Everybody in the world knows who is responsible for the wrongdoing of News Corp: Rupert Murdoch. More than any individual alive, he is to blame. Morally, the deeds are his. He paid the piper and he called the tune.
Tom Watson, UK Labour MP, passes his judgement on News Corporation chairman Rupert Murdoch and his role in the phone-hacking scandal that culminated in the closing of the popular News of the World.
Overnight, a British parliamentary inquiry into allegations of phone hacking by UK newspapers handed down its findings. It does not make for pleasant reading for News Corporation, whose News of the World Sunday tabloid was at the centre of the storm. NotW is no longer with us, having been shuttered last year. But the fallout continues, with Labour and Liberal Democrat MPs declaring that octogenarian media tycoon Rupert Murdoch was not a ‘fit and proper person’ to run a news empire.
The one saving grace for Murdoch is that while agreeing with the broad thrust of the inquiry report, the Conservative MPs on the committee flat out rejected the judgement — championed in particular by Labour’s Tom Watson — that Murdoch should be hammered. As the Conservatives’ Louise Mensch argued, it was not the committee’s place to make a determination of whether Murdoch was a ‘fit and proper’ media proprietor. Furthermore, she felt that given the size of the News Corp empire, it was simply too much to expect that one man could possibly know every single detail of what was happening at one newspaper in one country in which his company operated.
Despite the partisan split, the committee’s majority findings will inevitably have significant impacts. In the United States, where News Corp is primarily based, the inquiry report may prompt the Justice Department or the FBI to investigate News Corp’s conduct in that country. Even if it does not, it could still increase shareholder pressure on News Corp to consider management changes — while Murdoch is unlikely to be ousted out in a boardroom coup, the heat may bring forward any retirement plans he already has.
There could still be further ramifications in Britain as well. The communications regulator, Ofcom, could force News Corp to divest itself of its sizeable shareholding of subscription television broadcaster BSkyB — a company that News Corp was attempting to take over outright just as the phone hacking scandal erupted. This scenario becomes even more likely if the parliament as a whole takes up the committee’s report, with the possibility of a vote in the House of Commons to condemn Murdoch and News Corp.
Today is plainly a dark day for News Corp. But there will likely be many more dark days to come.
David Cameron, one-term PM?
The last British general election produced a parliament not entirely dissimilar to that Australia now faces. No party won an outright majority, and so parties had to pair up to form a government. (Of course, in Australia’s case, Labor presides over a minority government supported by the Greens and some independents. In the United Kingdom, the Conservatives govern in formal coalition with the Liberal Democrats.) And just like our government, the UK government is on the nose with the electorate.
British Prime Minister David Cameron commands a far more sizeable majority in Westminster than Julia Gillard does in Canberra. He’s elected to a five-year term of office, providing a greater opportunity to turn the polls around (especially if economic conditions turn more favourable). And best of all, his opponent — Labour’s Ed Miliband — is seen as an uninspiring, lacklustre performer who fails to connect with the electorate.
But is that true? As Matthew Norman writes in The Independent, Miliband is doing well in the polls. Depending on which poll you look at, he could be enjoying a double-digit lead over the incumbent. And his economic spokesman seems to be registering with voters as being just as credible as Cameron’s chancellor, the wily George Osborne. That leads Norman to suggest that Miliband is in with a fair shot of winning the next general election — not necessarily outright (all the parties seem to be unpopular in their own way with voters), but with enough clout to negotiate a coalition of his own. If he sits down and shuts up, letting the government unravel all on its own, he could be well placed to lead government in 2015.
Media misconduct and the regulatory fallout
Much of the commentary around the British media inquiry chaired by Lord Justice Leveson has expressed nothing short of delight about the prospect of a sledgehammer being brought down upon Rupert Murdoch, the head of News International (the UK arm of News Corporation). Outrage at the phone-hacking conducted for the now defunct Sunday tabloid News of the World, and further evidence that journalists at a number of newspapers (including News of the World’s daily counterpart, The Sun) have been bribing public officials, has revealed much anger about the power and influence of Murdoch, with many hoping to bring the old man down a peg or two.
But caution is also required about what the Leveson inquiry might lead to. And Brendan O’Neill delivers a bucketful. O’Neill is concerned that Lord Justice Leveson has been demonstrating some ‘authoritarian’ inclinations, including an assertion that his own inquiry should be above public criticism. The fear is that Leveson may seek to curb the freedom of the press — backed by many, including some from higher-brow broadsheet mastheads, who disapprove of the muckraking that passes for tabloid ‘journalism’.
It seems plain, based on the evidence presently available, that too many journalists have considered themselves above the law in plying their trade. Such lawbreaking cannot be defended. That, however, does not mean a full-frontal assault on the press — even the gutter press — is justified. Crimes should be prosecuted, whoever they are perpetrated by and against. The fact they have apparently not been is less a fault of the media, and more the independent institutions of authority and justice that have until now failed to hold them to account.
Bruised BlackBerry
One of the aspects of the carnage on the streets of London and other British cities that has raised eyebrows abroad has been reporting on how the riots have been organised. Predictably, Facebook and Twitter have both been raised as coordination tools. Less obvious is the use of BlackBerry mobile services. How have supposedly poor youths being able to lay their hands on devices most commonly associated with business users?
As it happens, BlackBerry is apparently quite popular with young Britons. The company has produced a range of cheaper handsets to capture the consumer market. And, unlike text messages, its inbuilt messaging service is free to use. Broadening the customer base would seem like a pretty sensible strategy for a company trying to hold its own against the onslaught of iPhones and other smartphones. But the risk now for BlackBerry is that its traditional high-end business users will become nervous about the company’s unfortunate association with looting and violence. BlackBerry, of course, hasn’t caused the riots. But it may end up a victim of them.
London burning
There have been a series of positively frightening stories about the nightly scenes of turmoil on the streets of London and other British cities. Tom Sturrock, an Australian based in London, has his own first-hand account to share.
The point to emphasise is that the riots gripping parts of the United Kingdom are purely criminal acts. Those trying to attribute political or economic motives — drawing parallels with austerity rallies in Europe, or pro-democracy campaigns in the Arab world (both of which have certainly had varying degrees of violence and property destruction) — are looking for a justification that doesn’t exist. What started out as a legitimate and peaceful protest against the police shooting of an apparently unarmed man has now been hijacked by thugs who believe they can act with impunity. But with hundreds having been arrested, and in a country that is well-known for its closed-circuit surveillance — that premise seems fundamentally flawed. Hopefully the perpetrators will find that out for themselves in due course.
