Murdoch's newspaper under investigation in Britain

@Who let this happen: at least in America, Reagan. He, or at the very least his reign and people involved in it, killed off the restrictions on how many news groups a single individual/corporation can own.

Freedom of speech is fine, but that doesn't mean you get the freedom to be the loudest voice in every room.

^ Yes it does. But it also carries the counterpart. You have the right to not listen to the loudest.

Why nobody understands that is really beyond me.

It's hard to ignore the loudest when it drowns out everything in the room. Why nobody understands that is beyond me.

edited 6th Jul '11 5:35:10 PM by Alichains

You can only try to ignore the loudest for so long.

If someone was living in the floor above you in an apartment, and they kept playing loud music constantly, would you just ignore it?

This too. Sensible folks (on whatever political spectrum) are always drowned out by the loudest.

edited 6th Jul '11 5:34:34 PM by Thorn14

And even if I ignore Murdoch, the fact is that many other people don't and allow their political opinions to be swayed by him, which affects me because my government is decided by those other people.

Nobody really "let" him. He set up a very successful corporation in Australia, expanded his operations to America and then started to buy newspapers in the UK at some point in the 1980s. It was hardly illegal, I assure you.

That said, if there was a tipping point which let him solidfy his power base, I think it's mostly down to the Death On the Rock documentary and Margaret Thatcher, though her primary objective wasn't handing power over to Murdoch. She wanted to break ITV's monopoly on commercial television, and Rupert Murdoch quite neatly assuming its position of prominence with Sky was a really by-product; he'd been angling to do it and Thatcher just gave him an opportunity.

I think I summarised this in the British Politics thread.

@posts 26-30: The Vocal Minority needs to shut the fuck up, doesn't it?

^ But you can't force that by rule of law. If you do, you end up with no rights or freedoms.

Its more of The Vocal Stupid Minority should shut the fuck up.

And I really wish people would shut up with their slippery slope arguments.

I always viewed Murdoch as a bit of an asshole just by looking at his pictures.

However, this scandal pretty much guarantees that, even if he's not the spawn of the devil that some people think he is, that most of the things he owns are run by assholes doing assholish things for profit.

(Yes I realize this can apply to 80% of all corporations.)

At least My Space died.

I find myself quietly hoping that the evidence of them hacking phones of dead soldiers would be sufficient to get Murdoch's American media assets investigated also. This sounds like something that a lot of Americans would consider to be the Moral Event Horizon.

^

Yeah, pretty much anything that hurts Murdoch is appealing to me.

The Sun's response to this was hilarious.

I can't find the article online, but trust me, it was a beaut. Didn't even pretend to be reporting on what was actually going on.

I mean, not that anyone else was, either. You could taste the glee coming off the newspaper stands in waves. Seeing The Guardian and the Daily Mail agree so absolutely on something was...well, it was quite something.

edited 7th Jul '11 2:57:14 AM by mmysqueeant

I really want to know what the Headline was in the News of the World "Perfectly ordinary day!" "Nothing Much Happening!"

^

Slow news day everyone! Go outside and enjoy the shit weather!

On a more serious note I think that the sun should also be investigated. Just on general principle

News of the World is a Sunday only paper - The Sun is really their weekday equivalent.

See, although I know I ought to boycott Not W... I'm kind of interested in seeing how they do handle it. I'll have to just check their website.

The amount of people they've been hacking would be quite comedic if it weren't for the victims.

Edit: The Sun is already facing an unrelated contempt of court case (as is their main rival, the Daily Mirror, who are probably quite relieved this is happening now to distract from that - British tabloids really do do some bad stuff, don't they?), so I would hardly be surprised if they were also involved.

edited 7th Jul '11 6:03:08 AM by ArlaGrey

Sadly I think Murdoch's name is gonna be pristine (In America at least) because this takes place in Britain and in the end of the day, most American's dont give too much thought about what goes outside of their borders.

Now if like Fox News was guilty of this...hoo boy. The shitstorm would be amazing.

Fox News are owned by News Corp. Does guilt-by-association still work?

Not when its so far away from the average American's life.

Britain? Yeah they probably hate his guts now.

Pity there's not much we can do about it. Unless we can connect him to something criminal. Then we can get the bastard extradited.

...Murdoch behind bars. Now THATS an appealing thought.

Playing guilt by association with entities that huge seems self-defeating. When they get as big as Murdoch, everyone is connected to everything. It's Glenn Beck territory.

That said, I'm hoping these charges are genuine purely for the sake of weakening Murdoch's media stranglehold.

News of the World to be shut down. Sunday's issue will be the last ever.

Quick quick quick, go to its wikipedia page

But here's the thing though: can it still be sued? Can News International be sued?

They had to settle for up to 1m for phone hacking targets and there are hundreds of those. All the advertisers pulled out so the business was going to crumble anyway but how much will closing them now be damage control.

edited 7th Jul '11 9:04:27 AM by SomeSortOfTroper