With the News of the World newspaper officially dead, folks are beginning to wonder: Is the Rupert Murdoch Empire crumbling? Is it set to crumble?
How much did the News Corp chairman know about wiretapping? Did he authorize it?
Folks are also wondering if the UK scandal will make its way into the imaginations of other Americans besides the media.
PHOTOS: Rupert Murdoch’s Son Could Face Charges In The US & UK
Murdoch and his minions, former editor Rebekah Brooks, Andy Coulson and his son James, face allegations of illegal wiretapping and lawsuits from celebrities and the relatives and friends of murder and kidnapping victims, allegations Murdoch decried years ago as competition from the New York Times.
Well, the Times were right in their reporting and the octogenarian Aussie is looking bad, real bad.
Since the scandal hit, the UK government has shown opposition to Murdoch’s bid to own the UK’s BSkyB Network. The low ball sale of MySpace for hundreds of millions of dollars less than what it’s worth followed, along with multiple lawsuits against Fox News and the New York Post.
There were charges of nepotism and that odd tweet from Fox News last week that said that President Obama had been killed. That tweet stood for 10 hours unchallenged by Fox, who swatted away the craziness by calling the tweet a hack.
PHOTOS: President Obama Is Not Dead, Fox News Hacked
Fox is Murdoch’s Cerebus in the form of a pitbull of American conservatism and contributes greatly to the addition of the scars on the mogul’s 35-year-old media resume.
The News of the World scandal may have been the straw that broke the camel’s back, an indication that some people all over the world (Murdoch’s News Corp. has papers and TV networks in the UK, the U.S. and Australia, to list three continents) are fed up with how information is retrieved and controlled by one person, information that’s both a mixture of politics and entertainment.
The portrait which emerges is one of a person that looks, eerily, like the media mogul/villain Eliot Carver in the 1997 James Bond film Tomorrow Never Dies.
The story that caused the New York Post and Fox News owner to blink has to do with privacy, decency, respect and control.
But did you know there are dozens of other dust particles turning the billionaire’s eyes red?
Find out some of them after the break!
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Racism & Sexism:
Former NY Post editor Sandra Guzman filed a lawsuit against Murdoch and Newscorp, accusing them, among other things, of racial and sexual harassment and enabling a hostile work environment. Guzman was the paper’s Associate Editor and was opposed to its editors publishing a cartoon depicting President Obama as a chimp. Allegedly, she was fired in retaliation. Read about her allegations here.
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Racism & Unfair Work Environment:
Austin Fenner filed suit in 2009 against the NY Post and Newscorp, accusing Murdoch and co. of racism and of being subjected to unfair employment practices. Fenner was fired the same day Guzman filed her lawsuit. They share the same attorney. Read more about Fenner’s lawsuit here.
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Eavesdropping/Wire Tapping:
Actress Sienna Miller sued and won damages from Murdoch’s News of the World after it was revealed that the paper violated her privacy by wiretapping her conversations. Her lawsuit was one of the first to bring the paper to its knees. Read her story here.
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Lying to the Feds:
Fox News chairman Roger Ailes may have broken Federal laws when he advised Judith Regan to lie about her relationship with former NYC top cop Bernie Kerik, according to legal documents filed by attorneys for a former News Corporation employee. Ailes’s goal in asking Regan to lie about the affair was meant to help protect Giuliani’s presidential ambitions, the New York Times noted in its coverage of the allegations. Read about them here.
SOURCE: RawStory
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Collusion:
Australian billionaire Kerry Stokes, above, alleges News Corp, Publishing & Broadcasting, Telstra Corp. and 19 others colluded to win Australian football rights for Foxtel Management Pty, Australia’s biggest pay-TV network, forcing the closure of Stokes Seven’s C7 sports channel in 2002. Stokes is seeking as much as $1.1 billion in damages, as well as demanding the football broadcasting rights be restored.
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Coupons:
News Corp. said it agreed to pay $500 million to settle a lawsuit, days before the case was to go to trial. The legal dispute started four years ago, when marketing firm Valassis Communications Inc. alleged that News Corp.’s News America Marketing, which sells coupon inserts in Sunday newspapers and in grocery-store displays, unfairly used its power with customers to gain advantages over competitors.
SOURCE: The Wall Street Journal
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Giving Away People’s Data:
MySpace unit was accused in a lawsuit of giving data to aggregators that are used to associate members by name with their Internet browsing history without their consent. MySpace shares the data with aggregators despite telling members they can restrict access to their information, according to the complaint filed in federal court in Brooklyn, New York. The suit, filed by New York law firms Milberg LLP and Reese Richman LLP, seeks class-action, or group, status and unspecified damages.
SOURCE: Bloomberg
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Nepotism:
Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation is being sued by shareholders for “paying for nepotism” in its $675m deal to buy daughter Elisabeth Murdoch’s production business Shine.
Shareholders the Amalgamated Bank of New York and the Central Laborers Pension Fund filed a lawsuit on Wednesday in a Delaware court alleging that the deal was a case of “nepotism” and that the board of News Corp failed to question or challenge Rupert Murdoch.
The deal, which following regulatory approval is expected to close on 31 March, will see 42-year-old Elisabeth take a seat on the News Corp board.
SOURCE: The Guardian
