Just be careful what you text or say on your phone.
"Hacking reported at more UK papers" by Alan Cowell New York Times / November 15, 2011
Records of illicit intercepts of phone messages presented to a judge’s inquiry on Monday appear to show that the practice was widespread at other newspapers besides News of the World, the tabloid that Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. empire shut down in July over the scandal.
Robert Jay, a lawyer for the inquiry, presented extensive written records of phone hacking not just at News of the World but also at another Murdoch-owned tabloid, The Sun, and at a rival paper, The Daily Mirror, owned by Trinity Mirror.
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Related: 'Cottage Industry' of Illegality Cited at News of the World
A total rewrite from what is in my printed paper with my marked paragraphs excised. WTF?
Jay said that notes kept by Glenn Mulcaire, a private investigator jailed in 2007 for hacking into voice-mail accounts of members of the royal family, showed that such tactics were used at News of the World on a much wider scale than previously known....
Notice how it never was an issue until the elite were spied on?
For years, News International argued that the hacking was restricted to a single "rogue" reporter, Clive Goodman, the former royal correspondent for News of the World; he was jailed along with Mulcaire. The records disclosed yesterday seemed to contradict that assertion in a sweeping way....
Another "lone gunmen," 'eh?
The inquires have inspired debate about the relationship between privacy and the press and the extent to which Britain's self-regulating news media should be subject to oversight.
The central issue, Lord Justice Brian Leveson said, could be "one simple question: Who guards the guardians?"
Well, judge, that would be BLOGGERS, wouldn't it? That is why YOU and I are HERE, readers!!!
The judge praised freedom of expression and freedom of the press as "fundamental to our democracy and fundamental to our way of life."
But, he said, press freedom needed to be balanced against individual rights.
All hand-typed, folks.
And I'm sorry for my lack of enthusiasm for the Globe; they are being discarded just as often as a tabloid would be here.
"Hugh Grant testifies on aggressive tactics of British tabloids" November 22, 2011|By John F. Burns, New York Times
LONDON - Actor Hugh Grant said yesterday that British tabloid newspapers had broken into his home, accessed medical records, and menaced his family as part of a “cowardly, bullying, and shocking’’ press culture whose targets were not just celebrities, politicians, and the police, but also people left vulnerable by misfortune.
They also have a war-mongering media?
And have you noticed the POLICE ASPECT is not a focus?
Through two hours of testimony before an official inquiry into press practices, Grant raised new accusations that broadened the debate to include all of the mass-circulation British tabloids, not just those owned by News Corp., Rupert Murdoch’s media empire. Grant displayed a barely contained animosity toward press intrusion that contrasted starkly with the boyish congeniality of his film roles.
I don't contain mine. Who likes being lied to and manipulated?
The inquiry was prompted by accusations that News of the World, the weekly tabloid that News Corp. shut down in July, had intercepted the voicemail messages of nearly 6,000 people, including Grant and some of his former girlfriends.
But many of his accusations yesterday were aimed at The Daily Mail and The Mail on Sunday, two papers belonging to Associated Newspapers that are among the best-selling in Britain; they had previously been untainted by the phone hacking scandal....
If they had hacked into war criminal messages or banksters communications that would have been fine, but this.... pffffft!
In a statement issued shortly after his testimony yesterday, The Mail on Sunday denied hacking his phone and said its information had come instead from a freelance journalist who spoke to a source close to Khan. “Mr. Grant’s allegations are mendacious smears driven by his hatred of the media,’’ the paper said.
Think anyone is going to believe them?
And did you EVER THINK there was a REASON we HATE YOU?
At the inquiry, Grant, 51, insisted that he was not pursuing a vendetta against the press over coverage of a 1995 scandal, when police in Los Angeles caught Grant in a car with a prostitute he picked up on Sunset Boulevard and he was fined $1,180.
“I totally expected there to be a press storm’’ after that, he said, and he saw the matter as fair game.
Who cares about such diversionary crap?
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"Parents of missing UK child call for media tactic changes" November 24, 2011|By Jill Lawless, Associated Press
LONDON - The parents of missing child Madeleine McCann called yesterday for fundamental changes to Britain’s media culture, saying they were left distraught by false stories and the publication of private information by a rapacious tabloid press.
Seems to be a quality that affects all corporate media these days.
Kate and Gerry McCann told a media ethics inquiry that they felt powerless in the face of stories, based on confected evidence, suggesting they had killed their daughter, who vanished during the British family’s vacation in Portugal in 2007.
That means BULLS***!!!
The disappearance of the 3-year-old, and her parents’ search for her, fueled a media frenzy.
“Lives are being harmed by these stories, and something has to change,’’ Gerry McCann said. “A commercial imperative is not acceptable.’’
Related: Missing Baby's Birthday
The couple appeared as witnesses at an inquiry set up by Prime Minister David Cameron in response to a scandal over phone hacking by journalists at the now-shuttered News of the World tabloid. A judge at London’s Royal Courts of Justice has heard evidence from celebrities, including actor Hugh Grant and comedian Steve Coogan, and from ordinary people like the McCanns left bruised by unwanted media attention.
The McCanns, both 43, said press coverage of Madeleine’s disappearance was initially sympathetic but soon changed, with some articles implying the parents were hiding something.
That's why anytime the media gets near you tell them to fuck off.
One story said the couple had sold their daughter into slavery, another that they had killed her and hid her body in a freezer.
Gerry McCann and his wife said they felt powerless to do anything about the coverage.
“These were desperate times,’’ she said. “When it’s your voice against a powerful media, it just doesn’t hold weight.’’
Not individually; however, it CAN COLLECTIVELY!! BLOGS have PROVEN THAT!
The couple successfully sued several British newspapers over suggestions that they had caused their daughter’s death and then covered it up.
Sounds like a thing a government would do, not parents.
Two, the Daily Express and the Daily Star, were forced to print front-page apologies to the McCanns.
Have they ever apologized for all the Iraq war lies?
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Btw, how is that commission coming? They put out a report yet?
"J.K. Rowling, Sienna Miller testify on UK tabloid tactics" November 25, 2011|By Jill Lawless, Associated Press
LONDON - Author J.K. Rowling and actress Sienna Miller gave a London courtroom a vivid picture yesterday of the anxiety, anger, and fear produced by living in the glare of Britain’s tabloid media, describing how press intrusion made them feel like prisoners in their own homes....
The pair were among a diverse cast of witnesses - Hollywood star Hugh Grant, a former soccer player, a former aide to supermodel Elle Macpherson, and the parents of missing and murdered children - who have described how becoming the focus of Britain’s tabloid press wreaked havoc on their lives.
Rowling said she was completely unprepared for the media attention she began to receive when her first book, “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone,’’ became a sensation. The seven Potter books have sold more than 450 million copies, spawned a hit movie series, and propelled Rowling from struggling single mother to one of Britain’s richest people....
Prime Minister David Cameron set up the inquiry amid a still-unfolding scandal about illegal eavesdropping by the News of the World tabloid. Owner Rupert Murdoch closed the newspaper in July after evidence emerged that it had illegally accessed the cellphone voicemails of celebrities, politicians, and crime victims in its search of scoops.
Of course, when government agencies do it, it's okay.
More than a dozen News of the World journalists and editors have been arrested, and the scandal has also claimed the jobs of two top London police officers, Cameron’s media adviser, and senior Murdoch executives.
Again, notice how the POLICE ASPECT is MINIMIZED?!!!
It has also set off national soul-searching about the balance between press freedom and individual privacy....
How does breaking the law fit into balance?
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Globe is starting to look more and more like People Magazine.
