The U.K. police official leading criminal probes into alleged wrongdoing at News Corp.’s U.K. newspaper operations asserted that the company’s tabloid, the Sun, had a “culture…of illegal payments” by journalists to a wide array of public officials.
During testimony Monday to a judge-led inquiry into British media practices, Sue Akers, deputy assistant commissioner of London’s Metropolitan Police, said that journalists in search of scoops had allegedly made payments to officials in the police force, military, health, government, prison services and other areas of public life.
[...]
Police have arrested 22 people in relation to the corruption probe. That includes 16 journalists, three police officers, a member of the armed forces, a member of the ministry of defense and a relative of a public official who allegedly acted as a conduit to hide a check payment to the official. The arrest tally is higher when the two other criminal probes, including the one into phone-hacking, are included. No one has been charged in any of the investigations.
[...]
News Corp.’s Chairman and Chief Executive Rupert Murdoch said Monday the company has vowed “to get to the bottom of prior wrongdoings.” He added: “The practices Sue Akers described at the Leveson Inquiry are ones of the past, and no longer exist at the Sun. We have already emerged a stronger company.”News Corp. also owns The Wall Street Journal.
By the way, the UK’s Leveson Inquiry into the Culture, Practice and Ethics of the Press has its own website where they regularly post video of proceedings.
Journalists are responsible for all this, and not the editorial board all the way up to the Dingo himself?
Ah CMMC, can’t you see that the Great Man feels bad enough already by how his misplaced trust in the ability of his editors to restrain the zealotry of his journalists has let the public faith in news reporting (and his shareholders) down? /spin
And how unlucky is Rupert that this dishonesty erupted in all of his mastheads simultaneously?
Inexplicable.
It’s just as well all of Rupert’s Australian newspapers are squeaky clean. The culture of the company is completely different here.
Katz said:
I don’t believe in ‘luck’, but it would surely be unkind to conclude that all of his mastheads were staffed by folks who shared the usages of tabloid journalism authored and promoted by him. The assertion that the fish stinks from the head seems counter-intuitive. As I hear it, Murdoch’s first concern is that everyone should play nice. He’s not a megalomaniac at all. Wealth and power mean nothing to him.
I mean, it’s not as if Murdoch started off this way in the Daily Mirror in the 1960s, is it? If he had, then one might have been more inclined to draw that conclusion.
it’s not as if Murdoch started off this way in the Daily Mirror in the 1960s
Actually, he didn’t. It was Kerry Packer who started of this way in the Daily Mirror, which was owned by his father Frank, in the 1960s. Frank sold it to Murdoch in 1972.
Further actually, it might have been the Daily Telegraph that Frank sold to Rupert in 1972.
Rupert Murdoch Biography
And what was that incident back in 1964?
Murdoch learned a lot from this episode, which is why …
Hang on a tick.
One can indulge in any number of orgies and still pass an autopsist’s test for virginity.
Quite right Katz. Nevertheless, I don’t think that was the meaning most people took from the term. It might be added that one can fail the virginity test despite never having participated in an orgy.
In any event, I would add that even if they’d failed the virginity test, these publications were an outrageous breach of the privacy of minors. In the context of the taboos of that period, these were extremely destructive smears, conducted merely for public amusement at the expense of children.
These days, we might well regard the diaries as ostensible child pr0n.
i would like to see someone – anyone – in the UK establishment use the word “espionage” at least once in connection with all this.
The UK govt has been shown repeated evidence over the past 5 years of how corrupt its police force is and how weak its anti-corruption safeguards are. Starting with de Menezes and continuing through multiple murders by police, then ending with this. Yet even a few months ago they refused to consider drafting a foreigner into the top police commissioner’s job, and they seem completely incapable of addressing the concept of systemic corruption.
Then they wonder why they have riots after the police kill another innocent man …
Quite true FB.
Which makes it all the more remarkable that an autopsist’s opinion was considered relevant to the case.
One may opine, given the irrelevancy of the condition of the poor girls’ hymens, that generating and publicising medical reports of this nature — that is, descriptions of close inspections of maidenheads — were themselves tantamount to the promulgation of child pr0n by proxy.
This story gets increasingly more amazing and disturbing as further examples of deep seated institutional corruption are revealed.
Who would have thought that the ruling and managerial class in the old Brit were such a bunch of spivs?
Looks like the John leCarre book that I’m reading at the moment isn’t fiction after all.
I’m just glad that the local branch of Murdoch Inc was immune from such practices.
And just to round out the analysis Katz, given that it’s clear that virginity tests are physiologically feasible only in the case of females their performance attests to the underlying misogyny both of the taboo and of the prurient interest in the “revelations” issuing therefrom.
US cop shows love demonstrating the fluorescent effects arising from flashing their black lights on semen stains.
That prurience appears to be directed primarily at male sexuality.
I doubt there’s an English newspaper that hasn’t bribed people for information.
Except The Independent of course. You don’t need to bribe people to make up ludicrous nonsense.
Then there’s Fairfax, which must be close to having to bribe readers.
@ Katz. No, it’s still primarily directed in the normal way.
The focus is on the semen receiver or receptacle. The whole show biz process is just used so as to show where a wild animal sprayed to mark their territory.
Craig Mc: I think you are being suspiciously naive. Journos trading ciggies, coffee and doughnuts for information is commonplace throughout the world. The “network of informants” organized by the Sun indicates a level of corruption rivaling that of the Bjelke-Petersen government.
Are they saying that 22 (24) people have been arrested without being charged: how exactly does that work ? Obviously I’m not a lawyer !
???
Oh. Lemme guess, Robert Fisk.
If so, this is just another reason why you can’t have
nice thingsa war with Iran, Craig Mc.So, James Murdoch has resigned from the UK tentacle to head for New York, while apparently News Corp shareholders want him kicked out entirely.
It’s heartening to see the implicit faith in the practices of the Murdoch media here in Australia with which I totally agree of course.
In the old days, if you sacrified a senior staffer with responsibility in a crisis, the problem would go away. If one didn’t do the trick, two was sure to bring peace and quiet.
Poor old News Ltd – now each time they disappear a key player, the investigations go deeper, and news gets worse for them.
It would appear, on the surface of it, that they are well short of the kharma required to survive this.
Who would have guessed it?