08 July 2011

Britain's media earthquake

Britain is in the grip of a far-reaching scandal involving the Rupert Murdoch media empire. It has come out that employees of one of the country's largest newspapers, the notoriously-trashy News of the World (a Murdoch paper) have, for years, been hacking into the phone messages of thousands of people deemed newsworthy, ranging from celebrities to families of terrorism victims and of soldiers killed in action to a former Prime Minister. There have also been accusations of bribes paid to the police and deliberate destruction of evidence.

Britain's leading left-wing newspaper, The Guardian, is doggedly pursuing the story. The scandal has forced News of the World to go out of business, and may even have political implications. The paper's editor Andy Coulson, who has just been arrested, was until recently Director of Communications for the present Conservative Prime Minister, David Cameron -- who has ties with other figures from the Murdoch empire as well.

It's still unclear whether the Conservative government will be damaged by association -- but Murdoch's position is starting to look shaky.

3 Comments:

Blogger Leslie Parsley said...

I hope his empire shakes so hard it totally collapses. One can't help but wonder what kind of creepy activity his U.S. empire is engaged in. Further, would our government react in such a manner, if they do get caught hacking into people's personal phone calls, etc.

08 July, 2011 18:19  
Blogger Robert the Skeptic said...

Even more sad was hearing that "News of the World" was the most popular periodical in the UK. Also are concerns that Murdoch has too much "power" this his media empire.. as in political power.

Wish we would knock around that concept on THIS side of the pond!

09 July, 2011 20:36  
Blogger Infidel753 said...

LP: Since "his US empire" includes Fox and the Wall Street Journal, I think a lot of people are wondering about that.

RtS: Actually The Sun (a daily) had it beat by a very thin margin. Out of curiosity I checked the most popular paper in the US -- it's Murdoch's WSJ.

Interesting that the world's top three newspapers by circulation are all Japanese -- and the world's top English-language paper is the Times of India.

10 July, 2011 05:22  

Post a Comment

<< Home