NewsCorp Go Boom! July 14, 2011

Murdoch Digital Ambition for BSkyB Dashed by Tabloid Scandal  Business Week.

 Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. spent two decades building the largest U.K. pay-television company. His efforts to leverage that into new digital businesses were dashed by a scandal at a 168-year-old tabloid.

News Corp. was forced to drop a 7.8 billion-pound ($12.6 billion) bid for full control of British Sky Broadcasting Plc yesterday after a phone-hacking scandal at the News of the World prompted Prime Minister David Cameron’s coalition government to side with the opposition Labour Party to block the deal.

Full ownership of BSkyB, which has 10 million subscribers, would have facilitated the bundling of print and pay-TV subscriptions by spreading content over different media platforms. That in turn would make New York-based News Corp. less susceptible to advertising sales at its newspapers. (In other words, editorially uncontrollable..)
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About 3 billion pounds has been wiped off BSkyB’s market value since the Guardian reported on July 4 that the News of the World in 2002 hacked into the voice mails of murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler and deleted messages. Before the allegations, U.K. Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt had said several times this year that he was minded to approve the deal.

Phone hacking: pressure in United States to investigate News Corporation  The Telegraph.  Excerpts:

 A powerful Senate committee chairman has said that phone hacking raises "serious questions" about whether Rupert Murdoch's News Corp "has broken United States law".

The statement by Senator Jay Rockefeller, a White House ally and Democratic chairman of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, dramatically raises the stakes for Mr Murdoch by signaling potential legal repercussions in America.

"The reported hacking by News Corporation newspapers against a range of individuals - including children - is offensive and a serious breach of journalistic ethics," he said in a statement issued following inquiries by The Daily Telegraph.

"This raises serious questions about whether the company has broken US law, and I encourage the appropriate agencies to investigate to ensure that Americans have not had their privacy violated.
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One group has even written to the Security and Exchanges Commission (SEC) and the FBI calling for investigations into possible breaches of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA). Under the FCPA, it is a crime for any American-linked company to bribe foreign officials to obtain or keep business.
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Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), said that congressional investigations were essential because it was evident there was a culture of corruption within News Corp.

“It’s hard to imagine that the same things have not been happening in the United States.”

The tipping point, she added, would be if it became apparent that the phones of Americans had been hacked.

“Republicans are very tied to Murdoch but not at the expense of constituencies of Americans such as terror victims and soldiers,” she said.

She also noted that Les Hinton, the Dow Jones chief executive, and Robert Thomson, the Wall Street Journal editor, were former senior figures in News International.

I think we'll be seeing a lot of former NewsCorp executives "noted" publicly now for their past work/deeds..

Australia PM open to review amid News Corp scandal  Yahoo News.  Excerpts:

Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard said she would be open to an inquiry into media regulation and ownership after the "disgusting" scandal engulfing News Corporation.

Australia's Greens party has called for a parliamentary review of the nation's media, in which News Corporation's boss Rupert Murdoch is a dominant player, adding to the pressure on his beleaguered global empire.

"I'm not surprised to see that in parliament or amongst parliamentarians a conversation is starting about the need for a review, and I will be happy to sit down with parliamentarians and discuss that review," Gillard said.
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Greens leader Bob Brown has called for a full inquiry into media practices and ownership as the scandal over telephone hacking and payments to police officers by News Corp's British newspapers reached fever pitch.

Bancroft Family Members Regret Selling The Wall Street Journal To Murdoch   And they all begin the pile - on..   Business Insider.  Excerpts:

A number of key members of the family that controlled The Wall Street Journal say they would not have agreed to sell the prestigious daily to Rupert Murdoch if they had been aware of News International's conduct in the phone-hacking scandal at the time of the deal.

"If I had known what I know now, I would have pushed harder against" the Murdoch bid, said Christopher Bancroft, a member of the family that controlled Dow Jones & Company, publishers of The Wall Street Journal. Bancroft said the breadth of allegations now on the public record "would have been more problematic for me. I probably would have held out."

Bancroft had sole voting control of a trust that represented 13 percent of Dow Jones shares in 2007 and served on the Dow Jones Board.

Lisa Steele, another family member on the Board, said that "it would have been harder, if not impossible," to have accepted Murdoch's bid had the facts been known. "It's complicated," Steele said, and "there were so many factors" in weighing a sale. But she said "the ethics are clear to me—what's been revealed, from what I've read in the Journal, is terrible; it may even be criminal."

Clegg urges Murdoch to submit to grilling  Financial Times.  Excerpts:
Nick Clegg on Thursday said there were “big questions” over whether News International was a fit and proper organisation to own media in Britain and urged Rupert Murdoch to demonstrate his accountability by appearing before a select committee of MPs next week.



Speaking on the Today programme, the deputy prime minister said it “cannot not be right” that while journalists and people working in the News of the World office lose their jobs, people “higher up the food chain” were not taking any responsibility. “That is a basic issue of corporate governance.”

Mr Clegg said Mr Murdoch must show he is accountable for what happened in the phone-hacking scandal by submitting himself to a grilling at the hands of MPs. But he acknowledged that MPs would have to consider what powers were available to “compel'' attendance.
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David Cameron, prime minister, has announced an inquiry into all aspects of phone hacking and other unethical media practices.

Is he on his last legs? Murdoch in meltdown as shares plummet, BSkyB deal is shelved, and shareholders sue  Daily Mail.  Excerpts:

Rupert Murdoch’s media empire today risked implosion amid claims he could abandon his British newspapers over the phone hacking scandal.

The embattled News Corp boss may sell his three remaining national titles after accusations were made against The Sun and the Sunday Times.
Lending weight to the claim, Mr Murdoch’s other tightly-controlled paper, The Times, reported that ‘City analysts asked whether News Corps could walk away’.
This afternoon News Corp launched a $5billion shares buyback, artificially bolstering the value of the company after days of losses.

News Corp. Paid No Taxes After Profiting $10B (Yet Rec'd $4.5B In Refunds)  And hence should be referred to as "Corporate Welfare Queens."  OpEd News.  Excerpts:

Over the last four years, the Rupert Murdoch's Newscorp conglomerate earned $10 billion dollars and received $4.5 billion in federal refunds after paying zero taxes. Who is David Cay Johnston, the reporter of this provocative piece ? He is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who has been focused on economic and tax policies for some time, Johnston wrote for Reuters, 'Over the past four years Murdoch's U.S.-based News Corp. has made money on income taxes. Having earned $10.4 billion in profits, News Corp. would have been expected to pay $3.6 billion at the 35 percent corporate tax rate. Instead, it actually collected $4.8 billion in income tax refunds, all or nearly all from the U.S. government.' UPDATE Reuters has drastically revised the article this was based on, basically retracting the main claim.

Because Reuters has revised this article and its claims, does it make those claims untrue, or just less available?