I was floored by a comment made on "Ring of Fire" today that linked Fox News to the News of the World scandal. As you will see below, the corporate culture of Murdoch, if you didn't know already, spanned both sides of the Atlantic (and the Pacific, I'd bet).
Also, apparently there's a shareholder suit against News Corp. Here's some tidbits that I haven't seen before:
First, a comment made by one of the hosts on "Ring of Fire" pointed out that Roger Ailes pressured Judith Regan not to report bad information about Bernie Kerik to the Feds. Really I thought?
Yep.
Fox News boss Roger Ailes has been unmasked as the executive who reportedly tried to keep publisher Judith Regan from dishing dirt to the feds about her ex-lover Bernard Kerik.
The News Corp. bigwig had previously never been identified as the executive who, as Regan claimed in a $100 million suit against News Corp. in 2007, asked her to stay mum with investigators vetting the former NYPD top cop for the Secretary of Homeland Security job.
But the New York Times reported yesterday that court papers from another suit involving Regan reveal that she recorded a 2004 conversation in which Ailes discussed how she should respond to questions about the seedy affair.
Read the rest of that - evidently Fox got a letter out of Regan denying this, but if this comes up again, Murdoch is toast.
But this behavior, as the host on Ring of Fire pointed out, is characteristic of News Corp's culture. And as for the culture at News of the World,
This is another reason it was hard to believe senior editors were not aware of phone hacking and other expensive illegal services provided by outsiders, the ex-reporters told Reuters. Mulcaire, the private investigator later jailed for phone hacking, was paid more than 100,000 pounds a year by the News of the World.
"No newspaper editor would not know what a 102,000 pound budget was used for. They knew about every 50 quid," said the long-term freelancer.
Eavesdropping on voicemail or obtaining call logs was initially a money-saving measure, according to the former employees. Rather than committing a reporter to stake out a venue for as long as it took to catch out a couple having an affair, for example, voicemails could first be scrutinized to establish the time and place of a rendez-vous, saving the reporter time and the paper money.
As its uses became apparent, it was employed more and more. The general news reporter said he was first shown how to listen in to people's cellphone voicemail by a colleague in the 1990s.
"It became the course of first resort rather than last," the long-term freelancer told Reuters.
It is simply inconceivable to me, that the ethics and standards at one place would be markedly different from that of another, and the Kerik scandal provides further evidence that there's crime throughout the News Corp criminal enterprise.
It is also inconceivable to me, as - I think it was Papantonio on Ring of Fire suggested, that there will be shareholder lawsuits, that is more than that beyond the current one...
Yet News Corp is not run like many normal companies. Instead it has a dual share structure whereby its stock is split into two classes: 'A' shares that carry with them voting powers and 'B' shares that do not. This structure, with Murdoch and his family owning the biggest stakes in the 'A' shares, allows Murdoch to run the firm tightly without actually owning the majority of it. To increasingly unnerved shareholders – who have seen the value of their investments lose hundreds of millions of dollars over the week – that no longer looks like a good idea. "This is a new climate. The largest shareholders of this company are not happy any more at how it is being run," said Michael Wolff, a media expert who wrote a biography of Murdoch...
Now a lawsuit has been filed against senior News Corp management by upset shareholders. It was placed on behalf of a group of investors, led by Amalgamated Bank, who were furious at Murdoch's purchase of Elisabeth's business for $675m. That suit alleged nepotism on behalf of News Corp. "Murdoch has treated News Corp like a family candy jar," the lawyers said. It has now been updated to include outrage at the fallout from the phone-hacking scandal and an argument that News Corp's handling of the crisis has been catastrophic for investors. "[It shows] a culture run amok within News Corp, and a board that provides no effective review or oversight," the suit now reads. Experts expect more such cases to be filed as shareholders circle the floundering corporation.
"This is now fertile ground for shareholder lawsuits," said Jeffrey Silva, a communications industry expert at Medley Global Advisers.
Yummy!
I think that Rupert Murdoch ought to pay his debt to humanity and confess his crimes now, and then be double bunked with Bernie Madoff.
update
It's labor unions who are lead plaintiffs in the class action
Last week, the attorneys behind the lawsuit dramatically increased its scope, alleging that the hacking scandal would never have got out of control if the board had been able to stand up to the Murdochs.
The lead plaintiffs in the suit – being brought in Delaware, and intended to become a class action on behalf of all News Corp shareholders – are a trio of activist investors with a long history of campaigning for reforms at companies they say are being poorly run. As new developments in the hacking scandal unfolded, one of them, the Central Laborers' Pension Fund in Illinois, said that News Corp was not living up to its responsibilities to outside shareholders.
The fund's involvement was the suggestion of the campaigning law firm Bernstein Litowitz. Class action lawyers with specialised corporate governance practices look for corporate targets, and then recruit lead plaintiffs to front the lawsuit.
The Central Laborers' Pension Fund represents 500,000 building workers from 12 unions. Dan Koeppel, its executive director, said: "We review the facts of an individual case, and we act where a board is not doing what it is supposed to be doing, where they are not representing shareholders but representing one or two of the company's primary people and acting only in their best interests."