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Hacking scandal spreads to Mirror and Piers Morgan’s protests ring hollow

August 4, 2011

The UK News of the World hacking scandal is like a cancer across all the tabloids where the spread is only gradually being revealed. It has now enmeshed the Mirror and covers the time when Piers Morgan was the Editor. CNN – his current employer – is revelling in Murdoch’s scandal but is steering well clear of the allegations against Morgan.

The Independent:

Piers Morgan under fire from Heather Mills hacking claim

The former editor of The Mirror, Piers Morgan, was under intense pressure last night after Sir Paul McCartney’s ex-wife came forward to claim a journalist had bragged to her about hacking sensitive messages left on her phone.  

Heather Mills said she received a call from an executive at Mirror Group Newspapers in 2001 “quoting verbatim” voicemails left by the singer after the couple had had a row. Her comments undermine Mr Morgan’s claim that he knew nothing about phone hacking – as the voicemails appear to be the same as those which he later admitting hearing. 

In a 2006 newspaper article, Mr Morgan referred to hearing a recorded message which Sir Paul had left for Ms Mills while she was away in India. He wrote: “At one stage I was played a tape of a message Paul had left for Heather on her mobile phone. It was heartbreaking. The couple had clearly had a tiff, Heather had fled to India, and Paul was pleading with her to come back. He sounded lonely, miserable and desperate, and even sang ‘We Can Work It Out’ into the answer phone.”

Last night Ms Mills said: “There was absolutely no honest way that Piers Morgan could have obtained that tape that he has so proudly bragged about unless they had gone into my voice messages.” However she said the journalist who contacted her was not Mr Morgan. …

Footballer Rio Ferdinand and TV presenter Ulrika Jonsson (also) believe they were hacked by the Mirror group.

Piers Morgan of course is protesting his innocence but his protests ring very hollow. Paul Staines (Guido Fawkes) has more on Piers Morgan’s hacking knowledge and his “insider” share dealings.

A website called FirePiersMorgan.com has sprung up and claims

Morgan knew about the hacking while he was at the NOTW and that Morgan is named in a Scotland Yard complaint about a U.S. victim of hacking.

CNN is maintaining an uncomfortable silence on Morgan’s many connections to the scandal. It has not mentioned him once in its 100-plus segments on the crisis in Rupert Murdoch’s meda empire. It’s odd because although Morgan has denied he knows anything about phone hacking, he’s probably the best expert CNN could hope to have for commentary on the story. And he’s on the channel every night.

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Posted in Ethics, Media | Comments Off on Hacking scandal spreads to Mirror and Piers Morgan’s protests ring hollow

New York Post implicated? Told to preserve emails following UK hacking scandal

July 30, 2011

UPDATE! News International ordered mass deletion of emails nine times

New York Post staff have been told by News Corp. to preserve any documents that may relate to phone hacking or payoffs to officials as the News of the World hacking scandal spreads across Murdoch’s empire. The clear implication is that something illicit has taken place at the New York Post – possibly connected with the victims of 9/11.

A memo to all staff from the legal department was followed by another from the editor Col Allen.

The text of the 2 New York Post memos is here – New York Post Memos

The documents to be retained were defined very broadly as:

“Any documents pertaining to unauthorized retrieval of phone or personal data, to payments for information to government officials, or that is related in any way to these issues, must be retained.

Please note that the term “documents” should be construed in its broadest sense, including but not limited to: written material, graphs, charts, files, e-mail, text messages, instant messages, any content in social media, voicemail, tape recordings, microfiche, video and film, handwritten notes, draft documents, memoranda, calendars, card files, appointment books, and the like whether in hard copy or on computer databases, hard drives, desk tops, laptops, thumb drives, disks, backup tapes, or any other storage medium, and regardless of whether the document is located on a company-issued or personal device. It also includes all copies of the same document.

The term “related in any way” should also be applied broadly. If you have any doubt whether a document should be preserved, you should err on the side of preserving it.”

Reuters reports:

In another sign that the phone-hacking scandal may implicate or at least taint News Corp.’s U.S. properties, the company’s legal team has asked New York Post employees to “preserve and maintain all documents and information that are related in any way” to phone hacking or bribery.

The email frames the demand as an effort to demonstrate how seriously it is taking the issues of hacking or bribery, improprieties — both confirmed adn alleged — which harpooned News Corp.’s famed British tabloid News of the World.

“Please know we are sending this notice not because any recipient has done anything improper or unlawful,” it reads.

However, the implication is that something illicit may have taken place. It asks that employees retain any documents “to unauthorized retrieval of phone or personal data, to payments for information to government officials, or that is related in any way to these issues.”

One possible reason is that the FBI has begun an inquiry into allegations that News Corp. newspapers hacked the phones of 9/11 victims.

As for what “documents” and “related” mean, the email asks the Post employees apply the terms as broadly as possible.

Post editor Col Allan sent out a memo to his staff regarding the email in which he says this should not be surprising.

“As we watched the news in the U.K. over the last few weeks, we knew that as a News Corporation tabloid, we would be looked at more closely,” he wrote.

Allan added that all employees must cooperate absolutely and that this edict should not endanger one’s ability to protect sources.

The legal team’s email instructed employees to contact Genie Gavenchak with any questions. A phone call to Gavenchak’s office was redirected to Rubenstein Communications. The PR firm did not immediately return a request for comment. 

In related news, the Guardian is reporting that Scotland Yard has opened up another inquiry involving hacking at News of the World, this time via computers.

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Rebekah Brooks and NoW – another new low

July 28, 2011

The Telegraph: 

Sarah Payne and Rebekah Brooks

NoW ‘targeted Sarah Payne mother’s phone’, a gift from Rebekah Brooks

Sara Payne, the mother of the murdered 8-year-old Sarah, has been reportedly told by Scotland Yard that her phone may have been hacked by Glenn Mulcaire, a private investigator working for the News of the World.

The phone is believed to have been given to Mrs Payne by Rebekah Brooks, the former News of the World editor who was forced to resign as chief executive of News International in the wake of the phone hacking scandal.

The allegations are particularly damaging because Mrs Brooks championed the cause of the Payne family and campaigned for ‘Sarah’s law’, a proposal to allow parents to know if sex offenders live in the area.

Friends of Mrs Payne told the Guardian she was “absolutely devastated and deeply disappointed” by the news.

Tom Watson MP – “The hacking scandal is about to nosedive to a whole new low. How could these people do what they did?”  

In the meantime The Guardian reports on the generosity of News International

“Former staff at the News of the World are understood to be underwhelmed by efforts by News International to find them work after they were handed a list of potential jobs which included posts in Siberia, Russia and Dubai”.

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Posted in Ethics, Media, UK | 2 Comments »

Glenn Beck tries to justify the massacre in Norway

July 26, 2011

The monsters in our midst are encouraged and nourished by the rantings of their high profile friends. Anders Behring Breivik has found one such apologist for his demented massacre of innocents in Glenn Beck – the darling of  the loony right.

Glenn Beck in uniform: Credit: http://www.mediaite.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/GB-Nazi.jpg

Beck’s rantings are indeed “ignorant, incorrect and extremely hurtful” but they are calculated to be extremely lucrative. Beck himself can be compared to Joseph Goebbels

  • “The most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly – it must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over”. 
  • “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.”

Goebbels was one of Hitler’s closest associates and  known for his zealous oratory and anti-Semitism. He played a hand in the Kristallnacht attack on the German Jews. The similarities with Beck are many. 

Norway shooting: Glenn Beck compares dead teenagers to Hitler youth (The Telegraph)

Beck, a multimillionaire darling of the Tea Party movement, said on his nationally-syndicated radio show: “There was a shooting at a political camp, which sounds a little like, you know, the Hitler youth. I mean, who does a camp for kids that’s all about politics? Disturbing.”

Torbjørn Eriksen, a former press secretary to Jens Stoltenberg, Norway’sprime minister, described the comment as “a new low” for the broadcaster, who has frequently been forced to apologise for offensive remarks.

“Young political activists have gathered at Utoya for over 60 years to learn about and be part of democracy, the very opposite of what the Hitler Youth was about,” he told The Daily Telegraph. “Glenn Beck’s comments are ignorant, incorrect and extremely hurtful.” 

The Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, a Washington-based campaign group, said the remark by Beck, a free agent after being forced out of the Fox News channel earlier this year, was “absolutely disgusting”. ….. 

Despite Beck expressing surprise that political movements would hold camps for children, followers of his 9/12 Project – which aims to “recapture the spirit of the day after America was attacked” – have this summer been doing just that.

Organisers of the “vacation liberty schools” in several states told the Daily Telegraph how they taught children as young as eight a Tea Party-endorsed curriculum spanning religion, economics and political principles.

But while Beck tries to justify the massacre by denigrating the victims, the media outlets which provide him with a platform for his rants and the advertisers who pour money into such outlets bear their share of the responsibility for the creation of monsters like Anders Behring Breivik.

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Posted in Behaviour, Media, Norway, Politics | 1 Comment »

Murdoch’s News Corp to stop email deletion: A little too little and much too late

July 25, 2011

It has been over 2 weeks since the “s**t hit the fan” at Murdoch’s News International. But it is only now that News Corp has issued a memo to all News International staff to stop deleting their e-mails.

A little too little and much too late.

And why was such an instruction to preserve all potential evidence not issued by the police?

The Independent:

Staff across all of Rupert Murdoch’s News International newspapers have been warned not to delete or destroy documents relating to any of the phone-hacking investigations now under way. In an email sent to employees over the weekend, the company reveals it has suspended all automatic deletion of files and destruction of documents.

The memo shows News Corp’s fears that journalists from its other papers might get sucked into the phone-hacking scandal, given the company’s insistence that it was solely an issue for the News of the World.

The email, sent from News Corp’s new Management and Standards Committee, also raises questions about why such a policy has only just been implemented, given that the company has been aware of the extent of the allegations against it for some time.

“It is very important that all News International employees take immediate steps to preserve and retain all documents that may be relevant to these issues,” it reads. “We apologise that this is necessary but it is an important step the company must take in order to comply with the various investigations.”

The email goes on to warn staff that “all types of electronic and hard copy data or communications, including memoranda, letters, emails, reports, presentations, handwritten notes, tapes and any other recorded information or computer media” are covered by the edict.

It adds: “Please suspend any automatic deletion or discarding of any documents, whether electronic or paper, including emails or drafts of documents… If you are uncertain whether a document is relevant… you should preserve it.”

The company also confirms that its current policy towards the deletion of documents has been suspended. “Given the current circumstances you should be aware that all policies requiring the destruction of such documents or overwriting of any electronic material will be suspended immediately,” it said.

The News of the World newsroom has already been sealed and staff refer to it as a “crime scene”. All News Corp staff will be spoken to in the coming days over the way they deal with emails. News Corp’s Management and Standards Committee is being run on a day-to-day basis by Will Lewis, public-relations man Simon Greenberg and Jeff Palker, general counsel for News Corp Europe and Asia. It is being overseen by Joel Klein, a News Corp director and former legal adviser to the White House.

Yesterday, The New York Times reported concerns about Mr Klein’s role as an independent adjudicator given his close relationship with the Murdochs. He sat behind them when they gave evidence to MPs on Tuesday and was initially hired by the company to push its educational publishing arm.

Lawyers and experts in corporate governance said News Corp should have hired outside legal counsel to oversee the inquiry, rather than use an executive director. “That is not standard practice,” said Charles Elson, an expert on corporate governance at the University of Delaware. “You cannot be seen as objective if you are inside.”

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Posted in Behaviour, Ethics, Media | 2 Comments »

Were Stephenson, Hayman, Yates and Wallis all freemasons?

July 18, 2011

The spreading tentacles of the UK phone hacking spectacle are reaching the highest levels of government and media and police.

Where else will it reach?

The particularly “chummy” relationships between media and police seem exactly like those between members of an exclusive club where all members are charged with providing succour and assistance to each other,

It has all the ingredients necessary for a conspiracy theory.

And few organisations are better suited for conspiracy theories than the Freemasons!!

UK Phone-hacking scandal: Freemason set up network of corrupt police, customs officials, taxmen and bank staff to gain valuable information

Related articles

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Posted in Behaviour, Ethics, Media, Politics | 2 Comments »

Rebekah in Murdoch’s wonderland: Hackers, blaggers, Clouseaus and dodgy geezers

July 13, 2011

For the last 10 days the Rupert Murdoch / Rebekah Brookes/ NoTW scandal (broken by The Guardian and their  intrepid reporter Nick Davies) has been raging in the UK. It is now a  full grown 3-ring circus.

The story has all the ingredients of a new TV mini-series – a media tycoon, spineless politicians, amoral journalists, a red-headed siren, a multi-billion take-over bid, some corrupt policemen, some Clouseau-like investigators and a bunch of small-time criminals.

Yesterdays hearings of policemen at a House of Commons select committee was fascinating not just for the ineptness of the  witnesses (with the exception of Sue Akers) but also for the smugness of the middle-aged, middle-class, self-righteous politicians putting the questions.

Making sense of the torrent of allegations now engulfing News Corp., its subsidiary News International and their newspapers is difficult. But Crikey has a good summary of events so far:

Closing down News of the World may have been James Murdoch’s second attempt at putting this problem “in a box”, but the allegations of phone hacking and criminal activity are now bleeding beyond the besmirched masthead, as British parliament calls for Rupert and James Murdoch and News International CEO Rebekah Brooks to front up to answer questions. 

As News International continues to try to staunch the blood, now upgraded to a full blown haemorrhage, here’s a guide to the allegations thus far — where they’ve come from, and the subsequent response …  

Read more 

The story moves on into the House of Commons today…..

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Posted in Corruption, Ethics, Media | Comments Off on Rebekah in Murdoch’s wonderland: Hackers, blaggers, Clouseaus and dodgy geezers

Hari, Johann: Plagiarising Churnalist

June 29, 2011

Churnalism is a form of journalism in which press releases, wire stories and other forms of pre-packaged material are used to create articles in newspapers and other news media in order to meet increasing pressures of time and cost without undertaking further research or checking.

Now we have Johann Hari (who I had never heard of till yesterday) apparently just lifting the writings of people he has interviewed and reproducing them as if they were said to him. The Telegraph:

Johann Hari, a multiple award winning political journalist who writes for newspapers around the world, was exposed after a reader noticed that a quote in one of his stories had been cut and pasted from a book.

Such was the controversy that he was forced to respond in a personal blog, but his defence only further fuelled the intensity of the attacks against him.

Within 24 hours the discovery had sparked a massive backlash as other examples of his alleged plagiarism were uncovered.

On Twitter, the micro-blogging website, users posted a series of jokes in which famous sayings in history were re-created as if Mr Hari had been told them in intimate interviews, while blogs from rival journalists accusing him of so-called “churnalism”. ….

Calls also grew for him to hand back his George Orwell prize, the most prestigious in political journalism, while the Independent, his main newspaper, received demands that he should be sacked.

His reversal of fortunes has been dramatic. Just a few days ago Mr Hari remained the darling of the left wing and was recently named as one of the most influential people on the left in Britain. He has reported from wars all over the world and been a regular art critic on television and a book reviewer.

As well as the Orwell Prize he has won awards from Amnesty International, the British Press Awards and Stonewall, the gay right activists. He has been a renowned critic of other organisations if he believed they strayed from the truth, especially those on the right, and has more than 60,000 followers on Twitter. …. 

Last night the Media Standards Trust, which funds the Orwell prize, demanded an investigation to see whether he should be stripped of the award. It said that the issue had “the potential to damage its reputation”. The organisers of the award said they were following a “process” normally carried out in “situation such as this”.

Toby Young writes on his blog:

For some time now, Hari has been under fire for his cut-and-paste technique – that is, passing off things that his subjects have said elsewhere as things they’ve said to him during his interviews.

A typical example was his 2009 interview in the Independent with Malalai Joya, billed as “the bravest woman in Afghanistan” (hat tip Brian Whelan). Here’s an extract from the interview:

I ask if she was frightened, and she shakes her head. “I am never frightened when I tell the truth.” She is speaking fast now: “I am truly honoured to have been vilified and threatened by the savage men who condemned our country to such misery. I feel proud that even though I have no private army, no money, and no world powers behind me, these brutal despots are afraid of me and scheme to eliminate me.”

But did she actually say this to Hari? The words Hari quoted are identical to those in a press release for her book, Raising My Voice: The Extraordinary Story of the Afghan Woman Who Dares to Speak Out:

I am truly honoured to have been vilified and threatened by the savage men who have condemned our country to such misery. I feel proud that even though I have no private army, no money and no world powers behind me, these brutal despots are afraid of me and scheme to eliminate me.

The furore has forced Hari to respond in a personal blog entitled Interview Etiquette.

He does protest too much.

Churnalism is nothing new and neither is plagiarism by journalists. But Mr. Hari seems to have plagiarised not merely for “improving” the quality of his articles but also for mis-representing his interviews (and by inference his interview techniques) as being far more productive and effective than they actually were.

Not just plagiarism in the service of an over-inflated journalist ego but actually a lack of ethics which is tantamount to corruption.

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Posted in Corruption, Ethics, Media | 3 Comments »

An inconvenient solar minimum..

June 15, 2011

Solar science and the possibility that a Maunder-like Minimum may be approaching seems to have caught the fancy of the MSM — Al Gore notwithstanding.

  1. The Telegraph New Little Ice Age in store? 
  2. Sydney Morning Herald Quiet sun: drop in solar activity may signal second ‘Little Ice Age’ on Earth
  3. Fox News Global Warming Be Damned, We Might Be Headed for a Mini Ice Age
  4. International Business Times The Sun’s inactivity leading to second Little Ice Age, to Offset Global Warming?
  5. MSNBC Solar forecast hints at a big chill
  6. The Christian Science Monitor A sun with no sun spots? What that could mean for Earth and its climate
  7. Discovery News IS THE SUN ABOUT TO FIZZ OUT?
  8. ABC News Goodnight Sun: Sunspots May Disappear for Years
  9. New Scientist Sluggish sun may ‘sit out’ next solar cycle
  10. Arizona Daily Star Fewer sunspots could help offset global warming
Most of these publications are generally fairly uncritical adherents of whatever seems to be in vogue and have usually been very vocal in supporting the AGW creed. But it is nevertheless interesting to see how they have all picked up this news — as if they are bored with and tired of repeating the same old AGW story-line and are just waiting for a new star to follow.
Perhaps the political tide is turning, ……

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Posted in Behaviour, Media, Science, Solar science | 2 Comments »

Media coverage dies as work resumes at Fukushima Dai-ichi – steam plumes did not raise radiation levels

March 22, 2011

Fukushima hysteria dies down as the media find that their alarmist and sensational reporting is not going to be sustainable.

Perhaps they will return their attention and their headlines to the victims of the earthquake and the tsunami in between the bombing raids on Tripoli.

As George Monbiot puts it in The Guardian:

As a result of the disaster at Fukushima, I am no longer nuclear-neutral. I now support the technology.

A crappy old plant with inadequate safety features was hit by a monster earthquake and a vast tsunami. The electricity supply failed, knocking out the cooling system. The reactors began to explode and melt down. The disaster exposed a familiar legacy of poor design and corner-cutting. Yet, as far as we know, no one has yet received a lethal dose of radiation.

Now George Monbiot’s views about energy in general, and renewables in particular, are usually quite ridiculous and ill thought through but  where he is absolutely right is of course that in spite of the headlines and the apocalypse scenarios, “no one has yet received a lethal dose of radiation”.

The work at Fukushima is difficult and hazardous  and it will test the courage and ingenuity of many – but it goes on even if all the headlines are gone     —– Kyodo News:

Work to restore power and crucial cooling functions resumed Tuesday morning at the crisis-hit reactors at the quake-stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, following suspension Monday after smoke was detected at its No. 2 and No. 3 reactors, its operator said.

Firefighters and the Self-Defense Forces also prepared to restart a mission later in the day to spray a massive amount of coolant water onto spent nuclear fuel pools at the No. 3 and No. 4 reactors, according to Tokyo Electric Power Co.

Although white smoke, possibly steam, was found to be continuously billowing from the buildings of the No. 2 and No. 3 reactors, the utility known as TEPCO found it does not obstruct electricity restoration work as radiation levels did not particularly surge at the site.

An external power source was connected to the No. 4 reactor in the morning, making it the fifth of the plant’s six reactors to have regained a power supply needed for the restoration of equipment such as a ventilation system to filter radioactive substances from the air and some measuring tools at the control room.

TEPCO aims to restore power systems to revive some key facilities such as data measuring equipment and functions at a control room by Wednesday for the No. 1 and No. 2 reactors and by Thursday for the No. 3 and No. 4 reactors, said Hidehiko Nishiyama, a spokesman for the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, at a press conference.

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