“Thank goodness it’s Friday!”

 Iraq, Iraq-ification, on a high, phone-hacking, police, publishing, Rupert Murdoch, social media, social networks, Sun  1 Response »
Sep 142012
 

Yes, I know.  It’s pretty hackneyed to say so.  It’s a cliché – yet, even so, a truth.

Is that why publishing empires like Murdoch’s have grown to such a size?  He has, after all, specialised in giving people what they allegedly want.  And perhaps, for some decades, what people have wanted is precisely not the truth.  The truth consists in the following:

  1. Those in charge will always remain in charge.
  2. Those in charge are not those best suited to rule.
  3. Those in charge will always try and make your life more miserable.
  4. Those in charge are there to win every bloody battle.
  5. Those in charge are there to win every bloodless battle.
  6. Those in charge are bloody, full stop.
  7. Those in charge are greedy and money-grabbing.
  8. Those in charge are always lying.
  9. Those in charge feather their nests at our expense.
  10. Those in charge are permanent cuckoos in the nests of democracy.

Mind you, one truth that Murdoch does sell runs as follows:

  1. Given the chance, we’d all love to be like those in charge.

Or so, at least, I used to believe.  But I do truly think things are changing.  My last post kind of reaches, in a nakedly rambling sort of way, a quite precise conclusion:

I don’t know about the civilisation you live in – but it seems to me that something really dirty is about to unspool out of the civilisation I habitually inhabit.

It’s probably a consequence of all that social media honesty.  If you start doing it for fun in your everyday life, how can you avoid not ending up doing it for real in your work?  We’re all, little by little, acquiring whistleblowing instincts, aren’t we?  Even those people in the middle levels of organisations, who generally find their job is to filter away reality from both the public and workforce’s gaze.

Who said Facebook and Twitter couldn’t conquer the world?  Maybe what’s really happening here is that these environments are actually retraining us all in the twin, unassailable and universal virtues of honesty and good faith!

With truth becoming a natural instinct again, perhaps there really is a chance for hope on the horizon.

Perhaps we are seeing a changing of the guard in the publishing world.  Murdoch’s penchant for avoiding the truth in his papers, that hackneyed clichéd boring truth which no wage slave on a daily basis would be able to survive, is being undermined by the amateur realities we generally honestly transmit in our social media communications.  And even when you avoid your truth in such communications, it’s eventually clear to the gathered audience what you’re really about – as well as where that truth is to be found.  So whether you tell the truth or not, the multi-directional nature of social media makes it impossible to convincingly sustain for any length of time a posture which does not approximate to reality.

Think of the tabloid empires throughout history and how they managed to support establishment inexactitudes.  Think of phonehacking and the police; think of certain MPs’ outrageous privileges; think of Hillsborough and maybe the miners too; think of Iraq and other points of intellectually brutalised conflict, wiped out in a tide of impositional politics.

The age of editing reality – without a productive and immediate comeback from those who might know differently – is coming to an end.

In a sense, therefore, so is traditional newspaper publishing.

The future lies once more in the hackneyed and clichéd realities that fairly paint our world as it actually is – instead of as the powerful would have it be shaped.

Thank goodness it’s Friday, eh?  Thank goodness it’s Friday.

Why today I agree 100 percent with Louise Mensch

 a con, David Cameron, Jeremy Hunt, phone-hacking, Rupert Murdoch, Tom Watson  No Responses »
May 012012
 

As the Commons Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee publishes a damning report today, Tom Watson provides a measured, contained and – as far as I can see – objective assessment of what’s really gone on over the past couple of years, whilst Parliament has tried to get to the bottom of the Murdoch phone-hacking case.  I agree with what, as an interested observer, I have read, heard and been able to cross-reference with respect to the case; with respect to the rest, I am happy to take his word for it.

Even so, I also find myself agreeing with Louise Mensch, one of the Tory Party members of the Committee, who found herself unable to vote for part of the report’s conclusions; in particular with respect to the following assertion: that Mr Rupert Murdoch was unfit to run a major international company.  As the BBC inform us:

A Conservative member of the Commons Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee said its phone-hacking report would lose credibility for its line over Rupert Murdoch being unfit to run an international company.

Louise Mensch said no MPs from her party could support the report – looking into allegations around the former News of the World newspaper – which would now be seen as “partisan”.

She’s absolutely right about the partisan nature of the vote, of course: the fact that – after all the sewage which has flowed under the tumbling media bridge – four Tory MPs can still band together along party lines and, by withholding their condemnation, let it be understood that the owners of News International have demonstrated all the tenets of good capitalism, is just about as revealing as any such vote ever could become.

When David Cameron saw nothing improper in Mr Hunt’s behaviours, he was implicitly – and simply – recognising that under similar circumstances he would have been happy to do exactly the same.

Louise Mensch and her Conservative colleagues now find themselves in precisely the same place.

I do hope they know what they’re doing and why.

In the very near future, I think they’re jolly well going to need to.

“Charismatic authority”, deniability and the Murdochs

 Chinese walls, James Murdoch, Leveson inquiry, phone-hacking, Rupert Murdoch, unclassifiable  2 Responses »
Apr 242012
 

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.

From a horse to an ass – English law and order today

 Jon Snow, News International, phone-hacking, Rebekah Brooks, smoke and mirrors, subversion, Tom Watson, unclassifiable  No Responses »
Feb 282012
 

I’d be inclined to think we should look a gift horse in the mouth – at least today.

It started off this morning with a story which appeared absolutely incredible.  Apparently, the Metropolitan Police is in the habit of lending its older horses to those who might be able to keep them.  In this case, Rebekah Brooks of News International fame.  As Tom Watson tweeted:

At least the horse’s head didn’t end up in my bed! http://t.co/UfwsVlmY Unbelievable. Quite unbelievable.

But later on, the suspicion arises that the timing of this juicy but relatively trivial piece of news has just been one massive exercise in smoke and mirrors.  The really big news has come from a quite different quarter – the Leveson inquiry and the declarations of a certain WPC.  The declarations first:

Do read para 40 of police officer Jacqui Hames’s #Leveson statement on surveillance:

“The News of the World has never supplied a coherent explanation for why we were placed under surveillance. Ill 2003, David, together with Dick Fedorcio and Colnmander Andre Baker, met Rebekah Brooks to discuss the matter.

“She repeated the unconvincing explanation that the News of the World believed we were having an affair. She agreed to iook into Alex Marunchak’s associations with Rees and Fillery but to my knowledge nothing further was ever said about the subject, indeed Mr Marunchak was subsequently promoted.

“I believe that the real reason for the News of the World placing us under surveillance was that suspects in the Daniel Morgan murder inquiry were using their association with a powerful and well-resourced newspaper to try to intimidate us and so attempt to subvert the investigation.”

As Jon Snow commented on his Twitter feed this afternoon:

Devatstating testimony from former WPC Jackie Haymes to Leveson: NOW subversion of a murder investigation? http://t.co/UjTxhaeM

Which brings me to my final piece of comment picked up from the ether:

#Leveson: Police collusion with NOTW to subvert murder inquiry. Met: HORSE! HORSE HORSE HORSE, LOOK AT THE HORSE! Murdoch: *silence*

If the above sequence of events is really how it has happened, and underlying it all is really a case of smoke and mirrors as already described, then it’s not just an old story about the alleged subversion of a murder inquiry but an absolutely hot potato of current news management.

By the police.

By certain parts of the media.

By the Lord only knows who else.

Can newspapers now legally intercept your texts, phonecalls and voicemails?

 apps, Facebook, in a hole, newspapers, phone-hacking, Rupert Murdoch, smartphones, Sunday Times, texting, unclassifiable, YouTube  No Responses »
Feb 272012
 

With recent evidence mounting up that governments are using corporations to do their dirty work, it does make me wonder – and want to infer – whether this weekend’s big technology news is an indication of a far wider malaise.  The fact that Facebook feels able to happily admit that it’s been spying on smartphone users’ text messages in order to harvest data to allow it to launch its own messaging facility does make me think that perhaps governments are already doing this; and, behind the scenes, this is simply a given which makers and shakers have long been aware of.

A given they are now even comfortable with.

The worst of the story isn’t however just that.  The worst is contained in this paragraph:

It claimed that some apps even allow companies to intercept phone calls – while others, such as YouTube, are capable of remotely accessing and operating users’ smartphone cameras to take photographs or videos at any time.

Hardly a surprise, therefore, when a Sunday Times survey of smartphone-user behaviours throws up the fact that almost three-quarters of those questioned never or rarely check out the terms and conditions before installing a program.

So whilst these institutions continue to reap the benefit of intercepting your text messages and phonecalls and taking control of your photos and videos, they are actually doing it with your explicit permission.

Three observations which strike me here: first, isn’t it ironic that it is Rupert Murdoch’s Sunday Times which – in the week before important revelations are expected at the Leveson inquiry into phone-hacking and media abuse – manages to pull together a report on how these huge technology companies (his sworn enemies in those battles on intellectual property and Internet freedoms that are SOPA, PIPA and ACTA) are potentially abusing their own dominant market positions to trick innocent users into giving up considerable swathes of their privacy?

Which, of course, and despite the conflict of interest, doesn’t mean the report isn’t absolutely right to say what it does.

The second observation?  Just imagine it was a government which, say, launched a friendly Direct.gov.uk single-point-of-access app whose terms and conditions allowed it to gather the kind of data and have the kind of control over your phone which Facebook has chirrupingly acknowledged and Google’s YouTube has surreptitiously acquired.

Just imagine, then, the hullabaloo that would be raised.  The furore the newspapers would generate in their attacks on the ever-encroaching police state.

Remember what I said about governments getting corporations to do their dirty work?  In the light of this and other recent stories, it really wouldn’t surprise me if both had long ago been involved hand-in-glove …

And lastly?  Well.  It doesn’t half make me shiver to realise that whilst morally unacceptable – and possibly illegal – phone-hacking and voicemail interception was the flavour of the past decade at some British newspapers, our favourite smartphone newspaper apps may one day – if, indeed, this is not already the case – allow their proprietors to legally follow our movements; track our texts; listen in to our calls; and write stories on our activities.

These phones are bloody self-financing, for goodness sake – with all the data we are giving up for nothing.  These companies talk about how difficult it is for them to make money on the web – and then they submit us all to the indignity of things like the above.

Perhaps there’s a lesson in that.  Perhaps this is the awful consequence of forcing unwieldy corporations to monetise their content in any which way but via direct payments.  Or, alternatively, a result of the aforementioned companies being entirely unable to move with the times.

A point worth debating further?  Maybe for another post.

Maybe, indeed.

The truth of the matter is, and the way it’s now going, we shouldn’t just be getting the content and devices for free …

We shouldn’t just have an inalienable right to be able to chatter, click and browse for zilch …

We should actually be remunerated for reading and using this stuff.  Because long-term, and I mean this seriously, we’re not going to be paying for the rest of lives but – rather (the difference is subtle but profound) – with the rest of our lives.

And that’s a thought that really doesn’t bear thinking about.

Now does it?

Snake in the gas

 James Murdoch, News International, News of the World, phone-hacking, Rupert Murdoch, Tom Watson, Twitter  No Responses »
Feb 012012
 

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?

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
 

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.

Contextualising Rupert Murdoch: "… the stiletto, a man of method, a cold-eyed manipulator"

 a con, Milly Dowler, News Corp, News International, News of the World, phone-hacking, Rupert Murdoch, unclassifiable  No Responses »
Sep 192011
 

I’m inclined simply to link to this feature article by Harold Evans from last night’s online edition and today’s paper version of the Guardian.  Link to it – and then allow you (I guess – I hope) to fume.  But I have to do more.  I can’t just leave it at that.

This, on Murdoch’s performance at the recent hearing before MPs on the question of phone-hacking, for example:

Observers in the Portcullis room were divided on the efficacy of Murdoch’s testimony. Some thought his answers revealed a doddery, amnesiac, jetlagged octogenarian. He cupped his ear occasionally to ask for a question to be repeated; at one moment he referred to the prime minister, David Cameron, when he meant Alastair Campbell, former prime minister Tony Blair’s press adviser. Others saw the testimony as a guileful imitation of “junior”, the ageing mentor to Tony, the capo in the Sopranos, who feigned slippered incompetence to escape retribution. I thought, on the contrary, that Murdoch was a good witness, more direct than his son James, who unnervingly sported a buzz cut reminiscent of Nixon’s chief of staff, Bob Haldeman. His father was as taciturn as James was loquacious. Murdoch père paused to run each answer through his shrewd mental calculations of the legal implications of his own words, occasionally smiting the tabletop in front in a kind of brutal authoritarian emphasis that began to make his wife Wendi Deng distinctly nervous. She leant forward to restrain the militancy.

And then we have a rather more direct description of exactly how Murdoch is – even now – able to impose without having to take ownership for his “actions”:

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?”. [...]

A couple of more comparisons before I finish with the reality that genuinely shocks me today.  On the one hand, on Robert Maxwell – at one point Murdoch’s direct competitor:

Maxwell was the meat axe, a muddler, a volatile sentimentalist, a bully and a crook.

Then, on the other hand, a thumbnail sketch of dear old Rupert:

Murdoch is the stiletto, a man of method, a cold-eyed manipulator.

And, finally, this story, as News International proposes to draw a line under its behaviours – and thus, paradoxically, perpetuate them – through its tried and tested method of buying off injured parties with wads of dosh:

Milly Dowler’s family have been offered a multimillion-pound settlement by Rupert Murdoch’s News International, in an attempt to settle the phone-hacking case that led to closure of the News of the World and the resignation of the company’s chief executive, Rebekah Brooks.

It is understood that News International has made a settlement offer estimated by sources at more than £2m, a figure that includes a donation to charity. But the publisher and media group has not reached agreement with the Dowler family, whose lawyers were thought to be seeking a settlement figure of closer to £3.5m.

So that’s all right then. 

Isn’t it?

But how can we possibly contextualise this?  Well, we could do it on the basis of annual turnover.  The BBC reports $32.7 billion in the year to June 2010 (the profit report here).  What does the figure mentioned above of £3.5 million really represent, then, to a man like Rupert Murdoch?  You know what I mean: for sorting out the pain and grief to the Dowler family, as far as this may be possible – and as a consequence of a set of behaviours his empire might arguably appear to have been built on.

How about – and as I’m feeling generous tonight – rounding up to a princely sum of 0.02 percent?  I think I got that right – maths was never my strong suit, mind.  So I’m happy to be corrected by anyone who’d like to doublecheck.

But let’s just say – for argument’s sake – that I am actually right.  We then have a figure for compensation for this massively high-profile case – a case which, remember, has led to the closure of Murdoch’s best-selling newspaper – of 0.02 percent of annual turnover. 

And yes, that’s the turnover of just one piddling year!

Whilst the phone-hacking and the competitive advantages it brought his newspaper empire have apparently been going on for at least a decade.

Now if you didn’t have that money, that’d be curtains for this company.  But since the spare cash is apparently lying around, and the will to pay it out is similarly prevalent, it looks like Mr Murdoch – “the stiletto, the man of method, a cold-eyed manipulator” if there ever was one – will get his own way yet again. 

Even in the case of Milly Dowler.

Even in such horrifying circumstances.

Even after everything that’s happened in the past six months.

So do his shareholders really have nothing more to say on this matter?

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
 

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.

Why you shouldn’t get all paranoid even when they are making out they’re following you

 news-gathering, paranoia, phone-hacking, Rupert Murdoch, unclassifiable, writing  No Responses »
Sep 112010
 

I’ve been writing quite a bit recently on the subject of wrongdoings in the newspaper and publishing industry.  I don’t want this to become an obsessive thing – obsessive often gets at the truth to matters of interest and importance but it can also become a little boring for those who find the subject in question neither interesting nor important.

Maybe it is, occasionally, the responsibility and duty of writers to incessantly bombard their readers with news items they’d far rather see the back of.  I suppose, however, there are different and better ways of doing everything.

I’d like to take a broader view today on what corrupt behaviours in industries such as news-gathering can mean for our wider society and democracy.  Apart from the apparently incidental fact that recent examples which come to mind involve breaking what seem to be loosely applied laws, there is the corrosive effect Tom Watson described in Parliament a couple of days ago which leads to a broad and extensive range of acts of self-censorship by supposedly powerful people who end up not daring to speak their minds.

The tabloid newspaper industry, of which Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation conglomerate is the finest exponent (and when I say finest, I honestly mean finest – at least in terms of coherent and money-generating product), doesn’t – however – only stop people from voicing their innermost thoughts.  If this were the case, we could maintain a certain degree of hope in the online future of virtual communication via a still open Internet of social media communicators.  (There is always the fear that the increasing prevalence of iPhone, iPad and other tablet-based apps could cause such an Internet to disintegrate to such a point that useful communication would necessarily have to be conducted via easily trackable and controllable pay-per-use strategies – but, for the moment, I think this unlikely).

What I think is truly dangerous about the behaviours we have recently had our attention drawn to is the tawdry and all-enveloping atmosphere of paranoia that they tend to engender: any of us who participate in any significant (or, indeed, even small) way in public discourse will be prone to wondering in an evermore paranoid manner whether someone is reading and concluding things about one we most certainly do not mean.

Or if we do mean them, they are things we know we do not have the resources to defend were we to be challenged in a rather more legal context.

For those who become accustomed to acting in bad faith are generally of deep pockets.

It is, however, my experience that even when they’re making out they’re following you, you really shouldn’t get paranoid.  It’s bad for your health; it’s bad for your sense of wellbeing; it leads you to a self-censorship which means bright ideas never see the light of day; and, worst of all, it allows those who run things to get used to running things quite unquestioned.

Even when they do threaten to hack into your private communications, live your private life proudly and fearlessly.

Be what you are in public and in private.

That’s the very best way to beat the untouchables with no predators Tom Watson so rightly drew our attention to.