Rupert Murdoch: Scientologists are ‘creepy, maybe even evil’

This is amazing for two reasons, both fairly obvious:  If Rupert Murdoch thinks you're creepy and may be evil, that is..  An Achievement.  The other;  Is Rupert Murdoch and his News International picking a fight with The Church of Scientology?  That would be, by definition, popcorn worthy!   The Raw Story:

Media mogul Rupert Murdoch weighed in on the Tom Cruise-Katie Holmes divorce story Sunday, saying he thinks Scientologists are “creepy” and possibly even evil.



The News Corporation chief urged his Twitter followers to watch the story, which broke on Friday when Holmes announced she was filing from divorce from Hollywood A-lister Cruise, a prominent member of the Church of Scientology.


“Watch Katie Holmes and Scientology story develop. Something creepy, maybe even evil, about these people,” Murdoch said on his Twitter account, @rupertmurdoch.


The fairytale Hollywood couple’s split was revealed when Holmes’ publicist announced that the actress had filed for divorce after five years of marriage, ending an unexpected love story dogged by tabloid rumors.


A spokesman for Cruise said the “Mission Impossible” star was “deeply saddened” by the news, fueling reports that his wife’s announcement had taken him by surprise.


Speculation about why Holmes wanted out has included suggestions she was concerned that Cruise was forcing their six-year-old daughter Suri deeper into the Church of Scientology.


The TMZ celebrity news website has reported that Holmes is seeking sole custody of Suri. Citing unnamed sources, it said she feared “that Tom would drag Suri deep into the church.”

“We’re told the couple had been arguing over Suri — that she’s now of the age where Scientology becomes a significant part of her life,” it said.
Murdoch’s Scientology comment generated a surge of Twitter traffic, prompting another tweet: “Since Scientology tweet hundreds of attacks. Expect they will increase and get worse and maybe threatening.

“Still stick to my story,” he added.


There was no immediate response to a request for comment from the Church of Scientology, or from publicists for Cruise or Holmes.


A short time after his Scientology tweet, Murdoch was asked his views on Mormonism — in the spotlight currently as Mormon Mitt Romney takes on President Barack Obama for the White House.


“Mormonism a mystery to me, but Mormons certainly not evil,” the News Corp tycoon replied

By the way: That whole phone hacking scandal unpleasantness..  How's that working out for you?

Blurg.. That Was Quick, And Really No Fun!

Hi Roger. It’s Me, Joe: The Fox Mole  That's 20 minutes of hilarious hopefulness I'll never get back. This was his second post!  Gawker.  Excerpts:

Hi. My name is Joe Muto. I was the Fox Mole.



Two hours ago I was called into a meeting with Dianne Brandi, the Fox News Executive Vice President of Legal and Business Affairs and suspended indefinitely... with pay, oddly enough.


They nailed me.


In the end, it was the digital trail that gave me away. They knew that someone, using my computer login, had accessed the sources for two videos that ended up on Gawker over the past few weeks. They couldn't prove it entirely, but I was pretty much the only suspect.

Seriously?  Digital trail?  Is everyone in New York too hip for NCIS or CSI?  Is teaming up with a hacker too cliche?  Nice try, though.  Here's your participation ribbon..

NewsCorp Go Boom! July 27, 2011

DPP was warned hacking was rife at Murdoch paper  The Independent.  Excerpts:

The former Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) Lord Macdonald was warned by his own employees as far back as 2006 that there were a "vast array" of News of the World phone-hacking victims.

Lord Macdonald, who has since been hired by the newspaper's owner, Rupert Murdoch, was sent a memo nearly six months before the reporter Clive Goodman and the private investigator Glenn Mulcaire were convicted, revealing that the charges they were facing related to just a fraction of the potential victims.

However, the hacking investigation was never widened despite pressure on the police and Lord Macdonald, the head of the Crown Prosecution Service at the time, to do so.

In a letter released yesterday, the former Attorney General Lord Goldsmith revealed: "The Director [of Public Prosecutions] and I were aware that the particular cases referred to were not isolated examples." Lord Goldsmith said protocol prevented him from speaking to the police, but this did not apply to the Crown Prosecution Service, which Lord Macdonald led at the time, and whose lawyers briefed him on other victims of hacking.

The Met had to reopen its inquiries into criminality by the NOTW in January this year when it became apparent that police and prosecutors had failed to fully investigate the widespread phone hacking by the newspaper five years ago.

Now it's the lawyers' turn to be sucked into the phone-hacking scandal    The Guardian UK.  Excerpts:

Now it's the turn of lawyers and the legal process to be sucked into the phone-hacking vortex. The Law Society has even suggested justice itself is under threat, implying messages could have been intercepted with the intention of influencing court cases.

Several prominent solicitors fear their mobile phones have been hacked. Some have been formally informed of the risk by police after detectives discovered their numbers among a private investigator's notes.

Graham Shear, of Berwin Leighton Paisner who has represented celebrities such as Robbie Williams and Jude Law, is one of those who has lodged a claim against the News of the World for damages over breach of privacy.

"In January this year I was contacted by senior officers in Operation Weeting [the Metropolitan police inquiry into phone hacking]," Shear said. "They told me that, contrary to what had been said previously, a number of my clients were referred to in documents from [Glenn] Mulcaire's file. My name was among them."

If messages had been intercepted, he said, it would have been a breach of confidential relationship with clients.

The media lawyer Mark Stephens expressed similar anxieties. "I asked [Scotland Yard] if I'd been hacked - they came back to me in 90 minutes and said yes," he told Channel 4 News. "It confirmed my worst suspicions, that I was in Mulcaire's notebook. There is nothing I can do about it, but the important thing is to ascertain which client [was the target] so I can advise them. My concern is for them, not myself."

My favorite Murdoch story to date, courtesy of the Sisters of Sorcha Faal..  Murdoch Threat To Expose Obama As “Christ-Child” Ignites Western Fury  Excerpts:

An amazing report circulating in the Kremlin today authored by the Federal Security Service (FSB) states that the ever-growing scandal in the United Kingdom related to the phone-hacking and police bribery claims being made against the global media empire of the man Time Magazine in 2007 called “The Last Tycoon” is, instead, due to the Australian-American billionaire Rupert Murdoch planning to publish a new book claiming that the American President, Barack Obama, is a “direct-line” descendent of Jesus Christ.

First, he was The Anti-Christ.  Now he's Christ.  Soon, I'm sure, he'll be The Anti-Christ again.  Awesome.  This is why I'll always love What Does It Mean?.  Who else could up the conspriracy ante on the already waaay over the top frenzy that is the Murdoch scandal?

In light of this story, this McCain ad looks a little different, now..

WSJ admits coverage of News Corp hacking scandal was poor  Americablog.  Excerpts:

The Wall Street Journal "could have done a better job" when it published an interview with proprietor Rupert Murdoch in which he said News Corporation had made only "minor mistakes" in managing the phone-hacking scandal, according to the paper's special editorial committee.

The swift decline of UK media titan Rebekah Brooks  Newsday.

Arrest of ex-Murdoch CEO Rebekah Brooks seals plunge from powerful news exec to public villain

NewsCorp Go Boom! July 25, 2011

The Case Against Piers Morgan.  Wow.  I have had a visceral disgust with this douche always.  I find his very presence vomitous and anger inspiring.  Because I never wanted to know anything about him, I only recently found out he was one of Murdoch's minions, editing The Daily Mirror during times of alleged hacking.  How very validated my intuition feels! 

Gawker.  Excerpts:

As British blogger Guido Fawkes noted today, in 2006 former Daily Mirror reporter James Hipwell told the Guardian unequivocally that hacking went on during his time at the paper—which overlapped entirely with Morgan's tenure as editor. "Many of the Daily Mirror's stories would come from hacking into a celebrity's voicemail," Hipwell told the Guardian

..

Hipwell, it should be noted, was fired from the Mirror in 2000 over accusations that he invested in a company whose stock he was promoting in a business column. He was eventually jailed for stock manipulation. Morgan was investing in the same company, but for some reason he didn't get fired.

In January, former member of Parliament Paul Marsden announced that he had been a victim of phone-hacking by a Daily Mirror reporter in 2003—again, during Morgan's tenure—and that he was pursuing a lawsuit against the paper.

Former Daily Mirror reporter Gary Jones was secretly recorded by British police telling private investigator Jonathan Rees—an accused (and acquitted) axe murderer at the heart of the hacking scandal who is accused of everything from voicemail snooping to conducting "burglaries of public figures to steal material for newspapers"—that "some of what he was doing for the Mirror was illegal." Jones was employed by the Mirror as a reporter for the entirety of Morgan's tenure there.

News Corp's James Murdoch under pressure over hacking testimony    Yahoo.  Excerpts:

News Corp executive James Murdoch was under pressure on Monday over his handling of a phone-hacking scandal that has hit the Murdoch family's media empire and could jeopardize his own position at the company.

British police are considering a request from opposition Labor politician Tom Watson to investigate claims the 38-year-old son of News Corp head Rupert Murdoch gave "mistaken" testimony to a high profile hearing in parliament last week.

Separately Labor lawmaker Chris Bryant has written to News Corp's independent directors calling on them to suspend both James and his 80-year-old father for failing to exercise proper corporate control.

And:

News Corp's British arm News International had maintained until then that previously known about incidents of the illegal practice at its News of the World tabloid was the work of a lone "rogue reporter."

However, two former senior figures at its British newspaper arm on Friday disputed James Murdoch's claim at the committee hearing that he had been unaware in 2008 of an e-mail that suggested such wrongdoing was more widespread.

The email related to a 700,000 pound ($1.1 million) out-of-court settlement paid to the head of English soccer's players union and signed off by James Murdoch in 2008, shortly after he took charge of News Corp's European operations.

Murdoch-detector browser add-ons warn you when you’re reading Murdoch-tainted news  BoingBoing.  Excerpts:

Two new browser plugins are here to help you with your Murdoch-detecting needs: Murdoch Block is a Chrome extension that warns you when you’re about to visit a news site controlled by the Murdoch empire and gives you the chance to turn away before the phone-hacking, ethics-lacking propaganda meets your eyes; and Murdoch Alert puts a helpful warning bar at the bottom of your browser whenever you land on a Murdoch-controlled news page.

Fox reporter claims network has covered Murdoch scandal ‘very seriously’  Charlie Gasparino, fresh from CNBC, and already on bended knees..

..“Actually, the coverage on Fox and The Wall Street Journal of the story has been embarrassing for journalism,” The Huffington Post’s Arianna Huffington pointed out. “Editorials in The Wall Street Journal — forget Fox, nobody really expects Fox to do this seriously…”

“Fox has covered this very seriously, Arianna,” Gasparino objected.

“The Wall Street Journal‘s editorial is whitewashing what is a very serious scandal that we have not seen the end of,” Huffington continued.

“I think we have covered this well. We have straight news reporters that have covered this all day,” Gasparino claimed.

And:

In fact, the Pew Research Center found that Fox News’ coverage of the Murdoch scandal trailed far behind CNN and MSNBC between July 6 and July 15.

Fox News had devoted less than 30 minutes to the story, while CNN and MSNBC each devoted over 140 minutes.

Report: News Corp UK execs threatened British Members of Parliament  Americablog.  Excerpts:

Lib Dem insiders say NI (News International) officials took their lobbying campaign well beyond acceptable limits and even threatened, last autumn, to persecute the party if Vince Cable, the business secretary, did not advance its case.

..

The accounts are only now coming to light, say sources, because the minister involved feared the potential for damage to the party, which was already suffering a dramatic slide in popularity after going into coalition with the Tories. They chime with reports from senior figures in the Labour party who say that Murdoch executives issued threats to Ed Miliband's office after the Labour leader turned on NI when the news broke that murdered 13-year-old Milly Dowler's phone had been hacked into by the News of the World.

The drips continue.

NewsCorp Go Boom! July 22, 2011

Ohio Democrats to Gov. John Kasich: Donate your News Corp. money to charity  We'll be seeing more of this, I'm sure..  From Raw Story.  Excerpts:

Ohio Democratic Party Chairman Chris Redfern sent a letter to Governor John Kasich on Wednesday asking him to give to charity the contributions he received from News Corporation.

..
Redfern noted that Kasich earned $265,000 in 2008 for a program he hosted on Fox News. The CEO of News Corp., Rupert Murdoch, also donated $10,000 to Kasich's campaign and said the two have a close friendship. Kasich appeared as a guest on Fox nearly thirty times to promote his candidacy for governor, even allowing him to solicit donations on air.

"Perhaps no public official in America has benefited more, both personally and politically, from News Corporation than you," Redfern wrote in his letter to the governor.

"The tactics of your former employer and major campaign donor were despicable, unacceptable and even inhumane. For that reason, we are calling on you to donate all of your earnings from News Corporation, as well as all of your campaign contributions from News Corporation, to charities of your choosing."

Rupert Murdoch's Fox News ran 'black ops' department, former executive claims  The Telegraph UK.  These allegations must be shocking to non-conspiratards.  Or probably not; yet.

Dan Cooper, who helped launch Fox News as managing editor in 1996, said that a “brain room” carried out “counter intelligence” on the channel’s enemies from its New York headquarters.

He was threatened after it found out he spoke to a reporter, he claimed.

Another former senior executive said the channel ran a spying network on staff, reading their emails and making them “feel they were being watched”.

And:

“Most people thought it was simply the research department of Fox News,” he wrote. “I knew it also housed a counter intelligence and black ops office. So accessing phone records was easy pie.”

..

Mr Cooper said yesterday that he helped to design the high-security unit. “It was staffed by 15 researchers and had a guard at the door. No one working there would engage in conversation.”

And:

Another former Fox News senior executive, who did not wish to be named, said staff were forced to operate under conditions reminiscent of “Russia at the height of the Soviet era”.

“There is a paranoid atmosphere and they feel they are being watched,” said the former executive. “I have no doubt they are spying on emails to ensure no one is leaking to outside media.  (Sounds like Rupert Murdoch is the freedom hater..)

“There is a unit of spies that reports up to the boss about who was talking to whom. A lot of people are scared that they’re going to get sidelined or even that they’re going to get killed.”

 Amid the Murdoch Scandal, There’s an Acrid Smell of Business as Usual  Information Clearing House.  Excerpts:

Long before it was possible to hack phones, Murdoch was waging a war on journalism, truth, humanity, and succeeded because he knew how to exploit a system that welcomed his devotion to the "free market". He may be more extreme in his methods, but he is no different in kind from many of those now lining up to condemn him who have been his beneficiaries, mimics, collaborators, apologists.

As Gordon Brown turns on his former master, accusing him of running a "criminal-media nexus", watch the palpable discomfort in the new parliamentary-media consensus. "We must not be backward-looking," said a Labour MP. Those parliamentarians caught two years ago with both hands in the Westminster till, who did nothing to stop the killing of hundreds of thousands of people in Iraq, and stood and cheered the war criminal responsible, are now "united" behind the "calm" figure of Ed Miliband. There is an acrid smell of business as usual.

Murdoch: This scandal has exposed the scale of elite corruption  The Guardian  UK.  Excerpts:

The Tory operation to bury the phone-hacking scandal in spin and official inquiries is now in full flow. On his way back from Africa, David Cameron declared it was essential to get the whole business into perspective, echoing Rupert Murdoch's insistence that his competitors had got up "this hysteria". Today, the prime minister chided Ed Miliband for "chasing conspiracy theories" and claimed it was really Gordon Brown who had been in the pocket of the global media billionaire.

Meanwhile, News International pundits and others with their own reasons to stem the flood of revelations have been loudly insisting that the political clout of Murdoch's corporate colossus has been exaggerated. The hyper-regulated BBC is the real media monopoly, they say, and in any case the current fixation with phone hacking has meant no one is discussing bankers' bonuses and the threat of another financial meltdown. This is a "frenzy that has grown out of control", the Daily Mail complained.

But the real frenzy isn't the exposure of the scandal – it's the scale of corruption, collusion and cover-up between News International, politicians and police that the scandal has revealed. As the cast of hacking victims, blaggers and blackmailers has lengthened, and the details of the incestuous payments and job-swapping between News International, government and Scotland Yard become more complex, it's easy to lose sight of the bigger picture that is now emerging.

If it were not for the uncovering of this cesspit, the Cameron government would be preparing to nod through the outright takeover of BSkyB by News International, taking its dominance of Britain's media and political world into Silvio Berlusconi territory. But what has been exposed now goes well beyond the hacking of murder victims and dead soldiers' families – or even the media itself. The scandal has lifted the lid on how power is really exercised in 21st-century Britain – in which the unreformed City and its bankers play a central part.

Phone hacking: News Corp hires former US attorney general to fight lawsuits  I'm wondering if the presence of a former Bush Attorney General means members of the Bush Administration might be concerned about exposure of their parts in the scandals that continue to grow and overlap..  The Telegraph UK.  Excerpts:

Judge Michael Mukasey, who served under George W Bush, will work alongside Mary Jo White, a former director of the Nasdaq stock exchange and US Attorney for the highly regarded Southern District of New York.

Both are partners at law firm Debevoise & Plimpton and are regarded as two of the country’s most formidable legal minds.

The independent directors, who are said to have had concerns about the way Rupert Murdoch has handled the phone hacking scandal, have also hired Mark Mendelsohn, a partner at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, who previously worked at the Department of Justice, where he specialised in bringing prosecutions under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA).

“The board want to protect themselves and doing that may come at the expense of Mr Murdoch,” said Roland Riopelle of Sercarz and Riopelle in Manhattan, a former federal prosecutor.

The US government confirmed this week that it has begun an investigation of News Corp under the FCPA act, which allows a criminal case to be brought against individual directors if there is evidence of a company bribing foreign officials such as police. It also allows a civil case to be brought if there is evidence of legitimate payments to officials being wrongly accounted for.

Former employees claim James Murdoch misled British parliament

James Murdoch gave "mistaken" testimony to a British parliamentary committee, two senior ex-News of the World executives said on Thursday, the most direct accusation made so far against News Corp's heir apparent in a phone-hacking scandal.

Murdoch said he stood behind his testimony to the committee, which had asked what he knew of a scandal that has forced senior News Corp executives and two senior police chiefs to quit and raised questions over press barons' influence on politicians.

The statement by Tom Crone, the British news group's top legal officer until last week, and Colin Myler, editor of the News of the World tabloid until it was shut down earlier this month, was the first open challenge by former senior executives of Rupert Murdoch's global media empire.

And it won't, rest assured, be the last.

NewsCorp Go Boom! July 21, 2011

News Corp.'s in-store ad firm faced several U.S. lawsuits  CNN.  Excerpts:

The fallout of the British phone-hacking scandal has resulted in the arrest of 10 people, including Rebekah Brooks, a former News of the World editor who resigned Friday from her post as chief executive of News International, and the resignation of Les Hinton as CEO of the Dow Jones unit, which publishes The Wall Street Journal.

Murdoch's company has suffered a stock plunge, is facing questions over future leadership and is under an FBI investigation.

Now, the business ethos of another arm of News Corp. could deepen the controversy and raise eyebrows about the media mogul's entire corporate culture.

News America Marketing, an in-store coupon and newspaper ad insert marketing business, has been hauled into U.S. courts several times over unsavory practices that include hacking into the computers of competitors.

In one of the lawsuits, New Jersey-based Floorgraphics charged that News America attacked Floorgraphics directly by breaking into a password-protected computer system to acquire sensitive proprietary information, including past and future contracts.

But.. But..  How could this be?  Hacking was only limited to one "rogue" reporter at News Of The World!

With Brooks arrested, tabloid insiders open up  Yahoo.  Excerpts:

With their former boss under arrest, tabloid reporters are beginning to reveal secrets of what it was like to work in Rebekah Brooks' newsrooms.

Disguises, bullying, lies dropped into copy — all were part of the pressure-cooker atmosphere that prevailed, according to former journalists who spoke to The Associated Press.

Michael Taggart, who worked at The Sun in 2003, said the paper under Brooks was marked by "ruthlessness and misogyny."

"The reporters who were prepared to subject themselves and others to the most ridicule were the ones earmarked for success," said Taggart, who now works as a consultant for London-based MRM.

Sounds "Ethical."

News International 'deliberately' blocked investigation  The Guardian UK.  Excerpts:

Rupert Murdoch's News International company has been found by a parliamentary committee to have "deliberately" tried to block a Scotland Yard criminal investigation into phone hacking at the News of the World.

The report from MPs on the all-party home affairs committee will be released on Wednesday morning. Its publication has been moved forward in time for a statement on the scandal by the prime minister, David Cameron.

..

It finds the company "deliberately" tried to "thwart" the 2005-2006 Metropolitan police investigation into phone hacking carried out by the News of the World.

See above comment. Also in green..

File Under:  Yeah; I bet he does..  Cameron "regrets" hiring scandal-hit tabloid editor  Yahoo.  Excerpts:

Prime Minister David Cameron, defending his integrity to parliament in emergency session on Wednesday, said he regretted hiring a journalist at the heart of a scandal that has rocked Britain's press, police and politics.

But in hours of stormy questioning he seemed to rally his Conservative party behind him and stopped short of bowing to demands that he apologize outright for what the Labour leader called a "catastrophic error of judgment" in appointing as his spokesman a former editor of Rupert Murdoch's News of the World.

Only if Andy Coulson, who has since resigned, should turn out to have lied about not knowing of illegal practices at his newspaper would the prime minister offer a "profound apology".

Analysts said Cameron emerged from the debate looking stronger than when he was forced to fly home early from Africa to face lawmakers who had delayed their summer recess by a day. But he left some lingering questions unanswered, notably about his role in Murdoch's takeover bid for TV network BSkyB.

What's that sound?  Maybe the loosening of more shoestrings, and the seperation of heels and insoles..  Let's see how Cameron looks this time next week, when things are in "ebb."

Horrible Bosses:  The Daily Show with Jon Stewart 

LulzSec claims to have obtained trove of News Corp. emails  Raw Story.  Excerpts:

Online hacking group LulzSec said Monday night it had obtained a large cache of emails from the servers of News International, the News Corp. subsidiary which oversees global media baron Rupert Murdoch's British newspapers.

Along with the emails, LulzSec said it had unearthed the email logins and passwords for News International executives, including former News of the World editor Rebekah Brooks, who was arrested recently in connection to the paper's phone hacking schemes.

A Twitter account connected with the hackers said they planned to release the emails online tomorrow. (This article was written on Tuesday)  Also unearthed were phone numbers for News International officials, along with personal information about an online content editor.

Sidebar:  This is the first scandal I can think of where international cyber pranks are also involved.  Pranks of consequence..NewsCorp must deal with their advertisers, shareholders, English and American Law, Wall Street, the people who never liked them, and now, the people who always liked them, that have been betrayed.  All the while, more negative allegations continue to hemorrhage what was, just last month, the vision of a Corporation-as-Invincible-Entity.  In June, NewsCorp was bullet-proof.

Time is subjective; moving slowly for some people and events. moving quickly for others..  I'd venture to guess it's doing both for those at NewsCorp, at once a 300 mile per hour whirlwind of destruction,  and also a soundless, sterile, white room, empty, save a table and chair.. 

NewsCorp Go Boom! July 19, 2011

Wow..  Twenty four hours later:  Where to start..

Murdochs have lost $1bn from stock free-fall due to scandal. British PM’s former communications director arrested.    Americablog has perspective.

(Quoting Financial Times)

The value of the Murdoch family’s shareholding in News Corp has fallen by $1bn since the political firestorm erupted over the phone-hacking scandal at the News of the World.

And from blog post:

Imagine the field day that Fox News, and Rupert Murdoch himself, would have had had Dan Pfeiffer, Obama's communications director, been arrested for his involvement in a scandal of this magnitude.

I know you know that's right. 

A 2nd London police official quits in scandal  Yahoo News.  Good background article.  Read the whole thing.  Excerpts:

Scotland Yard's assistant commissioner resigned Monday, a day after his boss also quit, and fresh investigations of possible police wrongdoing were launched in the phone hacking scandal that has spread from Rupert Murdoch's media empire to the British prime minister's office.

Prime Minister David Cameron called an emergency session of Parliament on the scandal and cut short his visit to Africa to try to contain the widening crisis. Lawmakers on Tuesday are to question Murdoch, his son James and Rebekah Brooks, the former chief executive of Murdoch's U.K. newspaper arm.

On the eve of the televised Parliament hearing, News Corp. board member Thomas Perkins said that CEO Rupert Murdoch has the full support of the company's board of directors. Perkins said the board is not considering elevating Chief Operating Officer Chase Carey to replace Murdoch.  (This has already changed:  Maybe.)

Tuesday Could Be Rupert Murdoch’s Last Day as CEO  From Gawker, in the "Rumors" file..

How bad are things looking for News Corp CEO Rupert Murdoch in the wake of the News of the World phone hacking scandal? This bad: If he screws up enough during Tuesday's parliamentary hearing, he may be replaced as CEO by jauntily-mustachioed COO Chase Carey.

Even if he stepped down as CEO, Murdoch would remain chairman, and retain the dirigible from which he directs his steam-powered robot army. But it'd a major blow to his hold on the company, and Bloomberg spoke with multiple anonymous sources who said that the move is under serious consideration—though "a decision hasn't been made." Apparently, it may come down to Murdoch's performance in front of the U.K. Parliament on Tuesday... and it's not looking good..

News of the World phone-hacking whistleblower found dead  The Guardian UK, via Alien Earth.  Excerpts:

Sean Hoare, the former News of the World showbiz reporter who was the first named journalist to allege Andy Coulson was aware of phone hacking by his staff, has been found dead, the Guardian has learned.

Hoare, who worked on the Sun and the News of the World with Coulson before being dismissed for drink and drugs problems, is said to have been found dead at his Watford home.

Hertfordshire police would not confirm his identity, but the force said in a statement: "At 10.40am today [Monday 18 July] police were called to Langley Road, Watford, following the concerns for the welfare of a man who lives at an address on the street. Upon police and ambulance arrival at a property, the body of a man was found. The man was pronounced dead at the scene shortly after.

"The death is currently being treated as unexplained, but not thought to be suspicious. Police investigations into this incident are ongoing."

Hoare first made his claims in a New York Times investigation into the phone-hacking allegations at the News of the World.

He told the newspaper that not only did Coulson know of the phone hacking, but that he actively encouraged his staff to intercept the phone calls of celebrities in the pursuit of exclusives.

In a subsequent interview with the BBC he alleged that he was personally asked by his then-editor, Coulson, to tap into phones. In an interview with the PM programme he said Coulson's insistence that he didn't know about the practice was "a lie, it is simply a lie".

LulzSec hacks website of The Sun and publishes fake story about Murdoch’s death  From Raw Story.  Excerpts:

The infamous hacker group LulzSec made a comeback on Monday by hacking the website of the British tabloid The Sun, owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, and redirecting the frontpage to a fake story about Murdoch being found dead.

The story read: "Rupert Murdoch, the controversial media mogul, has reportedly been found dead in his garden, police announce. Murdoch, aged 80, has said to have ingested a large quantity of palladium before stumbling into his famous topiary garden late last night, passing out in the early hours of the morning."

The fake story was quickly taken down, but visitors to the site were redirected to LulzSec's Twitter feed.

The group also hacked the website of Murdoch's United Kingdom newspaper publishing division, News International.

LulzSec took responsibility on their Twitter account for defacing The Sun's website, adding that "this is only the beginning."

"Arrest us," they said. "We dare you. We are the unstoppable hacking generation and you are a wasted old sack of shit, Murdoch. ROW ROW FIGHT THE POWER!"

Sir Paul Stephenson turns on David Cameron  From The Guardian UK.

Britain's top police officer resigns and turns on prime minister in dramatic escalation of the phone-hacking scandal.

In a carefully worded resignation speech that appeared aimed directly at Downing Street, Sir Paul Stephenson, the commissioner of the Metropolitan police, said the prime minister risked being "compromised" by his closeness to former  News of the World editor Andy Coulson.

Number 10 stressed that David Cameron had not been pressing in private for Stephenson to stand aside. But he was caught by surprise by the attack, which came just while the prime minister was on a plane en route to South Africa.

Fuck you, Piers Morgan.  I knew there was a reason I despise you. 

10 Questions The MPs Will Not Ask Murdoch  From Information Clearing House.  Lest we forget the last decade..  Excerpts:

When Rupert Murdoch appears before the parliamentary committee on 19 July 2011, here are ten questions the MPs certainly will not ask about the relationship he had with Tony Blair during the run up to the Iraq war, when Murdoch was, in the words of Blair's former press officer Lance Price, "the third most powerful figure in the Labour government", after Blair himself and Gordon Brown.
Question excerpts:
*Your third phone call with Tony Blair within nine days took place on 19 March 2003, the day before the Iraq war started. What was it about the relationship you had with Tony Blair that made him feel it was appropriate to take a phone call from a newspaper proprietor just hours prior to the most momentous decision a prime minister can make: ordering the country's armed forces to war?

*When the United Nations inspectors under Hans Blix could find no evidence of Iraq having weapons of mass destruction, the coverage in your newspapers bordered on hysteria -- "HE'S GOT 'EM. LET'S GET HIM" screamed the Sun headline. When it was later shown beyond dispute that the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq never existed, did you not feel that News International should have issued an apology for promoting a lie to justify an illegal war?

Beste is right:  These questions will never be asked.

Rupert Murdoch: what will MPs do without someone to fear?  The Guardian UK.  Excerpts:

You know the liberating feeling when someone unpopular leaves the room and everyone breathes a sigh of relief before openly discussing how much they dislike them? I don't. What's it like? What do people say? I only ever catch the odd whisper as the door shuts behind me. I'd love to hear the full conversation. Fortunately, watching Britain's politicians queue up to denounce Rupert Murdoch has given me a taste of how such talk might play out.

This scandal is metastasizing at an astonishing rate.  What    Happens     Next?

NewsCorp Go Boom! July 18, 2011

Rebekah Brooks arrested by hacking police  Inevitable, but bullshit nonetheless if this development keeps her from answering questions in front of a Parlimentry committee on Tuesday..  From BBC. Excerpts:

Ex-News International chief executive Rebekah Brooks has been arrested by police investigating phone hacking and bribery at the News of the World.

The 43-year-old was arrested by appointment on Sunday on suspicion of conspiring to intercept communications and on suspicion of corruption.
..
Our correspondent added: "It's certainly the most extraordinary development. Rebekah Brooks is incredibly close to the most powerful people in the UK - the current prime minister, the previous prime ministers Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. More or less every senior person of influence within Britain."

He said it could now potentially jeopardise her appearance at the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee on Tuesday, where she is due to answer MPs questions on the hacking scandal.

"I would assume having been arrested it's now almost impossible for her to appear. It's very difficult for MPs to ask her questions that wouldn't be seen to be impinging on the police investigation," he added.

From Gawker: 

Reports about the arrest are conflicting: Some accounts hold that Brooks was notified of the arrest on Friday and turned herself in to the police station at noon today by appointment, but her spokesman (spokesman!) says Brooks was at the station for questioning and didn't know she would be arrested.

Brooks is due to testify in front of a parliamentary committee on Tuesday; it's unclear if that hearing will still take place. Indeed, MP Tom Watson is speculating that Brooks didn't confirm her attendance at the hearing until after making her appointment to be arrested—allowing her to avoid answering questions from parliament by citing "an ongoing police investigation." The New York Times' Don Van Natta, Jr. (who yesterday broke news of Scotland Yard's complicity in the scandal) tweets about a source who says, ominously that the timing of the arrest "helps her more than hurts her... [and h]elps the Met, too."

Roger Ailes Met With Gov. Haley Barbour Three Weeks Before 2010 Elections  Also from Gawker.  Excerpts:

Add Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour to the list of GOP pols that Fox News CEO Roger Ailes schmoozes with. According to records obtained by Gawker under the Mississippi Public Records Act, Barbour met with Ailes at News Corporation's New York headquarters for an hour on October 14, 2010—just three weeks before the midterm elections in which Barbour played a major role.

During the 2010 election cycle, as confidence in the Republican National Committee and its chairman Michael Steele waned among GOP regulars, Barbour and the RGA became de facto leaders of the Republican Party. Until recently, Barbour was widely considered a potential contender for the GOP nomination in 2012. Ailes has claimed that he was "totally surprised" when he learned that News Corporation CEO Rupert Murdoch had decided to give $1 million to the RGA. The subsequent meeting between the two men raises questions about how insulated Ailes—who used to pick Richard Nixon's ties and plotted to launch a White House funded GOP propaganda network with Watergate felon H.R. Haldeman—was from the decision to fund the RGA.

Roger Ailes and the words "naive," "insulated," "out of the loop," and "innocent" have never, and will never truthfully be paired..  He is none of those things, so of course, this scandal will continue to grow.

More Trouble in Murdochworld  Information Clearing House.  Excerpts:

Rupert Murdoch's troubles keep piling up.

On Friday, Labor leader Ed Miliband called for a break-up of the Murdoch empire saying, "I think he has too much power over British public life.....We’ve got to look at the situation whereby one person can own more than 20 percent of the newspaper market....I think it’s unhealthy.”

Miliband has a good grasp of public sentiment, which is why his personal approval ratings have soared in the last few weeks. His comments reflect a fundamental change in attitudes about media ownership following revelations about Millie Dowler, the 13-year old murder victim whose phone messages were hacked by investigators employed by Murdoch. The public now understands that the concentration of media has led to terrible abuses that need to be corrected. As the phone hacking investigation widens, the effort to revise media ownership rules is bound to gain pace.
And:
Well, first of all, there's the question of criminal wrongdoing. Is there proof? This is from Reuters:



"News International chief executive Rebekah Brooks was warned by police in 2002 about serious malpractice and possible illegal activities by reporters at a newspaper she edited, former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said on Wednesday....


"As early as 2002 senior police officers at Scotland Yard met the now chief executive of News International and informed her of serious malpractice on the part of her newspaper staff and criminals undertaking surveillance on their behalf," Brown told parliament on Wednesday." ("Police told News Corps Brooks of malpractice: Brown, Reuters)


Okay, so who knew the phone hacking was going on and how high up the chain of command does it go? All the way to Murdoch?

And:

2008, Cooper wrote on his website that David Brock (now head of Media Matters) had used him as an anonymous, on-background-only source for an Ailes profile he was writing forNew York magazine. Before the piece was published, on November 17, 1997, Cooper claims that his talent agent, Richard Leibner, told him he had received a call from Ailes, who identified Cooper as a source, and insisted that Leibner drop him as a client--or any client reels Leibner sent Fox would pile up in a corner and gather dust. Cooper continued:



“I made the connections. Ailes knew I had given Brock the interview. Certainly Brock didn’t tell him. Of course. Fox News had gotten Brock’s telephone records from the phone company, and my phone number was on the list. Deep in the bowels of 1211 Avenue of the Americas, News Corporation’s New York headquarters, was what Roger called the Brain Room. Most people thought it was simply the research department of Fox News. But unlike virtually everybody else, because I had to design and build the Brain Room, I knew it also housed a counterintelligence and black ops office. So accessing phone records was easy pie.” ("Has Roger Ailes Hacked American Phones for Fox News?" Leslie Savan, The Nation)


If Savan is right, then the other major media are probably involved in similar activities. But doesn't that suggest that media is not really a "watchdog of power" at all, but rather a threat to the public interest? After all, no one knows how this information is being used. It could be that ownership is using the information to blackmail politicians or to eliminate political enemies. Is that why so many congressmen have decided not to run for another term in the 2012 elections, because someone in the media has dirt on them that would turn them into the next Anthony Wiener or John Edwards?

And finally..

"...widening revelations of the phone-hacking scandal show, News Corporation is not an ordinary commercial enterprise. Through his journalists and gossip columnists and the network of former and current police officers and law enforcement officials on his payroll, Rupert Murdoch has been operating what amounts to a private intelligence service. And the threat of personal exposure—on the front page of the Sun or Page Six in the Post—gives News Corporation a kind of leverage over inquisitive regulators or troublesome politicians wielded by no other company on earth.
..
Repeat: "Rupert Murdoch has been operating what amounts to a private intelligence service."

Scotland Yard Chief Resigns Amid Phone Hacking Scandal  Talking Points Memo.  Excerpts:

London'a police commissioner resigned his post on Sunday, just a few hours after a former executive for Rupert Murdoch's News Corp was arrested in connection with the News Of The World phone hacking scandal.

Sir Paul Stephenson, chief of the Metropolitan Police Force, also known as Scotland Yard, announced his resignation in a press conference and explained that the media coverage of the scandal "not only provide[s] excessive distraction both for myself and colleagues, but [is] likely to continue for some time."

Stephenson and the police services have been in the spotlight in the wake of allegations that officers accepted bribes from reporters for Murdoch's News Of The World tabloid -- reporters who have been accused of hacking into the phone records of murder and terrorism victims, celebrities, and public officials. Scotland Yard has also been criticized for botching the initial investigation into News Of The World phone hacking in 2006. Two people were convicted then, but recent revelations suggest the scandal was far more sprawling then the initial investigation found.

Stephenson himself has also been criticized for his decision to hire Neil Wallis, who was arrested last week in connection with the scandal, as a public relations adviser for Scotland Yard.

Neutering the corrupted officials from using their influence and connections will prolong the length of the scandal.  Rebekah Brooks getting arrested and probably not testifying before Tuesday's committee is proof of that.  Individual efforts at self preservation will ultimately kill Murdoch's collective empire.

David Cameron had deep ties to discredited News Corp execs  Boom!  Americablog.  Excerpts:

What exactly was happening? It's odd that the PM had extended a privilege to the News Corp executive that was not even extended to senior members of his team. Certainly a ruthless media that could discredit the opposition could be extremely valuable for a politician. Very curious.

The scale of private links between David Cameron and News International was exposed for the first time last night, with the Prime Minister shown to have met Rupert Murdoch's executives on no fewer than 26 occasions in just over a year since he entered Downing Street.

Every day, more damning revelations and larger implications, all still so early into this event.  The Bigger Picture is sure to shock the masses, eh?