LONDON — A damning report on the hacking scandal at Rupert Murdoch’s British newspapers concluding that Murdoch is “not a fit person’’ to run a huge international company has convulsed the political and media worlds in Britain and threatens a core asset of Murdoch’s US-based News Corp....
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"Hacking case turns eye on ex-editor, ties to Cameron" by Alan Cowell and John F. Burns | New York Times, May 11, 2012
LONDON - After months of testimony in the phone-hacking scandal, focused mostly on the inner workings of Rupert Murdoch’s businesses here, a judicial inquiry resumed hearings Thursday that delved into the extent of personal ties between Murdoch’s British newspaper executives and Prime Minister David Cameron and included revelations of surprising looseness for the security clearance of Cameron’s press secretary.
On Thursday, the so-called Leveson Inquiry, which heard evidence from Murdoch and his son, James, last month, summoned Andy Coulson, a former editor of the Sunday tabloid News of the World who became Cameron’s communications director while Cameron was the opposition leader in Parliament and later when he became prime minister. That appointment came under scrutiny because of Coulson’s ties to News International, the British newspaper subsidiary of Murdoch’s News Corp., based in New York.
On Thursday, Robert Jay, the government’s lead counsel at the inquiry, raised questions about Coulson’s relatively low security clearance - lower than is usual for his role at 10 Downing Street - which the government has defended as adequate because he did not have unsupervised access to highly sensitive material.
Coulson replied: “I may have done, yes.’’
Coulson also spoke to the inquiry Thursday about his appointment in May 2007, shortly after he resigned the editorship of the now-defunct News of the World because of earlier questions about phone hacking that led to the brief imprisonment of the newspaper’s royals reporter, Clive Goodman, and a private investigator, Glenn Mulcaire.
Coulson said he had been initially reluctant but intrigued by the Conservatives’ apparent interest in hiring him to handle communications in 2007.
Coulson stayed with Cameron through the Conservatives’ electoral success that brought the British leader to power in a coalition with the junior Liberal Democrats in May 2010. But, eight months later, he quit as the hacking scandal erupted again.
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"Murdoch aide details links with politicians; Tells inquiry of e-mail, parties" by Sarah Lyall | New York times, May 12, 2012
LONDON - They kept in touch, she said Friday, by telephone, text message, and e-mail. They met at lunches and dinners. They socialized at cocktail parties, birthday parties, summer outings, Christmas celebrations, and, in one heady instance, on a yacht in Greece.
So chummy were the relations between Britain’s political leaders and Rebekah Brooks, a former chief executive of Rupert Murdoch’s British newspaper subsidiary, that at one point Brooks found herself cheekily lecturing a future prime minister, David Cameron, about how to avoid humiliating himself by text message, she said.
“Occasionally he would sign them LOL - ‘lots of love,’ ’’
Brooks told the Leveson Inquiry on media ethics and practices, speaking
of Cameron’s text messages to her when he was the leader of the
opposition, “until I told him it meant ‘laugh out loud.’ Then he didn’t
use that any more.’’
By her account, when political leaders were not arranging birthday parties for her or meeting her for cozy private dinners or sending her notes or attending her wedding, she was picking up the phone to chat with them - or sometimes to cajole or strong-arm them into seeing things her way.
Queen Rebekah!!
But even as she described all that, Brooks repeatedly declared that they did not have to listen to her if they did not want to, and that the British media did not exert any special influence over politicians. When Robert Jay, the counsel for the inquiry, put it to her that media executives and editors were “unelected forces’’ influencing policy by exercising power over governments, Brooks said she disagreed.
They are a mouthpiece; however, because they are a Zionist tool and not a government one, they can destroy a government if it doesn't toe the line.
“Your power is your readership,’’ she said. “It’s not an individual power. It’s a readership power.’’ And, she said, “every day, the readers can unelect us’’ by deciding not to buy the paper.
I would like to thank you for being here, dear reader.
That other bit advice is coming soon, Globe.
Brooks, 43, has became a central figure in the phone-hacking scandal that has swept through News Corp., Murdoch’s company, and the upper echelons of Britain’s political and law-enforcement elite. A Murdoch confidante and favorite, she worked as editor of News of the World, the paper at the center of the scandal, and of The Sun, another Murdoch tabloid, before being appointed chief executive of News International, the British newspaper subsidiary, in 2009.
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Related: Why Bother Voting in Britain?
To see the links?
Britain's Shadow Royalty
The real shadow royalty: The Rothschild family
Next Day Update:
"The decision to prosecute Rebekah and Charlie Brooks was seen as a blow to Rupert and James Murdoch, who put Rebekah Brooks on the fast track to one of the most powerful positions in the News Corp. worldwide empire and who have stood by her as the scandal has grown. It was a blow, too, to Cameron. By his account and Rebekah Brooks’s, he has maintained a cozy social relationship with her and Charlie Brooks, a prominent racehorse trainer, when he was in the opposition and, since 2010, as prime minister....
Have they been in power that long?
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