Today word comes across the pike that the initial whistle blower in the case, Sean Hoare, has met his unfortunate demise in Herefordshire. Hoare fingered his boss at News of the World, Coulson, to the feds. Death not suspicious, 'tall, according to the police, of course. Might be a good time to bring in old George Smiley. Or has he retired again?
I decided to see how the Wall Street Journal, that eternal beacon of conservative America and News Corp. lion was taking the news. This is today's opinion, with my annotations in red. It is titled News and its critics, A tabloid's excesses don't tarnish thousands of other journalists.
When News Corp. and CEO Rupert Murdoch secured enough shares to buy Dow Jones & Co. four years ago, these columns welcomed our new owner and promised to stand by the same standards and principles we always had. That promise is worth repeating now that politicians and our competitors are using the phone-hacking years ago at a British corner of News Corp. to assail the Journal, and perhaps injure press freedom in general. British Corner? As in, how can you tarnish a whole empire for the sins of one little paper? Of course no one at Fox News or its proxies on this side of the lake would ever behave that way, the company having such a strong adherence to ethics and propriety. Politicians and competitors. This is all a big political stunt by our enemies and competitors. And an attack on us is an attack on press freedom everywhere. The old victim card. Please...
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At least three British investigations into phone-hacking and payments to police and others by the now-shuttered News of the World tabloid are underway, with 10 arrests so far. News Corp. and its executives have apologized profusely and are cooperating with authorities. Phone-hacking is illegal, and it is up to British authorities to enforce their laws. If Scotland Yard failed to do so adequately when the hacking was first uncovered several years ago, then that is more troubling than the hacking itself. We said that we were sorry. We shut the damn rag down. It was up to the cops to catch us. Can we help it if they were so tractable after we paid them off, wined and dined them and eventually hired them as consultants. You actually owe us a favor for exposing the clumsiness and moral bankruptcy of the Conservative government.
It is also worth noting the irony of so much moral outrage devoted to a single media company, when British tabloids have been known for decades for buying scoops and digging up dirt on the famous. Fleet Street in general has long had a well-earned global reputation for the blind-quote, single-sourced story that may or may not be true. The understandable outrage in this case stems from the hacking of a noncelebrity, the murder victim Milly Dowler. It wasn't like the victim was anybody, after all. And everybody else does it.
The British politicians now bemoaning media influence over politics are also the same statesmen who have long coveted media support. The idea that the BBC and the Guardian newspaper aren't attempting to influence public affairs, and don't skew their coverage to do so, can't stand a day's scrutiny. The overnight turn toward righteous independence recalls an eternal truth: Never trust a politician. Once again, blame our competitors. If you think we are the bastards, you ought to get a load of their act. This happens to be the way that the game is played.
Which brings us to Friday's resignation of our publisher and CEO, Les Hinton, who ran News Corp.'s British newspaper unit during the time of the alleged hacking. In his resignation letter, Mr. Hinton said he knew nothing about wide-scale hacking and had testified truthfully to Parliament in 2007 and 2009. We have no reason to doubt him, especially based on our own experience working for him. Alleged? Eight people have gone to jail. People have confessed. Alleged?
In nearly four years at the Journal, Mr. Hinton managed the paper's return to profitability amid a terrible business climate. He did so not solely by cost-cutting but by investing in journalists when other publications were laying off hundreds. On ethical questions, his judgment was as sound as that of any editor we've had. He made us money.
In the specific case of Singapore, he allowed the company to defend one of our journalists against a defamation claim through the appellate stage, despite the historically faint prospect of success. This is more than can be said for other British and American publications. In doing so, Mr. Hinton forced the Singapore judiciary to address significant changes in the law protecting honest journalism elsewhere in the former British commonwealth that the judges could have otherwise ignored. Sainthood must surely be awaiting right around the corner. And News Corp had to find a way to spend all that money from your rich Saudi Prince and investor.
Our readers can decide if we are a better publication than we were four years ago, but there is no denying that News Corp. has invested in the product. The news hole is larger. Our foreign coverage in particular is more robust, our weekend edition more substantial, and our expansion into digital delivery ahead of the pack. The measure that really matters is the market's, and on that score Mr. Hinton was at the helm when we again became America's largest daily. Not like those last skinflints who were paying our bills.
We also trust that readers can see through the commercial and ideological motives of our competitor-critics. The Schadenfreude is so thick you can't cut it with a chainsaw. Especially redolent are lectures about journalistic standards from publications that give Julian Assange and WikiLeaks their moral imprimatur. They want their readers to believe, based on no evidence, that the tabloid excesses of one publication somehow tarnish thousands of other News Corp. journalists across the world. Anyone who doesn't buy our line of shit must surely be a left wing anarchist.
The prize for righteous hindsight goes to the online publication ProPublica for recording the well-fed regrets of the Bancroft family that sold Dow Jones to News Corp. at a 67% market premium in 2007. The Bancrofts were admirable owners in many ways, but at the end of their ownership their appetite for dividends meant that little cash remained to invest in journalism. We shudder to think what the Journal would look like today without the sale to News Corp.You missed a period here at the end. Just because Corp. is abbreviated doesn't mean it is the end of a sentence. Hire a decent fucking proofreader with all of your great Fox resources. By the way noncelebrity is not a word. See paragraph three. ProPublica, wasn't it headed by one of your former top brass? Those damn Bancrofts who wanted to bankrupt this mean spirited little rag.
In braying for politicians to take down Mr. Murdoch and News Corp., our media colleagues might also stop to ask about possible precedents. The political mob has been quick to call for a criminal probe into whether News Corp. executives violated the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act with payments to British security or government officials in return for information used in news stories. Attorney General Eric Holder quickly obliged last week, without so much as a fare-thee-well to the First Amendment. Our first amendment rights trump your laws about U.S. corporations bribing foreign companies.
The foreign-bribery law has historically been enforced against companies attempting to obtain or retain government business. But U.S. officials have been attempting to extend their enforcement to include any payments that have nothing to do with foreign government procurement. This includes a case against a company that paid Haitian customs officials to let its goods pass through its notoriously inefficient docks, and the drug company Schering-Plough for contributions to a charitable foundation in Poland. The act is simple. Rebekah Brooks says they bribed policemen. End of story.
Applying this standard to British tabloids could turn payments made as part of traditional news-gathering into criminal acts. The Wall Street Journal doesn't pay sources for information, but the practice is common elsewhere in the press, including in the U.S. Once again missing a period at the end. Again, everybody else does it, the child's defense.
The last time the liberal press demanded a media prosecutor, it was to probe the late conservative columnist Robert Novak in pursuit of White House aide Scooter Libby. But the effort soon engulfed a reporter for the New York Times, which had led the posse to hang Novak and his sources. Do our media brethren really want to invite Congress and prosecutors to regulate how journalists gather the news? It will be you liberals' ass next, you can count on it. We are doing god's work and anyone who questions it, is obviously part of the evil empire.
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Phone-hacking is deplorable, and we assume the guilty will be prosecuted. More fundamentally, the News of the World's offense—fatal, as it turned out—was to violate the trust of its readers by not coming about its news honestly. We realize how precious that reader trust is, and our obligation is to re-earn it every day. XXOO
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| The late Sean Hoare |
4 comments:
great article.
the sean hoare looks as if he had just finished his shift in a welsh coal mine.
was not the foto a tad bit close to the tricks mr. murdoch uses in the publishing of his enemies?
I kiped the photo and then decided that it would be only ethical to use it if I heavily filtered it in HDR to give it my own artistic imprimatur. Much appreciated.
Nothing's gonna happen to the murdochs, the pie man delivering a bit of sentiment from the common people was the only punishment they'll ever receive.
I love how after this broke in the states +/- a week ago the guy who sold the WSJ to murdoch claimed ignorance of the old mans ways. yeah sure man
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