the Deng tip came in, News Corp. conspicuously announced that Ailes was re-upping his contract at Fox News.

The struggles around Murdoch would only intensify over the next few years: There was the unresolved issue of whether Chloe and Grace, Rupert and Wendi's two young daughters, would be read into the trust that would govern the disposition of News Corp. after Rupert's demise; there was Ailes publicly feuding with Matthew Freud, the husband of Murdoch's daughter Elisabeth, who was openly outraged at Fox News' oversteps; there were Ailes' knife-fights with the other Murdoch kids, Lachlan and James, his rivals for their father's attention; there were the departures of messaging guru Gary Ginsberg and then News Corp. president Peter Chernin, both seen as scalps won by Ailes in his effort to consolidate power.
Of course, Deng was herself another power center within Murdoch's sphere. So who was spreading dirt about her?
It recently came to my attention that the Harvey Dent tip was worth revisiting. Specifically: When one opens the Word document and views the metadata associated with it under the "Properties" tab, this is what one sees:

Maria Stasek runs an online clothing business in New York. But for several years, including 2008, when the tip was sent, she was an office manager for Beau Dietl & Associates, a private investigations firm run by former NYPD cop Richard "Bo" Dietl. Its initials are "BDA." You may recognize Bo Dietl from one of his many appearances on Fox News, where he is a contributor.
When I called Stasek to ask whether she had authored the tip, and if she had done so on behalf of a client of Dietl's, she wouldn't say much. "Wendi Deng? Who? Didn't they get divorced, Murdoch and this girl?" She declined to say anything else on the record, but she did confirm that she managed the office at Dietl's firm, a job that included purchasing office software, which could explain why her name was in the document's metadata.
At first, Dietl shrugged off the news that someone from his firm had been trashing the owner of the cable news network that pays him. "I know Murdoch," he told me. "I know Roger. I'm a very loyal Fox guy. I would never take a case to hurt them." He told me that Stasek had been fired years ago, and suggested that she had authored the tip without his knowledge or authorization.
If that were the casethat a low-level staffer in a connected firm slipped us some good gossip anonymouslythen it's not something I'd be interested in writing about on the site. We like low-lever staffers who slip is gossip anonymously, and we preserve their anonymity.
But this tip didn't read like a note slipped over the transomit had the character of a dossier, a detailed and fairly lengthy run-down of Deng's behavior ("Wendi Deng was born 1969 in china and has 2 sisters and one brother," etc.). The kind of thing someone might hire a private investigator to produce. And discreetly distribute.
So was Dietl, the "very loyal Fox guy," the actual source of the attack on Murdoch's wife? I called Stasek back to make sure that this was work product. She wouldn't speak on the record, but she angrily denied being involved and told me that she had been in touch with Dietl. Minutes after I hung up with her, I got a call from Dietl, who was angry, too.
In the course of our conversation, the investigator took back his initial claim of non-involvement. Dietl confirmed that he had, indeed, been hired to spread dirt on Deng. He wouldn't say who it was, but he did say who it wasn't.
"It was not Roger Ailes who hired me to look into Wendi and Rupert," he told me. He also told me that he had been in touch with Fox News' vice president for legal affairs, Diane Brandi.
Dietl isn't just occasional on-air talent at Fox News. He's a personal friend of Ailes who has done professional investigative work for Fox News staffers in the past. When Bill O'Reilly's former producer Andrea Mackris accused the cable news host of repeatedly harassing her with lewd and explicit sexual propositions, Fox News turned to Dietl for a counterattack. "To gather dirt," writes reporter Gabriel Sherman in his new biography of Ailes, The Loudest Voice in the Room,

O'Reilly hired the celebrity private investigator Bo Dietl. Sources with damaging anecdotes were tracked down. "This could be a message to people," Dietl said on MSNBC on the evening of October 15. "When you file these frivolous lawsuits...we're going to investigate you and we're going to uncover things."
Fox had a crucial ally in the war over O'Reilly: Murdoch's New York Post. On October 15, the front-page headline blared "EXCLUSIVE: O'Reilly Accuser in Bar Blow Up."

Dietl's web site boasts a personal letter of endorsement from Ailes himself, written in 2007, in which Ailes describes knowing Dietl "personally and professionally for many years" and praising his loyalty and "tireles[s] work on behalf of his clients."
Expand
If Ailes ever had an interest in driving a wedge between his boss and the new wife who was rapidly becoming a rival in the News Corp. power structure, Dietl would have been a tactful and effective man to turn to for the job. And if it wasn't Ailes who hired him, then Dietl is perhaps not as loyal a friend as Roger thinks he is.

http://gawker.com/fox-news-favorite-inve...1507585845

[David Guyatt]

::vomit::

Wendi Deng's 'love note for Tony Blair' published

Wendi Deng, former wife of Rupert Murdoch, wrote about loving Tony Blair's "good body" and "piercing blue eyes"


Rupert Murdoch and Wendi Deng were married for 14 years but she is said to have developed a crush on Tony Blair Photo: AP



By Anita Singh, Showbusiness Editor

3:38PM GMT 05 Feb 2014

Wendi Deng, the former wife of Rupert Murdoch, allegedly developed a passionate obsession with Tony Blair and wrote a note in which she rhapsodised about his "good body and really really good legs [and] Butt".

Miss Deng is said to have become infatuated with the former Prime Minister while she was still married to the media mogul.

In the note, Chinese-born Miss Deng wrote in broken English: "Oh, s***, oh, s***. Whatever why I'm so so missing Tony. Because he is so so charming and his clothes are so good.

"He has such good body and he has really really good legs Butt… And he is slim tall and good skin. Pierce blue eyes which I love. Love his eyes. Also I love his power on the stage… and what else and what else and what else… [all sic]"

The contents of the sensational note are detailed in Vanity Fair magazine, which described it as "a steamy, lovelorn missive".

Mr Blair has denied all allegations of an affair with Miss Deng. Friends of Miss Deng say the pair were never more than friends.
Mr Murdoch's discovery of his wife's crush on Mr Blair was said to be the "final straw" that prompted him to file for divorce after 14 years of marriage. The News Corp executive chairman felt "betrayed" as he considered Mr Blair to be a close ally.
According to Vanity Fair, a besotted Miss Deng invited Mr Blair to spend a weekend at the Murdoch family ranch in Carmel, California in October 2012 omitting to tell him that her husband would not be there.
"Mr Blair was reluctant at first. They were all mutual friends; there was no reason Mr Murdoch wouldn't have welcomed Mr Blair into his home," a Murdoch staff member told the magazine.
"But one day Mr Blair arrived and Mrs Murdoch was sort of being very flirtatious. She was charming him.
"He asked staff, When is Mr Murdoch going to arrive? And when he was told, Tomorrow night', Mr Blair rolled his eyes and gave a panicked look."
Miss Deng, 45, had allegedly told her 82-year-old husband she was spending a "girls' weekend" at the ranch in Carmel. That weekend, Mr Murdoch's 103-year-old mother, Dame Elisabeth, had been released from hospital and was expected to die within days, so family had gathered at her bedside.
The Australian media mogul began to hear rumours about his wife in 2012 and is said to have interviewed staff members at his various homes to ask them what they had seen.
According to the magazine, he learned that Mr Blair had visited Miss Deng at the Carmel ranch on more than one occasion. He allegedly spent the weekend of April 27, 2013 with Miss Deng at the property.
Other sources are quoted as placing Mr Blair and Miss Deng at the Carlyle hotel in New York, on a private yacht and at Mr Murdoch's home in London.
Mr Blair declined to comment on the article but has said in the past that allegations of an affair are categorically untrue. He was for many years a family friend of the Murdochs and is godfather to their elder daughter, Grace.
Friends say he was aware Miss Deng had become "emotionally dependent" on him but felt unable to turn his back on her as she was going through a difficult time in her personal life.
Mr Murdoch and Miss Deng reached an "amicable" divorce settlement in November last year.
She shot to international attention three years ago when she defended her husband against an attacker brandishing a foam pie during a hearing at the House of Commons.
A joint statement from Miss Deng and Mr Murdoch to Vanity Fair reads: "Given the complicated dynamics of our family, we made the decision early on in this process not to engage in public allegations or respond to negative claims."

[Magda Hassan]

I wonder who leaked the letter to Mark Seal? Vanity Fair is Conde Nast owned. No obvious connection to Fox except he is getting a movie made of one of his recent stories. Clearly some one wanted him to publish though.

[David Guyatt]

According to Vanity Fair, a besotted Miss Deng invited Mr Blair to spend a weekend at the Murdoch family ranch in Carmel, California in October 2012 omitting to tell him that her husband would not be there.

​I think we should change the address of the ranch from Carmel, California, to Carnal, Californcation...