"UK tabloid editor defends his ethics" Associated Press, January 13, 2012
LONDON - A former tabloid newspaper editor told Britain’s media ethics inquiry yesterday that he published an inflammatory story about the parents of a missing girl because he thought there was a possibility the story could be true.
The unfounded Daily Express story suggested that Kate and Gerry McCann, the parents of schoolgirl Madeleine McCann who disappeared from a Portugal resort, might have been linked to her 2007 abduction and possible death.
The Daily Express newspaper had to make a front-page apology and pay a substantial settlement to the parents, but former chief editor Peter Hill said he felt the “stories should be published because there was reason to believe they might possibly be true.’’
That's better than what we got for all the war lies the newspapers told, Americans.
Hell, they are still telling them.
The inquiry stems from public anger about the phone hacking scandal, which saw reporters and private detectives hack into the voice mail systems of celebrities, sports stars, crime victims, and royal aides.
Another tabloid editor, Dawn Neesom of the Daily Star, testified that reporters do exaggerate headlines, dramatize reporting, and occasionally go too far. She said stories are written “to put a smile on people’s faces.’’
Does it look like we are smiling at your shit rags out here?
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"Police arrest 5 as hacking scandal spreads to Sun tabloid" January 29, 2012|By John F. Burns
LONDON - A Scotland Yard team investigating the bribery of police officers by journalists searched the offices of Rupert Murdoch’s flagship British tabloid, The Sun, yesterday after arresting a police officer and four men identified as current or former journalists at the paper. A police statement said searches were also being conducted at the homes of the arrested men.
You don't see a lot about that.
Related(?):
"London’s police force.... repeatedly overlooked evidence of widespread illegal behavior at the News of the World - apparently in a bid to not antagonize Murdoch’s powerful media empire.... Details of senior officers’ professional and social links to Murdoch’s newspaper arm have also embarrassed police."
Is that why?
The arrests appeared to mark an intensification of the police investigation into the role of The Sun, Britain’s highest circulation daily newspaper, in the illegal news-gathering techniques that prompted Murdoch, 80, to close The Sun’s sister newspaper, the weekend News of the World, last summer. Police investigations of wrongdoing at News of the World, involving the illegal hacking of cellphone voicemail messages and the alleged bribery of police officers for leaking confidential information, have led to the arrest of more than a dozen reporters, editors, executives, and others who worked for that paper....
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Also see:
Slow Saturday Special: No More News of the World
Sunday Globe Special: Stop the Presses!
The Fall of Another English Empire
Hacking Away at the U.K.
Britain's Tabloid Testimony
British Phone Booth
Can't Read British Text Message
Phone's dead anyway.
"E-mail to Murdoch’s son on hacking deleted" by New York Times | February 02, 2012
LONDON - An e-mail telling Rupert Murdoch’s son James that phone hacking might be “rife’’ at News of the World was deleted from his computer less than a week before the police opened their current investigation into the phone hacking scandal, lawyers said yesterday.
The deletion was part of an “e-mail stabilization and modernization program’’ in which a number of accounts were “being prepared for the migration to a new e-mail system,’’ said Linklaters, a law firm representing News International, the British newspaper arm of the Murdoch media empire.
The e-mail in question was a chain of messages sent in 2008 to James Murdoch, who runs News Corp.’s European and Asian operations, warning that the potential legal fallout from hacking at one of the corporation’s newspapers, News of the World, was “as bad as we feared.’’
In response, Murdoch said that while he received and responded to the e-mail, he did not scroll all the way down through the chain and so did not read everything in it.
The disclosure of the deletion came in a letter from Linklaters to the House of Commons Committee on Culture, Media, and Sport, which is investigating phone hacking.
The letter says that the deletion occurred on Jan. 15, 2011.
The date is important because Operation Weeting, the police investigation into phone hacking at News of the World, began 11 days later.
The letter also disclosed that the e-mail became known only because a hard copy was found in a storage crate.
A spokeswoman for News International said the company had no comment and would not discuss what other e-mails might have been deleted at the time.
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I'll always like James, and here is why:
“Murdoch said he didn't see what the Palestinians' problem was and James said it was that they were kicked out of their f---ing homes and had nowhere to f---ing live,” said the account in The Guardian."
Maybe that's why the scandal is in the papers, 'eh? Can't take a chance on the son after the old man dies.
"Police inquiry targets Times of London" Associated Press, February 03, 2012
LONDON - Police are investigating alleged e-mail interception by Rupert Murdoch’s Times of London, a British lawmaker said yesterday - dragging Britain’s oldest national newspaper into scandal over press wrongdoing.
The country’s media ethics inquiry has summoned the newspaper’s editor to answer questions about the claims.
Labor Party legislator Tom Watson, who helped lift the lid on tabloid phone hacking, released a letter from police confirming they were investigating alleged e-mail hacking by The Times. Watson, a member of Parliament’s Culture, Media and Sport committee, had written to police asking them to take up the issue.
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Hey, look what was just lying around:
"UK paper says it got Olympic security data" January 18, 2012
LONDON - A British tabloid reported yesterday that it had been handed documents about security arrangements for the London Olympics that were left on a train by a police officer, the latest in a series of embarrassing mishaps involving British authorities misplacing government documents....
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