Murdoch struggles to control News Corp. as scandal escalates

[Turborama]

Source: Washington Post & Bloomberg

By Carol Hymowitz, Jeffrey McCracken and Amy Thomson, Published: July 18

-- News Corp.’s Rupert Murdoch is struggling to control the destiny of the company he began building six decades ago after a trusted deputy was arrested and Scotland Yard’s top official quit over ties to a suspect in the phone-hacking probe.

Independent directors of New York-based News Corp. have begun questioning the company’s response to the crisis and whether a leadership change is needed, said two people with direct knowledge of the situation who wouldn’t speak publicly. Rebekah Brooks, the former News International chief who Murdoch backed until last week, was arrested yesterday in London.

“The shell of invulnerability that Rupert Murdoch had around him has been cracked,” said James Post, a professor at Boston University’s School of Management who has written about governance and business ethics. “His credibility and the company’s credibility are hemorrhaging.”

Murdoch and his 38-year-old son, James Murdoch, are spending most of their time with advisers preparing for tomorrow’s hearing before a U.K. parliamentary committee. They will face questions over their role in and responsibility for phone hacking that took place at their now-defunct News of the World tabloid. The company took out advertisements in national U.K. newspapers this weekend to apologize for the scandal.

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/murdoch-struggles-to-control-news-corp-as-scandal-escalates/2011/07/18/gIQAUUTvLI_story.html

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ETA, the link above goes to page 1 of 3 and has a large photo of Murdoch's ugly mug at the top.

Here's the single page version, sans the ugly mugshot: http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/murdoch-struggles-to-control-news-corp-as-scandal-escalates/2011/07/18/gIQAUUTvLI_print.html

[beac]

1. Every day brings more and more coverage in the US. Even FAUX has been

forced to give it a cursory glance: http://www.foxnews.com/world/2011/07/18/former-ceo-brooks-wants-answers-about-her-arrest/?test=latestnews

LOL at their RIDICULOUS headline:

Former CEO Brooks Questions Police About Her Arrest

:rofl:

[OKIsItJustMe]

3. And (of course) It’s an AP story

It’s not as if FOX “News” had gone out of their way to cover this.

[midnight]

2. I had a quarantine removed from my wireless this morning...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quarantine


Quarantine is compulsory isolation, typically to contain the spread of something considered dangerous, often but not always disease. The word comes from the Italian (seventeenth century Venetian) quarantena, meaning forty-day period. Quarantine can be applied to humans, but also to animals of various kinds.

[apnu]

4. It couldn't have happened to a nicer guy (nt)

[Plucketeer]

5. Here's hoping

this is an unstoppable spiral towards Murdoch's demise. :nuke:

[Proletariatprincess]

6. Perhaps, when the Brits and the Aussies take action....

the USA will be embarrassed enough to take on Murdock. But US is pretty shameless, we may be disappointed again.

[Kingofalldems]

7. Fairness Doctrine needed now more than ever

[OKIsItJustMe]

8. Not so much fairness as truth

The federalists having failed in destroying the freedom of the press by their gag-law, seem to have attacked it in an opposite direction; that is by pushing its licentiousness and its lying to such a degree of prostitution as to deprive it of all credit. And the fact is that so abandoned are the tory presses in this particular, that even the least informed of the people have learned that nothing in a newspaper is to be believed. This is a dangerous state of things, and the press ought to be restored to its credibility if possible. The restraints provided by the laws of the States are sufficient for this, if applied. And I have, therefore, long thought that a few prosecutions of the most prominent offenders would have a wholesome effect in restoring the integrity of the presses. Not a general prosecution, for that would look like persecution; but a selected one.

—Thomas Jefferson
To Thomas McKean. Ford ed., viii, 218. (W., Feb. 1803.)