http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/jul/15/usa-rupert-murdoch<snip>
There are few universally sacred cows in American politics these days, but the families of the victims of 9/11 are among them -- conservative pundits Ann Coulter and Glenn Beck notwithstanding.
Of course, a fair bit of posturing – some of it deserved – was clearly going to be the end result of the News Corp scandal here, even if the scandal itself remained confined to British soil. After all, News Corp is the parent company of the politically-divisive Fox News, and any whiff of scandal was going to be red meat for an exhausted and increasingly demoralised Democratic base in need of something else to think about.
And from early adopters Senator Jay Rockefeller (Democrat, West Virginia) to Senator Frank Lautenberg (Democrat, New Jersey) to the plethora of House Democrats who joined in the chorus to investigate News Corp for hacking Americans, violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (which prohibits the payment of bribes abroad by any company with any American operations) and for possiblly violating the accounting rules of the Securities and Exchange Commission (by paying bribes abroad and covering them up), it was clear that the interest had far more to do with News Corp. (and its subsidiary Fox News) than any real interest in the virtually unknown-to-Americans News of the World.
Any proof that News Corp did try out its phone hacking here could jeopardise more than an as-yet incomplete acquisition or one newspaper. As the LA Times noted, convictions among News Corp employees could potentially endanger the company's broadcast licences in the US and, as King's call for an FBI showed, endanger the company's reputation among once-loyal conservatives. That would likely be a bigger loss to the company than even News of the World, given Fox News' near-monopoly on conservative viewers these days.
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please, please, please!!!