Replies to post #205949 on Tornado Alley (PROG)

[F6]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/05/cute-kid-note-of-the-day-fox-news_n_2123124.html [with comments]

[fuagf]

Scotland Yard seeks Rupert Murdoch secret tape

In tape, Murdoch is heard admitting to Sun journalists that payments to public officials were part of 'culture of Fleet Street

Josh Halliday
The Guardian, Saturday 6 July 2013 03.59 AEST

Link to video: Rupert Murdoch calls police incompetent in secret recording - audio
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/video/2013/jul/04/rupert-murdoch-secret-recording-audio

Scotland Yard detectives were on Friday attempting to track down a secret recording of Rupert Murdoch .. http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/rupert-murdoch .. admitting to Sun journalists that payments to public officials were part of "the culture of Fleet Street".

A police .. http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/police .. officer connected to the Operation Elveden investigation into illicit payments from journalists has made a formal request to Exaro News, the investigations website that broke the story .. http://www.exaronews.com/articles/5026/transcript-rupert-murdoch-recorded-at-meeting-with-sun-staff , to hand over the undercover tape.

DCI Laurence Smith told Exaro News that the police would seek a production order compelling it to disclose the recording if it did not do so voluntarily. It is understood the police have also approached Channel 4, which aired a small part of the recordings.

The development is the clearest indication yet that police in London .. http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/london .. are ready to examine Murdoch's private disclosures since the tapes emerged on Wednesday night. Murdoch is recorded saying the culture of paying police officers for stories "existed at every newspaper in Fleet Street. Long since forgotten. But absolutely."

Mark Watts, the editor-in-chief of Exaro News, said he had not handed any material to Scotland Yard and the force had not made clear "what they want, or why exactly they want it".

He said: "We are making public everything that we have, and I cannot see how else we can help. Like everyone else, they just need to keep logging on to Exaro. One thing is for certain, unlike News International, we will not – under any circumstances – betray confidential sources."

Although the 82-year-old media mogul did not admit knowing that any of his employees specifically paid public officials, he was recorded on two separate occasions describing the practice as part of the culture of Fleet Street.

On one clip published by Exaro News, an unidentified Sun journalist asks him: "I'm pretty confident that the working practices that I've seen here are ones that I've inherited, rather than instigated. Would you recognise that all this predates many of our involvement here?"

Murdoch replies: "We're talking about payments for news tips from cops. That's been going on a hundred years, absolutely. You didn't instigate it." Earlier in the tape, Murdoch tells the Sun .. http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/sun .. journalists: "I don't know of anybody, or anything, that did anything that wasn't being done across Fleet Street and wasn't the culture."

News UK, formerly known as News International, has maintained that Murdoch "never knew of payments made by Sun staff to police before News Corporation disclosed that to UK authorities". Scotland Yard, meanwhile, said it would not give a "running commentary" on Operation Elveden.

The press law campaign group Hacked Off on Friday urged the Commons culture, media and sport select committee to recall Murdoch, and said he "may have committed contempt of parliament".

Evan Harris, the associate director of the group, wrote to the cross-party committee's chairman, John Whittingdale MP, saying: "There is a strong prima facie case that Mr Murdoch may have committed contempt of parliament by misleading your committee over his true response to the police investigations into phone hacking and bribery of public officials.

"As far as the victims of phone hacking are concerned, the appropriate course of action is for the committee to recall him at the earliest available opportunity to explain the discrepancies between the expressions of remorse he made to you and the defiant and unrepentant tone of his private remarks earlier this year."

The leaked recordings revealed for the first time the level of bitterness harboured by arrested Sun journalists towards News Corporation's management and standards committee (MSC), which was tasked with handing over internal documents to the police. After the first arrests in early 2012, a source close to the MSC described the operation as "draining the swamp".

In an interview published on Friday .. http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/if_this_happened_in_china_thered_be_a_shitstorm_here/ , the Sun's crime editor, Mike Sullivan, said of that phrase: "After 20 years on the paper, I admit I felt sick to my stomach at that. And I still do." Sullivan was arrested under Operation Elveden in January 2012 and cleared in April 2013.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2013/jul/05/rupert-murdoch-secret-tape

[fuagf]

Labour MPs urge police to consider charging Murdoch after secret tape is released

Tom Watson and Chris Bryant suggest that Murdoch
could be charged with perverting the course of justice.

By George Eaton Published 04 July 2013 9:01


Tom Watson and Chris Bryant suggest that Murdoch could be charged.
Rupert Murdoch delivers a keynote address at the National Summit on Education Reform in San Francisco, California. Photograph: Getty Images.

While most people were watching Andy Murray's triumph or Mohammed Morsi's fall, the phone-hacking scandal took yet another turn. Almost exactly two years to the day after the Milly Dowler story broke, the investigative site Exaro revealed .. http://www.exaronews.com/articles/5025/rupert-murdoch-secretly-admits-i-knew-about-bribing-officials .. a secret recording (appropriately enough) of Rupert Murdoch addressing Sun staff in March in which he describes payments to the police and public officials as "the culture of Fleet Street" and expresses regret at News Corp's co-operation with the hacking inquiry.

In reference to the decision of the company's internal management and standards committee to hand over documents to the police, Murdoch said:

-----
… it was a mistake, I think. But, in that atmosphere, at that time, we said, 'Look, we are an open book, we will show you everything'. And the lawyers just got rich going through millions of emails.

All I can say is, for the last several months, we have told, the MSC has told, and [**** ****], who's a terrific lawyer, has told the police, has said, 'No, no, no – get a court order. Deal with that.'
-----

After journalists told him that they felt scapegoated, he commented:

-----
We're talking about payments for news tips from cops: that's been going on a hundred years, absolutely. You didn't instigate it.
-----

Labour MPs Tom Watson and Chris Bryant, the twin scourges of News Corp, have been quick to respond, urging police to question Murdoch and to consider charging him with perverting the course of justice.

Bryant, the shadow immigration minister, who I'm told is in line for a promotion when Ed Miliband reshuffles his team, tweeted ..

Police should investigate @rupertmurdoch suggestion that there is more evidence of illegality that News Int didn't hand over.

— Chris Bryant (@RhonddaBryant) July 4, 2013

.. this morning: "So there's a surprise, @rupertmurdoch .. https://twitter.com/rupertmurdoch .. was lying and play acting when he appeared before parliament. Time police considered charging him."

Watson told Channel 4 News last night: "What he seems to be saying there is that they stopped co-operating with the police before the Sun staff started to rebel. And what I would like to know is what are they sitting on that they've not given the police. And I'm sure that this transcript and this audiotape should be in the hands of the police tomorrow because I hope that they're going to be interviewing Rupert Murdoch about what he did know about criminality in his organisation."

News Corp has responded by declaring that "No other company has done as much to identify what went wrong, compensate the victims, and ensure the same mistakes do not happen again. The unprecedented co-operation granted by News Corp was agreed unanimously by senior management and the board, and the MSC continues to co-operate under the supervision of the courts."

For Ed Miliband, under relentless fire from the Tories over the Unite-Falkirk affair, the story comes at a convenient moment. At yesterday's PMQs, after Cameron accused him of "taking his script from the trade unions", Miliband reminded MPs that it was the Prime Minister who "brought Andy Coulson into the heart of Downing Street". Anything that revives interest in the scandal, ahead of Coulson's trial in September, remains political gold for the Labour leader.

Follow The Staggers on Twitter: @TheStaggers

http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2013/07/labour-mps-urge-police-consider-charging-murdoch-after-secret-tape-released

See also:

How much Murdoch misleading British parliament do
they need before they are charged with the serious offense?
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=89772904