“Charismatic authority”, deniability and the Murdochs

 Chinese walls, James Murdoch, Leveson inquiry, phone-hacking, Rupert Murdoch, unclassifiable  2 Responses »
Apr 242012
 
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Today’s events at the Leveson inquiry, with James Murdoch as the star turn, seem as I write to indicate the consequences of “charismatic authority” – a concept already nailed by Harold Evans as characterising Rupert Murdoch’s rule at the helm of News Corporation in the following way:

How much Rupert Murdoch knew and when he knew it may not be pinned down because he exercises what the sociologist Max Weber defined as “charismatic authority” where policy derives from how the leader is perceived by others rather than by instructions or traditions. The concept of charismatic authority as applied to the Murdoch empire may be best understood – as a concept, I emphasise, and not a personal comparison – in the use made of Weber’s definition by Sir Ian Kershaw, historian of the Third Reich. Kershaw argues that Hitler was not much absorbed by the day-to-day details of Nazi Germany’s domestic policy, but was nonetheless a dominant dictator. Kershaw explains the paradox by adopting the phrase of a Prussian civil servant who said the bureaucrats were always “working towards the Fuhrer”. They were forever attempting to win favour by guessing what the boss wanted or might applaud but might well not have asked for. Similarly, in all Murdoch’s far-flung enterprises, the question is not whether this or that is a good idea, but “What will Rupert think?”. He doesn’t have to give direct orders. His executives act like courtiers, working towards what they perceive to be his wishes or might be construed as his wishes. A few examples from the Times follow. They act this way out of of fear, certainly, because executions are so brutal but the fear also reflects a more rational appreciation of the fact that his “wild” gambles so often turn out to be triumphs lesser mortals could not even imagine.

It would appear to be a perfectly convenient example of an implementation of perverse Chinese walls of some kind – and whether intentional or accidental the kind of thing that would in other circumstances allow CEOs the world over to earn the salaries and bonuses their boards sanctioned on their behalf without running the risks of ultimate responsibility for everything that happened on their turfs and under their command.

Find it difficult to believe that all the above might take place in a modern business environment of clear rights and responsibilities?  Take these pieces of information from today’s questioning:

Here’s a tweet from FT media editor Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson.

Jay sounding incredulous that James left underlings to offer £350,000 Gordon Taylor settlement without his authority #leveson

— A Edgecliffe-Johnson (@Edgecliffe) April 24, 2012

And then there’s this exchange:

In a key exchange, Jay puts to Murdoch that there was either a cover up or a failure of governance.

Jay says:

There are two possibilities here. Either you were told of the evidence that linked others at the News of the World to Mulcaire and this was in effect a cover up, or you weren’t told and you didn’t read the emails properly and there was failure of governance at the company do you accept that?

Murdoch maintains that Myler and Crone gave him “sufficient information” to settle the Gordon Taylor case at a higher figure, but not sufficient information “to go and turn over a whole lot of stones”.

He adds: “I was given repeated assurances newsroom had been investigated, that there was no evidence. I’ve been very consistent about it.”

See what I mean?

Quite a bit more than just curious.

And perhaps quite a bit more than just revealing too.


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Snake in the gas

 James Murdoch, News International, News of the World, phone-hacking, Rupert Murdoch, Tom Watson, Twitter  No Responses »
Feb 012012
 
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This story – whilst an old one from May 2008 – came my way via my favourite tweeting gasman, Gary Robinson, on Twitter this morning:

Two pest controllers were called to coax a 4ft (1.2m) orange snake into a bag after it was found by a tenant in her house boiler.

When Lee Marshall, 40, spoke to an “almost hysterical” young woman from Southsea, Portsmouth, claiming she had seen a snake he thought she was joking.

But he and a colleague discovered the creature slithering inside a boiler.

Coincidentally – and also via Twitter, but this time via my favourite MP, Tom Watson – we get a report from the Independent, as well as a related .pdf file held on Parliament’s web servers, about the subject of Rupert Murdoch’s News International phone-hacking scandal.  In the incident under question, the Independent seems to imply a key email might have been held back from shareholders last year in order to ensure control would not be lost of BSkyB.  This, then, is what the Independent has to say of the very same year as our snake in the gas story – but this time a month later in June 2008:

A key email which cast significant doubt on James Murdoch’s repeated assertions that he was never told about the true extent of phone hacking at the News of the World was kept from public disclosure last year while the media heir faced a shareholder revolt over his leadership of BSkyB.

And this:

Had the email sent by Mr Myler in June 2008, which talked of a “nightmare scenario” of further phone hacking claimants, been made public around the time of its discovery by a “reviewer” in a crate of material recovered from the offices of the closed NOTW it is likely to have significantly heightened the pressure on Mr Murdoch.

Chris Bryant, the Labour MP and phone hacking victim who attended the AGM, said: “Had this information been available at the time of the AGM, I am sure more shareholders would have said ‘sorry James Murdoch but thank you very much and goodbye’.”

Meanwhile, what we presume is the full sad and sorry behind-the-scenes story – what apparently caused this key email to be “lost in review” – is contained in this recent letter (.pdf file) to the Parliamentary Committee investigating the hacking scandal.  Well worth your time.

Just a couple of final observations to wrap up. 

People get paid to not do their job like this, you know.  Or, on the other hand, to do it all too well.

Though I’m sure neither of the above has happened in this particular case.

When one can choose between rank conspiracy and rank incompetence, 99 percent of what happens in this world is due to rank incompetence.

Isn’t it?


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Murdochs, monks and dirty habits

 a con, Catholic Church, child abuse, corporations, James Murdoch, Jesus, Keith Murdoch, News International, News of the World, phone-hacking, Rupert Murdoch, sexual abuse  No Responses »
Nov 122011
 
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I read this story from the Mail today almost as soon as it was published.  I thought it might be wise to wait and see.  Even after everything that has happened, and even after everything we’ve all written, I did wonder if this was just one accusation too far.  James Murdoch and his NLP-like ways of disconcerting his verbal opposition, his carefully open body language, his convincingly couched appeals for reasonableness to those others sidelined in attendance as awful accusations were declaimed by Tom Watson, as well as Murdoch’s oh so appealing naivete in the face of a dreadfully suspicious world, all still continued to make me wonder if he – and by extension the Murdochs in general – were truly as bad as they are painted.

But the news continues to dribble out.  First from that Mail story I link to above:

The latest twist in the case emerged 24 hours after Mr Murdoch – the son of media mogul Rupert Murdoch – was grilled for two and a half hours on Thursday by a House of Commons select committee.

In a bruising second appearance before the Culture Committee, he insisted he had not learned until recently that the practice of illegally eavesdropping on private phone messages went beyond a single ‘rogue reporter’.

Then Andrew Neil tweets that:

Source close to R Murdoch tells me emails uncovered by police in India (see today’s Daily Mail) potentially ‘devastating’ for James M down.

Only for Tom Watson to confirm this incredible piece of information barely an hour and a half ago:

“Every Single Member Of The Committee Investigating [Phone Hacking] Were Followed By Private Eyes” http://t.co/TJKBnBZW 6 months ago!

Meanwhile, my attention is drawn to this similarly ongoing story – and it occurred to me a thought experiment really might not come amiss.  It describes how alleged abusive behaviours at a Catholic school were being investigated by the Church itself – an exercise which in the words of one observer was akin to putting “Dracula in charge of a blood bank”.  In a more recent report on the outcome of an external investigation into these selfsame accusations, we get this text:

The report’s key recommendation was that Ealing abbey monks lose control of St Benedict’s. It listed 21 abuse cases since 1970 with Carlile saying the form of governance was “wholly outdated and demonstrably unacceptable”.

The report said: “In a school where there has been abuse, mostly – but not exclusively – as a result of the activities of the monastic community, any semblance of a conflict of interest, of lack of independent scrutiny, must be removed.”

“Primary fault lies with the abusers, in the abject failure of personal responsibility, in breach of their sacred vows … and in breach of all professional standards and of the criminal law.

“Secondary fault can be shared by the monastic community, in its lengthy and culpable failure to deal with what at times must have been evident behaviour placing children at risk; and what at all times was a failure to recognise the sinful temptations that might attract some with monastic vocations.”

Historic fault also lay with the trustees and the school for their failure to understand and prepare for the possibility of abuse with training and solid procedures for “unpalatable eventualities”.

In his criticism of school governance, Carlile wrote that the existing structure lacked “independence, transparency, accountability and diversity, and is drawn from too narrow a group of people”.

So let’s rewrite that just a little – and see how it might pan out as template for – say – a massive global news-gathering corporation called Miljenko’s News:

The report’s key recommendation was that the Miljenko and his inner circle lose control of Miljenko’s News. It listed thousands of phone- and computer-hacking cases since 1999 with the report’s author saying the form of governance was “wholly outdated and demonstrably unacceptable”.

The report said: “In a corporation where there has been abuse, mostly – but not exclusively – as a result of the activities of its editorial community, any semblance of a conflict of interest, of lack of independent scrutiny, must be removed.”

“Primary fault lies with the abusers, in the abject failure of personal responsibility, in breach of their legal responsibilities … and in breach of all professional standards and of the criminal law.

“Secondary fault can be shared by its board and top management, in its lengthy and culpable failure to deal with what at times must have been evident behaviour placing the public and democratic discourse at risk; and what at all times was a failure to recognise the awful temptations that might attract some with corporate vocations.”

Historic fault also lay with with the shareholders – especially the institutional ones – for their failure to understand and prepare for the possibility of abuse with training and solid procedures for “unpalatable eventualities”.

In his criticism of corporate governance, the report’s author wrote that the existing structure lacked “independence, transparency, accountability and diversity, and is drawn from too narrow a group of people”.

For two things occur to me, you see.  What surprises me, first, given that the original version of our thought experiment tonight describes how a corporate body like the Catholic Church would allegedly appear to have been consistently allowing the abuse of children since 1970, is that this story is not grabbing the headlines this weekend as much as Mr Murdoch’s also alleged – and perhaps ethically analogous – disregard for what is admittedly an utterly different set of public and private mores.

Just remember the litany however.  Thousands of alleged cases of phone-hacking, uninvestigated by the British police for almost a decade; families like that of Milly Dowler absolutely led down the garden path of cruelly raised hopes; a body politic pulverised by Murdoch Sr’s total control over its democracy; and now, if Watson and Greenslade are to be believed, a surveillance of lawyers and MPs which continued well into 2011.

Whilst it was supposed News International was cooperating with the authorities.

Talk of Dracula being in charge of the blood bank.

*

What surprises me more, however, and after all, is that if such a report as the one we read above can be written on an institution as mighty as the Catholic Church, especially in the uncompromising tone we clearly can detect and note, why – then – cannot we do the same in relation to News International? 

And sooner rather than later?

Murdochs, monks and dirty habits.

There’s no getting away from them.

Closed environments, shuttered communities, organisations where money is no object.

And there was once a man called Jesus all people would probably have been proud to have in their belief systems.

Just as there was once a Murdoch called Keith all journalists would probably have been proud to have in their profession.

How the mighty fall.

And how very far.


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Omertà, Tom Watson and James Murdoch’s Chinese walls

 a con, Chinese walls, corporations, in a hole, James Murdoch, Mafia, News International, omertà, Tom Watson  No Responses »
Nov 102011
 
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Codes of conduct in large organisations help ensure people act in similar ways.  Whether this is good, long-term, for both the creative and mental health of our societies is a different matter.  But there we are: codes of conduct do – and probably must – exist.

Here’s an interesting excerpt from the piece I’ve linked to above on the subject:

In 1991, the U.S. Sentencing Commission issued the Federal Sentencing Guidelines for Organizations (FS GO), outlining the elements of an effective ethics and compliance program. As one component of this, the FS GO recognized that simply having a code was not enough. In this view, the “3P” approach – in which you “Print a code of conduct, Post it on the wall and Pray people actually read it”3 – simply did not form the basis for an effective program. As a result, the FS GO required code education for employees and other mechanisms for communicating and reinforcing organizational values.

In 2002, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act further bolstered the importance of codes of conduct by requiring public companies to have a code of conduct for top executives (and, if they didn’t have one, to explain why). Then in 2003, both the New York Stock Exchange and the Nasdaq required listed companies to adopt and disclose a “code of business conduct and ethics” that applies to all employees and directors. Together with these regulatory developments, having a code became practically a mandate for public companies.

The most recent step in the evolution of codes of conduct occurred in 2004 with the Revised Federal Sentencing Guidelines, which stipulated that companies must promote an organizational culture that encourages ethical conduct and commitment to compliance with the law. The impact of this change in the FS GO is that it effectively elevates a company’s code of conduct into becoming an integral part of its culture, not just a side note to employee education and communication.

The real question, of course, is what people do about these codes of conduct – and, indeed, which ones in reality are the ones which come out on top.  For whilst the job description generally indicates what we must do, the glue which holds it together often tells us far more about what is really expected.  There are many different kinds of codes of conduct out there: just because it’s written down and even drilled into you doesn’t mean that face-to-face contact on the day-to-day job won’t win you over to other ways of seeing and doing.

This, for example, from today’s second grilling of James Murdoch by Tom Watson on the subject of News International’s behaviours over the past decade or so.


http://youtu.be/RizWCBMfETk

Watson uses the Italian word “omertà” to describe the activities and environment he alleges circumscribe the behaviours in question.  Wikipedia tells us the following in relation to this term:

Omertà[1] (Italian pronunciation: [ɔmɛrˈta]) is a popular attitude and code of honor and a common definition is the “code of silence”. It is common in areas of southern Italy, such as Sicily, Apulia, Calabria, and Campania, where criminal organizations defined as Mafia such as the Cosa Nostra, ‘Ndrangheta, Sacra Corona Unita, and Camorra are strong. It also exists to a lesser extent in certain Italian-American neighbourhoods where the Italian-American Mafia has influence and other Italian ethnic enclaves in countries where there is the presence of Italian organized crime (i.e. Germany, Canada, Australia).[citation needed]

Omertà implies “the categorical prohibition of cooperation with state authorities or reliance on its services, even when one has been victim of a crime.”[2] Even if somebody is convicted of a crime he has not committed, he is supposed to serve the sentence without giving the police any information about the real criminal, even if that criminal has nothing to do with the Mafia himself. Within Mafia culture, breaking omertà is punishable by death.[2]

The code was adopted by Sicilians long before the emergence of Cosa Nostra (some observers date it to the 16th century as a way of opposing Spanish rule).[3] It is also deeply rooted in rural Crete, Greece.[4]

This, then, is clearly nothing more nor less than a code of conduct amongst members of a powerful organisation – a code which, in fact, makes such an organisation even more powerful than it might be.

So where does the essential difference lie between the above and – for example – a contractual relationship (of which there are many these days, in both the public and private sectors) which forbids a worker or employee from talking to, say, the press about anything company- or – indeed – societally-related?

Of course, in such circumstances, keeping quiet does not extend to us being asked to break the law – or, at least, I would hope not.  On the other hand, the way big companies are built these days – designed as they are to make it impossible for almost anyone to have a full overview of their processes and procedures in order to future-proof them against damaging staff turnover in times of extreme competition – means it is only out of the small gobbets of knowledge hundreds of thousands may separately possess that full stories may ever be known.

Perhaps in such structures, then, we have a case of a systemically fashioned “omertà”: not a code of silence which requires workforces to more or less voluntarily shut up but, rather, an infrastructure of Chinese walls generated by the evermore piecemeal approach to procedures and processes which makes it literally impossible for any ordinary worker these days to tell the truth as reality might honestly recognise it.

So this isn’t a code of silence as such – but its impact on the ability of anyone to tell the whole truth is just as effective as anything the Mafia could’ve come up with.

My conclusion?

Tom, you were sort of right when you described this as a mafia-like organisation.  But, actually, you didn’t go far enough.  This is far worse.


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Why none of us is to blame

 bankers, banks, corporations, dysfunctionality, financial crisis, Fred Goodwin, individual responsibility, James Murdoch, Rupert Murdoch, unclassifiable  No Responses »
Sep 262011
 
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There’s a very good post out there which defends bankers from the public excoriation they have been suffering of late.  

It’s so very good that I almost end up excusing the bankers myself for the terrible travails they have visited upon us.  I remember being in Edinburgh one September, sitting outside a fish and chip shop, having a conversation with a very kind man – who also happened to be a banker.  And I nodded and agreed as he gently argued that we’d have to keep our heads down for a while – until all this “crisis stuff” blew over.  Things like bringing in the snacks from the local upmarket supermarket instead of getting in the usual high-class caterers to the do the job.  A bit more video-conferencing, a bit less flight-and-hotels.

Keep our heads down, as he suggested.

A question of patience and time, really.

Now I haven’t read all of the comments (over three hundred) of the very good piece out there which has provoked me to put electronic pen to virtual paper today – but I did read all the OP and I can understand the underlying thesis at work.  And it’s an honourable stance – and fairly argued.

And since it almost convinced me, I’m inclined to believe it might almost convince you.  So here’s a bit of an inside story just to remind us.
 
I worked for one of the partly bailed-out banks until very recently.  I occupied an extremely humble data-processing role which prior to becoming really data-processing involved me working in account opening, where I got paid just as little and was always on tenterhooks in the expectation of being regraded (not).  In this previous account opening role (please bear with me – I’m getting there), I not only opened accounts but also filtered the applications for problems of an anti-money laundering nature – applications which incidentally came via relationship managers.  The RM helpline we ran provided clear evidence of the pressures these ladies and gentlemen were under to open accounts for people who didn’t always deserve the service.  More importantly, and although I cannot vouch myself for the truth of the next bit, people I trust told me they knew for certain that RMs were allowing customers to open high-interest deposit accounts with ourselves with funds obtained from overdraft facilities the customers had with ourselves.

I know, I know, I know.  This is damn small beer.  A deposit initiative, dysfunctional behaviours due to inappropriate targets – all signs of a system’s partial collapse.  Not necessarily a description of an entire sector’s attitudes, behaviours and demeanours.  So it is that the bankers, myself as a humble back-office worker, management and unions – none of us was responsible for anything that happened here.  And yet, little by little, the sum of our non-existent responsibilities added up to a crisis no one cared to predict, no one cares to own and no one will care to sit down properly and work out how to resolve.

In truth, we could argue that the reason no one owns any of this – and perhaps, quite reasonably, it is fair and just to accept that no one in fact does – is because of the tendency big business has to divide all process into very small discrete elements of action.  No one, then, under such a regime, even towards the top of the pyramid, knows what’s going on anywhere.  From the Murdochs to the Goodwins to you and I and the cat’s mother … we’re all either at the mercy of, or working out how to take advantage of, a systemic division of responsibilities – designed in the first instance to protect large corporations from the negative impacts of the frequent movement of personnel but, effectively now, and perhaps also in the future, serving to break down all kinds of significant threads of communication which might have otherwise been able to avoid the crisis under discussion.

I just remember what it was like to be that humble back-office worker.  And I remember what it was like to feel ashamed of my sector.  Now I’m out of it all, all that remains is the shame I feel for not having flagged some of this up when I could’ve done.  But if I had, I expect I would’ve been out of my job even sooner.

Or alternatively – when told to give over – I’d have decided to give over.

To flag up something wrong in an environment which accepts so much as a given, you have to be really strong.

And most of us aren’t.


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Letter to a not entirely unknown lady?

 a con, Clive Goodman, James Murdoch, News Corp, News of the World, Parliament, phone-hacking, Rebekah Brooks, Rupert Murdoch, Tom Watson  No Responses »
Aug 162011
 
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I studied a brilliant film at university called “Letter from an Unknown Woman”.  And its director, Max Ophuls, will forever remain one of my all-time favourites.

Meanwhile, the briefest of synopses at the IMDb website indicates the following:

A pianist about to flee from a duel receives a letter from a woman he cannot remember whom may hold the key to his downfall.

I am reminded of this film, for some peculiar reason, in relation to a slightly different matter.  To my unreasonable delight, in amongst the awful fireworks of the recent riots in England (for I still haven’t read anywhere a satisfactory explanation as to why they’ve only happened in England), it would appear today that the News International phone-hacking scandal has been reignited by the release into the public domain of this letter.  Not exactly a letter from an unknown woman then – as it was in fact written by Clive Goodman.  But, in the light of recent events at News International, including the resignation of its former CEO, Rebekah Brooks, its publication today couldn’t half be construed as an indirect missive to a not entirely unknown lady.  As well as a number of prominent gentlemen out there.

And if the implications of Goodman’s letter are as the Guardian describes them, I do wonder how these clever and powerful people could have believed with such impunity that telling incomplete truths was a secure and politically intelligent way forward when dealing with parliamentary committees of the kind we have here.  Unless, of course, their whole and daily ecosystem was made out of the kind of slippery relationship with reality that not only eloquence but also wealth and massive yes-people deference bring to one’s ability to maintain a sense of proportion.

On Twitter, this affair is rightly tagged #hackgate – precisely because the people involved should have remembered what happened to Nixon.  It wasn’t in the evil deeds that his people committed where his ultimate downfall lay.  Rather, it was in the arrogance of believing that he was beyond the reach of any jurisdiction because of the power he had acquired prior to and after the events in question.

When you commit indiscretions, do not get immediately caught and then learn to live with their permanent reality is – exactly – when you acquire a curious patina of Teflon-like impermeability to that sense of proportion I mention above.  If the corporation can be described as a kind of sociopathic entity – not because of its people as such (many of whom are well-minded to act honestly) but, instead, because of its ultimate and exclusive mission to increase shareholder value to the exclusion of everything else – is it at all surprising that some of its top-flight leaders may also acquire disagreeably disconcerting qualities which separate them so dramatically from ordinary people far down below?

And given that only very occasionally do they need to step outside their bubbles of yes-people deference, is it also at all surprising that when they do they get it so dramatically wrong?

What we saw in July, when Rupert and James Murdoch apparently told incomplete truths to a parliamentary committee, was two powerful gentlemen who expected the same treatment from the representatives of the people as they get in those daily ecosystems I referred to earlier.  It’s not that they expected to get away with telling porkies.  It’s, rather, that they didn’t expect for their authority to be questioned once laid down.

The psychology of power laid bare – that is what we are witnessing now.  And it’s really not a pretty sight.


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Britain today (III) (or when symbiosis becomes parasitical)

 a con, corporate speak, corporations, in a hole, James Murdoch, police, Rupert Murdoch  No Responses »
Jul 192011
 
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I thought I had tuned into the History Channel on the life and times of Florence Nightingale.  It was actually Rebekah Brooks speaking before a select group of British MPs – a band of brothers and sisters who seem to have been living so profoundly over the years the story in question that today they really couldn’t quite see the wood for the trees.

It does make me kind of despair – but only for a little bit.  For then I begin to realise the problems that were visited upon us in 2008 during the banking crisis – top-level helicopter-view executives running high-level strategies into the ground through their inability to effect, or lack of interest in, the marshalling of day-to-day operations – has become manifestly evident here in both the evidence provided by the police in the first encounter today as well as that provided by the Murdochs in the second.

As I tweeted not long ago:

Interesting how behaviours & excuses of top-level police officers & media executives sound so similar. #notmyjobtoknow

And it is, isn’t it?

So let me just summarise, with your kind permission.  Over a period of almost a decade, during which up to ten thousand people were victims of unreasonable press intrusion, the combined forces of the best of British policing and investigative journalism were unable to bring the criminals responsible to book.  What’s more, these two forces (supposedly) for good in a wider British society seem to have had – in Rebekah Brooks’ words – a “symbiotic” relationship which appears to have served more to benefit themselves than anyone else in that wider society.

I wouldn’t like to go as far as to suggest using the word “parasitical” instead of the word “symbiotic” – but we might like to go somewhere along the spectrum towards the former instead of the latter.  And it might be that the parasites in question were those interested parties in both of the forces I mention above who lived off the British body politic and social.

One conclusion, essentially, then: if the police and News International really had no idea what was going on until this year, I really wouldn’t like to rely on either to keep British society consistently clean.  And if they did, I wouldn’t trust them to do it.


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Britain today (II) (or banal soliloquies of corporate speak)

 a con, Britain, James Murdoch, lawyers, News Corp, News of the World, Rupert Murdoch  No Responses »
Jul 192011
 
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I’ve just seen the Murdochs give their account of what has happened during the past decade in News Corp.  Essentially, top-level executives got paid immense amounts of money to receive oral advice from highly expensive lawyers, either directly or via intermediaries – and then somewhere along the line, some individuals or other apparently hid, misplaced or confused key evidence which would otherwise have made it impossible for the executives in question not to commit to root and branch removal of criminal activity.

I may of course be wrong about all of this – but that’s my reading of it right now.

I do have two things to say on this matter: one, I actually prefer Rupert to James.  James has this most irritating habit of personalising all objects, so he says “I can’t speak to” something instead of “I can’t speak about” something.  Also, whilst Rupert took his time over most of his responses, James filled the silences with banal soliloquies of corporate speak.  I much prefer watching someone think before they open their mouth, even if it is to express their inability to remember, than suffer the awfulness of hearing a language I love so very much mangled by the tongues of those whose principle aim seems to be to avoid all sense of responsibility.

And the second thing?  Well, as I tweeted during the show itself:

Am I glad News Corp only does TV, news & films – just imagine if it did nuclear power with that lack of corporate control. #NOTW

If they thought this was going to be the moment they regained the initiative on being fit and proper as far as owning the totality of BSkyB was concerned, surely ordinary laws of corporate governance wherever would indicate they really weren’t fit and proper to run anything.  Not necessarily because of outright and overt criminality but, rather, simply because of an utter incompetence in relation to a correct and judicious understanding of corporate responsibility more generally.

An utter incompetence which absolutely beggars belief.


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MSNBC on the phone-hacking scandal at the heart of News International

 a con, James Murdoch, Rebekah Brooks, Rupert Murdoch  No Responses »
Jul 072011
 
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You read it and tweet it and think about it and wonder, but it takes the immediacy of video to truly horrify us all over again.  From across the Atlantic, this is how MSNBC is reporting recent events.  And at the foot of this post, how Fox News did so by accident!

More background here.  Thanks to Symbolman’s Twitter feed.
____________________

Further reading: here, Fox News covers the story without realising that it is doing so.

Update to this post: it’s just been announced that Rupert Murdoch will sacrifice the News of the World and close down the paper after this weekend’s edition.  Chinese walls have always been Murdoch’s way – consummate businessman that he is.  News International is more important as an entity than its component parts. The real objective here is the purchase of BSkyB at absolutely knockdown prices this autumn.  Just wait and see.


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