At the risk of beating the News of the World scandal to death, we’ll just point out a couple of other news items that hit our inbox over the weekend.
A group of News Corp. shareholders has filed claims in Delaware Chancery Court accusing the media giant of colossal corporate governance failures surrounding the phone hacking scandal that led to the closure of the 168-year-old tabloid. Shareholders charge that News Corp.’s board of directors “failed to exercise proper oversight and take sufficient action since news of the hackings first surfaced more than five years ago.”
News Corp. shares, which had been steadily climbing since mid-June, are off about 9% since the scandal broke last week. Shares of BSkyB, the satellite TV network that Murdoch is hoping to buy, have lost £2.75 billion in value since the scandal broke. Analysts are speculating that the losses could scuttle Murdoch’s bid, a situation the media mogul had hoped to avoid by shuttering News of the World.
News Corp. CEO Rebekah Brooks is facing police questioning and at least nine journalists and three police officers could face jail as the scandal unfolds, reports the Daily Mail. New e-mail evidence indicates that “four-figure payments” may have been made to police officers to ignore the activities of private investigators hired by the tabloid. The Telegraph says the payments may have totaled more than £100,000
Former News of the World editor Andy Coulson (right) was arrested by detectives investigating the phone hacking and illegal payments to police during his tenure as editor of the News of the World. The action is causing some embarrassment for British Prime Minister David Cameron, who hired Coulson as his press spokesman despite knowing about his involvement in the alleged scandal. (Telegraph photo)
And it gets worse. Rupert Murdoch’s son, James, could face criminal prosecution in both the UK and the US over the phone-hacking charges, several outlets report. James Murdoch is chairman of News International, the News Corp. subsidiary that owns News of the World. He has admitted to making out-of-court settlements to victims of the phone hacks and to misleading Parliament, although he maintains he didn’t do so deliberately. Murdoch is liable for prosecution in the US because News Corp. is listed on the NASDAQ stock exchange. “Under American law, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) makes it a crime for American companies to offer corrupt payments to foreign government officials,” says the Telegraph, which, like most British papers, is covering this scandal with gleeful abandon.
If you want more coverage of this unfolding story, follow it on Google News.
We are pleased to inform our readers that News of the World is not the same tabloid as Weekly World News, the US tabloid that has long been a crusader in its coverage of the threat of space aliens to our way of life. WWN is alive and well, and will continue in its mission to cover the stories that others fear to expose.
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This entry was posted on Monday, July 11th, 2011 at 9:38 am and is filed under Fake News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
The NewsOfTheWorld has never claimed to be as, uh, inventive as WeeklyWorldNews. (The finest investigative reporting organization on the planet -MenInBlack)
The image of Dick Cheney and the report that he is a cold heartless robot may not be exact but it might be accurate. 🙂
The problem with the NewsOfTheWorld is that, from the Murdochs to the mail room boys, they assumed powers normally only the purview of the state and, until Bush ][ and Cheney got rid of habea corpus and made toilet paper out of the shreds of the US constitution, only then after presentation of a subpoena.
We all know the joke about ass-u-me.
This time the joke is even more hilarious as vengeful Scotland Yard, Fleet Street and Houses of Parliament are sharpening the knives to carve out new rectums from the entire staff and administration of the now defunct NotW.
This is going to occupy the British news for some time, potentially years, as the American-cum-Australian Rupert Murdoch and his minions learn that payback is a bitch.
They are going to create nursery rhymes over this…
Guy Fawkes Night may just be supplanted or expanded to include poor ol’ Rupe.
[…] News of the World Scandal Deepens (newspaperdeathwatch.com) […]
The knives are becoming serrated, losing their edge as they get honed to laser sharpness while getting flats of flesh ripping notches.
Ol’ Rupert was heading out of the country when he suddenly turned around. Better to look contrite* in England and hope they don’t let him bleed to death while they rip him a new [expletive deleted].
Like all bullies, he’s suddenly trying to pose as the aggrieved party, something only the hacks in his pockets allege, but his minions, including a ginger-haired deer-in-the-headlights he’s going to regret ever hiring, who’s currently under lock and key in a London jail, are singing for all they’re worth and painting tales of terror in the newsrooms.
I can only wonder what [expletive deleted] dealings went on that the head of the Wall Street Journal resigned (prematurely since nothing had splashed on him yet.)
What fiscal perfidy had the felonious Rupert been engaged in with the WSJ. It is, or make that was read by the enfants terribles of the moneyed world.
Was Rupert running Pump ‘N Dump stock scams using the WSJ to hype the worthless?
Come to think of it, how much is/was News Corp stock really worth? … all along?
Is News Corp a house of cards and a tissue of lies.
*) The spin machine is ineffectually in motion here in the ‘States as his employees, the Fox news anchors who have given up any pretense of “fair and balanced” news reporting are trying to portray the oligarch as a victim of the phone system [expletive deleted] up perpetrated by by NotW minions at the behest of the corporate culture he himself brings to all of his enterprises.
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