Is this Armageddon for Murdoch and NewsCorp?

Sun newspaper staff among eight arrested in police probe



By the CNN Wire Staff
February 11, 2012 -- Updated 1127 GMT (1927 HKT)






The headquarters of News Corporation in Manhattan, New York.


STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• Five of those arrested work for the bestselling Sun newspaper
  
• The others are a police officer, a member of the military and a Ministry of Defence employee
  
• News Corp. says it is committed to ensuring unacceptable practices will not be repeated
  

London (CNN) -- Authorities arrested eight people
Saturday -- including five employees of Britain's bestselling Sun
newspaper -- as part of an inquiry into illegal payments to police and
officials.

The other three are a police officer, an employee of the Ministry of
Defence and a member of the armed forces, the Metropolitan Police said.

News International's offices in east London are being searched, the
police said in a statement, as well as the homes of those arrested.

News International, which owns the Sun, is the U.K. subsidiary of media mogul Rupert Murdoch's News Corp.

The arrests are part of Operation Elveden, an investigation running
in parallel with a police inquiry into alleged phone hacking by News
International employees.

News Corp. said in a statement that it "remains committed to ensuring
that unacceptable news gathering practices by individuals in the past
will not be repeated."

Hacking Cases Focus on Memo to a Murdoch

By SARAH LYALL and RAVI SOMAIYA

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LONDON — As dozens of investigators and high-powered lawyers converge on Rupert Murdoch’s News International in the phone hacking scandal, attention has focused on the printout of an e-mail excavated three months ago from a sealed carton left behind in an empty company office.

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David Moir/Reuters

James Murdoch in 2009.


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Addressed to Mr. Murdoch’s son James, it contained explosive information about the scale of phone hacking at The News of the World tabloid — information James Murdoch says he failed to take in because he did not read the whole e-mail chain.
The e-mail returned to cause trouble for News International, the British newspaper subsidiary of News Corporation, several weeks ago when the company said that it had been deleted from Mr. Murdoch’s computer. Even as people familiar with the investigations said the e-mail and its convoluted history will form a crucial part of the inquiry into allegations of a cover-up, the scandal appeared to be widening on Saturday, as senior journalists at News Corporation’s Sun tabloid were arrested.
Tracing the story of the e-mail, which was found in November and first became publicly known in December, also sheds light on the intrigue surrounding Mr. Murdoch, the company’s heir apparent, and on efforts to protect him from the scandal.
Embroiled in three separate police operations, a parliamentary investigation, a judicial inquiry and a flurry of civil suits with potentially hundreds more waiting in the wings, News Corporation has begun to provide information that suggests a broader sweep of hacking activity at News International than was suspected even recently and more widespread knowledge within the company of past efforts to cover it up.
This new level of cooperation includes the release of damaging material from an internal investigation that is being overseen by executives who, observers say, are using it to consolidate their power within the company, a move that could come at James Murdoch’s expense.
“There’s no good way out of it,” a former News International executive said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the continuing investigations. “If you put up your hand and say, ‘I’m going to investigate myself and here’s what I found’ and you’re not very open and full about it, then it looks like just another cover-up.”
A Stunning Find
When The News of the World was closed in disgrace last summer, its newsroom was locked down by security guards. In mid-November, News International says, investigators searching the seized materials found a storage crate that, judging from a sticker on top, had come from the office of Colin Myler, the paper’s last editor. It contained a hard copy of an e-mail sent from Mr. Myler to James Murdoch on June 7, 2008 — in reality a chain of e-mails that included correspondence with Tom Crone, then an in-house lawyer.
“Unfortunately, it is as bad as we feared,” Mr. Myler wrote, speaking of an impending lawsuit that threatened to reveal that voice-mail hacking at the paper was endemic.
Last summer, senior News International officials said that in that crucial period in 2008, Mr. Murdoch had neither been told about nor shown documentation of the extent of the illegality at The News of the World. The discovery of the e-mail, said one former official with knowledge of the situation, was completely unexpected.
Why did it take so long to come to light? Linklaters, a law firm working for News International, said that a junior employee found it in November, but that senior officials at the firm did not know about it until December.
In addition, Linklaters told the Commons Committee on Culture, Media and Sport, Mr. Myler’s electronic copy had been lost “in a hardware failure” on March 18, 2010,” while Mr. Murdoch’s electronic copy had been deleted on Jan. 15, 2011 during an “e-mail stabilization and modernization program.”
Big corporations routinely delete old e-mails. Between April 2010 and July 2011, News International discussed e-mail deletion with HCL Technologies, which manages its e-mail system, on nine occasions, according to a letter HCL wrote to Parliament last summer.
Most of the reasons were mundane. But in January 2011, HCL said, News International asked whether HCL was capable of helping “truncate” — meaning delete — “a particular database” in the e-mail system. The question came shortly after disclosures in a civil suit brought by the actress Sienna Miller raised fears that material about widespread phone hacking at The News of the World might become public.
News International did not explain why it wanted the deletion. HCL said it could not help and told the company to look elsewhere.
It is not clear whether the “stabilization and modernization program” that deleted the Murdoch e-mail was linked to News International’s request to “truncate” data. But it is clear that on Jan. 15, when the deletion took place, the company knew it was facing civil and potentially criminal inquiries. A month earlier, reacting to new information from the Miller and other cases, it had suspended the News of the World’s news editor, Ian Edmondson, on suspicion of phone hacking, and handed some material to the police.
Questions of Timing

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Jo Becker contributed reporting from New York.

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/4124870/The-Suns-Trevor-Kavanagh-Witch-hunt-puts-us-behind-ex-Soviet-states-on-Press-freedom.html

Trevor Kavanagh sounds, quite frankly, hysterical! He needs to take a wee valium or two or he's going to have a heart attack. I can't believe that this screeching hissy fit is on the front of a national newspaper!

In one raid, two officers revealed they had been pulled off an elite 11-man
anti-terror squad trying to protect the Olympics from a mass suicide attack."


Are we really expected to believe this?

When the NOTW scandal was revealed and the Murdochs appeared before the Government Committee, shareholdres of Newscorp expressed their
concern and , Newscorp, to their credit set up their own investigation and passed on all relevant information to the British Police which I think has been
responsible for the sun expose.

Carey, a Director of Newscorp is expected to take over from Rupert Murdoch who it would appear will not stand down . However, since Newscorp is
paying for all these hackings and may now be facing more claims from The Sun, the Murdochs may well be forced to stand down and their 70% shares
in Newscorp be diluted by U.S. Law.

Rupert Murdoch is on his way to London over news of the arrest of Sun Staff

The Sun is the biggest selling Newspaper in th U.K.

Tom Watson MP who bought shares in Newscorp to be able to attend the AGM and was very verbose at the Committee meeting with the Murdochs
says it is no longer possible for Murdoch to maintain good Governance and he should step down.

Newscorp, who have already paid £78million in compensation to the people who were hacked by the NOTW has also run up a bill of $200 million in Legal
Fees and the Board of Directors will be incensed at this latest news.

It is well known that Murdoch has backed future Prime Ministers but the Bribery probe is serious and at this stage no one knows how far it goes.

Rupert Murdoch has said there are no plans to close the Sun down but this could change as the investigation proceeds. Could bskyb be the next target
for investigation?

Apparently the UK Newspapers are not making money but bskyb is very lucrative.

If it is determined that that the Murdoch Empire is not operating under Good Governance rules, bskyb could be affected.

IT IS BEING SAID THERE THERE COULD AN INVESTIGATION IN THE USA UNDER THE FOREIGNCORRUPT OFFICIALS/BRIBERY ACT,THEREBY US OWNED BUSINESSES CAN BE INVESTIGATED FOR CORRUPT PRACTICES AND/OR BRIBERY ABROAD.

This is how Sun journalists such as Jacquie Swift behave in public.

Why doesn't rupert murdoch do the decent thing and jump off a boat !

I think this will be the end of his Reign as a Press Baron Lioned, Newscorp will demand that he step down because the NOTW hacking has cost millions
and is still ongoing.

Did Rebekah have a Baby by a surrogate Mother to avoid going to Jail?

Will Cameron be sleeping soundly?

Can we expect the bribery charges to include bskyb which was trying to increase it's holding?

Watch this space

just watched a T.V. Interview with Neville Thurlbeck, chief Reporter of the NOTW, recipient of the infamous e-mail "for Neville " which led to the
investigation and downfall of the NOTW.

He says Murdoch would get rid of The Sun to protect his American assets.

That Murdoch knows everything there is to know about Newspapapers and is quite capable of leading Newscorp out of this mess.

When asked about James and bskyb, he says he is fit for purpose but makes mistakes.

with this latest scandal, Murdoch might be facing a U.S.A. Standards Committee about good governance under Foreign Business Prosecution.

Rupert Murdochs personal wealth is $7.4 Billion

Breaking News. 6 Sun Journalists have been arrested and have approached the News International Union for advice.

Apparently there has been sustained criminality over a period.

Newscorp have been investigating and passed on their evidence to the Police.

Staff are considering suing Newscorp for providing the Police with the evidence.

Evidence shows there were regular cash payments to Officials which amount to a six figure sum.

The Staff at The Sun are getting on with the job and expect a meeting with Rupert Murdoch who has not yet visited the Office.

Thanks for this Panda, so the 6 arrested today are these further arrest, or is this the same lot that was arrested last week that are seeking advise from the NI Union?

Lillyofthevalley wrote:Thanks for this Panda, so the 6 arrested today are these further arrest, or is this the same lot that was arrested last week that are seeking advise from the NI Union?

Hi Lilyofthevalley, the Newscaster on Channel 4 didn't say . I presume it's the original 6, because they are considering Legal action against Newscorp
for releasing their names.whatever happens , Murdoch is in for a rough ride and he will have to resign as Chairman. Newscorp have done the honourable thing by investigating themselves, partly because they will have to face Good Governance under US Law.

A previous Employee of the NOTW said Murdoch will sacrifice the Sun because his US interests are far more important.

Rupert Murdoch has just landed at Luton Airport. He is expected to speak to Sun journos tomorrow.

Murdoch is to meet with Sun Staff later today. Ten current and former senior Staff have been arrested.

17 February 2012
Last updated at 00:58











Rupert Murdoch in UK to tackle Sun arrests fallout












Rupert Murdoch faces the prospect of anger among some journalists at the Sun newspaper



Continue reading the main story Related Stories

• Torin Douglas: Eye of the storm
  
• The Sun's controversial history
  
• Eight held over payments inquiry
  

Rupert
Murdoch, the chief executive of News Corporation, has arrived in London
to take charge of the latest crisis involving one of his newspapers.

Ten current and former senior staff at The Sun have been
arrested since November in connection with alleged corrupt payments to
public officials.

Sun journalists are angry at the way police were handed information by a News Corporation committee.

Mr Murdoch is expected to speak to staff of his UK newspaper group later.

He will address employees at the headquarters of News International in Wapping, east London.

Last year News Corporation closed the News of the World over impropriety.

Revelations that staff employed by the newspaper hacked the
phones of public figures prompted the closure of the 168-year-old paper.

Mr Murdoch arrived on a private plane at Luton Airport from the US on Thursday evening.

It follows anger at the way in which the News Corporation's Management and Standards Committee set up to investigate allegations of wrongdoing at the Sun passed on information to the police.

The National Union of Journalists has said news organisations
have a duty to protect their sources, and is considering a legal
challenge to the company.

And the paper's former political editor Trevor Kavanagh used his Sun column to question the management's actions.

Writing in the Sun's sister paper, the Times, human rights
lawyer Geoffrey Robertson said newspapers had a legal and moral duty to
protect their sources.

Mr Murdoch has previously said he would not close the Sun.








More on This Story





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• 
  Torin Douglas: Eye of the storm
  16 FEBRUARY 2012,
  ENTERTAINMENT & ARTS
  
• 
  The Sun's controversial history
  11 FEBRUARY 2012,
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• 
  Eight held over payments inquiry
  11 FEBRUARY 2012,
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• 
  Who is in the line of fire?
  19 JANUARY 2012,
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  29 JANUARY 2012,
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Murdoch will meet Sun Staff this morning where he faces a hostile reception. Journalists are furious that they have been named and shamed for being
"outed" by Newscorp . They say they have been thrown to the Wolves. The £100,000 quoted was payment for information paid by the Journalists.

Murdoch has an emotional attachment to Newspapers inherited from his Father but will do what is necessary to retain his U.S. Empire which consists
of the Wall Street Journal, Dow Jones, Fox News, The Times, BskyB where he is a Director of some.

America has a much more stringent approach to "Good Governance" than Britain which is why Newscorp took action partly because of shareholders concern
and Newscorp Directors worry about contagion. It is almost certain that Rupert Murdoch will be asked to stand down as Chairman and the Murdoch Family
shareholding diluted from the current 70%.

Murdoch says Sun on a Sunday coming soon
http://news.sky.com/home/politics/article/16171702

wjk wrote:Murdoch says Sun on a Sunday coming soon
http://news.sky.com/home/politics/article/16171702

thanks wjk.....It has been said that Murdoch cannot allow the "arrested journalists" to return to work until they are cleared because they would
have access to private information. Apparently Murdoch has always been bold in his actions and the idea of a Sunday Sun would alow him to promise
the Sun staff that their jobs will be protected. The Sun is very profitable so it remains to be seen whether any more Journalists are arrested .

Murdoch Offers Reassurances to Sun Newsroom



Ben Stansall/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesRupert Murdoch held a copy of The Sun as he left his home in London on Friday.
By JOHN F. BURNS

Published: February 17, 2012

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LONDON — In his 60 years in the newspaper business, few moments could have been as charged for Rupert Murdoch as the one on Friday when he visited the London headquarters of his British newspaper arm, News International, where reporters and editors at The Sun tabloid were in a state of ferment against him and his executives.






Readers’ Comments

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Scotland Yard jolted the Murdoch empire when it mounted dawn raids last weekend on the homes of five senior Sun employees who were questioned on accusations of paying police officers and other public officials for confidential information. With the raids, the focus of the scandal rocking Mr. Murdoch’s media conglomerate — and Britain’s police force — shifted somewhat from the accusations of illegal cellphone hacking by some News International reporters that have dogged it for months.
The fact that the names of the five Sun employees and their sources had been given to the police by a special committee appointed by Mr. Murdoch, which reported directly to his News Corporation headquarters in New York, set off a furor in the newsroom of The Sun, Britain’s highest-circulated daily newspaper.
Mr. Murdoch, who is 80, met those charges in a characteristically direct manner, flying to London on his corporate jet on Thursday and going straight to his company’s headquarters in London on Friday morning. After distributing an e-mail to Sun staff that combined an unapologetic defense of the company’s cooperation with Scotland Yard in the bribery and phone-hacking investigations with reassurances about the future of The Sun, he strolled through the tabloid’s newsroom greeting individual staff members.
Mr. Murdoch told Sun employees that News International would be starting a new Sunday tabloid, The Sun on Sunday, “very soon” that would aim at capturing many of the readers lost with the demise of The News of the World, closed because of the hacking scandal. “Our duty is to expand one of the world’s most widely read newspapers and reach even more people than ever before,” he said in the e-mail.
Concerns for The Sun’s future had been heightened by the shuttering of his other British tabloid, the weekend News of the World, at the cost of nearly 200 newsroom jobs. Like The Sun, The News of the World was hugely profitable, and served with The Sun as the financial mainstay of the two upmarket titles in the Murdoch newspaper stable in Britain, The Times and The Sunday Times, both of which run at heavy losses. In effect, any move to close The Sun would have imperiled all three titles, which together occupy a central role in British newspapering.
Mr. Murdoch also told the tabloid’s employees that he had ordered the lifting of the suspensions of all newsroom staff members who have been arrested “until or whether charged” and said the corporation would cover their legal expenses.
“Everyone is innocent unless proven otherwise,” he said.
Senior Sun staff members, including Trevor Kavanagh, the paper’s associate editor, had spoken up angrily after the weekend arrests. Mr. Kavanagh accused Mr. Murdoch and his executives of engaging in a “witch hunt” against reporters and editors at The Sun by passing names of possible miscreants to Scotland Yard, and, in effect, of being handmaidens to the scenes that developed on Saturday when police squads raided the homes of the Sun employees — among them the deputy editor, the deputy news editor, the chief reporter, the chief foreign correspondent, and the photo editor.
Accounts of the raids circulating among Sun employees spoke of the police swooping in at dawn, rousting children from their beds and ripping up floorboards. The raids prompted a barrage of accusations by reporters and editors that the Murdoch hierarchy was sacrificing individual employees in a bid to protect wider company interests.
In his e-mail, Mr. Murdoch was staunch in his defense of the role played by the company’s management and standards committee, which has been working with company-appointed lawyers to work through 300 million e-mails from the archives of The Sun and The News of the World, looking for any evidence of criminal wrongdoing. He noted that he had owned The Sun for 43 years, and said that the arrests of Sun employees was “a source of great pain for me, as I know it is for each of you.”
But he added: “We will obey the law. Illegal activities cannot and will not be tolerated, at any of our publications. Our board of directors, our management team and I take these issues very seriously.” He said that the company committee that has been working with the police had been established in a form that gave it independence from News International, and had been told to cooperate with the police. “We will turn over every piece of evidence we find,” he said, “not just because we are obligated to do so, but because it is the right thing to do.”
Still, his praise for The Sun was fulsome and feisty, suggesting that he saw the crisis at The Sun as an opportunity to begin to fight back against the wide circle of antagonists in Britain who have pounced on the scandals to vilify the country’s tabloid newspapers, and, in some cases, Mr. Murdoch himself. “Having a winning paper is the best answer to our critics,” he said. “I am even more determined to see The Sun continue to fight for its readers and its beliefs.”
To this, Mr. Murdoch added a pledge that he intended to remain in Britain “for the next several weeks, to give you my unwavering support.” To some, that suggested that Mr. Murdoch had lost faith in the ability of News International executives in Britain to steer the company out of the crisis. Media analysts said it also seemed like a tacit recognition of the damage that has been done to the reputation of his son James Murdoch, 39, long regarded as his presumptive heir.
As head of News Corporation’s European and Asian operations, the younger Mr. Murdoch has faced parliamentary testimony that suggested he knew or should have known about how widespread the hacking was — something he has vigorously denied — or, at the least, of bungling the company’s handling of the crisis.
Although the elder Mr. Murdoch’s rise from his beginnings as the scion of a newspaper-owning family in Australia to one of the world’s most powerful media magnates was based in large part in his early success in acquiring and expanding newspapers in Britain, he moved his headquarters to New York in the 1970s. That began a new phase that led to the giant that News Corporation has become, with tens of billions of dollars in assets that include Fox News and the Hollywood movie studio Twentieth Century Fox.

• comments (16)
  
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Panda wrote:

wjk wrote:Murdoch says Sun on a Sunday coming soon
http://news.sky.com/home/politics/article/16171702

thanks wjk.....It has been said that Murdoch cannot allow the "arrested journalists" to return to work until they are cleared because they would
have access to private information. Apparently Murdoch has always been bold in his actions and the idea of a Sunday Sun would alow him to promise
the Sun staff that their jobs will be protected. The Sun is very profitable so it remains to be seen whether any more Journalists are arrested .

So these journalists who Murdoch through his editors is vicariously liable for cannot return to work, but he is freely able to fly around the world, his ego causing deceit, corruption and grief in the name of profit and enterprise, yet he can deny all responsibility for the trail of mayhem his empire building has created.

malena stool wrote:

Panda wrote:

wjk wrote:Murdoch says Sun on a Sunday coming soon
http://news.sky.com/home/politics/article/16171702

thanks wjk.....It has been said that Murdoch cannot allow the "arrested journalists" to return to work until they are cleared because they would
have access to private information. Apparently Murdoch has always been bold in his actions and the idea of a Sunday Sun would alow him to promise
the Sun staff that their jobs will be protected. The Sun is very profitable so it remains to be seen whether any more Journalists are arrested .

So these journalists who Murdoch through his editors is vicariously liable for cannot return to work, but he is freely able to fly around the world, his ego causing deceit, corruption and grief in the name of profit and enterprise, yet he can deny all responsibility for the trail of mayhem his empire building has created.

malena, don't tell me Murdoch didn't know what was going on in the Sun!! The investigation by Newscorp was done to appease the U.S. Good Governance
Guide which includes U.S. Firms owning U.K. Companies.....Murdoch would never have investigated The Sun otherwise. The Board and shareholders have
complained about the legal Fees the NOTW cost Newscorp and there are still more claims to consider. Now we have legal Fees for the Sun Reporters ,
plus their Salaries until the Trial takes Place...what's next.!!!

Feb 20th
London (CNN) -- A Sunday edition of Britain's
best-selling newspaper will launch next week, The Sun announced Sunday,
two days after media magnate Rupert Murdoch said those plans were in the
works.

The publication date was announced to staff of the embattled
newspaper Saturday night by News International Chief Executive Tom
Mockridge, according to The Sun. News International is a U.K. subsidiary
of Murdoch's huge News Corp. empire, which has been rattled by a
phone-hacking scandal.

"This is our moment. I am sure every one of us will seize the
opportunity to pull together and deliver a great new dawn for The Sun
this Sunday," the newspaper quoted Mockridge as saying.

Murdoch announced during a newsroom visit Friday that that paper would move "very soon" to a seven-day publication schedule.





Tension high at "The Sun" newspaper





Should journalists ever buy stories?





Murdoch faces U.S. heat on phone hacking

The Sun on Sunday replaces the News of the World, a sister paper to
The Sun that was shuttered in July amid the scandal. Police in London
are investigating the hacking claims as well as suspected corruption
involving public officials.

As part of their investigation, officers on February 11 arrested five
senior journalists at The Sun over allegations of improper payments to
police and officials. A police officer, an employee of the Ministry of
Defence and a member of the armed forces were also detained.

The arrests followed those of four current and former Sun employees two weeks earlier in connection with the same investigation.

Murdoch traveled to London on Friday to visit The Sun staff. His
announcement of a Sunday edition appeared to be a bid to boost morale at
the paper, where staff have reacted angrily to the arrests and
journalistic investigations of their journalistic practices, likening
them to a witch-hunt.

Editor Dominic Mohan has said the paper has a readership of more than 7.7 million.

"This is a truly historic moment in newspaper publishing and I am
proud to be part of it. The Sun's future can now be reshaped as a unique
seven-day proposition in both print and digital," Mohan said of the new
Sunday edition, according to the paper.