Torturous News Corp defence. The increasingly ramshackle News Corporation is doing its best to push back against phone-hacking — so it was inevitable it would turn to torture advocate, and privacy law expert, Mirko Bagaric, to try and make some parallels between News of the World hacking the phone of a murdered teenager and WikiLeaks’ release of documents showing a decade of lies about two wars, corruption in the Arab world and spying on the UN.
WikiLeaks’ revelations had cause “shame and embarrassment” to people. No! Not shame and embarrassment! Torture, maybe, but not shame and embarrassment! Getting into his stride, Bagaric notes:
“It was only months ago that The Guardian, The New York Times and the Fairfax press in Australia ran numerous front-page exclusives featuring hacked communications supplied to them by WikiLeaks…”
Indeed professor, the evil liberal press — except that, at that time, the outfit scrambling desperately to get a slice of the cablegate material was…News Corporation, which ran an op-ed by Julian Assange in The Australian, a long pro-WikiLeaks piece in The Times, before turning on him once more when no cables were forthcoming. Not exactly the clearest defence there. Back to the waterboard, er, drawing board. — Guy Rundle
Front page of the day. The News of the World phone-hacking scandal just keeps on truckin’, as The Guardian‘s headline today illustrates:
Overington leaves Media Diary
“The Australian’s Media Diary editor Caroline Overington is to switch roles, becoming a writer on the relaunched Weekend Australian magazine.” — mUmBRELLA
Murdoch misled MPs, say ex-NoW editor and lawyer
“James Murdoch has been accused of misleading the parliamentary select committee this week in relation to phone hacking, igniting yet another fire for the embattled News International boss to extinguish.” — The Guardian
Missteps in managing News Corp’s hacking crisis
“No company ever wants a crisis to get to this point: the chief executive and his lieutenant grilled by skeptical legislators, with errors condemned, reputations impugned and the drama broadcast around the world.” — Wall Street Journal
Subscription TV sales boss: speak with one voice on ratings
“The CEO of subscription TV’s biggest sales house has called for the whole television industry to agree on a single way of discussing audience metrics.” — mUmBRELLA
Read all about it: Why we have an appetite for gossip
“There are very few universal truths, but two relating to human behaviour are that farting is considered funny in all societies and that gossip occurs but is ostensibly always disapproved of. The evolutionary reason for the former is not clear, but the evolutionary reason for the latter becomes clear when one considers what is gossiped about.” — New Scientist
E-book sales up 160% this year
“According to Association of American Publishers (AAP) sales figures for the first half of 2011, eBook sales were up 160 percent compared to the same period last year.” — Mediabistro
But Guy – Mirko is “apolitical”? That’s how he describes himself? Is it his fault his opinions, the written ones, lean one way?
Terry McCrann describes himself as a ‘business writer’, so, you know …
I see that in his article in The Australian, to which you refer (and to which you have a link), Mirko Bagaric describes Rupert Murdoch as “probably the most influential Australian in history”, in praise of the man (note; he says “probably”, not “arguably” or “possibly”). You may or may not agree with this, but, other extremely influential people come to my mind, including Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler. In fact, Time magazine was going to nominate Hitler as “Man/Woman of the Year”, at one stage, because the assignation was originally based on the candidate’s level of influence, whether that be good or bad. They had to rescind this assessment due to the all the objection it raised. I don’t know whether this was because there was a general lack of understanding of the award, perhaps it was more to with what the Nazi propaganda machine might make of it, however; I think it’s now only awarded to those who have positive influence on the world. I recall it was awarded to the computer.
Now, I am in no way suggesting that Rupert Murdock is so evil, but I think it highlights the fact that influence, of itself, is not necessarily a good trait. I have, however, thought for a long time that Rupert was quite a dangerous influence because his empire has contributed towards some extremely poor political decisions, not the least of which was the second Gulf war. I think he’s up there with Dick Cheney, who to me, appears to be a dangerously adamant character; so adamant, that I wonder if he ever questions himself or considers the possibility he might ever be wrong. The difference is that at least he was elected, and re-elected, to his position of influence, although again, Fox was probably a contributing factor to Cheney’s political success.
What really concerns me about Murdoch is that he’s NOT an elected official and yet his news service has so much sway with the public. I understand that Fox viewers in the US consistently come up as very poorly informed compared to regular viewers of other news sources. Regardless of how good individuals are at deciding which way to cast their vote, in a democracy, it’s crucial for the public to be well informed.
I’ll step down from my soap box now.
Cheers.