Katrina vanden Heuvel: Citizen Murdoch — no longer untouchable

from the WaPo:




By Katrina vanden Heuvel, Published: July 19


“We are sorry” read the full-page ads Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. has taken out in Britain, part of a new atonement campaign clearly orchestrated by the public relations firm brought on to help “manage” the company’s phone-hacking crisis.

Well, they got that right. “Sorry” is as good an adjective as any to describe the Murdoch media empire. It’s a buccaneer enterprise that is scornful of laws and decency and that peddles, as Murdoch’s biographer William Shawcross summarized, “titillation, sensationalism and vulgarity” to gain broad audiences, then uses gossip, tripe, manufactured stories and a distorted lens to further a right-wing ideological agenda. Sorry is also a good description of regulators and politicians on both sides of the aisle and the ocean, who were seduced by Murdoch’s money, feared his power and served as lapdogs rather than watchdogs as he consolidated and expanded his holdings.

In Britain, the scandal erupted with revelations of the hacking of a murdered young girl’s cellphone by the News of the World newspaper, giving her parents false hopes that she might still be alive. The ensuing exposure of routine hacking of the phones of reportedly 4,000 victims, as well as routine payoffs and bribery of police officials for inside information, has now shattered News Corp.’s cover story that this was the work of a rogue journalist or editor, or bent policeman.

The head of Scotland Yard and his deputy have resigned, and 10 people have been arrested so far, including Rebekah Brooks, the head of News International, a British susidiary of News Corp., and Andy Coulson, a former News of the World editor who served as Tory Prime Minister David Cameron’s chief press aide. Les Hinton, who ran News International before Brooks, has resigned as the head of Dow Jones and publisher of the Wall Street Journal. As Mark Lewis, lawyer for the family of Milly Dowler, the murdered young girl, said, “This is not just about one individual but about the culture of an organization.” Sorry, indeed. .......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/citizen-murdoch--no-longer-untouchable/2011/07/18/gIQAdjDsNI_story.html

When all this is through, will Murdoch and company have repented from their former actions and ways of doing things, or will it be business as usual?
Time will tell.

“This is not just about one individual but about the culture of an organization.”

Those words describe Murdoch and his son. They built that culture, and they need to pay dearly for buiding it...