Only a short diary, but watching the unfolding News of the World phone hacking scandal, I started to wonder if the owning a chunk of the UK press is cursed as opening Tutankhamen's tomb.
The UK press has been long dominated by groups of newspapers, always in cuthroat competition. These are often owned by what we call press moguls, who fight for dominance, until one day they overeach and flame out.
So, in a short history of Fleet Street ( aka Wapping since the 80's), we have the famous flame out of the Mirror Group with Robert Maxwell
1991: Publisher Robert Maxwell dies at sea
The body of the millionaire newspaper publisher, Robert Maxwell, has been found in the sea off the coast of Tenerife.
Mr Maxwell's body was discovered at approximately 1800 local time (1700 GMT) and flown to Gran Canaria for identification.
The publisher had been cruising in the Canary Isles aboard his luxury yacht, the Ghislaine.
Of course, it then turned out that his newspaper group was bankrupt, and he had raided the pension funds.
Maxwell's untimely death triggered a flood of instability with banks frantically calling in their massive loans. His two young sons Kevin and Ian struggled to hold the empire together, but were unable to prevent its collapse. It emerged that, without adequate prior authorisation, Maxwell had used hundreds of millions of pounds from his companies' pension funds to shore up the shares of the Mirror Group, to save his companies from bankruptcy
And then we have Mr Conrad Black of the Hollingsworth, owner of the Daily Telegraph
Black controlled Hollinger International, Inc. Through affiliates, the company published major newspapers including The Daily Telegraph (UK), Chicago Sun Times (U.S.), Jerusalem Post (Israel), National Post (Canada), and hundreds of community newspapers in North America.
He was convicted of fraud in a US court in 2007 and sentenced to six and a half years' imprisonment. On July 19, 2010 Black was granted bail. The U.S. 7th Circuit Court of Appeals overturned two of the three remaining mail fraud counts in October of that year.[2] On June 24, 2011 he was resentenced on one remaining count of mail fraud and one count of obstruction of justice to a prison term of 42 months and a fine of $125,000 (USD)
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And now we have the Grand poobah himself, owner of Fox News, Mr Rupert Murdoch, in the line of fire for illegal wiretapping in the UK, and potantial violations of the FCPA in the US.
So what is it going to be - an unexpected dip in the sea, or up the river?