Published CommPro.biz 2014.05.20

Hacking the Royals 

 

Shakespeare has left us with a picture of the Danes -especially members of the Royal family like Hamlet- as rather pouty young guys. In fact they are really nice people and Denmark is a very nice (if a bit chilly) small nation, most famous for design and Legos. Scandal is not a word you expect to connect to the Danes at all. However, last Tuesday (2014.05.14) they were hit with what they consider a “Major media scandal.”

It seems that back in 2008 the younger son of the queen was taking a second try at marriage. Joachim Holger Waldemar Christian, the Count of Monpezat, was married to Marie Cavallier a Parisian advertising executive. While their wedding was quite public their honeymoon plans were not. You can imagine their surprise when a reporter from a Danish celebrity magazine turned up on their flight home. The reporter got his interview (he says they answered his questions politely) and until last week the Prince and his bride had no idea how he found them. Therein lies the scandal, the magazine paid off a source who hacked the credit card used to book the flight. This revelation has triggered a firestorm of legal and regulatory activity in Demark.

Alas Denmark’s “Tuesday” in the media scandal spotlight was not to last, the very next day Clive Goodman, one of Rupert Murdoch’s editors told a court in London that he hacked the phones of Prince William, Kate Middleton and Price Harry over 200 times. That was in 2007 the year before Goodman was caught and jailed for this and similar “research” efforts. Perhaps the Danes picked up the Royal Hack idea from the Murdoch pond scum school of journalism.

While this is all great fun, we need to look at the serious side. There is more to our right to know than gossip and much more to journalism than the Murdoch minions’ petty view imagines. A British Parliamentary Committee found that “Rupert Murdoch is not a fit person to exercise the stewardship of a major international company”. Clive Goodman and others steeped in Murdoch’s duplicitous culture have felt the weight of the law. The question remains, why have they not felt it in America?

Rupert Murdoch is a United States citizen; he had to become an American before he could own radio and television stations in our country. It’s one thing for him to be deemed “not a fit person” in Great Britain, in America it’s the law. Bribing foreign officials is illegal. Murdoch’s operations in Great Britain routinely bribed law enforcement officers and other officials. Murdoch should be stripped of his American broadcast stations. He should be charged and tried for his illegal activities along with his henchmen who flaunt America’s laws. The Danes are taking care of their business, it’s time for America to take of ours.

Murdoch Again?

The Murdoch slime machine slithered into the news cycle again. Their people in China reportedly laid some hefty “gifts” (entertainment and travel) on sources over there. If true, that would seem to be a big no-no under US law. Wall Street Journal staffers in China were tagged with the bribery charges. They deny everything and say outsiders hired to investigate gave them a clean bill. They could have saved their money; hopefully our authorities will do the investigation and if it turns out that the Journal is clean, it will not cost Murdoch a penny. But if our investigation goes the other way, it will cost him big time. The FBI and the Justice Department are not commenting on these bribery charges.

However, this is not the only instance of the Murdoch empire being looked at for possible violations of our Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA). That’s the law that makes it illegal for American entities to bribe folks outside our borders as Murdoch has in Great Britain. His minions were nailed for unconscionable telephone hacking schemes and laying thousands of British pounds on police and other public servants for scoops. Murdoch is a US citizen and his organization is based in the United States; that would seem to put his London crew under FCPA.

That could be the least of Murdoch’s worries. The FCPA violations would go away after some healthy fines; just a cost of doing business for the ethically challenged like Rupert Murdoch. More serious is the finding of a committee of the British Parliament that Murdoch is "not a fit person" to run a major international entity like News Corp. Where that spills over into News Corp’s home in America is when Murdoch’s broadcast licenses come into play. He owns a couple dozen broadcast stations in America.  

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), a nonpartisan watchdog group, has been bugging the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to revoke his licenses as the Communications Act would seem to dictate. Should that happen Murdoch’s American broadcast properties would be reduced to some used office furniture, used electronics gear and real estate. The tens of millions these facilities are worth would be gone, poof, just like that. We’ll see what the FCC does. They have had this issue before them for a couple years; it is past time for them to act.

Meanwhile the DOJ is juggling the FCPA implications raised by Murdoch’s bribery activities in Great Britain. The Brits have arrested Murdoch minions by the dozen including Rupert’s darling, Rebecca Brooks, who formerly headed all his smarmy Fleet Street newspaper operations. The DOJ ought to be arresting Murdoch executives here in the United States, perhaps even Murdoch himself, certainly his son James, who headed News Corp at least in theory. Don’t hold your breath, however. In the end the FCC and the DOJ will probably chicken out and do nothing; a pity.

Collapse of an Empire

The ethical cesspool at the center of the media colossus Rupert Murdoch created over the years since he arrived on London’s Fleet Street, is beginning to suck him into its vortex. Last week (05.01.12) a Parliamentary Committee released a 121 page report detailing some of the smarmy activities and behaviors the Murdoch culture has spawned. As widely trumpeted in the media, it branded Murdoch “not a fit person” to run an enterprise like his.

Apologists for the Murdoch clan are quick to point out that the “not-a-fit-person” phrase was opposed by four of the nine members of the Committee, all members of Prime Minister David Cameron’s Conservative Party. While the Conservative members of the Committee dissented on the fit-person wordage, they agreed with most of the report. Cameron is connected to Murdoch’s organization in a number of aspects. Foremost is his former Communications Director, Andy Coulson, who moved directly to 21 Downing Street from one of Murdoch’s London newspapers. Coulson has been arrested but not charged. Prime Minister Cameron described his own ties to the Murdoch organization as “too cozy.”

Phone hacking, police bribery, and who knows what else were unearthed by the inquiry. “Who knows,” because many areas in the report are left untouched. The Committee did not venture into the domain of Scotland Yard and the prosecutors who are still building the criminal cases. As a result they did not explore the role of more than forty Murdoch editors, private investigators, and reporters, along with police officers who have been arrested so far. That group includes Murdoch darling Rebecca Brooks and ten others whose connections to the hacking scandal were reportedly referred to prosecutors last month by Scotland Yard.

All of this and the disclosures unfolding before a separate British judicial inquiry, raises the question, why are there no similar queries into the Murdoch Oligarchy in the United States? Rupert Murdoch and his clan are all US citizens; News Corp is a US corporation. While his trashy newspapers in the UK are often seen as the face of his holdings, they’re but a tiny segment. In America he has a couple dozen television licenses, so where is the FCC? Combined, these stations, Fox News, The New York Post, The Wall Street Journal and his entertainment entities dwarf any similar organization.

Where are the Congressional investigations? Given the detailed bribery charges in the UK, where are the FCPA (Foreign Corrupt Practices Act) concerns? If the SEC is hot on Walmart’s tail (properly) for spreading the wealth among Mexican officials, how about Murdoch’s minions greatly enriching Scotland Yard types? If a parliamentary investigation in the UK finds Murdoch “not a fit person” to run a handful of newspapers, what does that say about the television properties our FCC has awarded him? Are the bureaucrats and the political types in Washington afraid of his attack dogs at The New York Post and Fox News?