Dear Friend of Planet Waves:
Every once in a while, an edition of our subscriber magazine is especially timely and exciting, and we make it available to anyone who would like to read it. Today’s issue, The World in a Grain of Pholus, is one such occasion. It offers a view into the astrology of the Rupert Murdoch / News of the World scandal — and the wider implications for such a huge media implosion — you won’t see anywhere else. This is partly because Eric can handle a story of this complexity, and he happens to be a veteran of the tabloid press in England. But he’s also a specialist in the minor planets that factor so strongly in the current events.
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Yours,
Amanda Painter
Hate to sound so cold-blooded, but these sections feel like they were crafted with legal help. It didn’t feel right when I first read it, and even more now when re-read. It’s a deposition.
This is the third major resignation in 48 hours. News Corp’s counsel quit Weds, then today Brooks and now Hinton. Two players who were head of News International have gone down. So that whole division is tainted. God knows what Hinton had on him, what he knew, what’s going to come out — Murdoch cut him out to save Dow Jones from being dragged in, and they cut out Brooks to save News International…if they can. This is epic; I cannot think of another moment that even comes close in media history. More than that it’s a clarification…more later.
yeah — heard about hinton on npr while driving to see “waiting for godot” in the park.
somewhere i think there’s some sort of absurdist/existential joke…. i’ll let you know if i find it.
Les Hinton? You’re kidding. I’ve been offline for a few hours and…holy fuck.
With this news, the hacking scandal has arrived in New York.
Dow Jones CEO Les Hinton Stepping Down
Peter Kafka, WSJ
July 15, 2011 at 1:13 pm PT
Dow Jones CEO Les Hinton is leaving the company in the wake of the PhoneGate hacking scandal. Hinton is the second high-ranking News Corp. executive to step down today, and the first major figure from the company’s American operations.
Hinton has been under scrutiny in the past couple weeks because he oversaw News Corp.’s News International unit, the group that publishes its British newspapers, from 1995 through 2007. That’s the same time that News Corp.’s News of the World tabloid is alleged to have engaged in systemic voicemail hacking, among other offenses.
Hinton’s resignation follows current News International head Rebekah Brooks’ announcement, made this morning, that she was doing the same thing
News Corp. also owns this Web site.
Here’s News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch’s statement:
“Les and I have been on a remarkable journey together for more than 52 years. That this passage has come to an unexpected end, professionally, not personally, is a matter of much sadness to me. On this difficult day we should appreciate that his extraordinary work has provided a platform for the future success of Dow Jones. And his great contribution to News Corporation over more than five decades has enhanced innumerable lives, whether those of employees hired by him or of readers better informed because of him. News Corporation is not Rupert Murdoch. It is the collective creativity and effort of many thousands of people around the world, and few individuals have given more to this Company than Les Hinton.”
And here’s Hinton’s memo to his staff:
From: Les_Hinton
Sent: Friday, July 15, 2011 04:10 PM
To: Les_Hinton
Subject: farewell and thanks
Dear all,
Many of you will be aware by now that I resigned today from Dow Jones and News Corp. I attach below my resignation letter to Rupert Murdoch.
It is a deeply, deeply sad day for me.
I want you all to know the pride and pleasure I have taken working at Dow Jones for the past three-and-a-half years. I have never been with better, more dedicated people, or had more fun in a job.
News Corp under Rupert’s brilliant leadership has proved a fitting parent of Dow Jones, allowing us to invest and expand as other media companies slashed costs. This support enabled us together to strengthen the company during a brutal economic downturn, developing fine new products – not to mention one of the world’s great newspapers led by one of the world’s great editors, my dear friend and colleague Robert Thomson.
However difficult this moment is for me, I depart with the certain knowledge that we have built the momentum to take Dow Jones on to ever greater things.
Good luck to you all and thank you.
Les
Dear Rupert,
I have watched with sorrow from New York as the News of the World story has unfolded. I have seen hundreds of news reports of both actual and alleged misconduct during the time I was executive chairman of News International and responsible for the company. The pain caused to innocent people is unimaginable. That I was ignorant of what apparently happened is irrelevant and in the circumstances I feel it is proper for me to resign from News Corp, and apologize to those hurt by the actions of the News of the World.
When I left News International in December 2007, I believed that the rotten element at the News of the World had been eliminated; that important lessons had been learned; and that journalistic integrity was restored.
My testimonies before the Culture Media and Sport Select Committee were given honestly. When I appeared before the Committee in March 2007, I expressed the belief that Clive Goodman had acted alone, but made clear our investigation was continuing.
In September 2009, I told the Committee there had never been any evidence delivered to me that suggested the conduct had spread beyond one journalist. If others had evidence that wrongdoing went further, I was not told about it.
Finally, I want to express my gratitude to you for a wonderful working life. My admiration and respect for you are unbounded. You have built a magnificent business since I first joined 52 years ago and it has been an honor making my contribution.
With my warmest best wishes,
Les
IT IS IN AMERICA THAT MURDOCH FACES RUIN
By Anne Applebaum, The Telegraph
8:15PM BST 14 Jul 2011
Rupert Murdoch, the media mogul at the helm of News Corporation, does not want for enemies in the US – and they are poised to strike.
The New York Times has put several journalists on producing acres of newsprint detailing the impact of the story on British politics, on News Corp’s stock price, on London police.
We’ve been waiting a long time, but now the moment of reckoning is here: American journalists, long maligned by their British colleagues as boring and earnest, can finally take their revenge.
American newspapers have featured the News International meltdown on front pages since the story broke. American websites have posted every new development, as it breaks.
Gawker.com cheerfully writes that News International is “besieged by a strange and unfamiliar phenomenon called ‘bad publicity that can’t just be ignored’”.
Slate.com re-imagines Rupert Murdoch as Voldemort, speculating that he would turn the Daily Prophet into a tabloid promoting “Sunday sensation and sleaze”.
But nobody is having as much fun as the New York Times. In fact, given that this is essentially a story about British journalists breaking British law on behalf of a British newspaper that nobody in the US ever reads, the NYT has thrown extraordinary resources at it.
No doubt the NYT is motivated by its ever-earnest search for “all the news that’s fit to print”. But there are other things going on here, too.
Murdoch is more than just another proprietor: he’s a bitter enemy. He owns the Wall Street Journal, the NYT’s main upmarket rival. He owns the New York Post, its main downmarket rival.
More to the point, Murdoch owns Fox News, the enormously profitable television station which is the NYT’s main ideological rival.
For those Daily Telegraph readers who don’t follow these things, let me draw an analogy: Fox News is to American mainstream media what the Sun is to the British mainstream media. It’s louder, more unreliable, sometimes more entertaining and very much more Right-wing. Fox is the spiritual home of the Tea Party movement – it employs Sarah Palin – and is deeply unpopular among the people who read and write for the NYT.
Trouble for Mr Murdoch is good news for the American liberal establishment, in other words – and the liberal establishment is beginning to scent blood.
Congressional investigations loom: Senator Jay Rockefeller, a Democrat who chairs the Senate commerce committee, has declared that if Murdoch tabloids hacked the phones of 9/11 victims or any other Americans, “the consequences will be severe”.
Others in Congress point out that News Corp’s headquarters is in the US: if the company’s British employees paid policemen for information, that may violate American anti-bribery laws, even if the payments were made in London.
Stories that British tabloids tried to bribe New York policemen are already in circulation, and if those are true, the consequences could be even worse.
From Murdoch’s point of view, this is a terrible moment to attract political attention. He is not on the cusp of a major acquisition in America, as he was, until Wednesday, in Britain. But the scandal is awkwardly timed in other ways.
The newspaper market here, as everywhere, is in flux. The Wall Street Journal now struggles to achieve the profits which it once made so effortlessly.
The Journal’s main asset is its reputation for stodgy neutrality, at least in its news-gathering. If this scandal taints the Journal in any way, business readers are not short of other sources of information.
More importantly, America is about to enter the presidential election season, a period in our political calendar when anything and everything becomes fodder for partisan politics.
Should it turn out, for example, that the Sun or the News of the World really did hack the phones of the relatives of 9/11 victims, then all bets are off.
There could be advertiser boycotts of Fox News. Republican politicians could be forced to declare that they will no longer appear on the station.
It’s not a likely scenario – Fox is too important to the Republican Party – but it can’t be excluded. American politicians are as sensitive to public outrage as their British counterparts.
In the end, though, it is not Murdoch’s American properties that are most threatened by this scandal, it is his control of his publicly owned company.
News Corp’s stock is in freefall: a massive American shareholder revolt may not be far off. One group of shareholders has sued the company in a Delaware court, arguing that the company board “provides no effective review or oversight”.
The same group was already trying to sue over the purchase of a television company owned by Elisabeth Murdoch, and has been seeking to block her appointment to the board of directors.
The group’s lawyers have declared they want to “put an end to Rupert Murdoch’s use of company assets to serve personal and family agendas, without regard for public shareholders”.
Words such as “nepotism” and “cronyism” are in the air. As are “corruption” and “mismanagement”. They will be given extra weight if this story takes on any deeper political significance.
Shareholders and their lawyers are as likely to be members of the liberal establishment as anyone else: in America, the world’s most litigious country, they are unlikely to keep their views to themselves.
As a result, News Corp’s American properties will survive this scandal – but the Murdoch family’s control of News Corp may not.