Submitted by Gene Howington, Guest Blogger
More potential bad news for Rupert Murdoch and News Corp. as Thursday’s Wall Street Journal reports that the U.S. Department of Justice is preparing subpoenas relating to alleged foreign bribery and alleged hacking of voicemail of Sept. 11 victims. This is in addition to a separate FBI probe into the alleged hacking of voicemail of Sept. 11 victims and a possible FCPA-related (Foreign Corrupt Practices Act) investigation by the SEC related to allegations of bribing police in Great Britain. There are also a substantial number of civil suits springing up related to the activities of News Corp.’s now shuttered News of the World operation. While Murdoch and News Corp. have attempted to contain the damage done by the News of the World U.K. phone hacking scandal, it seems like their efforts are failing as the investigation into their operations expands across the Atlantic. The real question lies with A.G. Eric Holder’s Department of Justice willingness to act.
The subpoenas being prepared would require senior Justice Department approval to be executed and so far approval is still pending. Given the Department of Justice under Holder has a weak record for prosecuting corporate criminals (see Wall Street going unpunished for their role in the Credit Default Swap scandal) and prosecution of those with monied political connections (see the refusal to investigate and prosecute members of the Bush Administration for war crimes) is approval of these subpoenas going to happen under Eric Holder’s watch? Murdoch and his corporate interests are big campaign contributors and FoxNews is widely considered little more than the propaganda wing of the GOP. Are such investigations merely lip service to public outrage or is the Department of Justice going to get off the bench and play ball this time? If the Department of Justice hedges and decides to once again ride the pine on investigation and prosecution of corporate criminals, it will hinder if not kill both the FBI and SEC investigations. Is sitting out on this case even a viable political option for Holder and the Obama Administration at this point given their poor track record to date on upholding justice over political expediency? What do you think?
Source: The Wall Street Journal
~ Submitted by Gene Howington, Guest Blogger
Anyone happen to catch which politician Newscorp gave the most money too?
http://thehill.com/blogs/hillicon-valley/technology/172321-report-obama-top-recipient-of-news-corp-donations
I guess it’s time to see just how many tunes you get to call when you pay the piper.
Well, never fear Holder is here… ANYTHING he can do to shut down Fox News, he will do a tap dance in public with such outcry, the liberals will weep at his feet. He only fails to prosecute friends, family, obama, anyone in obama’s administration, any democrat, or anyone black (Eric “my people” Holder) like black panthers. So rest assured, if they can twist and turn this until they squeeze of something that he can implicate Fox News in, it will be on every lame stream media’s top of the hour and front page news, every hour, every day.
By John Farmer/The Star-Ledger
July 24 2011
Rupert Murdoch
Could it happen here?
Could something akin to the hacking scandal that has turned Britain upside down and trashed its politicians, the police and the press — or something like it — occur here?
The odds are against it, not so much for reasons of superior American morality as for the lesser role the press plays in this country’s politics than it does in the United Kingdom.
This country has no media mogul with the power to dominate politics that Rupert Murdoch exerts in Britain. In fact, unlike the U.K., we have no national newspapers with the reach of Murdoch’s Sun, Times of London or now-defunct News of the World and their power to cow and intimidate politicians, even prime ministers.
Our major papers are primarily regional in scope, with limited national impact.
In Britain, Conservative and Labor party bigwigs, even leaders of the supposedly more independent Liberal Democrats, regularly kissed Murdoch’s ring (among other things).
He was a regular presence at 10 Downing Street, the first person invited there after Prime Minister David Cameron took office. Labor leader Tony Blair flew to Australia on a summons from the Great Man to address his News Corp.’s annual conference. As they say in Chicago, that’s real clout.
It’s no coincidence that Murdoch is arguably the biggest media bloke on the block here, too. With assets such as Fox News and Fox pictures, the Wall Street Journal and the New York Post, Murdoch can reach millions of Americans with his hard-right conservative message.
His impact here, however, is puny by British press standards; still it’s enough to raise a red flag for Rep. Peter King, (R-N.Y.). King is demanding the Justice Department look into whether any of Murdoch’s American minions hacked into the phones of 9/11 victims, many of whom were residents of King’s Long Island district.
It would be a stunning breach of American journalistic ethics and practice, and probably — hopefully — is not true. However, the idea of the press paying for news and information is not entirely unknown here; supermarket tabloids have done it for years. So far it has not surfaced as a practice in mainstream newspapers. But we’ll see.
American journalism has other problems of it own that are largely the product of the seismic change in how information is acquired and disseminated these days, primarily cable television.
With the advent of cable, the polarization of the American press exploded. Murdoch’s Fox News is a megaphone for conservatism and almost all things Republican. MSNBC peddles the liberal line and lionizes almost all things Democratic. The Sunday news talk shows reek of partisan punditry.
In Britain, television plays less of a role in shaping the day-in, day-out political debate for a variety of reasons. For one, the BBC is required to be politically neutral. And much of the sort of paid political campaign advertising that’s commonplace here is banned in Britain.
Though we could use it, we have nothing here that corresponds to BBC. Still, it’s not all that hard to identify and discount the political bias that marks so much of American TV.
What’s harder to pick your way through is the increasing polarization in the print press — if only because we’re been brought up to expect more from our newspapers.
Used to be that newspaper op-ed pages were an outlet for analysis more than opinion, more the journalism of James Reston than George Will. But no more. Opinion rules today. And both the reader and journalism itself are ill-served. How did it all happen? Some believe it’s what a public educated (miseducated?) by television now demands even from its newspapers. Or maybe what a print press industry in decline believes is required to stimulate a sagging readership. Hard to know.
There’s a temptation in this country to relish the shame that has befallen our British cousins and their tabloid press. The two-bit German term for this kind of shabby joy-taking is schadenfreude — pleasure taken in another’s pain. (Leave it to the Germans.) We should resist it.
Just about every outlet for American journalism has seen a decline, if not in standards then in the financial ability to give readers what they want and, more important, what they need to make informed decisions. And there’s no promise of improvement in sight.
The DOJ under Holder is exhibiting confusing policy, especially when it comes to state licensed medical marijuana.
Holder will not act. He is a willing gatekeeper for the establishment and all his actions prove it so. It’s wishful thinking to believe otherwise.
This is actually a bit of late news because on June 20, 2011 the US Supreme Court docketed a complaint filed against a certain employer, GW Bush, VP Cheny, John Boehner, Eric Cantor, Chuck Grassley, Mitch Mcconnell and about 8or 9 more members of the GOP or of the C Street Family; and Rupert Murdock; for Mass Religion Fraud and RAPE RAGE i.e., Race, Ancestry, Political, Ethics, Retaliation, Age, Gender and Equal Employment and Education forms of Discrimination that has been allowed to flood public air waves and caused by our 1st Amen-dment clause “No law respecting an establishment of religion” as they relate to all of the laws, state mottoes or oaths that were sworn a KJV Holy Bible.
Certarior was granted to a Plain American Indian Native and Negro Democratic Assimilated Sister Christian Citizen, or a PAIN ND ASCC for short who said; she is Satan, the daughter of God; sister spirit and espoused wife of Jesus Christ, risen and reborn in the flesh of a regular Christian woman. This woman asks the Court for a Writ Declaring Female as One Peoples, Independence stating “No law respecting an establishment of religion is A Just Cause to Dissolve, and Throw Off a body of White Christian Republican men; who are about to reduce our nation to utter despotism. That these men are allowed to corrupt our blood because its a fact men cant stop thinking about sex long enough to do their jobs, or right themselves. As well as Be Cause; females never got a separate and equal vote, choice or the decent respect of being asked their religion convictions.
Further; since Nanticoke Native American Indians females were the head of their household; by their maternal religion and referred to in our DOI as merciless savage Indians; she contends “no law respecting an establishment of religion is a breach of the Mayflower Compact as a prior constitional engagment and debt valid against the constitution of these united states because she says she can prove the Bible is True, and explain why it was grossly misunderstoood. That the father, son and holy ghost trinity family actually coonsist of the father, son, mother, and daughter but the Father &Mother are One in the same a Holy Hostess or Goddess.
She asked fthe Court for Man Damn Us Relief from those Republicans who have denied Her and Her kind of mankind the same laws of Nature and Nature God; pursuant to Article VI of the Constitution, and Article 36 of Maryland’s the NW Ordinance, NAIRPP Acts, Iroquosis Dawn of Democracy and Mayan Indian 2012 Prophesies to prepare for the “World to come” When we should know by now that there can never be a new heaven, earth, son of God, or Rebirth of Freedom for any nation; without 1st the Pain and Travail of a Woman; that she contends; GOD created bettter and greater than men. . .
All of this time We have been waiting for some Fat Lady to sing, but instead S/He sent Her boney daughter to Collect the Rent a/k/a the Final Judgement. .
Heard this discussion the other night,that maybe there will be a middle ground in the information that we should be getting due to the Murdoch scandal.Its a read.:
Cover Story — July / August 2011
News for the World
A proposal for a globalized era: an American World Service
By Lee C. Bollinger
I would be surprised if in future decades, people did not say that the end of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first was the period in which the shape of the modern world was determined, and that two primary forces did most of the shaping: the spread of capitalism and free market economies, and the invention of new technologies of communication.
We live as never before in an interdependent and integrated world economy. Nearly half of the revenues of the S&P 500 corporations are generated from business conducted outside the United States; developing countries provide roughly half of the manufactured goods bought by developed countries (up from 14 percent in 1987); approximately half of the US government’s debt is in foreign hands; and, on a more personal scale, a significant portion of everyone’s retirement fund is invested in foreign enterprises. The days have passed when America’s demand for energy in the world market was so large, relative to other nations, that it determined the price of oil we consume.
http://www.cjr.org/cover_story/news_for_the_world.php
Heres another:
What The Guardian Can Learn from Watergate Coverage
On the importance of making the “right” mistakes
By Craig Silverman
http://www.cjr.org/behind_the_news/what_the_guardian_can_learn_fr.php
“Go for it… I see a difference here…The goose is already down….It is just a matter of plucking the remainder of the feathers” (AY)
Goin’ with AY on this one.
Gene,
It is anybody’s guess, but I am guessing that Holder is sniffing the blood in the water and he will jump on the bandwagon and investigate our good friends at Murdoch, Inc!
Go for it… I see a difference here…The goose is already down….It is just a matter of plucking the remainder of the feathers….that is easily accomplished if you wring it neck first and then put them in a vat of boiling water…. symbolically all aspect are present….