Is this Armageddon for Murdoch and NewsCorp?

News International Chief Executive Steps Down


News International boss Tom Mockridge will leave the company at the end of the year, News Corporation says.


4:46am UK, Monday 03 December 2012

Tom Mockridge was CEO since July last year

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  News International's chief executive Tom Mockridge is to quit his role at the end of the month, News Corporation has announced.
  
  Mr Mockridge, who has been in the position since July last year, is leaving the company to "pursue new opportunities".
  
  News Corporation chairman Rupert Murdoch said Mr Mockridge's decision to step down was "entirely his own".
  
  He said: "For nearly 22 years, it has been my pleasure to have Tom Mockridge as a colleague.
  
  "Whether it was his early days with our newspaper group in Australia, his incredible work building Sky Italia, or his steadfast leadership of News International, Tom has always been a skilled executive and a trusted friend.
  
  "His decision to step down is absolutely and entirely his own. I am sorry to see him leave us but I know he will be a great success wherever he goes."
  
  Mr Mockridge took over leadership of News International, the publishing arm of News Corporation, from Rebekah Brooks at the height of the phone-hacking scandal.
  
  Rupert Murdoch said Mr Mockridge's decision to quit was 'entirely his own'
  The ex-newspaper journalist joined News Ltd in Australia in 1991, where he worked with James Murdoch, deputy chief operating officer of News Corporation, at Star TV, before moving to his native country of New Zealand, where he oversaw the company's newspaper and TV operations.
  
  After launching Sky Italia he became chief executive of European Television and served on the boards of BSkyB and Sky Deutschland, and is chair of Fox Turkey.
  
  Last week, Mr Mockridge backed calls for a "tough" new press watchdog but warned that state-backed regulation would put too much power in the hands of politicians.
  
  He said: "As a company we are keen to play our full part, with others in our industry, in creating a new body that commands the confidence of the public.
  
  "We believe that this can be achieved without statutory regulation - and welcome the Prime Minister's rejection of that proposal.
  
  "We accept that a new system should be independent, have a standards code, a means of resolving disputes, the power to demand prominent apologies and the ability to levy heavy fines."
  
  Mr Mockridge said he was "genuinely shocked" about the allegations of phone hacking at the company.
  
  But he insisted The Sun would not be shut down like its now defunct Sunday sister paper, The News Of The World, if more allegations emerged.
  
  ======================================
  
  Are we watching rats deserting the sinking ship?????
  

Tom Mockridge quit News Corp after major Murdoch shake-up left him with a role 'he didn't want'


Tom Mockridge resigned as chief executive of News International, publisher of The Times and the Sun, because a major management shake-up at Rupert Murdoch's media empire has left him with a role he does not want.









Image 1 of 2
Mr Murdoch announced that Robert Thomson, the managing editor of The Wall Street Journal, would become the new chief executive of News Corp's publishing business when the company splits in two. Photo: AFP



Image 1 of 2
Tom Mockridge quit as News Corporation’s most senior executive in Britain because the new structure does not offer his a role he was comfortable with. Photo: PA











By Telegraph Staff

2:35PM GMT 03 Dec 2012

17 Comments




He resigned hours before Mr Murdoch announced a major management reshuffle at News Corps' troubled newspaper and book publishing business.


Mr Mockridge, News Corporation’s most senior executive in Britain, said in a letter to staff: "To be direct, the reason I am leaving is that the new structure does not offer me a role I am comfortable with and, after 22 years with the company in five countries, I feel I have made enough of a contribution to make a personal choice to go."


News Corp is separating the publishing assets from its more valuable film and television businesses to limit the damage caused by the News of the World hacking scandal to the rest of the media empire. The entertainment arm generates 74pc of its $33.4bn (£20.9m) revenues and 90pc of its profits.


Mr Murdoch announced that Robert Thomson, the managing editor of The Wall Street Journal, would become the new chief executive of News Corp's publishing business when the company splits in two.


As part of the management shake-up, Mr Mockridge's role will be taken up by Mike Darcey, the chief operating officer of BSkyB.



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The newspaper business will retain the News Corp name, while the entertainment businesses will be named Fox Group, the company said.

Mr Murdoch said: “From the moment we made the decision to split the company, I could think of no one better suited to be chief executive officer of our publishing company than Robert Thomson.

"Robert has been an outstanding leader for the The Wall Street Journal, making it the dominant newspaper in the U.S. and greatly expanding its global reach through WSJ.com, which now publishes in eight languages.

"More than that, Robert is a person of unmatched integrity, whose passion and commitment to excellence have gained him the confidence and trust of his colleagues all around the world.”

Mr Mockridge, the former chief executive of Sky Italia, was parachuted into News International to help restore order after his predecessor, Rebekah Brooks, was unseated by the News of the World phone hacking scandal.

He had been widely tipped to lead the new publishing arm as a reward.

In a statement overnight, News Corps said Mr Mockridge was stepping down to “pursue outside opportunities” and Rupert Murdoch, the chairman of News Corporation, said his "decision to step down is absolutely and entirely his own".

Mr Mockridge, who thanked Mr Murdoch for sending him to Italy "where I met and married Lucia and I am now blessed with Filippa and Rodolfo", said in his letter: "This family is my future."

Mr Murdoch said he was "delighted" that Mr Darcey was to be News International's new chief executive.

"Mike is a world-class executive with unprecedented strategic and commercial experience and I look forward to benefiting from his many talents. His broadcasting background will provide important leadership in the development of our already impressive suite of digital products at News International.”

Other management changes at the publishing business included Bedi Ajay Singh, most recently chief financial officer for MGM Studios, becoming CFO, Paul Cheesbrough, News Corporation’s chief technology officer, taking on the role of technology chief and Keisha Smith as director of human relations.

Gerson Zweifach, currently General Counsel of News Corporation, will be General Counsel for Fox and News Corp. The News Corp role will be for a year.

Mr Murdoch retains his grip on the media empire, becoming chairman of both operations and chief executive of the entertainment arm, whose assets range from Fox Television and a 39pc stake in BSkyB to Twentieth Century Fox film studios.

The shake-up could also see the departure of James Harding, editor of the Times. Sources claim that Mr Murdoch was displeased by the way the Times newspaper covered the recent arrests of former News International executives, particularly in recent weeks.

There has been speculation that Mr Harding could move across to the Wall Street Journal.

Roy Greenslade, the media commentator, said in his blog on Monday that he had texted Mr Harding to ask if he was leaving and he had replied: "It isn't so."

John Witherow, editor of The Sunday Times, is expected to assume control of The Times newspaper. However, it is unclear whether this will be as its editor or as an editor in chief across both titles.

Either way, the move would pave the way for the two newspapers to move closer together.

===========================

Murdoch is ruthless "News Corp is separating the publishing assets from its more valuable film and television businesses to limit the damage caused by the News of the World hacking scandal to the rest of the media empire. The entertainment arm generates 74pc of its $33.4bn (£20.9m) revenues and 90pc of its profits" .......Andy Coulson had to take legal action
to force News International to pay his Legal Fees, I presume he is going to pay Rebekah Brooks as well and maybe a couple of other Execs, once the Trials start there will be more scandal revealed .

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   Elisabeth Murdoch reveals family rifts over MacTaggart Lecture
   

Rupert Murdoch did not speak to his daughter Elisabeth for nine weeks after she made a speech that was widely held to be critical of her brother James and his handling of the phone-hacking scandal at the News of the World.








Elisabeth Murdoch, Shine Group chairman and daughter of News Corporation chairman and CEO Rupert Murdoch, revealed her father did not speak to her for over two months after she delivered the MacTaggart Lecture Photo: PA






By Jonathan Russell, Assistant City Editor

6:15PM GMT 03 Dec 2012

2 Comments




As well as being cold shouldered by her father, it was also revealed on Monday how Ms Murdoch’s relationship with her brother is now so sour that the pair do not speak to each other, except on business matters. In the MacTaggart lecture Ms Murdoch openly challenged her brother’s profit-driven philosophy at News International, publishers of the News of the World, calling the idea a “recipe for disaster”.


Although the speech in August was well received, her father refused to read the positive press coverage while her brother felt “betrayed”, according to a detailed profile in The New Yorker.


Ms Murdoch told the author: “I should have said more positive things about James. [However], 99.9pc of the reaction was very positive… The only person who didn’t like my speech – who told me so – was my dad.”


The revelations shed an unflattering light on the dynamics that exist within the Murdoch family. Lachlan Murdoch, once the heir apparent to the media empire, left the company because of his father Rupert’s micromanagement; James still apparently resents his elder brother’s position as family favourite; and Elisabeth has been overlooked by her father because of her sex, the article claims. It also states it was a result of Ms Murdoch putting pressure on her father and brothers that led to former News International chief executive Rebekah Brooks stepping down at the height of the phone-hacking crisis.


After the MacTaggart lecture family relations became so strained it took the intervention of Robert Thomson, one of her father’s closest lieutenants, to reintegrate Elisabeth into the family.



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“He realised it [his response to the MacTaggart lecture] was not a loving reaction,” Ms Murdoch revealed.

Ms Murdoch quit her role at BSkyB in 2000 to set up her own production company Shine. She sold the company back to her father’s company in 2011, pocketing £150m in the process. She turned down a seat on the News Corp board as part of the deal, preferring to remain as chairman of Shine.

She disclosed that she was now looking at extending Shine, which makes programmes such as MasterChef, into the digital market, possibly with a new company called Rise.

A spokesman for News Corp declined to comment on the article.

Rupert Murdoch was protected from police, claims MP


News International may have stopped co-operating with a police investigation into alleged criminal behaviour by journalists because it found evidence that could implicate Rupert Murdoch, an MP claimed last night.








News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch Photo: Getty Images






By Gordon Rayner, Chief Reporter

6:37AM GMT 04 Dec 2012





Chris Bryant suggested the company’s Management and Standards Committee had been happy to help the police by “chucking overboard” journalists as long as they could ensure “the proprietor’s feet didn’t get wet”.


He also used parliamentary privilege to claim NI destroyed a laptop computer to get rid of evidence of “criminality” over The Sun newspaper’s payment to a US soldier for pictures of Saddam Hussein in jail.


Speaking during a Commons debate on the Leveson Report, the Labour MP for Rhondda who was also a victim of phone hacking by the News of the World, said he believed Rupert Murdoch could face criminal charges and urged NI to hand over all emails he had sent to staff about the Saddam pictures.


Photographs of Saddam in his underpants were splashed on the front page of The Sun and the Murdoch-owned New York Post in 2005. NI has never denied paying for the pictures, with a fee of £50,000 said to have changed hands.


Significantly, the pictures were bought from a US soldier by a Sun photographer who flew to California to obtain them, meaning a crime was potentially committed on US soil.



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This would make Mr Murdoch vulnerable to a criminal investigation in the US, with the FBI saying last week it would be interested in any evidence of the payment being made.

Under US laws, corporate executives can be pursued more aggressively for wrongdoing by their employees than in the UK.



Mr Bryant claimed the standards committee, which has provided the Metropolitan Police with millions of emails and other documents relating to phone-hacking and allegedly corrupt payments, had stopped co-operating in May. He said: “The lack of MSC co-operation with the Met since May of this year smacks of the plimsoll strategy where as soon as the water started lapping a little bit higher, chuck somebody overboard - a newspaper, an editor. They provided the material about some of their journalists as long as they made sure that the ship still floated and the proprietor’s feet didn’t get wet.

“I would suspect that at some point there will be charges brought against senior directors quite possibly including James and Rupert Murdoch as part of the body corporate.

“But there’s one mystery that I really don’t understand. I understand from two well-placed people inside News International that in 2005 The Sun and the New York Post paid a substantial sum to a serving member of the United States armed forces in the US for a photograph of Saddam Hussein, and a much larger amount was then paid via a specially set-up account in the UK to that same member of the US armed forces.

“It is difficult to see how the people who wrote that story up in the UK and the US and the two editors of the American newspaper and the British newspaper could possibly pretend that they did not know how that material was obtained and that there had been criminality involved in the process of obtaining that photo.

“So I urge the MSC to provide all the emails from Rupert Murdoch to NI staff that relate to this matter and in particular to the photograph of Saddam Hussein because I think that otherwise people will conclude in this country that News International still don’t get it, they’re still refusing to co-operate fully with the police.”

In July Deputy Assistant Commissioner Sue Akers, who is leading Scotland Yard’s inquiries into phone hacking, computer hacking and illegal payments, told the Leveson Inquiry that the MSC “reconsidered their position” and for several weeks there was no co-operation. She said co-operation resumed in June but meetings were “with lawyers only” after that.

A spokesman for NI declined to comment, referring calls to News Corp, its parent company, which had not responded at the time of going to press.

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Committee report 'will be rightly seen as partisan'






MPs say News Corp 'misled parliament'






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Steven Nott ‏@StevenNott
Rebekah Brooks and co are in Southwark Crown Court now applying for dismissal of charges. Thought you should know. ;>)

The Crown Court
at Southwark
Daily List for Wednesday 5 December 2012 at English Grounds, off Battlebridge Lane
Court 1 - sitting at 10:00 AM
BEFORE: THE HONOURABLE MR JUSTICE FULFORD (2)
For Application for Dismissal of Charges
T20127253 BROOKS Rebekah M
01HT0155312
BROOKS Charles
01HT1553012
CARTER Cheryl S
42BY2700012
EDWARDS Paul C
01HT0155312
HANNA Mark
01HT0155312
LINKED TO:
T20127364 BROOKS Rebekah M
01PL6469011
LINKED TO:
T20127380 SANDELL Lee
DEFENDANTS TO ATTEND


http://www.courtserve2.net/courtlists/current/crown/sthwk_T121205.01.htm

IT SEEMS THAT RUPERT MURDOCH WANTED PETRAEUS(SP?) TO RUN FOR PRESIDENT.

Thanks AnnaEsse........how can they apply for dismissal of charges?????? If they get away with this it will be the greatest travesty of justice and the arrogance of Murdoch to think Britain's Judicial System would agree beggars belief. If you can find out why please post here.......could Cameron have the Power do you think?

Panda wrote:Thanks AnnaEsse........how can they apply for dismissal of charges?????? If they get away with this it will be the greatest travesty of justice and the arrogance of Murdoch to think Britain's Judicial System would agree beggars belief. If you can find out why please post here.......could Cameron have the Power do you think?

This is all I've seen Panda

Steven Nott ‏@StevenNott
Rebekah Brooks & alleged accomplices in court and the press have been gagged from telling us. Smell a rat anyone ?

AnnaEsse wrote:

Panda wrote:Thanks AnnaEsse........how can they apply for dismissal of charges?????? If they get away with this it will be the greatest travesty of justice and the arrogance of Murdoch to think Britain's Judicial System would agree beggars belief. If you can find out why please post here.......could Cameron have the Power do you think?

This is all I've seen Panda

Steven Nott ‏@StevenNott
Rebekah Brooks & alleged accomplices in court and the press have been gagged from telling us. Smell a rat anyone ?

I posted a couple of days ago that Murdoch was seperating his Companies and that there was a rumour that a Director of NEWSCORP was involved in the scandal . I think if this is true there would be such a public outcry that Cameron would have to stand down and this is a prime example of why the Press needs to be monitored. Murdoch ought to have his Licence taken away. I would be very surprised if the Government could slap a D Notice on this , it's all happening and I await the result with bated breath . I think there would be a public outcry if the Murdochs got away with this.

Anymore news on what happened with RB and her cronies?

wjk wrote:Anymore news on what happened with RB and her cronies?

I tell you what though wjk , there really would be a public outcry if their cases were dismissed and this may be a joke.

It is estimated that News International will end up paying over £1 million in costs for Legal aid to those charged . Murdoch is moving some of the Newscorp Business to Fox because he says there is more profit in the Film and Books than the Press, presumably because most newspapers are online now.

we shall see, but I would be very surprised if the cases are dismissed.

I agree Panda. Disgraceful if true!

wjk wrote:I agree Panda. Disgraceful if true!

To be honest wjk......how can Murdoch have the effrontery to tell the British Judicial System what to do???? I wouldn't be surprised if HE is the NewsCorp Member of the Board suspected to have known about the phone hacking so he thinks he can bully his way out of it.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-20705535

12 December 2012 Last updated at 18:48

Rebekah Brooks, the former head of News International, was paid £10.8m after she resigned, it has emerged.

The figure, compensation for loss of office, appeared in the company's accounts, released on Wednesday.

Mrs Brooks resigned in July 2011 shortly after the News of the World closed because of phone hacking allegations.

The accounts for the year to July 2012 also show the group set aside £17.5m to cover legal fees and damages.

That figure relates to existing claims only, and could rise in the future if it receives more, News International said.

Individuals who have received payments from the company include the parents of the murdered schoolgirl Millie Dowler and the singer Charlotte Church.

Mrs Brooks, who has been charged over alleged payments to police and public officials, was a former editor of the News of the World and the Sun newspaper, and later rose to chief executive of News International.

She appeared at the Old Bailey last week and is due to face trial in September next year over alleged illegal payments to public officials.

Losses

The company said this financial year contained a "high level of uncertainty" due to potential damages and legal costs which may be payable as result of the legal action by those alleging their private messages were intercepted by the News of the World in search of stories.

News International Group is a subsidiary of Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation and owns both the Times titles as well as the Sun newspaper.

Its accounts show it lost £153m in the year to July 2012 compared with a profit of £113m a year earlier.

The group said one of the main causes of the loss, £46.6m, was the closure of the News of the World, which published its last edition in July last year.

More than half of this is legal fees, it said. In addition to that there is the £10.8m loss of office payment and £2.9m in charitable donations from the sale of the last News of the World.

The Times

Separately, the editor of the Times, James Harding, has announced his resignation.

He will leave within a month and is expected to be replaced by Sunday Times editor John Witherow. .

In an address to staff, Mr Harding implied that the decision was not entirely his: "It has been made clear to me that News Corporation would like to appoint a new editor of the Times.

"I have, therefore, agreed to stand down. I called Rupert this morning to offer my resignation and he accepted it," he said.

Mr Harding could move to Mr Murdoch's publishing firm, Harper Collins, BBC business editor Robert Peston says.

Rupert Murdoch said: "James has been a distinguished editor for the Times, attracting talented staff to the paper and leading it through difficult times.

"I have great respect for him as a colleague and friend, and truly hope we can work together again."

Mr Harding, who is 43, was one of the youngest journalists to take charge of the paper.

Split

The change at the Times newspaper comes hard on the heels of another move at the top of Mr Murdoch's company.

Last week, the chief executive of News International, Tom Mockridge, who had taken over from Mrs Brooks in July 2011, said he would leave his role before the end of the month.

Rupert Murdoch, chairman and chief executive of News Corp, said that Mr Mockridge's decision was "absolutely and entirely his own".

News Corp plans to split into two businesses, separating its newspaper and book publishing interests from its now dominant and much more profitable TV and film enterprises.

Thanks wjk......very interesting !!! So Rebekah was paid £10.3 million "severance pay" will she have to pay her own Legal fees out of that or will News International pay?

I think the U.S. will force Murdoch to close down News International , they have strict rules regarding the honesty of U.S. Companies operating abroad, that is why Murdoch has split the Companies . The Board of Directors at Newscorp which owns News International , owner of The Sun , were very concerned at the amount of money paid to people who had been hacked but since the Murdochs owns 70% there wasn't much they could do . However, since Coulson has successfully sued for News Int. to pay his Legal Expenses, I expect Rebekah and some of the Senior Staff will also have their Legal Fees paid by NI. Pity we have to wait until next September .

Poor Rebekah, how will she manage to exist on such a tardy payout. It must be awful being reduced to your last £10 mill. Who says crime doesn't pay? We're all in this together are we Cameron?

Another grabbing g*t!!

With 3 charges against her I think Rebekah will be given a jail sentence , if there is any" interference" in the Judicial system the Press and public would be outraged. she might have money but her reputation is gone .

Panda wrote:With 3 charges against her I think Rebekah will be given a jail sentence , if there is any" interference" in the Judicial system the Press and public would be outraged. she might have money but her reputation is gone .

Agree

NOTW




Private investigator loses his appeal in case brought by Max Clifford's PR consultant






Tuesday 31 July 2012

Cameron gets legal tutoring to prepare for grilling at Leveson

Rebekah Brooks' former PA arrested by phone hack police

Tom Crone held in phone hacking investigation

The names of senior journalists at the News of the World (NOTW) who commissioned the private investigator Glenn Mulcaire to hack phones must be handed to police, the High Court ruled yesterday.


The order by Mr Justice Vos means Scotland Yard will have full access to Mulcaire's witness statement in the case brought against him and the now defunct newspaper by Nicola Phillips, a former assistant to the PR consultant Max Clifford.

The ruling was made at a pre-trial hearing of the latest tranche of 50 civil actions filed against News International over phone hacking. It follows the decision by the Supreme Court to refuse an appeal from Mulcaire, who claimed that revealing who hired him would amount to self-incrimination.

The Met Police's counsel, Jonathan Dixey, revealed that further charges against Mulcaire and others could soon follow. Although Mr Justice Vos said that giving Mulcaire's witness statement to Scotland Yard would "not be duly unfair", he admitted it did contain "positive information" that may benefit current police investigations.

New charges were brought against Mulcaire by the Crown Prosecution Service last week in a list that included: the NOTW's former news editor, Greg Miskiw; the former head of news Ian Edmondson; and the former news editor and chief reporter Neville Thurlbeck. News International's former chief executive, Rebekah Brooks, and the paper's former editor, Andy Coulson, were also charged.

Ms Phillips began her legal battle against NI and Mulcaire in May 2010. She claims voice messages left by her clients during the time she worked for Mr Clifford were unlawfully hacked.

Although her case was one of the first brought against Rupert Murdoch's company, she has still to settle. Yesterday she told The Independent that after three years of stress and living with the continuing legal battle, she'd had enough. "I'm leaving the UK in January or February and moving to Los Angeles. Immigration papers are being finalised and I'm shifting my business to LA," she said.

In a separate development yesterday, The Sun's chief foreign correspondent became the eighth person to be arrested by the Met's Operation Tuleta probe into computer hacking and privacy breaches. Nick Parker, 51, was held on suspicion of handling stolen goods after arriving by appointment at a central London police station. He was arrested and questioned in February in connection with the Met's anti-corruption investigation into alleged payments to public officials. He was still on bail yesterday from the earlier arrest.

Scotland Yard said the arrest related to a suspected conspiracy involving the gathering of data from a stolen mobile phone. In July another Sun journalist, Rhodri Phillips, 35, was arrested by Operation Tuleta. His arrest is believed to be related to an order given to Mr Phillips by the paper's news desk, which told him to go and pick up a mobile phone alleged to have been left on the train by an MP and found by a member of the public.

By Katherine Rushton, Media, telecoms and technology editor

9:00PM GMT 12 Dec 2012


24 Comments




Senior executives at Rupert Murdoch’s British newspaper operation have made informal approaches to Government to seek permission to restructure the papers as a single, seven-day news operation.


News International is currently bound by undertakings Mr Murdoch gave the Government when he acquired The Times to keep the two titles separate. However, News International executives have sounded out Government figures to see if they can be released from the legal agreement, which is signed by Mr Murdoch and sits in the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.


A source within News International said that the newspaper group was “uniquely handicapped” by not being allowed to consider merging its titles. “We are uniqely disadvantaged in terms of trying to balance the books and make the newspapers viable in the long term,” the source said.


The Daily Telegraph revealed last week that Mr Harding was close to leaving The Times. He resigned on Wednesday at the request of the board, with what is understood to have been a £1.3m pay-off. “It has been made clear to me that News Corporation would like to appoint a new editor of The Times,” he said.


It is understood that Mr Murdoch was unhappy at the way that the newspaper had covered the News of the World phone hacking scandal, particularly in recent months. Mr Harding will leave at the end of the year, and is in discussions about taking a job elsewhere in Mr Murdoch’s media empire.



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John Witherow, editor of The Sunday Times, is expected to replace Mr Harding at the loss-making daily, whilst Mr Witherow’s deputy, Martin Ivens, is thought to be in line to take the helm of the more successful Sunday title, until News International gets permission for a full merger

Rebekah Brooks 'received £10.9m pay-off' as cost of hacking spirals


Rebekah Brooks is understood to have received a £10.9m payoff from News International, where she was chief executive, after the media group admitted it handed the sum to “one director as compensation for loss of office”.








David Cameron has been friends with Mrs Brooks’ husband Charlie since the pair studied at Eton College. They also own houses near one another in Oxfordshire. Photo: REX






By Katherine Rushton, Media, Telecoms and Technology Editor

3:48PM GMT 12 Dec 2012


225 Comments




The payout was revealed in the accounts of NI Group and four of its subsidiaries, which also counted the mounting cost of the closure of the News of the World.


News Group Newspapers, which published the News of the World and still produces The Sun, took a write-down of £289m for costs related to the hacking scandal, including £160m for the loss of the Sunday tabloid. The News of the World was shut down last year following claims that its journalists hacked phones and paid police bribes on Ms Brooks’ watch.


Meanwhile NI Group, its parent company, swung from a £111.5m pre-tax profit in 2011 to a £155.5m loss in the year to July 2012, after a series of significant write-downs related to the hacking and bribery scandals, which have shaken Rupert Murdoch’s entire News Corporation media empire.


The British newspaper operation took a £51.6m hit for “restructuring expenses” associated with the News of the World, and another of £140.9m for “legal and professional fees” related to the phone hacking claims during the period.


Sales also fell, dropping12.8pc to £1.19bn.



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  26 Sep 2012
  

The scandal is still taking a substantial toll on News International’s bank balance this year, the company revealed.

Its internal Management and Standards swat team, assembled to investigate the issue, has notched up a further £23m of legal and professional costs in the current financial year, and the company has also had to pay a further £11.3m for the News of the World closure.

“The outlook will continues to be impacted by the closure of the News of the World [and there is] a high level of uncertainty in respect of potential damages and legal costs which may be payable,” News Group Newspapers said.

“The company is co-operating with these investigations, but is not able to estimate the ultimate outcome or costs associated with these investigations…Violations of law may result in civil, administrative or criminal fines or penalties, which may or may not be significant.”

News Corporation faces lawsuits on both sides of the Atlantic, and is being investigated by America’s Department of Justice and Federal Bureau of Investigation for breaches of its Foreign and Corrupt Practices Act which outlaws bribery to overseas officials.

The accounts also revealed the declining performance of The Times and Sunday Times newspapers, held by Times Newspapers Limited. Turnover fell 10pc to £361m, whilst pre-tax losses widened considerably from £11.9m in 2011 to £28.8m last year.

The division notched up £12.7m of redundancy costs during the 12-month period

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We must defend the BBC from Murdoch and death by a thousand Tory cuts



If we want to preserve quality public-service broadcasting in Britain, we must defend the Beeb.


By Mehdi Hasan Published 14 November 2012 17:41

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Men walk past a bank of television screens in the BBC headquarters at New Broadcasting House. Photograph: Getty Images
Rule one of politics, as Barack Obama’s former chief of staff Rahm Emanuel once remarked, is: “Never allow a crisis to go to waste.” Right-wingers in the UK have heeded his words: they certainly aren’t allowing the crises engulfing the BBC “to go to waste”. And their strategy is as brazen as it is cynical and opportunistic: to magnify and exaggerate the sins of the hated Beeb while quietly minimising the crimes of their friends at News International.

A case in point was Boris Johnson’s Telegraph column of 12 November. After blithely declaring that the “real tragedy” was the “smearing [of] an innocent man’s name” by BBC’s Newsnight (and not, as you might think, the sexual abuse of children), Johnson claimed that Newsnight’s reporting had been “more cruel, revolting and idiotic than anything perpetrated by the News of the World”.

Sorry, what? Dare I remind the Mayor of London that more than 4,000 people have been identified by police as possible victims of phone-hacking, including the families of dead British soldiers, relatives of the 7/7 victims and a murdered schoolgirl? Yet the cultural vandals on the right only have eyes for the BBC, whose existence has always been anathema to their free-market, anti-regulation ideology.

Hysteria and hyperbole


The Newsnight debacle has provided the perfect cover for an attack on the corporation that has been a long time in the making. Remember, in opposition, the Conservative Party in effect allowed James Murdoch and NewsCorp lobbyists to write its media policy. And on coming to office, the Tory-led coalition froze the BBC licence fee for six years. An unavoidable cost-cutting measure, perhaps? Not quite: a gleeful David Cameron let the mask slip when he referred to the BBC “deliciously” having to slash its budget. (For the record, the BBC costs each licensed household less than 40p a day.)

In recent weeks, conservatives – both big and small “c” – have queued up to denounce the broadcaster and demand that it be downsized or even broken up. “The BBC must do less, and do it better,” declaimed the Telegraph on 13 November. The Defence Secretary, the Conservative Philip Hammond, suggested in (where else?) a BBC radio interview that the future of the licence fee might be in doubt.

What we are witnessing is a shameless, co-ordinated assault on the BBC’s reputation and output by Conservative politicians and by their outriders in the right-wing media echo chamber. Don’t believe me? Ask yourself: where were these doughty Tory defenders of media ethics when Christopher Jefferies, the landlord of the murdered architect Joanna Yeates, was being smeared as a “creepy” killer by the press? Eight newspapers, including the Sun, the Mirror and the Daily Mail, had to pay “substantial” libel damages to the former schoolmaster. None of those papers’ editors quit his job; none “stood aside” from his post pending an independent inquiry.

It is also worth asking why so few Tory MPs and Tory-supporting columnists have gone after ITV – the network on which the presenter Phillip Schofield idiotically ambushed the Prime Minister, live on air, with a list of alleged paedophiles culled from the internet. Schofield is still in his job. So, too, are the chairman and chief executive of ITV.

To try to delegitimise or dismantle the BBC, the world’s biggest and best broadcaster, on the basis of Newsnight’s double failure – first over Jimmy Savile, then over Lord McAlpine – is unfair both to the corporation and to Newsnight itself. Ask the brave people of the besieged Syrian city of Homs what they think of the show. Newsnight’s acclaimed film Undercover in Homs, which reported their plight to Britain, won an Amnesty media award in May.

The BBC is bigger than Newsnight – though you might not have guessed it from the recent hysteria and hyperbole in the press. Consider some of the award-winning and popular BBC output of the past 12 months: Panorama, David Attenborough’s Frozen Planet, Andrew Marr’s History of the World, Strictly Come Dancing, The Archers, Sherlock, the Today programme, Children in Need, the Proms, Woman’s Hour, CBeebies . . . the list goes on. Figures released by the corporation suggest 96 per cent of the UK population consumes BBC services every week.

The inconvenient truth for right-wingers is that their hatred of the taxpayer-funded, publicly owned BBC has never been shared by the tax-paying public. As the Financial Times noted on 12 November: “In a survey by Ofcom, the media regulator, in November 2011, 59 per cent of people said the BBC was the news source they most trusted. The next, ITV News, scored 7 per cent.” The reporters added: “No newspaper beat 2 per cent.”

Beware the Rupert


The BBC has bent over backwards to hold itself to account. How many other media organisations would have allowed their editor-in-chief to be flayed in public by one of his own employees, as Ent­wistle was by the Today programme’s John Humphrys on 10 November?

Full disclosure: I was once a BBC employee and I now do paid punditry for various BBC programmes. But I am no dewy-eyed defender of Auntie: I have, on these pages, condemned the Beeb’s “establishment bias . . . towards power and privilege, tradition and orthodoxy” and its “stomach-churning” coverage of the monarchy. And I agree that the corporation’s “bonkers” (© David Dimbleby) management structure is stuffed with “cowards and incompetents” (© Jeremy Paxman).

But what is the alternative? Death by a thousand Tory cuts? The Foxification of the British media landscape? Make no mistake, Rupert Murdoch – who incidentally hasn’t had to resign as chief executive of a media company where phone-hacking was conducted on an industrial scale – is waiting in the wings.

The BBC, despite its many faults, must be protected from its right-wing enemies. In the battle to preserve high-quality, non-partisan public-service broadcasting, Auntie is our last line of defence.

Mehdi Hasan is political director of the Huffington Post UK and a contributing writer to the New Statesman. This piece is crossposted with the Huffington Post here

Rebekah Brooks, the former chief of News Corp.’s U.K. newspaper unit accused of phone hacking and bribery, received a payout worth 10.9 million pounds ($17.6 million) after stepping down from the post.
The package given to Brooks, who left the role in July 2011, included legal fees and costs for office space, according to regulatory filings. The amount is higher than the 7 million pounds Brooks was initially reported to have received. A spokeswoman for News Corp.’s London-based International division declined to comment.

Brooks is among executives charged with either conspiring to intercept the voice mail of celebrities, lawmakers and crime victims, or conspiring to cover up the practice as a police probe into phone-hacking intensified last year. Brooks, who faces a criminal trial next year, became head of News International, which also publishes the Sun, the Times and the Sunday Times, in 2009 after serving as editor of the Sun for 6 1/2 years.

Beginning her career as a feature writer for the News of the World tabloid in 1989, Brooks rose through the ranks and was editor of that newspaper from 2000 to 2003. News Corp. (NWSA) shut down the News of the World tabloid, where the phone-hacking scandal started.









News Corp. has spent more than $315 million on civil settlements, legal fees and other costs related to the scandal. More than 80 people have been arrested for intercepting voice mail and bribing public employees. Results from a press-ethics probe recommended Britain set up an independent media regulator in response to wrongdoing by journalists.

Restructuring Costs


The regulatory filing from Britain’s Companies House states that News Group Newspapers Ltd. incurred 43.3 million pounds in“exceptional” restructuring costs in relation to shuttering the News of the World tabloid last year, where the phone-hacking scandal started.

Amid the scandal, the U.K. newspaper unit this month named its third chief executive officer in less than 18 months.

Mike Darcey, currently chief operating officer at pay-TV operator British Sky Broadcasting Group Plc (BSY), will replace CEOTom Mockridge, who plans to step down by the end of the year. Mockridge last year took over from Brooks.

Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., bowing to pressure from shareholders, agreed in June to break off the publishing assets, which are growing more slowly than its Fox entertainment businesses. The company on Dec. 3 named Wall Street Journal editor Robert Thomson to lead the publishing spinoff. News International said today James Harding, who in 2007 took over from Thomson as the editor of The Times of London, will leave his post at the end of this month.

Bloomberg LP, the parent of Bloomberg News, competes with News Corp. units in providing financial news and information.

Why the US media ignored Murdoch's brazen bid to hijack the presidency


Did the Washington Post and others underplay the story through fear of the News Corp chairman, or simply tin-eared judgment?

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    Carl Bernstein
    
  • The Guardian, Thursday 20 December 2012 16.41 GMT
    
    
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The Ailes/Petraeus tape made clear to many that Murdoch's goals in America have always been nefarious. Photograph: Reuters

So now we have it: what appears to be hard, irrefutable evidence of Rupert Murdoch's ultimate and most audacious attempt – thwarted, thankfully, by circumstance – to hijack America's democratic institutions on a scale equal to his success in kidnapping and corrupting the essential democratic institutions of Great Britain through money, influence and wholesale abuse of the privileges of a free press.

In the American instance, Murdoch's goal seems to have been nothing less than using his media empire – notably Fox News – to stealthily recruit, bankroll and support the presidential candidacy of General David Petraeus in the 2012 election.

Thus in the spring of 2011 – less than 10 weeks before Murdoch's centrality to the hacking and politician-buying scandal enveloping his British newspapers was definitively revealed – Fox News' inventor and president, Roger Ailes, dispatched an emissary to Afghanistan to urge Petraeus to turn down President Obama's expected offer to become CIA director and, instead, run for the Republican nomination for president, with promises of being bankrolled by Murdoch. Ailes himself would resign as president of Fox News and run the campaign, according to the conversation between Petraeus and the emissary, K T McFarland, a Fox News on-air defense "analyst" and former spear carrier for national security principals in three Republican administrations.

All this was revealed in a tape recording of Petraeus's meeting with McFarland obtained by Bob Woodward, whose account of their discussion, accompanied online by audio of the tape, was published in the Washington Post – distressingly, in its style section, and not on page one, where it belonged – and, under the style logo, online on December 3.

Indeed, almost as dismaying as Ailes' and Murdoch's disdain for an independent and truly free and honest press, and as remarkable as the obsequious eagerness of their messenger to convey their extraordinary presidential draft and promise of on-air Fox support to Petraeus, has been the ho-hum response to the story by the American press and the country's political establishment, whether out of fear of Murdoch, Ailes and Fox – or, perhaps, lack of surprise at Murdoch's, Ailes' and Fox's contempt for decent journalistic values or a transparent electoral process.

The tone of the media's reaction was set from the beginning by the Post's own tin-eared treatment of this huge story: relegating it, like any other juicy tidbit of inside-the-beltway media gossip, to the section of the newspaper and its website that focuses on entertainment, gossip, cultural and personality-driven news, instead of the front page.

"Bob had a great scoop, a buzzy media story that made it perfect for Style. It didn't have the broader import that would justify A1," Liz Spayd, the Post's managing editor, told Politico when asked why the story appeared in the style section.

Buzzy media story? Lacking the "broader import" of a front-page story? One cannot imagine such a failure of news judgment among any of Spayd's modern predecessors as managing editors of the Post, especially in the clear light of the next day and with a tape recording – of the highest audio quality – in hand.

"Tell [Ailes] if I ever ran," Petraeus announces on the crystal-clear digital recording and then laughs, "but I won't … but if I ever ran, I'd take him up on his offer. … He said he would quit Fox … and bankroll it."

McFarland clarified the terms: "The big boss is bankrolling it. Roger's going to run it. And the rest of us are going to be your in-house" – thereby confirming what Fox New critics have consistently maintained about the network's faux-news agenda and its built-in ideological bias.

And here let us posit the following: were an emissary of the president of NBC News, or of the editor of the New York Times or the Washington Post ever caught on tape promising what Ailes and Murdoch had apparently suggested and offered here, the hue and cry, especially from Fox News and Republican/Tea Party America, from the Congress to the US Chamber of Commerce to the Heritage Foundation, would be deafening and not be subdued until there was a congressional investigation, and the resignations were in hand of the editor and publisher of the network or newspaper. Or until there had been plausible and convincing evidence that the most important elements of the story were false. And, of course, the story would continue day after day on page one and remain near the top of the evening news for weeks, until every ounce of (justifiable) piety about freedom of the press and unfettered presidential elections had been exhausted.

The tape of Petraeus and McFarland's conversation is an amazing document, a testament to the willingness of Murdoch and the wily genius he hired to create Fox News to run roughshod over the American civic and political landscape without regard to even the traditional niceties or pretenses of journalistic independence and honesty. Like the revelations of the hacking scandal, which established beyond any doubt Murdoch's ability to capture and corrupt the three essential elements of the British civic compact – the press, politicians and police – the Ailes/Petraeus tape makes clear that Murdoch's goals in America have always been just as ambitious, insidious and nefarious.

The digital recording, and the dead-serious conspiratorial conversation it captures so chillingly in tone and substance ("I'm only reporting this back to Roger. And that's our deal," McFarland assured Petraeus as she unfolded the offer) utterly refutes Ailes' disingenuous dismissal of what he and Murdoch were actually attempting: the buying of the presidency.

"It was more of a joke, a wiseass way I have," Ailes would later claim while nonetheless confirming its meaning. "I thought the Republican field [in the primaries] needed to be shaken up and Petraeus might be a good candidate."

The recording deserves to be heard by any open-minded person trying to fathom its meaning to the fullest.

Murdoch and Ailes have erected an incredibly influential media empire that has unrivaled power in British and American culture: rather than judiciously exercising that power or improving reportorial and journalistic standards with their huge resources, they have, more often than not, recklessly pursued an agenda of sensationalism, manufactured controversy, ideological messianism, and political influence-buying while masquerading as exemplars of a free and responsible press. The tape is powerful evidence of their methodology and reach.

The Murdoch story – his corruption of essential democratic institutions on both sides of the Atlantic – is one of the most important and far-reaching political/cultural stories of the past 30 years, an ongoing tale without equal. Like Richard Nixon and his tapes, much attention has been focused on the necessity of finding the smoking gun to confirm what other evidence had already established beyond a doubt: that the elemental instruments of democracy, ie the presidency in Nixon's case, and the privileges of free press in Murdoch's, were grievously misused and abused for their own ends by those entrusted to use great power for the common good.

In Nixon's case, the system worked. His actions were investigated by Congress, the judicial system held that even the president of the United States was not above the law, and he was forced to resign or face certain impeachment and conviction. American and British democracy has not been so fortunate with Murdoch, whose power and corruption went unchecked for a third of a century.

The most important thing we journalists do is make judgments about what is news. Perhaps no story has eluded us on a daily basis (for lack of trying) for so many years as the story of Murdoch's destructive march across our democratic landscape. Only the Guardian vigorously pursued the leads of the hacking story and methodically stuck with it for months and years, never ignoring the underlying context of how Rupert Murdoch conducted his take-no-prisoners business and journalism without regard for the most elemental standards of fairness, accuracy or balance, or even lawful conduct.

When the Guardian's hacking coverage reached critical mass last year, I quoted a former top Murdoch deputy as follows: "This scandal and all its implications could not have happened anywhere else. Only in Murdoch's orbit. The hacking at News of the World was done on an industrial scale. More than anyone, Murdoch invented and established this culture in the newsroom, where you do whatever it takes to get the story, take no prisoners, destroy the competition, and the end will justify the means."

The tape that Bob Woodward obtained, and which the Washington Post ran in the style section, should be the denouement of the Murdoch story on both sides of the Atlantic, making clear that no institution, not even the presidency of the United States, was beyond the object of his subversion. If Murdoch had bankrolled a successful Petraeus presidential campaign and – as his emissary McFarland promised – "the rest of us [at Fox] are going to be your in-house" – Murdoch arguably might have sewn up the institutions of American democracy even more securely than his British tailoring.

Happily, Petraeus was not hungering for the presidency at the moment of the messenger's arrival: the general was contented at the idea of being CIA director, which Ailes was urging him to forgo.

"We're all set," said the emissary, referring to Ailes, Murdoch and Fox. "It's never going to happen," Petraeus said. "You know it's never going to happen. It really isn't. … My wife would divorce me."