Community | July 16, 2011 | 56 comments

Turning out the Lights at News Corp...

source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/jul/15/les-hinton-news-corp?intcmp=239

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Les Hinton sacrificed, but the worst is yet to come for News Corp
Every time Murdoch ditches a key executive, the flames of scandal flick ever closer to him, writes Matt Wells

Matt Wells
guardian.co.uk,

Les Hinton and Rupert Murdoch in 2002. Hinton headed News International when the News of the World phone-hacking allegations first arose. Photograph: PA

No relationship is safe, no loyal bond strong enough for Rupert Murdoch who – looking more than the sum of his 80 years – is mounting a final battle to save the company he built from nothing.

His decision to throw Les Hinton to the wolves is his most dramatic move yet. For more than 50 years, as a journalist and then an executive, Hinton loyally served the Murdoch empire from its roots in Australia to the height of its power in New York.

Now, in a desperate effort to save News Corporation's most valuable assets – its 27 US broadcast licences and the 20th Century Fox movie studio – Murdoch is prepared to sacrifice one of his closest allies.

The problem for Murdoch is that every time he ditches a key executive, the flames of scandal flick ever closer to him.

Hinton was ditched because he was the crucial link between Murdoch's valuable US businesses and the tainted operation in Britain. He was at the helm of NI – the holding company for his UK newspapers including the News of the World and the Times – when it seemed that everyone who was in sniffing distance of a significant news story found their phones being hacked.

Questions were being raised about what Hinton knew about corrupt payments to London police officers: if he was shown to have been aware of them, that would be a felony in the US under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.

The problem for News Corp now is that, at every stage, its attempts to contain this story have failed. The decision to close the News of the World was motivated in part to save the chief executive of NI, Rebekah Brooks: that decision bombed and Brooks resigned on Friday.

But the departure of Brooks was not enough to contain the scandal in Britain, so Hinton, who has been more significant to the company's fortunes and to Murdoch personally for far longer than Brooks, also left.

The inevitable next move for Murdoch is prolicide. His son James, appointed in 2007 as chairman and chief executive of News Corporation's operations in Europe and Asia, based at News International's headquarters in Wapping, east London, clings on – but only for now.

In London, James Murdoch oversaw the response to the hacking scandal. He approved the £700,000 hush money paid to Gordon Taylor, the former chief executive of the Professional Footballers' Association – a decision he has blamed on poor advice. (The legal director of News International, Tom Crone, was one of the executives of News International to leave this week.)

The departure of Hinton suggests that News Corporation has finally got to grips with the global significance of this story, but the worst is yet to come. The FBI has launched an investigation into accusations that News of the World journalists asked a former New York police officer for the phone records of relatives of 9/11 victims. If that toxic allegation is shown to have been true, one thing is certain: Fox News is finished, along with the rest of News Corporation as we know it.

The emotional supercharge of 9/11 in the US is many times greater than Milly Dowler in the UK – and look what happened here.

Commentators have compared the crisis to Watergate; Carl Bernstein, the former Washington Post reporter whose revelations helped depose a US president, says it is evident to him the events of the past week "are the beginning, not the end, of the seismic event".

To coin a famous Murdoch newspaper headline: will the last person to leave News Corporation turn off the lights?
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56 comments // Turning out the Lights at News Corp...

  • Mayeffie
  • ElSquire
    • 0
      ElSquire  
    • Image

    • Perhaps its been overlooked or maybe I just missed it but one superb factor that could come from all this is a true 'word storm' and will end up in the real dictionionary along with communism,fascism, and all those other words which bring people to their toes is 'Murdochism'. (http://www.johnpilger.com/articles/welcome-to-the-world-s-first-murdochracy)
      In years to come let us hope the word will excist but the concept will be outlawed.
      Anyone old enough to remember the name 'Wapping' should be old enough to put it together with 'Thatcherism' followed by Miners strikes,Union busting,'fake wars', etc etc all of which have not only been created by men like Murdoch but continue to be practiced (see Koch Bros / Wisc etc).
      Break this Murdocracy and people will THINK again and not be bent to the will of a few powerful wealthy people. True democracy could really return. Its an uphill struggle of course especially in the US where not only one political party is controlled that way but even the judiciary needs to be returned to a level playing field but in the end we may thank Murdoch for his greed for power which hopefully will result in the end of Murdochism forever.

    • 10 months ago
  • Frosty46
    • 0
      Frosty46  

    • I know the news exposing FOX and Rupert Murdoch's crime family we Liberals see and hear is heartening but sadly 80.5% of Americans only see what Rupert wants them to see. The other 19.5% see the doctored corporate news and then we have the Liberal outlets like Current with a one half percent viewership getting honest news.

      It takes a village on fire to change governance!

    • 10 months ago
  • warman1138
  • warman1138
  • panichead
  • hurleyburly
    • +1
      hurleyburly  

    • I heard someone on 'This Week with Christianne Ammanpour'...say Murdoch and co..repeatedly said that the last time they were in the hotseat in the UK..that it was only a "few rotten apples"....this guy said it now appears to be a "rotten barrel".....oh, bad things are in store for fox and friends...not to get all biblical..but, something about reaping and sewing comes to mind.

    • 10 months ago
  • Mark701
    • +4
      Mark701  

    • "Washington Post reporter whose revelations helped depose a US president, says it is evident to him the events of the past week "are the beginning, not the end, of the seismic event".

      Indeed. Murdoch has made many enemies in the media, if only from a competition point of view. Now they are primed and waiting for the silver bullet i.e. did he do the same thing here in the US as in Britain. My feeling is he did and it's simply a matter of time before we find out.

      Note: Expect Rupert to have a heart attack or stroke at any moments. Seems to be the way to go when you're in the line of fire like he is.

    • 10 months ago
  • nikonwilly
    • +2
      nikonwilly  

    • What's happening on the competitors television stations ? Are they reporting on this ? I don't have TV...just wondering how it's being played out on the other outlets. Are these corporate pigs sticking together or will the chance to grab master Murdoch's viewers fuel this and help bring him down ?

    • 10 months ago
  • hurleyburly
  • nikonwilly
  • Frosty46
    • 0
      Frosty46  
    • nikonwilly:

      CNN is doing it's part to grab viewers but MSNBC is doing it's usual GE version of things thus far. Remember what and who owned media prior to Raygun and the dismantling of the FCC and Antitrust laws?

    • 10 months ago
  • thedirtman
    • +2
      thedirtman  

    • What a bunch of dorks at MTP. They are not covering the big story of the week. Instead, they are talking a "jobs summit" over the manufactured crises.

    • 10 months ago
  • hurleyburly
    • +1
      hurleyburly  
    • thedirtman:

      sarcasm?...Greggory drives me up the wall..he is the most softball throwing talking head ever...he continually lets guests get the better of him. I give him my time until Christianne comes on. When he made the comment about..he's not supposed to fact check...I checked out on him.

    • 10 months ago
  • PeteLeS33
  • Conniepae
  • budsnews
    • +1
      budsnews  

    • Sieze the holdings of news corp,dicky cheney,and all others that made profit from human misery.Spread it evenly among all the servicepersons families.

    • 10 months ago
  • nikonwilly
    • 0
      nikonwilly  
    • budsnews:

      Not a bad Idea...especially since so many kids are now left with no other options, but to join the military.....I personally know many who thought they had no choice ....lack a of work and school unaffordable.....That's one way to avoid a draft !!

    • 10 months ago
  • wolfess
    • 0
      wolfess  
    • budsnews:

      I read somewhere awhile ago it was that worthless shrub that waived the laws on immigrants becoming Americans so that murkoch could come into the US and buy up all the crap he bought. if THAT isn't a class-a reason to try both the antichrist and the shrub I don't know what is!

    • 10 months ago
  • ithink
  • kvb1
    • 0
      kvb1  

    • "a final battle to save the company he built from nothing". Wrong! Another mogul that built their company from an inherited empire their father built.

      Murdoch's problem is that he has so much control of his company, that he would have known about the scandal from the beginning. Loosing his 27 station will put a big hurt on FOX network, but will not put it out of business.

    • 10 months ago
  • kennymotown
  • wolfess
  • HAllenld
    • +2
      HAllenld  

    • I am tempted to e-mail Fox News And ask them if they think that Michelle Bachmann will also help find them a new job when she becomes president. Maybe they can all go to work where Glenn Beck is at.

    • 10 months ago
  • Straighttalker
  • wolfess
  • Milieu
  • ThirdSection
  • SandyBerman
    • SandyBerman  
    • This comment was removed as a violation of community guidelines.
  • jim_b
  • ampersand
    • +3
      ampersand  
    • SandyBerman:

      Rupert is always accompanied by a few professional thugs these days--even in the very bucolic coastal community I live in where his daughter has a "ranch" nearby.
      They prove useful in intimidating locals who don't immediately agreed to his hints of how he likes to be served, which are always actually demands, of course.

      I do sometimes wonder about the one man, one bullet, theory of history.
      An open and enquiring mind should always be prepared for novel methods of empirical testing...

    • 10 months ago
  • wolfess
  • HAllenld
  • Incredulous
  • dinm76
    • +6
      dinm76  

    • When I saw the Saudi Arabian Prince who owns THE SECOND LARGEST BLOCK OF STOCK in Fox (News Corp.) on TV, I just about fell out of my chair! There he was in the flesh for all to see! The average FOX viewer could be turned against their manipulaters so easiely with just a little effort at playing their own game. Every Democrat should be saying that guys name over and over and showing that video until the idiots start to realize they have been played for fools.
      The damage done to this country since the mid 90's when the shit-sellers first went into business will go down in history! How many (real) deaths and how much misery has come to this country because of one man?
      Murdoch can't be too far from meeting his maker and boy is he going to cook for a long time!

    • 10 months ago
  • budsnews
  • Mark701
    • +1
      Mark701  
    • dinm76:

      The fact that A Saudi Prince is the second largest owner of NewsCorp is pretty common knowledge. So how come all the red meat conservative crazies still watch FAUX News? The answer is simple. They don't watch to become informed. They watch because FAUX News in the only main stream outlet that legitimizes their hatred, bigotry, and ignorance. If FAUX News actually began to report in a "fair and balanced" manner, most of them would jump ship.

    • 10 months ago
  • Straighttalker
  • Straighttalker
    • +7
      Straighttalker  

    • The problem with News Corp comes from the top. Murdoch sets the culture for the firm. If the culture is deception the actions will fall in line. If the culture is fairness and decency the Indians will follow the Chief. In time we will know what the culture really is.

    • 10 months ago
  • SandyBerman
    • SandyBerman  
    • This comment was removed as a violation of community guidelines.
  • wolfess
  • Conniepae
    • 0
      Conniepae  
    • SandyBerman:

      My hope is, 'when they investigate Rupert Murdoch in the U.S., they find he tampered with American elections and charge him with treason'. Fox News has been out to destroy the Democratic Party. I hope they 'did' do things, which were illegal and get charged for doing it.

      Elections do have consequences. I hope President Obama's Justice Department realize how important it is to clean house and get rid of the rats who have been eating away at fair elections.

      Rupert Murdoch's 'just say it' crowd, have hurt our voting process with spin, lies and rhetoric. He fought for the right to distort instead of report and won. I hope he looses the right to spy and lie, using American airwaves.

    • 10 months ago
  • ThirdSection
  • warman1138
  • northernexpat
    • +5
      northernexpat  

    • Please, oh please, let it be true that Fox goes down with the rest of News Corp. The fox is in the hen house and the chickens have come home to roost. The way things are going there is going to be a big cock fight and we will all have a front row seat. I wonder if Rupert will throw his son under the bus next? Rupert always wants his news to be more salacious, let's hope he gets his wish on this news story.

    • 10 months ago
  • wynnmeg61
    • +3
      wynnmeg61  

    • Oh but how will the BaloonHeads ever be able to find emplyment again if Fox goes down.... you know like Douchey, and Kelley, and Cavuto, and Billo...I see them becoming a social problem.

    • 10 months ago
  • Vic_Romano
  • totally_dilapidated
  • chew_chew
    • +4
      chew_chew  

    • With each passing day, this can of worms gets deeper and smells worse. The total collapse of News Corp would be a wonderful thing for America and the world.

      Time will tell.

    • 10 months ago
  • artemis6
  • chew_chew
  • totally_dilapidated
    • +5
      totally_dilapidated  

    • .
      Matt Wells writes:

      "...the phone records of relatives of 9/11 victims. If that toxic allegation is shown to have been true, one thing is certain: Fox News is finished, along with the rest of News Corporation as we know it."

      where o where will the Billo land
      where o where will Billo beeee...

      *old fox home for the turgid and corrupt

    • 10 months ago
  • Richard_Wyatt
  • ejasun
  • figgdimension
    • +8
      figgdimension  

    • The disgusting anti-privacy practice of Rupert and friends at Newscorp & Fox has brought the media monsters to their knees sadly it took all this to bring this evil corp down and if you ask me good riddance

    • 10 months ago
  • figgdimension
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