James and Rupert Murdoch testify before the parliamentary investigative committee July 2011.
So the House of Commons seems to have issued a bloviated report on the Murdochs, with six Labour/Lib Dems voting for it and five Tories against it, saying James and Rupert misled the phone-hacking investigations, led a coverup, and are not fit to manage a large corp.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/may/01/rupert-murdoch-not-fit-select-committee
“On the basis of the facts and evidence before the committee,” the report said in one passage, “we conclude that, if at all relevant times Rupert Murdoch did not take steps to become fully informed about phone hacking, he turned a blind eye and exhibited willful blindness to what was going on in his companies and publications.”
“This culture, we consider, permeated from the top throughout the organization and speaks volumes about the lack of effective corporate governance at News Corporation and News International,” its British newspaper subsidiary.
“We conclude, therefore, that Rupert Murdoch is not a fit person to exercise the stewardship of a major international company,” the report said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/02/world/europe/murdoch-hacking-scandal-to-be-examined-by-british-parliamentary-panel.html?hp
Forgive me, but that’s just stupid. A good coverup is the very hallmark of a well-run organization. Get over it.
I think the House of Commons has blown an opportunity to strike a major hit against the destabilizing, anti-democratic journalism values and business practices of the Murdochs by not holding their tongues. Of real value would have been a careful parsing of the evidence the Murdochs have already given.
My sense is that by saying Murdoch is not fit to run a business, the Labour/Lib Dems are trying to head off the acquisition of the majority of the shares of a pay TV company the Murdochs have been working toward. You have to be a fit and proper business person in the UK to get the broadcast license. The problem with this bloviation aspect is that the broadcast license agency, Ofcom, is already investigating the Murdochs’ fitness and propriety on the pay TV acquisition. The cabinet secretary in charge of this is in deep fucking trouble for expediting the Murdochs’ acquistion of this pay TV company. The whip smart Tory chick has it right:
Louise Mensch, a Conservative member of the panel, said the division had come about because of “the line in the middle of the report that said that Mr. Rupert Murdoch was not a fit person to run an international company.”
“We all thought that was wildly outside the scope of a select committee” and “was an improper attempt to influence” Ofcom, the British media regulator, which is already investigating whether News Corporation is “fit and proper” to hold a broadcast license.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/02/world/europe/murdoch-hacking-scandal-to-be-examined-by-british-parliamentary-panel.html?hp
In other words, the House of Commons Labour/Lib Dems have squandered credibility with inflated and spurious charges, voted upon with an even split down party lines, piling on in a battle others like Ofcom, the broadcast license agency, are much more qualified to fight. I think they’ve also taken the criminal heat off Hinton and Myler, who lied like rugs and are now here running things in the US. As well as coverup lawyer Crone and the unbelievable layers of bribe-taking corrupt Scotland Yard detectives and police officials around the country. If the Murdochs are not fit and proper on account of the phone-hacking coverup, what will be left to say when the police bribery cases are investigated?
That’s not exactly what I mean.
If the House of Commons is going to bloviate on the phone-hacking, which is extremely heinous, nobody’s going to give a shit about what they have to say about suborning the law of the land with money, which is treason. Very very heinous.
A thousand times more effective would have been a unanimously-approved immaculate bipartisan report in the form of a legal decision, or if not unanimous, with an honorable dissent appended.
Hopefully the Leveson special inquiry into this will finger the actual crimes and those who committed them.
I’m not articulating this very well, but the politicization of the charges against the Murdochs, which are extremely serious, makes them far easier to dismiss.The Labour/Lib Dems have lost any chance they may have had of getting rid of the cabinet minister who expedited the pay TV deal by doing this. And that is one guilty mamma jamma who should go, and go to prison.
