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

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

DEM not gonna CON dis NATION: Rolling UK politics in the short-lived post-Murdoch era

cheers, Matt.

i got confused with the UK season finale having so many false endings.

My farmer colleague (imagine a Doctor Who obsessive who resembles John Peel) LOVES the whole 'UK end of season finale' as a concept.

doesnt surprise me, farmers love tv

loooool

IPCC clears Sir Paul Stephenson and three other senior Met officers of misconduct relating to hacking

The IPCC is very "efficient" when it needs to be, isn't it? Amazing.

They've moved from "innocent even if you are filmed lumping a bystander and booting him to the ground" to "only if you are filmed lumping a bystander and booting him to the ground" in recent years.

missed a 'guilty' out but you know.

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

― joe, Tuesday, August 16, 2011 12:46 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

haha this was one of the redactions.

The decision is inconsistent. because [ redacted ] and other members of staff were carrying out the same illegal procedures…. This practice was widely discussed in the daily editorial conference, until explicit reference to it was banned by the Editor. As far as I am aware, no other member of staff has faced disciplinary action, much less dismissal.

Phone hacking: Reports of James Desborough arrest

51yo detective arrested on suspicion of leaking to the guardian.

weird. i mean it was obvious they had police sources, but i don't see how that's an arrestable offence unless they were bribed, which the guardian can't afford even if it wanted to. this seems to make being a journalistic source an offence. #chillingeffect

possibly a contempt of court issue

i'd be surprised, it seems to be about the names of hacking arrestees, which would come out before any court case anyway - they can't prejudice the trial. maybe the cop didn't have direct knowledge of the arrests and improperly accessed the police database? idk, but it goes to show why this stuff was never touched by papers in the first place, the line between a reporter's "ratlike cunning" and "criminal conspiracy" is a bit fine in some instances.

what's the charge?

duh, ignore me. arrested, not charged.

just checked, press gazette explains it's for "misconduct in a public office". sounds like doing it for a leaking prosecution is somewhat overzealous. CPS guidelines say:

The culpability '... must be of such a degree that the misconduct impugned is calculated to injure the public interest so as to call for condemnation and punishment' (R v Dytham 1979 QB 722).

The fact that a public officer has acted in a way that is in breach of his or her duties, or which might expose him/her to disciplinary proceedings, is not in itself enough to constitute the offence.

Examples of behaviour that have in the past fallen within the offence include:

wilful excesses of official authority;
'malicious' exercises of official authority;
wilful neglect of a public duty;
intentional infliction of bodily harm, imprisonment, or other injury upon a person;
frauds and deceits.

i reckon that either sue akers has gone a bit bonkers in her aim to be whiter-than-white or there's a bit of pressure from somewhere to advance the narrative that "they're all at it" and diffuse the blame and outrage.

taking money to reveal information that ought to be private has been a criminal offence for >100 years for some stupid reason

that's why everyone gets up in arms when you post 77 posts on the excelsior thread

xp but there's no suggestion the cop was paid, all the bribery arrests have been under the prevention of corruption act not misconduct in a public office.

i mean, the CPS decided that the guy who assaulted ian tomlinson didn't meet the threshold for misconduct in a public office so

So apparently Coulson was still receiving payments from News Int even after he started working for Cameron. Lots of "call me cynical but..." type comments on twitter about how convenient for Peston's NI buds that he put this out tonight when everyone's preoccupied with Libya

er "how convenient it is", that should be.

i was just thinking about the vetting thing; did that ever go anywhere? the last time i was tuned in it was those letters rebounding between the g & #10, repeatedly asking questions about who knew what. i don't know whether it somehow proved a dead end or is just in limbo. it def seemed strange that he wasn't vetted to the level of the guy he succeeded, or his successor, but doubly so considering that he was a guy whom there were allegations about previously

Conservative party sources insisted on Monday night they had no knowledge of any News International payments made to Coulson, after checks were made with every senior party official who might have been involved in hiring him in 2007.

it's weird that the vetting process didn't pick up on... oh

i was just thinking about the vetting thing; did that ever go anywhere? the last time i was tuned in it was those letters rebounding between the g & #10, repeatedly asking questions about who knew what. i don't know whether it somehow proved a dead end or is just in limbo.

Think this government is using the time honoured tactic of not answering questions. Once again, where are you Liberal fucking Democrats? I'm sure it did happen under New Labour (they employed Alastair Campbell after all), but it seems like these days I'm constantly hearing broadcasters saying, "We asked the government to respond, but no-one was available."

oh yeah but, for the duration that the story was developing the guardian seemed to make real, incremental progress, with the crowdsourcing of vetted staff done through the blog & everything else. and i know there were editorials contrasting it with cameron's commitment to transparency. it's just frustrating that being walled off seems to have frozen the actual story. through this, at least, the guardian have been the most valuable 'opposition' in the place of an opposition party or coalition partner

Riots + Libya + what have you. Hasn't gone away though.

Interesting that Robert Peston broke this story. A deliberate attempt to break away from the "Chipping Norton set", perhaps?

if you want an example of LOTS HAPPENS nothing seems to happen LOTS HAPPENS then libya should cheer you up: things don't need to be in the papers to be happening

i would actually be glad of a rest, a week without news please

"Good evening. Today is Good Friday. There is no news.

http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/laurie-penny/2011/08/interview-prison-murdoch

piet-throwing man called 'activist'

I came to meet him on the day of his release from Wandsworth Prison,

But why, Laurie? Why?

what did you do in the revolution, daddy?

I just turned up, and suddenly I'm running through the woods being chased by horses, trying to improvise consensus decision-making with people I'd never met before.

Before that, Come Dine With Me is what we were mainly watching. Endless, endless episodes of Come Dine With Me.

don't remember that bit in Bronson

Your real name is Jonathan May-Bowles. Are you secretly posh?

Cutting edge stuff this

RIP print journalism

Multiple xp's:

Interesting that Robert Peston broke this story. A deliberate attempt to break away from the "Chipping Norton set", perhaps?

Could be, but I guess the counterargument to that might be that they knew it was going to come out eventually, so they might as well put it out in a controlled-ish way, at the most politically expedient time (i.e. when, as Tom D says upthread, everyone's too busy with riots + libya, and perhaps also a bit of hackgate-fatigue has set in).

former colleague of stuart kuttner, NOTW managing editor, dishes the dirt:

A greasy yob who wore handmade Lobb shoes, Kuttner’s main aim in life was to expose MPs in their liaisons with rent boys and call girls.

His Pandora’s box of bugging devices was legendary. As was his habit of parading in drag as a prostitute on the streets of Mayfair’s Shepherd Market, supposedly on undercover missions to spot unwary pillars of society at play. A staff photographer covering a story about prostitution thought he’d found a beauty lurking in a doorway and snapped off a few frames. “It’s me you fool!” hissed an enraged Kuttner.

the whole thing is worth a read:

http://www.noseweek.co.za/article/2580/Out-on-a-limb

There's a new mea culpa culture at the Financial Times. Weeks after the newspaper printed the word "Murdock" on a front-page sub headline about the News Corp boss's appearance at the media select committee, the repercussions at the pink'un go on. Martin Dickson, the deputy editor, who was in charge on the fateful night, summoned the page one editor into his office and gave him a first official warning for not spotting the typo that appeared in the first edition. When the production editor heard about the bollocking, he told Dickson that he was also to blame – so he got a written warning too. News then reached the hapless sub editor who actually wrote the word, so he went to see Dickson – and got an official warning as well. If the guy who sells the first editions outside Waterloo station wants to pop into the FT offices … you can probably guess the rest.