Rotten to the News Corps

From Variety:

Is this what implosion looks like?

Bill Shine & Jesse Watters hopefully about to get hit by a train.

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Uncle Rupie’s Son-dick-ate

From Mail Online:

Police investigating phone-hacking at the News of the World have recovered a series of ‘bombshell’ emails which they believe takes the inquiry to ‘a new level’.

The emails were among tens of thousands held by the newspaper at a data storage facility in India.

Police are believed to want to question News International chief James Murdoch and former Sun and News of the World editor Rebekah Brooks about their contents.

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End of the Innocence

(Reuters) – News Corp agreed to pay hundreds of thousands of pounds to an early phone-hacking victim because it recognized that evidence from the case was ‘fatal’ to its claims of innocence, new details released on Tuesday showed.

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News of News of The World

Anyone else notice that all the people involved in the News of the World/News Corporation scandal have names that sound like Alfred Hitchcock villains?

From The New York Times:

LONDON — A reporter who is among the 16 people arrested and then freed on bail in the phone hacking case that has shaken Rupert Murdoch’s media empire in Britain warned his former bosses on Friday that he planned to break his silence on the scandal in a civil court case. He said that he would reveal those who were responsible for the phone hacking.

The reporter, Neville Thurlbeck, 49, who was the chief reporter for the now-defunct tabloid The News of the World, gave the warning in a statement issued through his lawyers in connection with his wrongful-dismissal lawsuit against News International, the British newspaper arm of Mr. Murdoch’s News Corporation. Mr. Thurlbeck was one of the first people arrested by Scotland Yard in a renewed investigation of the phone hacking this year, but he has denied publicly having played any part in the illegal interception of cellphone voicemails.

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Phone Tap Dance

From The Telegraph:

As detectives work their way through the 11,000 pages of telephone numbers that were hacked by the News of the World, they are still surprised by the extent of the illegal actvities at Rupert Murdoch’s now defunct tabloid.

Mandrake can disclose that the latest victim is the fitness trainer at News International’s gym, Kags Alexander-Cahill, who was the instructor to Rebekah Brooks, Andy Coulson and Neil Wallis.

His company, Training Partner, which ran the gym until the end of last year, has been notified by his mobile phone operator that his number was hacked dozens of times between 2005 and 2006.

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Die-nasty

(Reuters) – It was one of many strange moments in a hearing rich in absurdity. As British lawmakers questioned Rupert Murdoch last month over whether his News of the World journalists broke the law by hacking into mobile phones, the 80-year-old Australian-born boss of media giant News Corporation began to reminiscence about his late father.

…snip…

Member of Parliament Damian Collins tried to get the hearing back on track, but Murdoch, sitting beside his son James, the head of News Corp’s non-U.S. interests, continued: “That just addresses the question of it being a family business. I would love to see my sons and daughters follow that route — if they are interested.”

What Murdoch’s children are interested in may no longer matter.

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Hair’s to a Snake in the Grass

From the Mirror:

THE News of the World hacked a phone belonging to Sarah Payne’s mother – which was given to her by then editor Rebekah Brooks, it was claimed yesterday.

Scotland Yard have told Sara – mother of the eight-year-old schoolgirl murdered by Roy Whiting – that the mobile may have been targeted by the newspaper. They said they had found evidence suggesting she was hacked by News of the World ­investigator Glenn Mulcaire.

Officers from ­Operation Weeting told her on Tuesday that they had found her personal details among his notes. The evidence is believed to relate to the phone Rebekah Brooks gave her to help her stay in touch with supporters.

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Tsar’s Bores: The Empire Strikes Back

From Howard Kurtz at Newsweek:

The inquiry was grinding on, and Rupert Murdoch looked exhausted when he had trouble remembering what he’d said when he appeared with his loyal aide Rebekah Brooks. “I walked outside my flat,” Murdoch said, “and I had 20 microphones stuck in my mouth.”

That, of course, is the kind of hot pursuit his tabloids routinely employ against elusive celebrities. In the twilight of his career, Murdoch has gone from the hunter to the hunted, brought low by the crass culture he helped create.

And yet even in his apologetic testimony, the 80-year-old mogul couldn’t resist a shot at rivals with “dirty hands” for trying to “build this hysteria.” That theme has echoed across News Corp.’s many media outlets as it tries to turn the corner on the phone-hacking scandal. The empire, it would seem, is starting to strike back.

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