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BBC News - News of the World to close amid hacking scandal
This took under a week.
Some back ground.
The basics of the case was that News of the World journalists hired a private investigator in 2001 and onwards to hack the voice mails and phones of "famous people". It started when the Royal family got the police involved after they suspected someone had been bugging/hacking their mobile phones. This has been know for a while and the journalist and private investigator have been convicted of it some time ago after a police investigation.
However there has always been criticism of the investigation and a suspicion it was not on a few that had their phones hacked but in fact many. The other news papers but especially The Daily Telegraph and The Guardian continued to look into the case and over the years the names of the famous people who had been hacked came out. They included the actress Siena Miller, British politicians and so on and so on.
But the "crapper hit the fan" under a week ago, when it came out that the phone of missing child Milly Dowler had been hacked by the very same private investigator and that he even deleted voice mails during the investigation, making the family and police think she was still alive. Then it came out other missing girls/boys phones were hacked, and then it really started to snowball with revelations that the families of victims of 7/7 terror attacks in London might have been hacked and then yesterday the worst of all came out.... the phones of families of service men lost in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Now the attacks against News of the World did not stop here, but continued up the corporate ladder and is still going on, since the editor of the News of the World at the time of the hacking, is now the CEO of NewsCorp International and a very personal friend of the sitting Prime Minister. Also one of those now seriously implicated in the case, is the former spin doctor and right hand man of... the present Prime Minister.
Companies have pulled pretty much all advertising over the last two days, with only NewsCorp semi owned Sky saying they would not pull their ads.
So today, Murdoch Jr. pulled the plug on a 168 year old newspaper in the hope that the scandal will not pull down NewsCorp it self... Daddy Murdoch still backs the editor now CEO of News International... as does the Prime Minister... and every one is denying that they knew about the hacking... since when does an Editor not know what is going on in his/her newspaper?
Oh and it is also now a fact that the News of the World paid police officers for information, which of course means even more police investigations. Lets hope they do a better job this time around...
And in all this, NewsCorp has been trying to buy 100% of Sky (Satellite operator in the UK and major News outlet), which now is under review after massive pressure despite the Cameron government signing off on it .. well pretty much.
And to show how bad it is with NewsCorp.... the Sun, another Murdoch tabloid, did not mention a word of the scandal today in its newspaper...The Times did though.
The consequences for Murdoch in the UK can be huge... he sits on a huge portion of the media as it is, but this scandal has the possibility to tear the whole thing apart.
Much much more to come... and if I were Murdoch, I would be very afraid about going to the UK any time soon.
This Sunday's issue of the News of the World will be the last edition of the paper, News International chairman James Murdoch has said.
This took under a week.
Some back ground.
The basics of the case was that News of the World journalists hired a private investigator in 2001 and onwards to hack the voice mails and phones of "famous people". It started when the Royal family got the police involved after they suspected someone had been bugging/hacking their mobile phones. This has been know for a while and the journalist and private investigator have been convicted of it some time ago after a police investigation.
However there has always been criticism of the investigation and a suspicion it was not on a few that had their phones hacked but in fact many. The other news papers but especially The Daily Telegraph and The Guardian continued to look into the case and over the years the names of the famous people who had been hacked came out. They included the actress Siena Miller, British politicians and so on and so on.
But the "crapper hit the fan" under a week ago, when it came out that the phone of missing child Milly Dowler had been hacked by the very same private investigator and that he even deleted voice mails during the investigation, making the family and police think she was still alive. Then it came out other missing girls/boys phones were hacked, and then it really started to snowball with revelations that the families of victims of 7/7 terror attacks in London might have been hacked and then yesterday the worst of all came out.... the phones of families of service men lost in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Now the attacks against News of the World did not stop here, but continued up the corporate ladder and is still going on, since the editor of the News of the World at the time of the hacking, is now the CEO of NewsCorp International and a very personal friend of the sitting Prime Minister. Also one of those now seriously implicated in the case, is the former spin doctor and right hand man of... the present Prime Minister.
Companies have pulled pretty much all advertising over the last two days, with only NewsCorp semi owned Sky saying they would not pull their ads.
So today, Murdoch Jr. pulled the plug on a 168 year old newspaper in the hope that the scandal will not pull down NewsCorp it self... Daddy Murdoch still backs the editor now CEO of News International... as does the Prime Minister... and every one is denying that they knew about the hacking... since when does an Editor not know what is going on in his/her newspaper?
Oh and it is also now a fact that the News of the World paid police officers for information, which of course means even more police investigations. Lets hope they do a better job this time around...
And in all this, NewsCorp has been trying to buy 100% of Sky (Satellite operator in the UK and major News outlet), which now is under review after massive pressure despite the Cameron government signing off on it .. well pretty much.
And to show how bad it is with NewsCorp.... the Sun, another Murdoch tabloid, did not mention a word of the scandal today in its newspaper...The Times did though.
The consequences for Murdoch in the UK can be huge... he sits on a huge portion of the media as it is, but this scandal has the possibility to tear the whole thing apart.
Much much more to come... and if I were Murdoch, I would be very afraid about going to the UK any time soon.
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