Murdoch Throws 200+ Under the Bus -- But Not the Right One(s)

If you've read, watched, or listened to the news at all in the last day or two, you've heard about the shutdown of the 168-year-old British weekly, News of the World, as a result of a phone hacking scandal (you've heard so much about it because there's nothing that journalists think is more interesting than other journalists).

Every hour seems to bring some new "juicy" tidbit, which is why the Guardian is live-blogging the unfolding scandal (here). Indeed, there has apparently been so much bad behavior, it's hard to know where to start.

The scandal has old roots.

In 2005, according to the Guardian's interactive timeline, Buckingham Palace began to suspect that the voicemail of Prince William and other royals had been hacked, and called in Scotland Yard. News of the World royals editor Clive Goodman, and a private investigator the weekly had hired, were arrested in August 2006, and were jailed in January 2007. Editor Andy Coulson resigned, claiming he knew nothing, and in August became a senior media adviser to now-Prime Minister David Cameron (Coulson resigned from Cameron's staff in January of this year, and was arrested today).

More victims were uncovered in 2009 and 2010, as well as payments to drop legal action to several of the victims. But the uproar was relatively muted as long as the victims were royals and celebrities who live much of their lives in the public eye.

What made the scandal roar were the revelations this month that the tabloid, Britain's largest-circulation paper (2.7 million), had hacked into (a) the voicemail of a murdered schoolgirl in 2002, even deleting messages to make room in the box, thereby giving the girl's parents false hope that she was still alive, and (b) the phones of families of the victims of the July 2005 London subway bombings. In addition, there are now police investigations into alleged bribery of police officers for information (not just for news tips -- illegal but apparently commonplace -- but also, according to a story by Sarah Lyall and Alan Cowell at the New York Times, "for substantial information, including confidential documents held by the police.")

After all this, drastic action was needed, and News Corp. has taken drastic action, shutting down the paper after this Sunday's issue, devoting all advertising space in the final issue to charities (most major advertisers had already fled), and donating all final issue revenues to "good causes", specified as "organisations ... that improve life in Britain and are devoted to treating others with dignity." (I found the full statement from James Murdoch, chairman of News International, and son of News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch at the Poynter Institute site here; scroll down).

But is shuttering the tabloid enough? Is it right?

Murdoch acknowledges that many, if not most, of the 200+ writers, editors, and staff were "either new to the Company or ... had no connection to the News of the World during the years when egregious behaviour occurred."

He did not, however, apologize to that staff, saying only that "I can understand how unfair these decisions may feel." "May feel"? How about, "are"? This is, after all, guilt by association.

Who hasn't been fired? Rebekah Brooks, editor of News of the World when much of the hacking took place, and now chief executive of News International (of which James Murdoch is chairman; the company is the British newspaper subsidiary of News Corp.). Rupert Murdoch is reported, according to Sarah Lyall and Jo Becker's article in today's New York Times, to "regard her as a kind of favorite daughter (although he has four actual daughters)."

The article goes on to quote a "person who knows them both socially":

Rupert Murdoch adores her -- he's just very, very attached to her.... To be frank, the most sensible thing that News Corp. could do would be to dump Rebekah Brooks, but he won't.

Actually, it's more than "the most sensible thing", it would be the right thing, as this happened on her watch and was therefore ultimately her responsibility. Of course, on the "buck stops here" principle, one could argue that Rupert should dump his son James, but the younger Murdoch actually has far more "plausible deniability" than does Ms. Brooks.

Why did the Murdochs move so quickly to close the paper down? You might think it was to silence the chorus of outrage.

But it seems to have done little more than raise suspicions.

Slate's Jack Shafer calls the action "the ultimate 'reverse-ferret'" (read the whole story; it's scandalously funny and deeply depressing). He terms the closing of the paper as an action "designed to scatter and confuse the audience." Shafer continues,

It looks like the sacrifice of something very special to him, seeing as it was his first U.K. newspaper acquisition in 1968. But it's not. It looks like atonement, but it's not. It's supposed to change the subject, but it's too late for that....

As Jennifer Preston and Jeremy Peters wrote in today's New York Times, some immediately saw it "as a ploy to salvage government approval of the News Corporation's potentially lucrative controlling stake in the satellite company British Sky Broadcasting, or BSkyB. Others saw it merely as a rebranding."

Allison Frankel, on her Reuters blog, wrote that -- according to a British media lawyer -- by closing the tabloid down, the company "may not be obliged to retain documents that could be relevant to civil and criminal claims against the newspaper -- even in cases that were already underway."

Moreover, the scandal has made one thing very clear: the relationship between the British press, in the person of Mr. Murdoch (senior), and British politicians (on both sides of the aisle) has been ickily close.

In today's New York Times, John Burns and Jo Becker report that

Some of Mr. Cameron's political opponents have cast the embrace of Mr. Murdoch as a mistake that could combine with other recent miscues by the Cameron government to seriously weaken the prime minister's party, the Conservatives. But those critics ... have to cope with the awkward fact that the Labour Party was just as closely linked to Mr. Murdoch, if not more so, during the 13 years that Britain was led by Mr. Cameron's predecessors as prime minister, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.

But there's another group I'd like to hear from: News Corp.'s board of directors. They are ultimately responsible. What are they going to do? I'm waiting to read that story. (Curious as to who they are? Try here.)