The hacking scandal
 

To summarise this:

A UK tabloid which is a part of News Int'l/News Corp has stood accused of phone hacking for several years.

The story has trundled along (largely due to Sienna Miller in my opinion, who has relentlessly pursued News Intl, and also Hugh Grant) for at least a couple of years, but the story went critical about a week ago when it was alleged that the paper had hacked the phone of a missing 13 year old girl (who was in fact murdered) The paper also was accused of deleting messages on the phone to free space in the mailbox - thus giving her parents false hope she still had access to the phone and potentially misleading the police investigation.

This sparked a wave of outrage, and a UK based web community for "yummy mummy's" lead an targeted protest against every major advertiser who paid for ads in the News of the World. Murdoch reacted by closing the paper down (but at the same time registering a web domain for a sister paper to potentially go to a 7 day operation and fill the void that the NOTW would leave) but insisted he would not accept the chief executives resigination.

She (Rebekah Brooks) has now gone, and also been arrested and questioned under caution, as have several other leading people in News Intl.

Murdoch Sr and Jr will sit before a select committee tomorrow.

Every day fresh attacks have come against News Intl every day since, from Gordon Brown and from other media sources especially (Brown reported that NOTW illegally obtained info about his seriously ill son and published it)

The two most senior police in the Met (London police force) have been forced to resign today over allegations of corruption and the fact they employed an ex senior NOTW employee. It is well known that Andy Coulson (ex editor of NOTW at the time) was employed by David Cameron and he is coming under increasing pressue.

If it is a straight up fight now, which it seems to be descending to, I am not sure that I would pack Cameron against Digger myself.

From a US perspective, some of the allegations relate to hacking the relatives of 9/11 victims.

I wonder if this is our Watergate... an incident that initially appears minor which leads the whole pack of cards to come tumbling down.

Also, one of the first whistle blowers has been found dead in his home today. Media sources saying that he had a drink problem and had been seriously ill, but all the same...


__


I'm curious how big a story this is in the US and other states? And whether the story is centred on Murdoch outside of the UK, or on the general issue about how a free press can be held to obey the law.

I posted something in discussion calling the NOTW the scum of the eath when the allegations about Milly Dowler first came out... I never thought then that so many heads would have rolled and there are still so signs of the firestorm being stopped...

Front page news on NYT and Time magazine.

I reckon it's just another media feeding frenzy. Scandals are always so much fun. :)

Did anyone else see that the whistle blower for this was found dead? Cops said there was nothing suspicious, but I would think the timing alone would be suspicious.

He had made way too many enemies. Even the Police themselves were exposed.

I wouldn't want to be the one to investigate that crime in an official capacity.


The timing is both good and bad, why wouldn't the people who were behind the hacking wait a few more weeks if they in-fact were behind this? What other powerful people would protect Murdoch and do his dirty work? Did this guy have any other secrets?

I only hope the investigations spread and it damages Fox news enough to bring about a change.

If ANYONE doesnt believe that Murdoch (not directly of course) put the guy up to it who mushed a shaving foam pie into his face... well they must be a person with a very sweet and trusting nature.

Lots of pretty 20 something female reporters working in his papers who would talk some left wing layabout in teaching the dirty digger a lesson

End result - lots of sympathy for a man having the most "humble day of his life"

And lots of negative stuff on Cameron and what he knew about Coulson coming into the public domain... I'd almost like Murdoch if he managed to bring down the Con-Dem coalition.. Almost.

_

And from what I know, Sean Hoare was genuinely very ill.

But the timing of his death is suspicious. In his state of health perhaps he felt he had nothing left to lose, and perhaps some powerful people in the Met felt they had rather a lot to lose...

here's a useful timeline of the developments in the hacking scandal, courtesy of the guardian:

News of the World phone hacking ? interactive timeline | Media | guardian.co.uk

Sympathy... ha, I wish the pie was something else.

The problem with our justice system (and elsewhere around the world) is that a bunch of little hackers get arrested by the FBI for inconveniencing some big companies with crappy security. Yet, Murdoch and the big CEOs on Wall St. get to do major damage to society and will no face any time behind bars.

As for other hacking that News Int. probably did was the 'Climategate' e-mails... It turned out to be nothing, yet Fox News and his media organizations ran with it, even though the scientists did nothing wrong.