Phone hacking scandal deepens

[Peter Lemkin]

PS it has been reported that Rebekah Wade/Brooks received a payoff over £3 million....

DAMN!, I'd resign and admit to all kinds of things I've never done for half of that! :what: But methinks that was less 'thanks' and more buying her silence and fidelity, when needed. [That will start Tuesday - and go on for a LONG time!...... :rofl:

[Jan Klimkowski]

Some Murdoch family gossip in the Daily Telegraph.

Not to be taken at face value.

However, Rupert did look like "an old 80" in the brief clips I saw yesterday.

The sibling squabbling sounds plausible too.

The family's control over News Corporation, the world's second-biggest media company, can no longer be taken for granted. The fissures that have characterised relations between Murdoch and the three of his six children who have at different times aspired to succeed him are reopening.

"This is implosion time," says Michael Wolff, Murdoch's biographer. "Rupert has lost his way. He doesn't have any more friends. Rupert has run his business with a particular currency: that he could use his newspapers to reward you or punish you. He doesn't have that power any more, and without it he doesn't have any currency, so from a power point of view he is bankrupt."

(snip)

Sources in News Corporation say the game is up for James in terms of succeeding his father as its head. The lack of faith displayed by father in son was obvious in a leader in yesterday's edition of The Times, part of the News International stable. In an extraordinary attack on its own chairman, the newspaper criticised James's offer to give evidence before the select committee in mid August, during the parliamentary recess, as "unnecessarily provocative".

The leader is said to have been inspired by Rupert, whose initial refusal to attend is condemned in softer terms. Murdoch junior is also facing calls to step down as chairman of BSkyB. The scandal has scuttled a bid by News Corporation to buy up the 61 per cent of shares in the satellite broadcaster not under its control.

"James is essentially out of business," says Wolff. "He cannot run the company, he is no longer the heir."

(snip)

Elisabeth and her second husband, the public relations man Matthew Freud, have often been described as friends of Mrs Brooks, but it is understood that Miss Murdoch was less than happy at the attention lavished by her father on the executive. Mr Freud denies any such friction, describing a report that his wife railed against Mrs Brooks as having "f----- the company" as "untrue" and "placed with malicious intent".

Elisabeth is said by a source at News International to have resented her father's tendency to favour her brothers in business, despite her being older. Like Lachlan, James and Prudence, Mr Murdoch's daughter from his first marriage, Elisabeth was granted $150 million in cash and shares by her father. The four share voting rights in the family trust, a privilege not extended to their father's two young daughters by his third wife, Wendi Deng.

Elisabeth is now being touted as the new heir to the News Corporation throne. Asked how the Murdochs were bearing up, Mr Freud texted The Daily Telegraph: "They are bearing up pretty well. Tough time but they have always been attacked and always pushed through. This battle perhaps not as righteous as the others!"

In addition to the select committee hearing, the Murdochs' interests in Britain are threatened by a wide-ranging police investigation and a judicial inquiry. But the ultimate threat lies in America. Could the Murdochs be ousted from the company that controls the Fox Network, 20th Century Fox Studios and the Dow Jones group?

Sam Hart, media analyst at the brokerage Charles Stanley, says: "Obviously the Murdochs will take into consideration what their large shareholders say. Until 10 days ago everybody was assuming that Rupert Murdoch's successor was going to be James. Whether he does take control now depends on the criminal investigation, and whether there is evidence that criminality went further up News Corp than seems to be the case."

(snip)

"The opinion in the US is there's no way he (Murdoch) couldn't have known what these guys get up to because he knows what they're like," says Wolff. The world, he says, will have a surprise when Murdoch sits down in front of MPs on Tuesday. "Rupert is very good at campaigning when it's in a backroom. He's good at meeting power with power. He's good at making a deal. He's not good at this other thing, which is about perception, sensitivity, image, brand. These are things that he's incredibly bad at.

"Right now the difficulty is that Rupert is incredibly old. He is an old 80, which makes him seem like 100. I just don't think he is up to it any more. I've spent a lot of time with him and it was weird. Often he's fine, but it was very hard for him to follow the track of the conversation. He's an old guy. You think, 'Oh my god, this guy is old'."

[Peter Lemkin]

The Bigger they are...the Harder they can [at times] Fall!

IF he Falls, it couldn't happen to a more deserving person, IMHO. :captain:

Nick Davis Rules!

[Jan Klimkowski]

Scotland Yard's top cop, Sir Paul Stephenson, is now in big trouble, after the latest revelations in the NYT.

18 meals with NI, including 8 with Wolfman Wallis whilst he was still at NOTW.

Shameful.

Members of Parliament said in interviews that they were troubled by a "revolving door" between the police and News International, which included a former top editor at The News of the World at the time of the hacking who went on to work as a media strategist for Scotland Yard.

On Friday, The New York Times learned that the former editor, Neil Wallis, was reporting back to News International while he was working for the police on the hacking case.

Executives and others at the company also enjoyed close social ties to Scotland Yard's top officials. Since the hacking scandal began in 2006, Mr. Yates and others regularly dined with editors from News International papers, records show. Sir Paul Stephenson, the police commissioner, met for meals 18 times with company executives and editors during the investigation, including on eight occasions with Mr. Wallis while he was still working at The News of the World.

Senior police officials declined several requests to be interviewed for this article.

The police have continually asserted that the original investigation was limited because the counterterrorism unit, which was in charge of the case, was preoccupied with more pressing demands. At the parliamentary committee hearing last week, the three officials said they were working on 70 terrorist investigations.

Yet the Metropolitan Police unit that deals with special crimes, and which had more resources and time available, could have taken over the case, said four former senior investigators. One said it was "utter nonsense" to argue that the department did not have enough resources.

[Peter Lemkin]

:pointlaugh: Oh, Great, this is now taking on Shakespearean proportions.... There REALLY is something highly ironic of a Tabloid Baron ending up the biggest story of the Tabloids But I won't truly feel I went to Nirvana unless I learn that someone has or is hacking RM's emails and/or phone. :flypig:.... and that Faux News is dead! - with a wooden stake through its heart. :happydrinks:

On a more serious note....this a quote from an internet post by Sterling Seagrave on another Forum....I think an interesting analysis...and one I share...

"Bill Casey was one of the key men in the acquisition of media after WW2. It was one of his proteges (a young German immigrant to the US) who was sent back to Germany after the war to take over Bertelsmann and build it up. Rupert Murdoch was very tight with Shackley, which is how he got launched on his global acquisitions and has now taken over the WSJ. Murdoch was running a failed national newspaper in Australia while Shackley was station chief in Oz. Then suddenly he becomes a US citizen literally overnight and goes on an endless buying spree. Shackley's pockets were infinitely deep. At the time, Murdoch was facing the likely closure of his newspaper THE AUSTRALIAN. His ticket out was Shackley. This also explains why Murdoch was allowed to break all the rules in acquisition of media in America." - Sterling Seagrave

[Peter Lemkin]

Brooks was just arrested! :dancingman:

I want Rupert to be!

[Lauren Johnson]

Brooks was just arrested!
I want Rupert to be!

Watch for a strategy of intentionally messing up the investigation. That's what happened in the Iran Contra scandal.

[Dawn Meredith]

Brooks was just arrested!
I want Rupert to be!

Watch for a strategy of intentionally messing up the investigation. That's what happened in the Iran Contra scandal.

It's what happens in all investigations of the powerful. Remember we thought Rove, Cheney et al would be indicted in the outing of Valerie Plame. But just Libby whose sentence was later commuted.
Dawn

[Peter Lemkin]

Help! We're prisoners in a rigged game!!! :joystick:

[Keith Millea]

So why arrest her now?

Because,she is to testify Tuesday,and now she can claim "no comment"to questions because she is involved in an ongoing criminal investigation.........

The joke is on us. :what: