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Tag: phone hacking scandal

Designer Accepts Damages Over Tabloid Hacking

LONDON (AP) — Interior designer Kelly Hoppen has accepted 60,000 pounds ($93,000) in damages for phone hacking from the publisher of the News of the World, lawyers for both sides said Friday.

Hoppen, former stepmother of actress Sienna Miller, is one of scores of people accusing the tabloid of eavesdropping on cell phone voicemails. Her case was due to go to court in January.

Her lawyer, Mark Thomson, told a preliminary hearing that the paper’s publisher had agreed to pay Hoppen the damages, plus legal costs.

He said that between 2004 and 2006, Hoppen was the subject of numerous articles in the paper “which contained intrusive and private information.”

“The claimant did not know the source of this information at the time of publication and often could not understand how it was possible for the News of the World to obtain such private information,” Thomson said.

He said police in February told Hoppen they had found evidence she had been targeted by the newspaper, an allegation the tabloid later admitted.

Michael Silverleaf, lawyer for the tabloid’s publisher, confirmed that “the parties have agreed to settle their differences” and offered a “sincere and unreserved apology” to Hoppen.

More than 60 people have filed court papers alleging their phones were hacked by the News of the World, which was shut down by owner Rupert Murdoch in July after evidence emerged that its reporters had eavesdropped on the telephone voice mail messages of Milly Dowler, a 13-year-old who disappeared in 2002 and was later found murdered.

The revelation — and mounting evidence that phone hacking was routine at the newspaper — shook Murdoch’s media empire, and sent tremors through Britain’s political, police and media establishments.

News Corp. Nixes Hacking Joke At Emmy Awards

Sunday night’s Emmy Awards broadcast had glitz, gowns, glamour… and censorship.

Alec Baldwin had planned to make a joke about News Corp.’s recent phone-hacking scandal during the awards show’s opening sketch. FOX, which is owned by News Corp., removed the joke from the previously recorded skit. A network spokeswoman said the decision was made because the company did not want to appear to be making light of the serious hacking allegations.

According to The New York Times, “In the skit, Mr. Baldwin played the ‘president of television.’ While on the phone with an unidentified colleague, he paused and said, ‘Rupert, is that you? I hear you breathing, Rupert!’ The chairman and chief executive of the News Corporation is Rupert Murdoch.”

News of the World, a British News Corp. paper, was shut down this summer following reports that the paper had illegally eavesdropped on several occasions, including hacking into the phones of celebrities and victims’ families. The investigation is ongoing.

After the network cut the joke, Baldwin pulled out of the skit altogether. The sketch was re-filmed without the hacking joke, and Star Trek veteran Leonard Nimoy took over the role. Baldwin did not attend the Emmys, saying he had a prior commitment and insisting that his decision was unrelated to the News Corp. incident.

30 Rock, the NBC comedy in which Baldwin plays a General Electric boss who meddles in a television show, often takes jabs at NBC and network politics. Apparently, Murdoch and Co. lack NBC’s sense of humor.

On Sunday night, Baldwin wrote on Twitter that he understood why News Corp. killed his joke: “If I were enmeshed in a scandal where I hacked phones of families of innocent crime victims purely for profit, I’d want that to go away too.”

Whether watching awards shows or singing along to “Glee,” it’s easy to forget that FOX is owned by News Corp. But even when it comes to entertainment, viewers should always be aware of what message the networks are sending– and what they aren’t letting others say.

Documents Cast New Doubt on James Murdoch’s Denial Of Knowledge Of Phone-Hacking

LONDON (AP) — Lawyers and former executives have cast fresh doubt on the denials made by Rupert and James Murdoch over Britain’s phone hacking scandal, raising the prospect that the media tycoon’s son could be recalled for a new grilling by U.K. legislators.

In written testimony released by lawmakers Tuesday, former Murdoch lieutenants poked holes in the dramatic testimony delivered by their ex-bosses before Parliament last month, accusing them of misrepresentations, exaggerations and more.

Claims made by the Murdochs carried “serious inaccuracies,” ex-News International lawyer Jonathan Chapman said in a letter to the House of Commons’ media committee, rejecting the notion that the two had been kept in the dark by subordinates.

“Nobody kept Mr. James Murdoch or any other News International/News Corporation executives from being in full possession of the facts,” he said.

Other former executives contradicted James Murdoch’s assertion that he hadn’t been aware of a critical piece of evidence implying that illegal eavesdropping had been far more widespread than News International had previously claimed. The evidence, contained in an email apparently addressed to a senior News of the World reporter, appeared to rip apart the company’s fiercely-held claim that the illegal espionage campaign was limited to former royal editor Clive Goodman, who’d already been jailed over the practice.

James Murdoch told lawmakers he wasn’t aware of the email at the time, but his former legal adviser Tom Crone said that he’d specifically flagged it to his attention during a brief meeting in June of 2008.

“I have no doubt that I informed Mr. Murdoch of its existence, of what it was and where it came from,” Crone said in a letter.

Some of the most scathing attacks on Rupert Murdoch came from his former law firm, Harbottle & Lewis, which accused his company of misusing its legal advice.

The London-based firm said it was asked to perform a narrow review of emails at the News of the World following an employment claim made by Goodman, who’d lost his job after pleading guilty to phone hacking in 2007.

In Parliament, both Murdochs presented this as evidence that Harbottle & Lewis had thoroughly vetted the paper — something the law firm rejected.

“There was absolutely no question of the firm being asked to provide News International with a clean bill of health,” the law firm said in a statement. It denied Rupert Murdoch’s assertion before Parliament that Harbottle & Lewis was commissioned to “find out what the hell was going on” after Goodman’s conviction, saying that if it had in fact been asked to do what the elder Murdoch described, it would have refused.

“It appears there has been some confusion in the mind of Mr. Rupert Murdoch, or perhaps he has been misinformed, about the role of the firm,” it added.

The attacks on the Murdochs’ testimony are latest to pile the pressure on News Corp., which has already had to close the News of the World tabloid and scupper its multibillion pound (dollar) bid for satellite broadcaster BSkyB as the scandal rumbled on through the summer.

The controversy — which centers on allegations that reporters routinely listened to phone messages of public figures and bribed police officers to score scoops — has also claimed the jobs of Prime Minister David Cameron’s top media aide, two top Scotland Yard officials and several long-serving newspaper journalists.

The near-daily revelations about past misbehavior have largely stopped, but the focus is shifting to the issue of whether James and Rupert Murdoch told the truth when they denied knowing what was going on at their newspapers.

Former newspaper editor Paul Connew told Sky News television that the publication of the new allegations that the pair misled Parliament “has been one of the startling developments of the saga so far.” He predicted that Rupert Murdoch “will have to look very carefully at whether James’ position is tenable.”

The long-simmering scandal was first aired in 2006, when Goodman was arrested.

The correspondence released Tuesday included a 4-year-old letter by Goodman warning of what many have long suspected — and what News International has long denied — that eavesdropping was widely used at the News of the World and that senior figures there approved the practice.

The letter also alleges that Goodman was repeatedly promised his job back as long as he did not implicate anyone else at the News of the World during his trial — buttressing allegations that the newspaper group had tried to buy his silence.

“If Goodman’s letter is accurate … the whole foundation of the company’s defense for the last three years collapses,” opposition lawmaker Tom Watson told Sky. “Day by day, week by week, we’re slowly getting the facts.”

Watson was one of the committee members who said it was likely to recall James Murdoch to answer more questions about phone hacking at the News of the World, telling journalists earlier that “it is likely we will take Murdoch back.”

“There seems to be a question as to whether James Murdoch himself misled the committee,” Watson said. “We have not reached a conclusion on that.”

Committee Chairman John Whittingdale said there are no plans to recall Rupert Murdoch, who gave evidence to the committee alongside his son on July 19.

Meanwhile, police are investigating claims the News of the World illegally accessed cell phone messages and bribed police to get information on celebrities, politicians and crime victims.

News International said in a statement Tuesday that “we recognize the seriousness of materials disclosed to the police and Parliament and are committed to working in a constructive and open way with all the relevant authorities.”

It did not address the specifics of the allegations made against the Murdochs.

What Fox News Isn’t

A few words on what Fox News is.

The question has, of course, been debated forever. Fox says it is, as the name would suggest, a news network. Its critics say it is actually the propaganda arm of the Republican Party and that its highest loyalty is not to accuracy, fairness or other journalistic values but to the furtherance of the party line. Not that any sentient life form should need the help, but events have recently arranged themselves such as to make painfully obvious which view is truth and which is tripe.

As it happens, one of the biggest news stories of the past few weeks has been the phone-hacking scandal that now ensnares media baron Rupert Murdoch. For those who somehow missed it, it involves revelations that reporters at Murdoch’s News of the World British tabloid routinely paid police sources for information and hacked into people’s cellphones, including that of a murdered 13-year-old girl.

That’s led to the shutdown of the 168-year-old newspaper, a spate of resignations and arrests, hearings in Parliament, rumored hearings in Congress and criminal investigations here and in the UK. This story is a gift from the news gods, and any news organization worthy of the name would jump on it like a trampoline. Most have. Fox has not.

The Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism just surveyed reportage of the story in two time frames: July 6-8 and 11-15. In that period, according to Pew, CNN devoted almost 170 minutes to the story, MSNBC about 145. Fox? About 30. That bears repeating: One of the biggest stories of the summer gets, over the course of six days, a half-hour of attention from Fox “News.”

Now, let us be fair and balanced here. Fox is owned by Murdoch, and the last thing any news organization wants is to be in the awkward position of reporting on itself. To have to air that which might embarrass or damage colleagues or bosses is the definition of a no-win situation, especially since there will always be doubts, from within and without, about your ability to do so fairly. But when professionalism demands, this is what you do.

When CBS News’ report on President George W. Bush’s service in the Texas Air National Guard turned out not to be credible, CBS reported it.

When Jayson Blair hoodwinked and humiliated the New York Times, the New York Times reported it.

When NPR was mortified by a deceptively edited hidden camera sting, NPR reported it.

Fox’s failure to report — and allow viewers to decide — speaks volumes and offers a definitive answer to the question of what Fox is.

It is the nation’s leading manufacturer of false outrage and fake fury — War on Christmas! War on Christmas! — the top supplier of bogeymen for those who need to feel terrorized in order to feel alive.

It is America’s No. 1 distributor of misinformation — Hide Nana! The death panels are coming! — a warehouse of conspiracy theories, junk history and dubious “facts” given credit by virtually no one who does not watch Fox.

It is a noisemaker, a box of cacophony from which reason will seldom emerge unscathed. And it is a bovine excreta machine.

But a news organization? No. That is a designation you have to earn.

Step 1: Report the news.

Leonard Pitts is a columnist for the Miami Herald, 1 Herald Plaza, Miami, Fla., 33132. Readers may contact him via e-mail at lpitts@miamiherald.com.

(c) 2011 The Miami Herald Distributed by Tribune Media Services, Inc.