The phone-hacking scandal and Murdoch's media empire

As media mogul Rupert Murdoch intensifies his drive to dominate the global media, an old scandal involving phone-tapping has resurfaced to haunt him.

Tom Fawthrop

IT was an election result in the UK that had the champagne corks popping among the executives of Rupert Murdoch's News International, the media empire that prides itself as a 'king-maker' in British elections.  

The final result that brought the Conservative Party back into office in a coalition led by Prime Minister  David Cameron, was a real cause for celebration in the offices of  the News of the World, The Sun and The Times, all owned by News International.

This was not just because Murdoch's stable of UK newspapers and his satellite TV broadcaster Sky  had all rooted for a Conservative Party victory. Far more important was to toast the success of  Andy Coulson, a former editor at the News of the World, who had seamlessly moved on to become the PM's spin doctor as head of communications at the heart of  the new conservative government.

Murdoch, who already owns most of the Australian media, the New York Post, the Wall Street Journal and the hate-mongering Fox cable TV network in the US, was no doubt salivating over his former news editor now acquiring a pivotal position at the centre of British politics.

All this is happening at a critical time when Murdoch's News Corporation, of which News International is the main UK subsidiary, is manoeuvring to shrink and if possible sink the BBC, in favour of his satellite Sky TV network.

So everything appeared to be super-rosy in the Murdoch media garden, with the new government and their man so close to Number 10 Downing Street (the prime minister's official residence).

However,  the smooth sailing of the new PM and the apparently unstoppable media magnate has just run into some unexpectedly turbulent weather, as the News of the World 'phone-hacking' scandal  suddenly re-surfaced.

In 2007, News of the World reporter Clive Goodman and a private investigator working with him, Glenn Mulcaire, both went to jail for hacking the phones of royal family aides. Also, in 2009, the News of the World paid about $1.6 million to settle cases by two public figures who claimed its reporters had hacked their voice mail.

But  the British police showed  little enthusiasm for  pursuing their investigation beyond the one case, in spite of extensive evidence that several hundred had been victims of the phone-hackers, including the Labour Party's former deputy prime minister John Prescott and many other big names.

The dirty little tricks of the News of the World

The News of the World, the biggest-selling newspaper in the UK, has built its reputation on selling sex and scandal. And its methods of exposure are unsavoury, often libellous, frequently illegal, and sometimes even fabricated.

From exposing the adultery of Manchester United star Wayne Rooney, to any kind of dirt they can dig up or manufacture against politicians especially those from the Labour Party, the Sunday newspaper's scurrilous methods have kept their sales soaring.

However, hacking into private phone calls of  politicians, or anybody else, is illegal.  Goodman, who had illegally obtained access to confidential data of aides to the royal family, was jailed in 2007. His editor Coulson resigned, while denying any personal responsibility.  He has always insisted the reporter was just 'one bad apple', and that he the editor had no knowledge of illegal phone-tapping practices on the paper.

Other ex-news reporters of the News of the World have come forward to say this was a systematic policy. Key members of the Labour government at the time were all victims of phone-tapping.

During August and September pressure has been increasing for the police to reopen their inquiry into the phone-tapping saga. A parliamentary investigation has restarted, accompanied by calls for PM Cameron to dismiss the man at the centre of the allegations - Andy Coulson.

Murdoch media and the New York Times

In September the unexplored evidence of wrongdoing at the News of the World was given renewed focus, and brought back into the public eye by a special investigation by the New York Times.

The Murdoch media has become a major force in US politics; Fox News, with its openly rightist slant, is now the leading cable news channel, with viewing figures outstripping its rivals CNN and MSNBC. The Wall Street Journal, a recent acquisition of News Corporation, is now a major rival of the New York Times.

At a time when many feared the cash-strapped NYT could fall into Murdoch's hands, the newspaper scored a hit with the major investigative feature on the UK scandal.

Why so little police investigation?

Tabloid newspapers, with their lurid shock-horror headlines feeding off crime and scandal, count on close links with crime detectives to get their stories.

Wealthy newspapers such as the News of the World have the resources that the police sometimes lack to pursue UK criminals operating abroad. A culture of cosy collaboration has long existed between Britain's most notorious Sunday newspaper and the Metropolitan police and Scotland Yard.

Several retired commissioners and senior officers have found space as columnists or regular writers in The Sun and the News of the World.

The New York Times spoke to detectives at Scotland Yard who believe that London police did not want to take their investigations any further, because they wanted to keep their good relations with News International.

'There was simply no enthusiasm among Scotland Yard to go beyond the cases involving Mulcaire and Goodman,' said John Whittingdale, the chairman of a parliamentary committee, in the New York Times report.

The committee had twice investigated the phone hacking. Whittingdale added, 'To start exposing widespread tawdry practices in that newsroom was a heavy stone that they didn't want to try to lift.'

The clearest confirmation of  this cosy culture between cops, crime reporters and the Murdoch media machine is the embarrassing fact that  the officer in charge of the inquiry into phone-tapping at the News of the World, assistant commissioner Andy Hayman, subsequently left the police force and now contributes a column for The Times, another newspaper in the News International stable.

The power of the press barons

This ongoing scandal is gnawing at the heart of UK democracy and goes far deeper than MPs fiddling their expense claims, which caused a major furore in Britain last year.

Concerns over Andy Coulson's role and the corrupting power of Murdoch's media raise disturbing questions about who really is in control: The voters? Or the media moguls and corporate monopolies?

The UK Press Council was founded in 1953 to preserve press freedom and deal with complaints, standards and problems of monopoly. (In 1991 it became the Press Complaints Commission.)

The Press Complaints Commission  has never seriously questioned the abuse of media power by the Murdoch press. The public has little or no protection from harassment by the tabloids and their underhand methods in securing confidential records. The only recourse is costly litigation in the courts.

In the debate over press freedom in the world, the focus of various Western-based watchdogs is directed at political dictatorships and the crude exercise of state censorship.

For the most part, media moguls and their exercise of a market-based news manipulation in favour of sensationalism, anti-immigrant campaigns, and right-wing political prejudice, are completely under the radar.

In many parts of the world, Murdoch's media have operated with impunity, even as Western media watchdogs were too busy screaming about China's clampdown on the Internet to notice the moves towards media dictatorship stealthily gathering pace on their own doorstep.

Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's synthesis of media ownership, information control and political power in Italy is only the most obvious case of a failed democracy.

These threats to democracy and press freedom should be treated, not as symptoms of a 'free-wheeling press', but rather as a malignant and cancerous growth based around an increasing monopoly control over the information market.

Unless UK, US and Australian society take a stand against the Murdoch empire, these countries will continue to suffer a media disease of creeping Berlusconi-isation.     

Tom Fawthrop is a member of the UK National Union of Journalists and a frequent contributor to the Guardian, BBC and the Al Jazeera TV website. 

*Third World Resurgence No. 240/241, August-September 2010, pp 64-65