As heads roll at News Corp: And then there were . . . well, two less scumbags, but plenty left waiting in the wings

The week that ended Rebekah Brooks's News International career

From the Telegraph -- view the video on the website.

by Ken

This morning the news was that Rebekah Brooks, the chief exec of News Corp's U.K. tentacle News International, frequently described as a "protégée" of Rupert Murdoch, had fallen on her sword. (See the Financial Times's "Public anger forces Brooks to step down.") By afternoon it was former News International chairman Les Hinson, whom Rupert had installed to preside over the crown jewel in his American "news" operation, Dow Jones and the Wall Street Journal. (See the Guardian's "Les Hinton: the rise and fall of Rupert Murdoch's most trusted lieutenant.")

I can't say I expected that the two of them would fall so quickly, but then, who expected that the master of News Corp would act so precipitously to try to tamp down the phone-hacking scandal at the company's mass-circulation London tabloid News of the World by shutting the thing down? Still Rebekah and Les had to be in the investigative crosshairs. As I pointed out Tuesday ("Re. the News Corp scandal(s): The thing about corruption is that it's so, um, corruptational"):

The question rightly raised, it seems to me, concerns an entire culture of corruption. After all, the editor of NOTW from 2000 to 2003, when the first illegal hackings took place, was Rebekah Brooks, who went on to edit the Sun from 2003 to 2009 and is now chief executive of News International! And the man whom Rupert M installed as CEO of Dow Jones and publisher of the Wall Street Journal after he took control of them in December 2007, Les Hinton, came to these august journalistic positions from 12 years as executive chairman of . . . oh my, News International!

Now there are calls for investigation of News Corp's U.S. "news" operations, for any evidence of phone-hacking (of, for example, 9/11 survivors), and maybe even the kind of corrupt collusion with police that has been uncovered in the U.K.

Unfortunately no attention is likely to be paid to the real problem with News Corp: its unabashed function as a purveyor of propaganda in support of its cutthroat campaign of political manipulation and collusion. As I also pointed out Tuesday, News Corp's high command's "best hope at this point is that so many people in authority are being incriminated -- not just News Corp execs who've been promoted to lofty positions, including in the U.S., but the Metropolitan Police (i.e., Scotland Yard), British pols like now-PM David Cameron, parliamentary "overseers" -- that there may be enough nabobs with enough power to keep some of the mess safely swept under the rug." You have to believe that the PM is cheering very hard for something, anything, that will get all these increasingly embarrassing disclosures off the front pages.

The careers of two masters of media manipulation are a small enough price to pay on the chance that it may help the story run its course, before it extends, for example, to the intimacy between Mr. Murdoch and his minions and the U.S. pols at whose disposal they have put their crack propaganda machine. (And remember, heavily though our Rupert may favor Republicans, he works all sides of every aisle. Progressives who are sighing now for having supported Barack Obama over Hillary Clinton for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination might want to remember that Rupert had made peace with the Clintons, and if Hillary were in the White House now, Rupert would have had a buddy there.)

And Fox Noise and all the Murdoch "news"-papers continue spewing their unbroken strings of lies -- the lies they know Americans like to hear. With the result that Congress is increasingly populated by a combination of mental defectives and scumbag tools of the financial elites.

So pestilential vermin like Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity and the others can sniff about liberal conspiracies. Meanwhile the slathering of lies continues unabated. Case in point: the gradual unraveling of the News Corp-owned New York Post's invention of a career as a prostitute -- and at that a prostitute installed at the Sofitel by her union -- for former IMF chief Dominique Strauss Kahn's accuser. It turns out that the paper had at most one source, and that whether the Posties were fed all those lies or made them up themselves or some combination, they knew before they printed the story that it was all lies.

Check out Erik Wemple's washingtonpost.com report, "New York Post prostitution story gets shakier," and an online follow-up by New Yorker senior editor Amy Davidson, "The Tabloid and the Housekeeper." Note, though, that the follow-ups are blog reports, which hardly anyone will see compared with the screaming Post front page.


UPDATE: Don't know why I didn't think to include this

THE BOROWITZ REPORT
Disgusted, Satan Returns Murdoch’s Soul
Media Titan Loses Closest Ally

LONDON (The Borowitz Report) – In a blow that many insiders saw as the last straw for embattled media titan Rupert Murdoch, Satan today returned Mr. Murdoch’s soul to him and demanded his money back.

“Rupert Murdoch has done my bidding for decades, but that relationship is now terminated,” read the terse statement from the Prince of Darkness, who close associates said has been “disgusted” by Murdoch’s recent activities.

Purchased by Satan in Melbourne, Australia in 1951, Mr. Murdoch’s soul is estimated to have a current value of nine dollars (US).

Around the media world, observers were stunned by this latest setback for Mr. Murdoch, who in Satan is losing one of his closest and most powerful allies.

But according to Ian Langramstone, who at his post as the University of Nottingham has studied Mr. Murdoch’s relationship with Satan for years, the slap in the face from the Lord of Misrule should not come as a surprise.

“Satan never wants to be the last one to desert a sinking ship,” said Mr. Langromstone. “He always takes his lead from British politicians.”

In what many saw a tacit admission of the depth of his current problems, Mr. Murdoch today cancelled plans to purchase the remainder of the British government that he does not already own.

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