Murdoch turns on editor and lawyer in hacking probe

Source: Reuters

LONDON | Thu Nov 10, 2011 9:02am EST

LONDON (Reuters) - James Murdoch turned on his former News of the World colleagues Thursday as he fought to survive a second grilling over phone-hacking by British lawmakers and keep his place in his father's media empire.

Murdoch blamed Colin Myler, the last editor of the now-defunct Sunday tabloid, for giving him incomplete information, and accused the newspaper's ex-legal chief, Tom Crone, of misleading the committee of MPs investigating the hacking.

"This was the job of the new editor who had come in... to clean things up, to make me aware of those things," said Murdoch, appearing confident under interrogation by lawmakers even when compared by MP Tom Watson to a Mafia boss.

He also said Crone had ordered the surveillance of public figures by the News of the World -- revelations of which have further damaged the company this week.



Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/11/10/us-newscorp-murdoch-idUSTRE7A937A20111110

He stood up well under attempted but generally failed pressure.

Ha! As if any mafia boss could blackmail the most powerful governments in the world.

There's always someone else that deserves the blame, much lower down on the scale.

The rich and powerful are always blameless, yes, we know!


:sarcasm:

:spank:

Source: ABC News

News Corp. chief operating officer James Murdoch, testified Thursday morning in front of a parliamentary select committee in London, saying he did not mislead the panel in his previous testimony on the phone hacking scandal that has rocked the company and the family of its leader, Rupert Murdoch.

At issue is whether he had seen an e-mail that included transcripts of 35 hacked conversations, intended for use by reporters in preparing stories at the defunct tabloid, News of the World.

"I want to be very clear. No documents were shown to me or given to me at that meeting or prior to it." Asked if the had misled the committee, James Murdoch replied: "No, I did not."

Parliament member Tom Watson said it appears James Murdoch and his staff were "all bound together by secrecy." He called Murdoch "the first Mafia boss in history not to know he is running a criminal enterprise" to which Murdoch replied, "that's inappropriate."



Read more: http://abcnews.go.com/Business/murdoch-mafia-boss-parliament-member-tom-watson/story?id=14917571

excuse for every deliberate insult - I'm certain Mr. Watson meant that as a 'joke'.

Murdoch is quite aware that he is running a criminal enterprise.

NewsCorp doesn't act like the mafia. It acts much more like a twentieth century totalitarian government. It's main product is propaganda and it has been caught spying on private citizens it suspected of being a threat to it or its right wing agenda. Fortunately, it has no police power and would have a hard time making such people disappear, like Pinochet's victims. Or Stalin's. On the other hand, it may have encouraged the mentally unstable to do its extrajudicial killings for it, such as in the case of Dr. Tiller. Of course, no DA could make that charge stick. Bill O'Reilly's fingerprints weren't on the murder weapon.

Interviewed later on our tv news described it as being inappropriate and also as lowering the tone of the enquiry.

Watson needs to lose the theatrics.