This latest Murdochgate development has already been well diaried by Christian Dem in NC: http://www.dailykos.com/...
and RockoStrongo: http://www.dailykos.com/...
...but maybe it doesn't really count until the same story is found on the front page of today's New York Times, above the mother-loving crease!:
See just under the Beirut Bank blah blah article,
Murdoch Son is Challenged Over Hacking
An excerpt from Ravi Somaiya's article:
LONDON — Rupert Murdoch’s son James received and responded to e-mail messages in 2008 that referred to “a nightmare scenario” of legal repercussions from widespread phone hacking at the tabloid The News of the World, a chain of e-mail messages and replies released Tuesday by a British parliamentary panel shows. It is the first documentation that Mr. Murdoch had been notified of a wider hacking problem long before he has admitted.
In statements released Tuesday, James Murdoch, who runs the News Corporation’s operations in Europe and Asia, admitted he had received and replied to the message on his BlackBerry, but he said he “did not read the full e-mail chain.” He said he stood by his repeated public denials that he knew of widespread hacking at the tabloid at the time he approved a large legal settlement with a victim of the practice in 2008.
...
The e-mails, from June 7, 2008, discuss that lawsuit, brought by a British soccer union executive, Gordon Taylor, whose phone had been hacked by The News of the World. One lawyer said the case was a “nightmare scenario” because it might uncover other voice-mail interceptions and names other journalists implicated. Another message noted that Mr. Taylor wanted to demonstrate that hacking was “rife throughout the organization.” As he forwarded the chain to Mr. Murdoch, Mr. Myler, the editor, warned that the situation was “as bad as we feared” and requested a meeting to discuss the matter further.
http://www.nytimes.com/...
And here is an excerpt of a devastating analysis of this latest bombshell from David Leigh, writing for The Guardian less than an hour ago:
Now, finally, a set of emails has surfaced that appear to suggest James was, in fact, thoroughly in the loop during the Gordon Taylor cover-up. He was copied in to emails recording Taylor's allegation that criminality was "rife" at the NoW, describing the hacked transcripts (referred to in the emails slightly differently as the "Ross Hindley email"), and warning of a "nightmare scenario" if others sued. James's response this time was distinctly limp. He wrote to the committee claiming that, although he admitted receiving the correspondence, he had never properly read it. The idea that he would authorise payments from his company of three-quarters of a million pounds without bothering to read the files is one many will find startling.
Quite apart from the moral and legal failures, James' poor decision-making will plainly end up now costing News Corporation's shareholders much more – many tens of millions. The company's immediate financial liability remains literally incalculable, for the lawsuits and the lawyers' fees continue to mount. The longer-term reputational damage to his company is gigantic and, worse still, looks like being unbearably prolonged, as potential prosecutions follow judicial inquiries follow celebrity litigation.
On the evidence now published, James appears to have gone along with an attempt at a cover-up and then, when the cover-up failed, sought to wriggle out of involvement and blame his subordinates. The original cover-up was not a smart idea. The subsequent attempt at a cover-up of the cover-up will appear to many to have been even dumber.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/...
James is TOAST!!!!! Cheers.
p.s. Here's the long-awaited video trailer for the book fellow Kosack Brit is writing and I am illustrating:
Please support the book here:
http://unbound.co.uk/...