news corp // Current TV

Breaking News: Major League Baseball Takes Over Los Angeles Dodgers

On Wednesday, April 20, 2011 MLB.com reported that the Major League Baseball has taken... more

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News Corp considering F1 motor racing bid: Source

Rupert Murdoch's News Corp is in the early stages of talks about forming a... more

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News Corp unveils The Daily, a revolutionary digital app for iPad

News Corporation has unveiled a sensational new digital application for the Apple... more

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Kim Bowled for Murdoch's Dollars With Korean Games

"North Korean leader Kim Jong Il has found an unlikely ally to help raise cash... more

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Top UK Aide Had Royals' Phones Hacked For A Rupert Murdoch Owned Paper

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2010/09/05/magazine/05hacking-span/05hacking-span-articleLarge.jpg

There is a short summary for those with limited attention spans at the following URL
http://www.aolnews.com/world/article/report-former-editor-andy-coulson-now-a-top-uk-aide-had-royals-phones-hacked/19618507

PG. 1 of 8
IN NOVEMBER 2005, three senior aides to Britain’s royal family noticed odd things happening on their mobile phones. Messages they had never listened to were somehow appearing in their mailboxes as if heard and saved. Equally peculiar were stories that began appearing about Prince William in one of the country’s biggest tabloids, News of the World.

The stories were banal enough (Prince William pulled a tendon in his knee, one revealed). But the royal aides were puzzled as to how News of the World had gotten the information, which was known among only a small, discreet circle. They began to suspect that someone was eavesdropping on their private conversations.

By early January 2006, Scotland Yard had confirmed their suspicions. An unambiguous trail led to Clive Goodman, the News of the World reporter who covered the royal family, and to a private investigator, Glenn Mulcaire, who also worked for the paper. The two men had somehow obtained the PIN codes needed to access the voice mail of the royal aides.

Scotland Yard told the aides to continue operating as usual while it pursued the investigation, which included surveillance of the suspects’ phones. A few months later, the inquiry took a remarkable turn as the reporter and the private investigator chased a story about Prince William’s younger brother, Harry, visiting a strip club. Another tabloid, The Sun, had trumpeted its scoop on the episode with the immortal: “Harry Buried Face in Margo’s Mega-Boobs. Stripper Jiggled . . . Prince Giggled.”

As Scotland Yard tracked Goodman and Mulcaire, the two men hacked into Prince Harry’s mobile-phone messages. On April 9, 2006, Goodman produced a follow-up article in News of the World about the apparent distress of Prince Harry’s girlfriend over the matter. Headlined “Chelsy Tears Strip Off Harry!” the piece quoted, verbatim, a voice mail Prince Harry had received from his brother teasing him about his predicament.

The palace was in an uproar, especially when it suspected that the two men were also listening to the voice mail of Prince William, the second in line to the throne. The eavesdropping could not have gone higher inside the royal family, since Prince Charles and the queen were hardly regular mobile-phone users. But it seemingly went everywhere else in British society. Scotland Yard collected evidence indicating that reporters at News of the World might have hacked the phone messages of hundreds of celebrities, government officials, soccer stars — anyone whose personal secrets could be tabloid fodder. Only now, more than four years later, are most of them beginning to find out.

AS OF THIS SUMMER, five people have filed lawsuits accusing News Group Newspapers, a division of Rupert Murdoch’s publishing empire that includes News of the World, of breaking into their voice mail. Additional cases are being prepared, including one seeking a judicial review of Scotland Yard’s handling of the investigation. The litigation is beginning to expose just how far the hacking went, something that Scotland Yard did not do. In fact, an examination based on police records, court documents and interviews with investigators and reporters shows that Britain’s revered police agency failed to pursue leads suggesting that one of the country’s most powerful newspapers was routinely listening in on its citizens.

The police had seized files from Mulcaire’s home in 2006 that contained several thousand mobile phone numbers of potential hacking victims and 91 mobile phone PIN codes. Scotland Yard even had a recording of Mulcaire walking one journalist — who may have worked at yet another tabloid — step by step through the hacking of a soccer official’s voice mail, according to a copy of the tape. But Scotland Yard focused almost exclusively on the royals case, which culminated with the imprisonment of Mulcaire and Goodman. When police officials presented evidence to prosecutors, they didn’t discuss crucial clues that the two men may not have been alone in hacking the voice mail messages of story targets.

“There was simply no enthusiasm among Scotland Yard to go beyond the cases involving Mulcaire and Goodman,” said John Whittingdale, the chairman of a parliamentary committee that has twice investigated the phone hacking. “To start exposing widespread tawdry practices in that newsroom was a heavy stone that they didn’t want to try to lift.” Several investigators said in interviews that Scotland Yard was reluctant to conduct a wider inquiry in part because of its close relationship with News of the World. Police officials have defended their investigation, noting that their duties did not extend to monitoring the media. In a statement, the police said they followed the lines of inquiry “likely to produce the best evidence” and that the charges that were brought “appropriately represented the criminality uncovered.” The statement added, “This was a complex inquiry and led to one of the first prosecutions of its kind.” Officials also have noted that the department had more pressing priorities at the time, including several terrorism cases.http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2010/09/05/magazine/05hacking-span/05hacking-span-a... more

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Fox News co-owner funded ‘Ground Zero mosque’ imam: report

The second largest shareholder in News Corp. -- the parent company of Fox News -- has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to causes linked to the imam planning to build a Muslim community center and mosque near Ground Zero in Manhattan, says a report from Yahoo!News.

According to the report from Yahoo!'s John Cook, Saudi Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal, who owns seven percent of News Corp., "has directly funded [Imam Feisal Abdul] Rauf's projects to the tune of more than $300,000."

Cook reports that Prince Al-Waleed's personal charity, the Kingdom Foundation, donated $305,000 to Muslim Leaders of Tomorrow, a project sponsored by two of Rauf's initiatives, the American Society for Muslim Advancement and the Cordoba Initiative, which is building the Manhattan mosque.

That Fox News' second-largest shareholder, after Rupert Murdoch, has financial links to the "Ground Zero mosque" will be seen as ironic by critics of the news network, who have watched with chagrin as the network's talking heads attempt to link the mosque to radical Islamism.

Last week, Daily Show host Jon Stewart lambasted Fox panelist Eric Bolling's attempt to link the Cordoba Initiative to Hamas and Iran. Stewart used News Corp.'s connections to Prince Al-Waleed, and the prince's connections to the Carlyle Group and Osama bin Laden to make a tongue-in-cheek argument that Fox News may be a "terrorist command center."

"Stewart didn't need to take all those steps to make the connection," Cook writes.

Cook also reports that Prince Al-Waleed has in the past funded a number of Islamic organizations that have been maligned by Fox News commentators:

Al-Waleed donated $500,000 to the Council on American-Islamic Relations — which has been repeatedly denounced on Fox News's air by Geller and others as a terror group — in 2002. Indeed, Rauf's "numerous ties to CAIR" alone have been cited by the mosque's opponents as a justification for imputing terrorist sympathies to him, yet few people seem to be asking whether Murdoch's extensive multi-billion business collaboration with the man who funds both Rauf and CAIR merits investigation or concern.

Other beneficiaries of Al-Waleed's largess include the Islamic Development Bank, a project designed to "foster the economic development and social progress of [Muslims] in accordance with the principles of Shari'ah." The IDB funds the construction of mosques around the world, and has been implicated by frequent Fox News guest Stephen Schwartz in an attempt to spread radical Wahhabism (a fundamentalist branch of Islam) throughout the United States.

Cook notes that it was none other than News Corp.'s New York Post that reported on Prince Al-Waleed's donation to Muslim Leaders of Tomorrow. He reports that Fox News had no comment for his article, and emails to the prince's Kingdom Foundation were not returned.

Prince Al-Waleed owns an estimated $2.5-billion-worth of News Corp. Majority shareholder Rupert Murdoch recently took a stake in the prince's Middle East-based media conglomerate, Rotana Group. Murdoch and Prince Al-Waleed are reportedly working on launching an Arabic news network that will compete with existing pan-Arabic networks Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya.The second largest shareholder in News Corp. -- the parent company of Fox News -- has... more

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Bill O'Reailly will get you fired How Fox host used corporate power to destroy a critic

The Media are closer to cartels than service or information sources , the news... more

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Whoops! NY Post Mixes Up Black Media Moguls in Obama Swipe

The New York Post has had a somewhat contentious relationship with black New Yorkers... more

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Fox News, Right-Wing Media Deserve a Snowball in the Kisser

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Prop. 8 Federal Lawsuit Begins; Cue Right-Wing Media Hysteria

http://mediamatters.org/columns/201001110033 This week in a San Francisco Federal... more

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Does Rupert Murdoch have an Internet strategy?

Our take is that Murdoch’s strategy is not likely to be successful, although we... more

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News Corp Wants To “Lead” The Media Industry To Its Own Demise. Google stops laughing long enough of

Earlier this week, Rupert Murdoch told an Australian interviewer that he might start... more

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Rupert Murdoch could block Google searches entirely

Rupert Murdoch says he will remove stories from Google's search index as a way to... more

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News Corp/Fox News records $3.4 Billion loss

News Corp records £2bn lossRupert Murdoch's global media empire suffers worst year in recent memory amid advertising slump and internet losses
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Andrew Clark in New York
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 5 August 2009 21.49 BST
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Chairman and CEO of News Corporation Rupert Murdoch Photograph: Hector Mata/AFP

Rupert Murdoch's global media empire, News Corporation, slumped to a $3.4bn (£2bn) net loss for the 12 months to June as a combination of plunging advertising revenue, impairment charges and online losses contributed to the company's worst year in recent memory.

The group suffered hefty accounting charges related to a drop in the value of its assets. After stripping out these one-off items, its full-year operating profit dropped by 32% to $3.6bn, with growth in revenue at the group's cable television networks failing to make up for a slump in income from films, newspapers, books, magazines and online offerings.

Murdoch said: "The past year has been the most difficult in recent history, and our 2009 financial performance clearly reflects the weak economic environment that we confronted throughout the year."

He continued: "We streamlined all our businesses and continue to do so, at the same time adjusting to the revolutionary changes taking place throughout the media industry."

In the final quarter of the year, News Corp made a $203m loss, compared to a $1.1bn profit for the same period in 2008, hit by a $680m impairment charge at Fox Interactive Media – the division that includes the social networking website MySpace, which recently shed 400 staff as it struggles to compete with larger rival Facebook.

Murdoch's British newspapers, which include the Times, the Sun and the News of the World, suffered a 14% drop in year-end advertising revenue as the recession took its toll. Profits at News Corp's global newspapers unit, which includes international titles such as the Wall Street Journal and the Australian, fell from $786m to $466m.

The group's Twentieth Century Fox film studio recorded annual profits of $848m, a drop from last year's $1.24bn, as films such as X-Men Origins: Wolverine and the second instalment of the Night at the Museum series failed to match releases such as The Simpsons Movie and Live Free or Die Hard a year ago.

Earnings from cable network programming rose by 31% to $1.67bn but the group's television division, including its Fox stations in the US and Star networks in Asia, saw profits fall from $1.12bn to $174m.News Corp records £2bn lossRupert Murdoch's global media empire suffers... more