April 4, 2012 AD
Fox News
is a
Monstering Beast?
When the famous Fox News motto line "Fair and Balanced" arrived, conservatives were so endearingly grateful to finally, AT LAST, have a conservative news station who "represented them".
By presenting a long denied conservative voice to the airwaves, Rupert Murdoch bought his way into the hearts and minds of not just America's right-wing conservatives, but England's as well.
Conservatives did not notice, nor care, what the effect of this open embrace of Fox News actually meant.
Little did America's most patriotic citizens know or suspect they were trading in their own American News Media, liberal as they are, for a One World, multi-national, media-news empire, born of a sleazy sex-scandal expose tabloid.
The conservatives in England would later be shocked to learn that "their paper" would just as easily endorse the liberal candidate for Prime Minister, if the liberal Labour Party candidate "cooperated" with Murdock better than the conservative Tory Party Candidate, as Labour Candidate Tony Blair did.
The scandal described here all transpired in England, but there is no reason whatsoever to expect Jewish media-Scribe Murdock would not engage in the same criminal activities here in America.
Behind the glossy surface of Fox News, lies a dark and sinister story of scared politicians, afraid to confront "The Beast" for fear of being "Monstered".
History of Murdock
From Australia to England to America
Rupert Murdock's father was a reporter who managed to save enough money to purchase a small newspaper just in time to hand it off to his son.
When Australian newspaperman Rupert Murdock expanded to England in 1969, he purchased
The News of the World, a Sunday tabloid. Shortly afterward, he also purchased
The Sun.
Murdock began publishing an endless stream of sex scandals and gossip, quickly making him the largest selling Sunday paper in the country.
His next newspaper target acquisition was
The Sun, which Murdock turned into the largest selling daily paper.
He would later branch into television with BSkyB, becoming the largest in Europe.
Many are aware in the United States, that Rupert Murdock owns Fox News, The Wall Street Journal, and The Movie Channel.
How Murdock came to be
Sex Scandals and Monstering
For the success of Murdock, in order to obtain a steady stream of "sex scandals", he needed a constant stream of "victims".
Of course, it was always assured that the "victims" were "enemies" of Murdock who got in his way to utter power and influence.
To get these constant stream of "victim enemies", Murdock needed to have round-the-clock "surveillance" of his victim enemies.
The term for this in England, of what is finally published with all the surveillance, bribes, phone taps and other illegal invasion of privacy was "Monstering".
By the time Murdock finished working his enemies over, they were viewed by the public as a "Monster".
And to be expected, the result was that the enemy victim who had been attacking Murdock, now found himself in a desperate bid to defend his own reputation.
The public quickly forgot what the politician was warning about the previous week as they were hounding him out of office.
The Murdock Formula
"Reward and Punishment"
Often, if the victim enemies list was a politician, the victim enemy would have to resign from Parliament in disgrace.
A member of Parliament, Chris Bryant, was one such man.
Bryant had gotten Murdock's editor to admit under oath that Murdock paid the police for information, thus proving the illegal act of corrupting and subordinating a police officer.
The head of the investigative committee immediately shut-down the hearings and nothing came of it. (Obviously, one on the take)
As could be expected, six months later, Bryant was "Monstered". He was worked over good with allegations of homosexuality, photos splashed on the pages of Murdock's newspapers of him in his underwear and other deviances.
The Murdock formula was "Reward and Punishment"
Your "Reward" for cooperating with Murdock was glamorous news of your glorious achievements and your wonderful family and life.
Your "Punishment" for interfering with Murdock was unglamorous scandal, sure to be read by your grandmother, your manager, your wife, your kids, your neighbors, and your church deacon.
The Murdock Scandal Opens
"My knee is crocked"
The surveillance of victims is where Murdock finally got into his first real trouble.
He was caught red-handed hacking into private phone messages.
As one ex-Journalist so honestly and frankly put it, "If you get caught, you go to jail. If you don't get caught, you win a Pulitzer."
This time, a Murdock associate would go to jail, and the man who reverse-Monstered Murdock should have been given a Pulitzer.
Prince William phoned and left messages with several friends that he had "crocked" his knee playing a sport. The next day, Murdock published in his newspapers that Prince William's knee was crocked.
Unfortunately for Murdock, the knee was not so crocked and worked itself out.
Obviously someone had been hacking into the phone of one of England's most valuable citizen.
"Inquiring Minds Wanted to Know" how Murdock knew and when the Royal Family wanted to know, then Scotland Yard put its best detectives on the case.
That was the start of the hacking scandal for Murdock.
Clyde Goodman, the Royal correspondent at
The News of the World, and an investigator working for Goodman, went to jail as the fall guys, while the rest of the Murdock empire clammed up.
The managing editor at the time, Andy Colson, and the red-headed former editor, Rebecca Brooks, would claim under oath that this hacking of the Royal prince and 7 others, was the extent of the problem -- can we all move on now?
Scotland Yard stopped their investigation at that point, saying they had fleshed out the total scandal.
As a closed story, an ex-journalist of
The News of the World said he knew better.
He said that it was standard policy for editors to routinely want to see the evidence of "Where did you get it and how can you prove it". The reporter would tell his editor, "Well I can prove it because, here is his voice saying 'Yes I had sex with Erica last night and it was great darling'". The editors had to know since they were the one who was legally going to go out on a limb to publish and needed objective proof to prevent them from being sued.
Think of the TV gossip show TMZ, where the Jewish garbage Editor Harvey Levin is standing behind a desk and all his journalists and reporters are showing him the slimy dirt, (or tender embraces), they have unearthed on Hollywood celebrities.
Andy Colson resigned as editor, and for the next 5 years nothing happened.
Rupert Murdock was able to successfully say he was not the ultimate editor who saw the evidence. He was too busy with running his empire, so the story went.
Indeed, this Royal Family phone hacking was only the tip of the iceberg.
Breaking the Murdock Scandal Wide Open
"Thousands of phones hacked"
Breaking the story of the magnitude of the iceberg was Nick Davies of the Guardian, a tiny competing newspaper -- The David to the Murdock Goliath
Davies had ran across a senior policeman at a social function who told Davies that the hacking involved not just a few phones, but thousands of phones.
If the police knew there were more victims hacked, the question Davies wanted to know was why the police did not notify any of these other victims beside the original eight hacked victims everyone knew of?
Michael Gordon Taylor, a soccer player named in court as one of the hacked victims was already suing
The News of the World and had hired a lawyer -- Mark Lewis, a little known provincial lawyer.
The first thing Mark Lewis did was sue the police to force them to hand over what they had on the investigation. The police handed over "The Email for Neville", which was to be the smoking gun he was looking for.
These were emails sent from a junior reporter to the then chief reporter of
The News of the World, Neville Thelvbeck, of about 30 to 40 transcripts of intercepted phone voice-mails.
This completely contradicted the official story from the newspaper.
Mark Lewis won his case for his client Gordon Taylor who was sworn to secrecy over the $1.2 million dollar settlement.
That is when Nick Davies at the Guardian found out and published what
The News of the World had been doing.
Needless to say,
Rupert Murdock was not at all happy to have been "Monstered" himself!
Murdock and company struck back, denying everything and accusing the Guardian of misleading the public, citing the police clearing their name (a bribed and bought off police).
In parliamentary investigations, the entire Murdock corporation executive staff was cited as having "collective amnesia".
The investigation stalled once again.
Murdock at the time was busy in helping David Cameron win his election, which of course he did win with Murdock's help. Afterward, Murdock would be the first to visit him on 10 Downing Street to congratulate him on "his" victory. The famous "back door" meeting.
From a start in England in 1969, Murdock's support of winning politicians dates back to Margaret Thacher's 1979 government. She would win her next three elections with Rupert Murdock at her side. And in 1981, in gratitude, he was able to circumvent newspaper monopoly rules to buy two more papers, the Times of London and The Sunday Times.
In 1986, he consolidated all his papers into a modern news plant and fired all his older union workers.
In the union riots,
The News of the World became very close to the police and vice-verse. Police would retire and become columnists for Murdock and Murdock journalists would become police spokesmen.
Then in 1992, The Sun gloated that they helped defeat Neil Kinnock, the Labor Party leader. He was expected to win, right up to election day when he got mugged by a Sun headline saying, "If Kinnock wins today, will the last person to leave Britain, please turn out the lights".
Former News of the World reporter Paul McMullan puts it this way, "We had real power. I mean 5 million copies. The Guardian sells what -- two or three hundred thousand to a bunch of bearded lesbians who pretty well have their opinions made up."
Paul McMullan commenting from the pub he now manages continues,
The Influential Power of a Newspaper
"Sometimes people come into this pub and spout the same opinions verbatim from what was written in the papers and it is quite interesting how you can really mold the mood of a nation, and take it one way or the other."
-- Paul McMullan, former journalist for The News of the World
Murdock abandons Conservatives
Backs the Liberal
At this time, Murdock stopped fighting the unions he had busted and backed the Labor Party candidate -- Tony Blair, Bill Clinton's side-kick.
Of course, Tony Blair was a Murdock puppet from the start, as evidenced by his booking a flight to Australia, making a pilgrimage to address the Murdock empire on Murdock's private yacht.
With Murdock changing sides, Tony Blair won election becoming England's next Prime Minister.
Payback was in the Blair government relaxing their cross-media control laws, which then allowed Murdock to take control of BSkyB satellite television broadcasting.
BSkyB or British Sky Broadcasting, would become the most profitable network in Europe, after heavy initial subsidies from his lucrative newspaper holdings.
Murdock abandons Liberals
Backs the Conservative again
By 2010, Murdock wanted to own all of BSkyB in a $12 billion dollar total takeover and he would need the help of another incoming Prime Minister -- This time Murdock was backing the conservative again -- David Cameron.
And they had placed a News of the World insider in the Cameron government -- the same Andy Colson who had resigned in scandal was David Cameron's Communications Director.
The Corrupting Power of a Newspaper
"The evidence of endemic abuse is growing by the day."
"That the balance of the media are the biggest beasts in the jungle."
- "They laugh at the law"
- "They smear at Parliaments"
- "They have the power to hurt us"
- "And they do with gusto and precision"
--Tom Watson, Labor MP
For commenting on Murdock's corruption, Murdock placed Tom Watson under surveillance, hoping to find juicy Monstering sleaze on him.
Our lawyer Mark Lewis and his family were likewise under surveillance.
Then England's top cop, Sir Paul Stevenson paid a visit to the Guardian and threatened them with continuing the phone hacking scandal. Not known just then but Stevenson had just employed Neil Wallace, Andy Colson's deputy from
The News of the World, as a special adviser to the police.
At their wits end, the Guardian asked The New York Times for help.
With Murdock buying the Wall Street Journal three years beforehand and threatening to kill the NYT, the Times was more than happy to agree to help and uncovered a few more details on the phone hacks.
Around 2011, Attorney Mark Lewis had gathered many more clients and the police agreed to re-open the investigation as their Operation Waiting (sic).
Trouble growing, Andy Colson was forced to resign from the Cameron administration, but Murdock was determined to keep his BSkyB takeover on track.
June 2011, after settling many cases out of court, it appears that David Cameron was on the verge of pulling Murdock's BSkyB deal through.
Murdock gets Reverse-Monstered
The Milly Dowler Voice-mail
Milly Dowler as a missing teen who had transfixed the nation when she went missing 9 years before.
Now,
The Guardian had evidence and reported that
The News of the World had hacked the phone of the missing Dowler and had deleted portions of her voice-mail.
The entire nation was appalled to discover that Milly's phone had been hacked!
More shocked that the family had been given false hope of her being alive, thinking she had listened to the messages and had deleted them herself.
And outrageously shocked to learn Murdock had erased her voice-mail in order to maintain his own greedy exclusive news coverage so no one else could read them and report on them.
The whole world wanted to know about the phone hacking and the insiders themselves understood the evil they were participating in and no longer could keep quiet.
All of a sudden, the wall of silence came tumbling down.
Families of dead soldiers - phone hacked!
Victims of terrorist bombings -- phone hacked!
Other crime victims -- phone hacked!
Even the newly married duchess of Cambridge -- phone hacked!
Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott -- phone hacked! 45 times!
And even former Prime Minister Tony Blair -- phone hacked!
Fallout from the Murdock Monstering
Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police John Yates, who had denied at the time the charge that phones were being hacked five years previously, was forced to resign.
Britain's top cop, Sir Paul Stevenson, who had threatened the Guardian and had ultimate responsibility for the investigation, also decided to resign.
Neil Wallace, whom Sir Paul Stevenson had hired from The News of the World, was arrested.
Murdock's chief executive Rebbecca Brooks resigned and within a week arrested for phone hacking and police bribery.
David Cameron withdrew his support of Murdock and the BSkyB deal fell through.
The final casualty was The News of the World itself. Forced to close down - Not traded -- Not sold -- just closed down.
By the time of the closing, Murdock's holdings had grown to such a great extent that The News of the World was less than one percent of his holdings.
Murdock had been given a slap on the wrist.
And even that didn't hurt, since he immediately turned around and replaced the Sunday tabloid The News of the World, with The Sun on Sunday.
Arrogance knows no boundaries!
Additional investigations revealed that his other major holding, The Sun, had engaged in bribery which extended further than the police -- to other government public officials.
Murdock's son, James Murdock was forced to step down as CEO and to testify about his knowledge of the phone hacking and bribery scandal.
The investigations continue in England...
Implications for Fox News
For the United States, bribery of foreign officials is illegal.
But what of Rupert Murdock operating in the United States? On our soil?
We all know from Jack Abramoff, that our Republican officials are no cleaner than that of Great Britain.
If we were to seriously investigate Murdock's operations here, would it make the Jack Abramoff scandal look like a child handing a teacher an apple?
Does the Rupert Murdock scandal conclusively show that the News is the tail that wags the dog?
SOURCE:
Lowell Bergman for Frontline March 27, 2012 (PBS)
The Murdoch Scandal
Article located at:
http://www.thechristiansolution.com/doc2012/529_MediaBeast.html
