The Official Newscorp/UK end of season finale/Rebekah Brooks did 9/11 thread

Well into the depressing stage of this saga now...

ny mag is overstating it a bit to say that drawing a distinction between a corrupt arms dealer and a murdered schoolgirl is a "nuanced moral argument".

Yeah it's not nuanced at all. I think most people feel pretty uncomplicated about it. We don't mind if journalists break the law in the service of speaking truth to power, but we do mind if they break the law to get sensationalist stories about regular people. Pretty simple, dudes.

[Ed: You need 350 more words, keep going]

We don't mind if journalists break the law in the service of speaking truth to power, but we do mind if they break the law to get sensationalist stories about regular people.

Unanalysed impression is that what "we" mind about doesn't impact on newspaper sales except Liverpool obv.

No one is innocent, earth revolves around sun, let's evolve.

#notagoodstory tbh

i was thinking the other day how entirely appropriate it'd be if heather mills ended up playing a significant role in bringing down piers morgan

He may also hope and pray that no one who attended it still remembers a lunch held in September 2002 in a private room at the swanky new Four Seasons Hotel in Canary Wharf, just by the offices of the Daily Mirror. The occasion was one of the monthly bunfights hosted for Moron by convivial Trinity Mirror chairman Sir Victor Blank. The dozen or so guests at this one included Ulrika Jonsson, Jeremy Paxman and the then chief executive of BT, Ben Verwaayen.

Moron’s feeble attempts to master a Scandinavian accent in front of Jonsson – he was trying to wind her up by mimicking conversations with Eriksson – were received with embarrassed titters. Then he started to hector Verwaayen, roaring that BT “should start providing better security for pin numbers for mobile phones! You should tell your customers to go and change them!”

At which point one might have expected the Trinity Mirror chairman to ask how his editor seemed to know the intimate details of Jonsson and Eriksson’s phone calls. But nothing was heard from the man who had so famously protected Moron in the “City Slickers” scandal, ignoring chief executive Philip Graf’s pleas to have him fired.

Having mocked Ulrika and hectored Verwaayen, Moron then launched into his party piece – a re-enactment of Heather Mills arguing on the phone with Paul McCartney and the ex-Beatle winning her round by singing “We Can Work it Out”.

Via Private Eye.

If there's any truth in this, he was essentially admitting it to anyone who would listen - which is just the kind of daft, hubristic thing you can imagine him doing. It has to just be a matter of time before CNN suspends him.

Rebekah Brooks will not comment on claims she is still drawing a News International salary.

A big song and dance was made of Rebekah Brooks’s belated decision to resign as the chief executive of News International as the phone-hacking scandal engulfed Rupert Murdoch’s empire, but it has not had any great effect upon her standard of living. I am reliably informed that she remains on the company payroll.

“My understanding is that Rupert has told her to travel the world on him for a year and then he will find a job for her when the scandal has died down,” whispers my informant.

When I call News International to inquire if Brooks is still on the payroll, they refer me to her personal publicist at Bell Pottinger. “We’re offering no comment on your query regarding Rebekah,” Steve Double tells me, helpfully.

October will be entertaining, then.

Have they rebuilt Tyburn for these people yet? If nothing else, just to give 'em a little nudge?

her personal publicist at Bell Pottinger. “We’re offering no comment on your query regarding Rebekah,” Steve Double tells me, helpfully.

the NME photographer?

Miskiw arrested

Also via reports on Twitter: "Police communications chief Dick Ferdocio on leave pending investigation re hacking/NI"

Colin Myler and Tom Crone likely to be recalled to Commons media select committee in September, chair John Whittingdale says.

^^^ bombshell

So a summary so far: The select committee says the fresh evidence they have received in relation to the News of the World phone-hacking scandal is "devastating" and that James Murdoch is "likely" to be recalled for a second grilling.

The former editor of the Sunday tabloid, Colin Myler, and the paper's head of the legal affairs have provided more evidence to support their allegations that Murdoch 'misled' the committee about his knowledge of phone-hacking at the News of the World.

But Watson has hinted at explosive new evidence from the former royal editor Clive Goodman, who was jailed back in 2007 in relation to phone-hacking offences.

tweetsplosion of hints that the guardian will be dropping a "bombshell" around 1pm..

12.02pm: tom_watson has just tweeted this:
Documents submitted to DCMS select committee will be published at 12.59pm. On dcms web site. Lobby- I'll be in grimond room at 1pm.

Yeah I don't think anything we've heard so far today qualifies as a "bombshell".

SO FARRRRRRRRRRRRR

apart from the milly dowler news it's mostly been a steady accumulation rather than bombshells. what a weird summer.

heard a little something about how the 'bombshell' relates to JM, and how his alibi doesn't hold up, because he's a vampire, and b/c vampires can't be out doing business during business hours

Oooh, I'm like a little child contemplating his first Christmas

I think the Sara Payne & 7/7 families and war dead families all count as bombshells - it's just that by then they were all seen as shockwaves from the main event.

McCanns as well iirc?

xxxp

I think I'm going to be consistently disappointed until the point at which something of substance incrimiates Cameron, if that ever happens. Murdoch Jr will do for now though.

Don't think any concrete McCann revelations have come out yet?

won't today's thing be just a specific regarding myles showing the evidence to JM? like not that it's not a bombshell! but that it's something that we can presumably predict? like i got the impression that this is re: the committee appearances rather than the larger scandal

Disgraced NoW correspondent said hacking was done with 'the full knowledge and support' of senior journalists

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/aug/16/phone-hacking-now-reporter-letter

there it is

Rupert Murdoch, James Murdoch and their former editor Andy Coulson all face embarrassing new allegations of dishonesty and cover-up after the publication of an explosive letter written by the News of the World's disgraced royal correspondent, Clive Goodman.

In the letter, which was written four years ago but published only on Tuesday, Goodman claims that phone hacking was "widely discussed" at editorial meetings at the paper until Coulson himself banned further references to it; that Coulson offered to let him keep his job if he agreed not to implicate the paper in hacking when he came to court; and that his own hacking was carried out with "the full knowledge and support" of other senior journalists, whom he named.

The claims are acutely troubling for the prime minister, David Cameron, who hired Coulson as his media adviser on the basis that he knew nothing about phone hacking. And they confront Rupert and James Murdoch with the humiliating prospect of being recalled to parliament to justify the evidence which they gave last month on the aftermath of Goodman's allegations. In a separate letter, one of the Murdochs' own law firms claim that parts of that evidence were variously "hard to credit", "self-serving" and "inaccurate and misleading".

Two versions of Goodman's letter were provided to the committee. One which was supplied by Harbottle and Lewis has been redacted to remove the names of journalists, at the request of police. The other, which was supplied by News International, has been redacted to remove not only the names but also all references to hacking being discussed in Coulson's editorial meetings and to Coulson's offer to keep Goodman on staff if he agreed not to implicate the paper.

nice try

loool

murdoch jr's strategy of dumping on the lawyers in his select committee appearance is starting to look like a big mistake.

shafted by their own law firm :-)

not bad bombshellwise, in my opinion: it doesn't go further outwards, of course, it exactly re-targets the flimsily stabilised line the defendants were hoping to stage their defence at

well done especially on this letter being four years old

and haha "hard to credit"

Someone really needs to do an animated gif of that clip of Kilroy-Silk from "Shafted"

not bad bombshellwise, in my opinion: it doesn't go further outwards, of course, it exactly re-targets the flimsily stabilised line the defendants were hoping to stage their defence at

Les Hinton, who was sent a copy of the letter but failed to pass it to police and who then led a cast of senior Murdoch personnel in telling parliament that they believed Andy Coulson knew nothing about the interception of the voicemail of public figures and that Goodman was the only journalist involved.

redacting documents seems such a weird practice. you feel like in a hundred years time it could be looked back on as a hilarious hallmark of old-style corruption, that survived by virtue of its impressive name & by being done w/the imprimatur of huge companies or agencies. it so often seems to be just agenda-furthering scribbling.

sheer criminality

think we can all agree on rubber bullets for these guys

send them to a desert island with the records they pretended to like

Take away their tax benefits.

kick wendi deng out of her council house

mindless, just mindless. Send in the army, it's the only language these people understand.

sheer criminality

― lex pretend, Tuesday, 16 August 2011 14:22 (16 minutes ago) Bookmark

I lol'd

They ought to be conscripted into National Fat Cat Service.

Fat Cats get enough Service as it is!

national lol cat disservice more like

and with that "bombshell" i must return to writing this review!

i can has incriminating documents redacted?

is this the general uk politics thread now? this has probably been linked on ten different threads today but it's worth posting here in case some of you missed it.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/15/opinion/stop-coddling-the-super-rich.html?_r=2&ref=opinion