Why the Tories are opposing the Leveson report

After many months of delving into the murky world of the UK press (phone hacking, corruption, bribes, invasion of privacy, criminality, misrepresentations, lack of accountability, political interference, hate campaigns and other abuses) Brian Henry Leveson finally published his report on press standards.

The two headline proposals from Leveson's mammoth 1,987 page report should have been these:

1. The creation of an independent press regulator, free from interference from media owners and politicians alike.

2. The creation of a legal duty on the government to protect the freedom of the press.

However, if you hadn't bothered to read the report and just relied upon the right wing press and political shills like David Cameron and William Hague to [mis]interpret Leveson's proposals for you, you would be left with the impression that Leveson is proposing unprecedented government interference in the media and an outright attack on freedom of the press, a position that relies on maintaining the fictional narrative that the Leveson proposals are precisely the opposite of what they actually are.

It is quite easy to see why the tabloid press would be opposed to the introduction of an independent press regulator to replace the cosy and ineffective media controlled Press Complaints Commission. The phone hacking scandal and the Metropolitan Police bribery scandal are just two of the myriad examples of how the PCC voluntary self-regulation regime has utterly failed to maintain anything approaching decent press standards, and that is why the tabloid press oppose change. They want to keep their voluntary, media dominated talking shop, without the means or the will to inflict punishment on severe transgressions. They don't want an independent regulatory regime with the means and the obligation to punish severe press transgressions. By opposing Leveson they are simply expressing their own self-interest, nobody would expect anything else from the Murdoch press and the Daily Mail.

The Tory position, of briefing against Leveson before the report was even published, and then attacking, all guns blazing once the report came out is a little harder to fathom. I mean the opinion polls show that, of those that care about such things, the majority of voters would like to see independent statutory regulation of the press, rather than the continuation of the farcical PCC & PressBoF voluntary regulation regime, via a simple rebranding process.

Taking the side of the powerful press barons that oversaw the hacking of a dead teenager's mobile phone and the bribery of police officers and medical staff, rather than taking the side of the victims doesn't look like a particularly intelligent strategic play. However, even if the Tory attempt to crash the Leveson proposals fails, David Cameron must be banking on this demonstration of loyalty to the corporate press in the hope that the favour will be repaid in the run-up to the 2015 General Election, where his desperately unpopular party will need as much help from the corporate press as possible.

Another factor to consider in the Tory opposition to the Leveson proposals is that implementation would actually diminish Tory control over the press. Remember Leveson's proposal that the new independent press regulator should be "free of interference from the government", well that would end the situation where a Tory peer gets to choose someone from within the Tory party to run the press regulator, as is the case now! The man in charge of the PCC is the unelected Tory peer David Hunt, who was selected as head of the PCC by the unelected Tory peer Guy Black in his role of Chairman of the Press Standards Board of Finance, a man who also happens to be the Executive Director of the Telegraph Group of newspapers. The third key role in the voluntary shambles of a regulatory regime is Paul Dacre, who is editor of the Daily Mail. It is inconceivable that any of these three would be able to keep their positions within the regulatory authorities if the Leveson recommendations are adopted.

It is hardly surprising that the Conservative party that has their members in two of the three most important regulatory roles under the current system oppose the creation of a new regulatory body that explicitly forbids political interference.

Hunt and Black attempted to torpedo the Leveson report by drawing up an alternative "reform" to preempt Leveson, in which the current self-regulatory regime is simply rebranded with new names, allowing the powerful media interests and Tory party peers to keep their roles at the heart of the press regulatory regime. They have also devised a number of other reforms which, upon closer inspection turn out to be nothing more than outright attacks on press freedom, including mandatory Press Cards, to be distributed by the (corporate media and Tory party controlled) regulatory regime, without which, journalists would be forbidden from interviewing politicians, civil servants, the police, health workers and the like.

Another of Hunt and Black's proposed alternative reforms is a crackdown on Internet journalism; on bloggers like me. It is quite extraordinary that these opportunists are trying to use a vast corruption scandal in the mainstream corporate press, to crack down on the independent press. Let me be clear, I have never hacked a telephone, intercepted private messages, bribed the police, formed cosy inappropriate relationships with politicians, deliberately misrepresented people's statements, committed perjury or falsified evidence. However, because the corporate media have done these things, the Tory peers and corporate media representatives that run the press regulatory system are planning to use these crimes as an excuse to crack down on me!

Here is a damning critique of the Hunt/Black proposals from the Media Standards Trust.

So it is absolutely clear that the corporate media organisations and the Conservative party are opposed to Leveson because it would strip them of their ability to interfere in the press regulatory regime. What makes this stance so shocking is that the Tories and the corporate media are dressing up their defence of their own vested interests as a defence of "the freedom of the press". Take Tory Foreign Secretary William Hague's statement that the introduction of the Leveson reforms would be an attack on the freedom of the press which would "undermine Britain" on the World stage. It seems that the Tory definition of "freedom of the press" is wildly divergent from what most people would recognise. The average person might accept the definition of a "free press" to be a press free from government control, or control by an oligopoly of "press barons", whilst the definition David Cameron and William Hague seem to be defending is freedom of the Tory party and powerful corporate interests to dominate regulation of the press.

In fact, the Tory stance, as so often is the case these days, relies on a near complete reversal of reality. They falsely characterise the Leveson proposals as attacks on the freedom of the press, whilst the actual proposal looks more like an attack on Tory subversion of the press. If the Leveson reforms are passed, then the placement of two Tory peers in the two most high-profile regulatory positions would be absolutely inconceivable. Aside from defending vested corporate interests in the hope of some much needed pre-election propaganda, the Tories are also playing a desperate defence of their position of influence over the press regulation regime.

See also

What is... A Justification Narrative? 
  

Tory policy: All narrative, no substance
 
Rupert Murdoch and the evil empire 

The Daily Mail: Fascism, Racism & Homophobia

 

Why I tend to swear

I try to avoid using filthy language because I know that swear words tend to drive moderate people and older people away from the debate, thus undermining the message I am trying to get across. I rarely swear on the actual blog, but I do occasionally lapse into profanity on the Another Angry Voice Facebook page.

There are two main reasons that I tend to resort to bad language. The first one is quite obvious and needs little explanation. Sometimes I just get so angry and frustrated at the sheer scale of fraud and corruption amongst the political and corporate elite I just can't help it. After all, the occasional well placed swearword is actually very effective.

The second reason takes a little more explanation. I tend to swear more than the average intelligent, educated bloke with a huge vocabulary because I spent a decade working on building sites, industrial units and other extreme "bad language environments" all over Yorkshire, County Durham and Lancashire.

I picked up habitual swearing because to millions of Brits these days, swearing is simply a form of verbal punctuation, and if you don't swear in "bad language environments" you soon get labeled as a fucking "Lord Chuffington" type with a superior attitude and get yourself ostracised as a snob. I mean I was already skirting quite close to snobby "Lord Chuffington" territory by virtue of being university educated (in a subject most of my work colleagues wouldn't even understand the definition of) and having very liberal political views.

Given the general tide of racism, homophobia and misogyny in these work environments it was absolutely necessary to cloak my liberal and educated ideas in a cloud of filthy language. I mean, when you're trying to argue with a bloke who's only reading material is copies of the S*n or the Daily Heil from one week to the next, you've got to try to present your counter argument (based on nuanced political ideas) in an accessible style.

Here's a typical example of the kind of "conversation" I had many, many times over many years:

Work Colleague: "Don't you just hate fucking Paki scum? they're all fucking terrorists innit?"

Me: "Actually mate I reckon that most 'Pakis' are just ordinary fucking blokes, just like us, who don't give a shit about fighting in any stupid ideological war because they're too busy working their bollocks off to put food on the fucking table for their family."

I've also worked in environments (such as the charitable sector and in local government) where such racist  language is considered completely unacceptable, however what choice did I have? Can you imagine how long I would have lasted if I'd retorted with what I was actually thinking ("That is an absurd racist generalisation and you are an unthinking reactionary idiot that soaks up revolting views like that because you have no critical thinking skills and you read nothing but the Daily Mail") then gone to complain to the site supervisor?

Anyone that is familiar with my written work will know that I'm not the kind of bloke to bite my tongue and let abject reactionary nonsense pass, especially if it is racist, homophobic or misogynistic gibberish. The only choice I had was to grow a thick skin and argue my case. This often left me in the situation where, despite my aggressive and swearword laden responses, I was derided for being a "pussy" and a "Paki-lover". However I actually consider the accusation of being a "Paki-lover" to be a badge of honour when it has been hurled at me by a bloke that takes his political views directly from the pages of the Daily Mail, supports the divisive activities of the EDL and votes for the fascist BNP.

The crazy thing about these cultures of racism and intolerance in the UK is that the majority of people that express this kind of view are actually functionally intelligent and reasonably decent people, they love their wife and kids, they wouldn't hesitate to offer a helping hand, they are hard workers that are good at their jobs, and they like a laugh and a beer just as much as I do. It is just that the insidious influence of the right-wing press has pushed them into the fascist mentalities of "blaming the victim" and "seeking scapegoats".

The workers of London famously united to resist Oswald Mosley's
fascist blackshirts at the "battle of Cable Street" in 1936.

It is really sad that the fascist mentality has been allowed to take hold in Britain, especially given the proud British history of standing up to fascism. Some of Britain's proudest moments can be seen in our resistance to fascism; from the working classes of London blocking the march of Oswald Mosley's British Union of Fascists at "the battle of Cable Street" in 1936 to Britain's brave and lonely resistance against Nazi Europe, supported only by the Commonwealth countries and a small band of European exiles (Free Poles, Free French, Free Czechs, the Norwegian resistance...) between June 1940 and June 1941 (when Axis forces invaded Russia). The Americans continued to stand by (and cash in by selling us the arms and supplies we needed) and watch Britain's desperate struggle against fascism until December 1941 when they were dragged into the conflict by the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour.

If picking up the habit of casual swearing is the price of making an accessible argument against the rise of modern day fascism, then to me, this is a price more than worth paying.

Someone once told me that as a teenager, when he started to swear in an argument with his father, his father retorted "If you have to revert to swearing you have lost the argument, you have nothing intelligent to say." Whilst I agree with the general sentiment, I prefer to think about it like this:

For millions of people in modern Britain, swearing is not particularly offensive, it is just a form of verbal punctuation, however if you resort to personal abuse and insults (ad hominum attacks) against the person you're arguing with, that's when you lose the argument by default.

See also
 

The Daily Mail: Fascism, racism and homophobia 
  
What is... a justification narrative?

George Galloway, "Islamophilia" and his far-right critics

The contrasting fates of Alan Turing and Lord Sempill
  
Tory immigration policy: Lies and spin 
  
           Tory immigration rules: Discrimination against ordinary British families
 
Rupert Murdoch and his evil empire
 

Even more hypocrisy from David Cameron

The UK Prime Minister David Cameron has already exposed himself as a massive hypocrite by publicly criticising the tax dodging activities of the so-called comedian Jimmy Carr, whilst leading a party that has accepted millions in donations from other tax-dodgers. These tax dodging Tory donors that Cameron refuses to criticise include George Robinson, who donated £250,000 to the Tories and has been using exactly the same K2 avoidance scheme that Cameron described as "very dodgy" and "morally wrong" in the Jimmy Carr case. Other top Tory donors and supporters that avoided criticism from Cameron include the singer Gary Barlow who is under investigation for his involvement in a massive tax dodging scheme and the notorious "Belize based" tax dodger Michael Ashcroft who is the single biggest donor to the Tory party since David Cameron became the party leader.

Not content with making one stunningly hypocritical statement, Cameron then made another only days later when he decided to criticise the leadership at Barclays bank in the wake of their £290 million fine for rigging (Libor & Euribor) interest rates that effect millions of people and £trillions worth of transactions. Cameron attempted to take the moral high ground, claiming that "people have to take responsibility for the actions and show how they're going to be accountable for these actions," and that "it is very important that goes all the way to the top of the organisation". Noble sentiments indeed until you consider some of the numerous Tory corruption scandals under David Cameron's leadership.

Take the News International phone hacking scandal, has the man that maintained stunningly inappropriate relationships with high profile members of the Murdoch press empire and hired the liar Andy Coulson as his right hand man, taken "responsibility" for his actions? Of course he hasn't.

Take the Liam Fox, Adam Werrity, Atlantic Bridge corruption scandal. Did Cameron take responsibility for allowing such blatantly corrupt activity to go on under his watch? Of course he didn't. He actually attempted to shield Liam Fox to such an extent that he even breached the ministerial code in order to avoid a politically damaging independent investigation into the corruption scandal.

Take the Westminster expenses scandal, didn't the fact that dozens of Tory MPs were brazenly stealing from the taxpayer demand that accountability should have gone "all the way to the top of the organisation"? Did Cameron "take responsibility" for the corruption and theft that his MPs were engaged in? Of course he didn't. In fact under his watch many of the worst offenders got off scott free. Several Tory second-home flippers such as Michael Gove and William Hague are sitting in David Cameron's cabinet. This shows that under David Cameron's leadership, accountability not only doesn't apply to "the top of the organisation" it doesn't even apply to those that committed the offences.

Take the absurd case of Jeremy Hunt, the man who was parachuted in by Cameron to deal with the Rupert Murdoch's bid to take complete control of Sky because his predecessor Vince Cable was criticised as "too biased". Hunt was quite clearly Murdoch's pick as their inside guy, crucially sending a memo to David Cameron in support of the BSkyB bid weeks before Cameron had even appointed him as the minister responsible for determining the outcome. How on Earth Hunt did not consider this blatant bias a conflict of interests and recuse himself is a mystery, especially since his predecessor had been removed because of accusations of bias. Perhaps in Cameron's and Hunt's minds Cable was simply guilty of "the wrong kind of bias". Given all of the evidence of his cosy relationship with the Murdoch press, has Hunt been made to resign and somebody at "the top" of the Tory party taken responsibility for having made such a transparently biased appointment? Of course they haven't.

Take the blatant mismanagement of the economy by George Osborne and his numerous shambolic U-turns after his "back of an envelope" millionaires budget, has Cameron forced his Bullingdon Club buddy to take responsibility and resign for having driven the UK economy back into recession with his "cut now, think later" austerity fetishism? Of course he hasn't. 

It is quite astonishing to such brazenly hypocritical pontification from a man that has wriggled and connived to avoid responsibility for the corruption and incompetence of his party, a man that has done everything in his power to protect his MPs and supporters from the consequences of their corruption and incompetence too. By contrasting his statements on the immorality of tax-dodging and the need for responsibility to be taken at the top of an organisation, with his actions when it comes to these matters, we can see that Cameron clearly believes that there is one set of flexible and morally ambiguous rules for Tories and their supporters and a completely different set of clearly defined and morally rigorous rules for everyone else. A clear double-standard that is the classic sign of self-interested hypocrisy.

See also

David Cameron vs Jimmy Carr in the tax hypocrisy stakes

Barclays defiling their Quaker roots

Austerity & the double-dip

More riches for the rich, recession for the rest

Why are the Guardian stifling debate over phone hacking?

In the wake of the phone hacking scandal I came across an interesting article by Jeff Jarvis on the Guardian website about regulation of the media in which he asked four questions. I wrote a response for the comments section however when I clicked publish comment I received a notification that comments had been turned off. Here is the comment that I was prevented from posting.

To answer your questions

1. First, what activities are to be regulated? The rules should state that the owners, executives and chief editor of media organisations will be held accountable if staff are proven to have broken the law. There should be some legal clarification of what is a justifiable "invasion of privacy", legal protection for proper investigative journalism (to prevent lawsuits against people that question medical evidence for example). There should also be strict compliance rules and hefty punishments for organisations that are proven to have wilfully obstructed any kind of investigation, (misleading the regulator, withholding information from police investigations or lying to Parliamentary select committees or the courts).

2. What should a regulator do in the case of violations. Fine the offender into submission? Close the publication? Does that not give your government the same weapon used by dictators elsewhere against journalists? The first two questions are reasonable, the third is just a pathetic piece of weasel wordage trying to taint the whole concept of regulation as some kind of fascism. Yes the independent regulator should have the power to inflict enormous fines on media organisations that repeatedly break the law, they should also have the power to shut down organisations that have been found to be corrupt (making payments to the police, widespread illegal activities, extensive cover-ups, misleading statements to Parliament, perjury etc.). None of this equates to fascism or dictatorship, in almost any other industry widespread illegal activity would/should be punished by the regulator.

3. Third, who is the proper regulator? You offer a false dichotomy as an answer, pathetic self regulation (PCC) or Government control (A concept you have already tainted with comparisons to dictatorship). How about a proper independent regulator taking employees from a cross section of society, rather than just a bunch of industry insiders (with vested interests) as so many other regulators do.

4. Finally, who is to be regulated? In other words, who is the press? I agree that this is the key question.  Obviously the papers, TV and radio broadcasters are media that should be regulated. The difficulty comes when you try to establish which websites should be regulated. Clearly stuff like the Guardian website and the BBC would already fall under regulation aimed at newspapers/broadcasters, however what about personal blogs or blogs hosted on other services such as blogger? What can be done to protect peoples rights to express their own personal opinion? What can be done to stop the routine dissemination of lies across the blogosphere?

 Upon refreshing the page I found this comment from one of the Guardian editorial staff:

"Sorry, we were meant to launch this with comments off, and will be turning them off in a minute. Please use our Open Thread to post all comments relating to hacking. Thanks"

It seems absolutely absurd that an article that asks specific questions of its readers should have it's comments function deliberately and retrospectively disabled. The Guardian began their policy of diverting comments from all vaguely hacking related articles to these gigantic lumbering open threads over the weekend of the final News of the World, however they didn't bother to open a new thread on Monday morning meaning that by then they were insisting that any comments relating to the specific issue of media regulation should be thrown to the bottom of Sunday's pit of over 2,800 other general comments about the phone hacking scandal, mainly consisting of various shades of outrage. Jeff Jarvis happens to be one of the few columnists that has the courtesy to read through the below-the-line comments and respond to them, how the hell is he going to find them if they are subsumed into thread with 58 pages of responses? The one guy that got his response in on the media regulation thread before comments were shut down stated it is "very difficult to have a nuanced debate pertaining to the specific issues raised in disparate articles in one uber-thread" (a view that was later moderated out of existence by Guardian staff).

He is of course right, this editorial decision is an obstruction to nuanced debate. The Guardian have taken the decision to redirect comments from all articles that even mention phone hacking to their comments black hole, including comments on regular opinion pieces from contributors such as Charlie Brooker and Polly Toynbee that always have open comments and always generate large numbers of responses. It has also had a serious impact on the Comment is Free section of the website, creating the absurd situation where it is impossible to comment on several of the Comment is Free articles.

The Guardian deserve a lot of credit for their persistence in pursuing the News of the World phone hacking scandal but they are seriously letting themselves down with this open thread nonsense. It seems like a deliberate attempt to stifle debate by lumping all of the separate issues together into one enormous thread. Restricting comment on any article that even mentions phone-hacking in a week absolutely dominated by the phone hacking scandal would be the equivalent of redirecting all comments that make mention of sports to an open thread that rapidly becomes gigantic impenetrable jumble of sports related themes leaving regular readers of Guardian Football confused and annoyed as well as obstructing people who like to read and comment on the work of a particular sports writer.

There is no harm in having an open thread on the phone-hacking scandal, however redirecting comments from myriad other articles into it seems like a ludicrous decision. It is hard to even guess at the motivation for such a strategy however I'm certain that it is absolutely nothing to do with their statement "You asked for open threads. Here they are", nobody asked for comments to be shut down on Charlie Brooker's weekly rant and redirected to an open thread. Here are some of the possibilities:

•  Costs: There have been several dozen articles related to phone hacking, and before the open thread redirect policy was put in place they were all attracting large numbers of comments, perhaps the decision to obstruct discussion was an attempt to reduce bandwidth costs. 
• By request: After it was announced by News International that News of the World was to be closed I noticed a few right-wing "trolls" complaining along the lines of "not another artilce on CiF about phone-hacking". It is hard to imagine that the Guardian create editorial policy that would annoy so many of their regular readers based on the complaints of a few right wing whingers.
• Legal issues: The Guardian could be trying to limit debate on the subject out for fear of legal issues such as lawsuits from News International, however several other leading UK based media organisations (BBC, Telegraph & Daily Mail) maintained multiple open threads on the subject over the same period. I am sceptical of this reason because I find it extremely difficult to imagine a legal basis for holding an organisation legally responsible for readers' comments below the line. Especially given the Guadian's exhaustive list of community standards and often harsh moderation regime.
• The Guardian genuinely wants to stifle debate about phone hacking. It seems absurd that the organisation that did so much to break the scandal would want to shut down debate about the issue but it is what they are doing with the redirecting of comments policy, so the possibility that it is deliberate shouldn't be excluded. 

I have no intention of posting my response to Jeff Jarvis on an open thread that the Guardian can't even be bothered to renew on a daily basis because there is absolutely no chance that he, or anyone else that read his article would ever sift through nearly 3,000 unrelated comments to find it. One thing that struck me is that the Jarvis article has the word "openness" in it's URL, however the Guardian's decision to prevent me from making a specific response to his questions is pretty much the opposite of openness.

Rupert Murdoch: The evil empire, British politics, phone hacking and a murdered teenager

, With a net worth of $6.2 billion,
Murdoch is the117th-richest person in the world

On Sunday 10 July 2011 News of The World went on sale for the last time, bringing it's 168 year history to an end. It was 42 years since Rupert Murdoch took control of the paper at a shareholder's meeting in January 1969 beating Robert Maxwell in a bitter year long battle over the acquisition.

Murdoch had begun his life as a newspaper baron at an early age, inheriting his father's Australian News Limited newspaper group in 1953 at the age of 22. After fifteen years of buying up newspapers across Australia and New Zealand he returned to the UK (where he had studied at Oxford University before his father's death) and within a year had beaten Maxwell to get his hands on News of the World.

In the aftermath Maxwell famously described Murdoch as a "cynical maneuverer" that "plays by the laws of the jungle", damning criticism from a man that went on to pilfer the pension schemes of his employees in order to maintain his life of luxury, allegedly worked as a double agent for the Israeli and British secret services and ended his life "falling off" his luxury yacht off the coast of the Canary Islands in 1991 shortly after the pensions scandal broke.

Later in 1969 Murdoch acquired his second British newspaper taking control of the mid-market daily broadsheet The Sun and immediately re-releasing it as the salacious sex filled tabloid it has remained until the present day. As the Sun and News of the World raced to the bottom of the British news market and Murdoch ruthlessly forced out anyone that got in the way of his agenda, it soon became clear that Maxwell's warnings about Murdoch had been right, causing many amongst the British establishment elite to regard him as an immoral impostor.

The British establishment turned their backs on Murdoch
after the NOTW published sordid details about
John Profumo's affair with Christine Keeler

Murdoch showed his ruthlessness by going back on his word that he would run News of the World alongside former owner Sir William Carr by forcing him out within three months of the takeover. He then outraged the British establishment by publishing the memoirs of the model Christine Keeler in the News of the World. She had played a large part in bringing down the Harold MacMillan government when her affair with minister John Profumo came to light in 1963. Following his resignation Profumo had been seen to have redeemed himself through years of charity work so Murdoch's decision to publish the sordid details were seen as muck-raking of the lowest kind, done entirely for his own personal gain.

After repeated rejections from the British establishment Murdoch left the UK in 1973 to continue his empire building in the United States. His first acquisition was the San Antonio Express in 1973 followed by a stream of other newspapers. He liked to claim that it was him that chose to reject the British establishment and often justified the simplistic and sensationalist style of his newspapers by dressing it up as anti-elitism.

In 1981 he returned to the UK to buy out the Times group, a move that shocked both sides of the political spectrum. He was facilitated in his acquisition by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher who allowed the deal to go ahead without referring it to the Monopolies Commission as it should have been. The two remained close allies from that point onwards, Murdoch's papers provided unrelenting support for Thatcher's divisive regime while Thatcher allowed him to sack 6,000 striking print workers in 1986 and passed the merger between Murdoch's loss making Sky TV and the only other major satellite broadcasting network BSB in 1990.

Murdoch and Thatcher had a number of shared ideologies, from hatred of trade unions to belief in the privatisation and the neoliberal economic model. They both also had a ruthless streak, would dispose of anyone that stood in their way and they both had management styles best described as "divide and conquer". Murdoch's relationship with Thatcher seems like one of the few genuine relationships he had with politicians rather than his usual modus operandi of exerting as much control over them as he could in order to increase his own wealth, power and influence.

Fox News, fair & balanced is a great joke,
almost as good as the FCC's 1995 conclusion that Murdoch's ownership of
the Fox Network is "in the best interests of the public"

In 1985 Murdoch became a naturalised American citizen allowing him to bypass the foreign ownership rules for US television stations. He bought Fox studios in 1985 and the Metromedia group, which would eventually become the Fox Broadcasting Company.

In 1995 Murdoch's Fox Network became the object of scrutiny from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), when it was alleged that News Ltd.'s Australian base made Murdoch's ownership of Fox illegal. However, the FCC ruled in Murdoch's favor, stating that his ownership of Fox was "in the best interests of the public" probably the most absurd committee decision since the Norwegian Nobel Committee decided to give war monger Henry Kissinger the Nobel Peace Prize.

In 1990 his long standing ally Margaret Thatcher was removed from power by a Conservative party rebellion in the wake of the Poll Tax riots and double digit leads for the Labour opposition in the majority of opinion polls. Murdoch's papers supported Thatchers' favoured successor to the hilt, and when the Conservatives defied the polls to win the 1992 General Election Murdoch's Sun newspaper ran with the headline "It's the Sun wot won it" a sentiment acknowledged by several Tory MPs at the time.

By the 1990s Murdoch's gutter press had become
much less candid about their controlling influence
over the British electorate.

By this point the influence of the Murdoch press was powerful enough to win him personal meetings with heads of state and political leaders across the English speaking world, a kingmaking tradition that continues to this day with both Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron and Labour opposition leader Ed Milliband having dined with Murdoch since the 2010 General Election.

In 1995 Murdoch unexpectedly turned his back on the Conservatives instructing his News International papers to support Tony Blair causing his long time ally and Conservative party go-between Woodrow Wyatt to state that "Rupert has behaved like a swine and a pig".

After Labour's election victory in 1997, opinion was divided. Many people claimed that Murdoch switched his support to Blair because he knew that "the grey man of politics" John Major couldn't possibly be re-elected and he couldn't be seen to back a loser. Others concluded that Blair must have driven the Labour party so far to the right that their policies had become acceptable to "uncle Rupert".

Whatever the motivation for his betrayal of the Conservatives, in Tony Blair's New Labour he had a party that were more than happy to continue with Thatcherite policies, from further privatisation of national infrastructure to appeasing the right-wing press with measures like the scapegoating and persecution of minorities such as refugees. According to Lance Price, an ex-spin doctor who worked as Alistair Campbell's deputy, Murdoch had regular secret meetings with Blair, was in regular telephone contact with him so much that he seemed like a 24th member of the cabinet.

Tony Blair openly ignored the protests of
millions of his countrymen but took several
secretive calls from Murdoch in the buildup to war.

Blair insisted no record was ever kept of his meetings or calls with Murdoch, including the three conversations in the ten days before the commencement of the Iraq invasion in 2003.

Murdoch was a keen advocate of the Iraq invasion and famously stated that "The greatest thing to come out of this for the world economy...would be $20 a barrel for oil. That's bigger than any tax cut in any country." It seems incredible but it seems that Rupert Murdoch held more sway over Tony Blair's decision making than the million plus of Blair's fellow countrymen that held the largest public demonstration in British history in opposition to the invasion on 15 February 2003 and the views of millions more across the globe.

In 2000 Murdoch appointed Rebekah Wade (now Rebekah Brooks) as editor of the News of The World, making her the youngest editor of a British newspaper and setting in motion the events that led eventually to the demise of the title eleven years later. Wade enthusiastically embraced Murdoch's favoured gutter press style of journalism famously orchestrating public witch hunts against paedophiles by publishing their personal details. Unfortunately several of the details published in the paper were inaccurate causing great suffering to innocent people. The campaign was criticised as "grossly irresponsible" by Tony Butler, then Chief Constable of Gloucestershire.

In January 2003 Murdoch moved his protege across Wapping to take over as editor of the Sun. She continued to court controversy with headlines such as "Bonkers Bruno Locked Up" labelling the former boxer a "nut" after he was admitted to a mental health institution suffering from depression and bipolar disorder. This character attack provoked widespread criticism from across the political spectrum and a swift retraction. Later that year she made a bizarre admission to a House of Commons Select Committee, stating that her publication had paid police officers for information.

In 2006 the News of the World phone hacking scandal first broke with Royal editor Clive Goodman and the private investigator Greg Mulcaire eventually sentenced to a few months in prison for hacking into the mobile phone messages of one of Prince William's aides to delve for information. The revelations led to the resignation of Rebekah Brooks' successor as editor Andy Coulson who claimed that he didn't know anything about the illegal practices going on under his stewardship.

News International created the line that it was only a few rogue individuals. It is quite an irony that the phone hacking scandal that eventually rocked his media empire started off with revelations that one of his newspapers had been spying on one of the British establishment that he so openly despised.

"Yates of the yard" clearly misled a Home Affairs Select Committee
helping to cover up the massive scale of the phone hacking scandal.

Inquiries by several organisations came to the same conclusion, that phone hacking and illegal activities at the News of the World were limited to a few rogue elements.

During their investigation the Metropolitan Police took the highly controversial decision not to inform the thousands of individuals whose phones had been hacked and assistant police commissioner John Yates deliberately misled a Parliamentary Home Affairs Select Committee by stating that "all reasonable steps" had been taken to warn individuals where police had reason to believe their phones had been hacked, which he said only applied in the case of 10 to 12 people.

This  police collusion seems a little easier to understand in light of further revelations that News of the World journalists had regularly paid police officers for information. Given the immense political fallout if the police bribery evidence came to light, a limited scope investigation focusing on the activities of a few clearly nominated fall guys favoured the interests of both the Metropolitan Police and News International. Suspicions were further raised when Andy Hayman, the police officer with overall responsibility for the phone hacking investigation subsequently went on to become a columnist for News International papers including News of the World and the Times where he wrote in defence of the police investigation, maintaining that there were only "perhaps a handful of hacking victims".

In 2009 the Guardian and Private Eye revealed that senior News International executives had signed of a secretive £1 million compensation package to former FA chief executive Gordon Taylor on condition of secrecy. The evidence that they had tried to suppress was the commissioning of private investigators to illegally obtain personal information on an astonishing scale. The evidence showed that journalists from News of the World, other News International titles and senior executives from News International had systematically paid private investigators to (illegally) hack into over 3,000 telephones and (illegally) con organisations into breaching the data protection act by giving out personal details such as telephone numbers, personal addresses, criminal record details and health records. The organisations targeted included the DVLA, police criminal records databases, British Telecom, the Inland Revenue, taxi companies, hotels and other sources.

In the wake of these revelations John Yeats of the Metropolitan police took the decision not to re-open criminal proceedings after studying the evidence for only eight hours. The media owned self-regulation service the Press Complaints Commission strongly resisted calls from the Information Commission to issue "a clear public statement warning journalists and editors of the very real risks of committing criminal offences", choosing instead to issue guidelines that were criticised as insufficient, and to announce that they had found no evidence to show that they had been "materially misled" by the News of The World or News International executives.

The Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger resigned from the PCC in disgust and his newspaper continued their efforts to reveal the true scale of the scandal, efforts derided by the Murdoch press as a witch hunt against Andy Coulson who had taken over the Woodrow Wyatt role as Conservative party communications director (the human interface between David Cameron and the Murdoch press) an appointment that neatly coincided with Murdoch's decision to switch allegiance once again, to back the Tories ahead of the 2010 election.

Rebekah Brooks was condemned by a House of Commons
report for her failure to co-operate with their investigation

In February 2010 a House of Commons report condemned the testimony of News of the World witnesses that had appeared before the committee, referring to "collective amnesia" and "deliberate obfuscation", and noted Rebekah Brooks (who had by then risen to become News International chief executive) had refused to appear at all.

The Committee concluded "We strongly condemn this behaviour which reinforces the widely held impression that the press generally regard themselves as unaccountable and that News International in particular has sought to conceal the truth about what really occurred". These findings prompted Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Conservative Mayor of London Boris Johnson to call for a full judicial inquiry into the affair, however further investigation into the phone hacking affair was deliberately torpedoed by Britain's top civil servant Sir Gus O'Donnell on the grounds that re-opening an investigation involving a leading member of the Conservative party (Coulson) would be inappropriate so soon before the 2010 election.

British Prime Minister David Cameron may come to regret his close
personal friendship with Rebekah Brooks, his employment of
Andy Coulson and his meetings with Rupert Murdoch

After no side managed to form an overall majority David Cameron became Prime Minister by entering into a coalition with the Liberal Democrats, and the judicial inquiry into the phone hacking affair was forgotten about but the Guardian, Private Eye and Labour MPs Cris Bryant and Tom Watson continued investigating the phone hacking affair releasing a stream of information throughout 2010 and 2011.

 Amidst all of this negative publicity Andy Coulson's position as Cameron's communications director became untenable and he resigned in January 2011.

In January 2011 the Met's deputy assistant commissioner, Sue Akers, headed up yet another investigation called Operation Weeting which employed 45 officers on a full time basis. Hopes were high that this one may actually turn out to be more than just a cover-up and whitewash.

In July 2011 the Guardian revealed that the News of the World had hacked into the telephone of murdered teenager Milly Dowler, interfering with the police investigation and giving false hope to the parents that she was still alive. They also revealed that other victims had included the families of dead British servicemen, victims of the 7/7 bombings in London. They had evidence that News of the World had been making illegal payments to police officers in return for information. Other newspapers reported that the families of murdered Soham schoolchildren Sarah Payne and Holly Wells were also potential victims.

Despite revelations that NOTW employees had been
involved in the hacking of telephones belonging elected politicians,
the real public backlash came when it was revealed that
they had hacked the phone of murdered teenager Milly Dowler.

Following these revelations there was a huge public outcry and a mass exodus of sponsors away from News of the World. On 6 July Chris Bryant was allowed to bring an emergency debate in parliament which featured condemnation of News International from across the political spectrum. One of the most extraordinary contributions came from Conservative MP for Richmond and Hampton, Zac Goldsmith who concluded with the statement that Rupert Murdoch's organisation had "systematically corrupted the police and castrated parliamennt".

On 7 July 2011 News Corporation Europe and Asia chief executive and Rupert's son, James Murdoch announced that the News of the World would be shut down after the publication of the 11 July edition. Tom Watson MP responded with the statement that "Rupert Murdoch did not close the News of the World. It is the revulsion of families up and down the land as to what they got up to. It was going to lose all its readers and it had no advertisers left. They had no choice."

Rebekah Brooks adressed staff for the final time she told staff how advertizers had deserted because the News of the World brand had become toxic, that the decision to close the paper had not been taken lightly but as the worst revelations were yet to come, the paper would have suffered a further two years of turmoil.

It is pretty hard to imagine what is worse than hacking the telephone of a teenage girl and deleting messages from her inbox as she lay dead, spying on the grieving families of dead soldiers and victims of terrorism, bribing the police and paying private investigators tospy on key members of the British government.

News of the World staff were virtually unanimous in their appraisals that they had all been sacrificed to save the career of Rebekah Brooks who remained in her post as chief executive of News International. As staff worked to complete the final edition of the paper, without access to the internet or email, (presumably to prevent angry staff from exporting further incriminating evidence):

• Speculation abounded that the NOTW would simply be replaced by a Sunday edition of the Sun, a strategy that has allegedly been under development for at least three months.
• Their former editor Andy Coulson was arrested by police.
• Scotland Yard's assistant commissioner tried to talk down the police role in the cover up and his refusal to reopen the case after the 2009 Guardian revelations with words of "regret".
• It was revealed that a senior News International executive had deliberately deleted the majority of an archive of millions of internal emails, including potentially incriminating correspondence with other senior NI executives.  
• It was revealed that private investigators acting on behalf of newspapers from across the News International spectrum blagged information, hacked into databases and employed corrupt police officers to gather information on Gordon Brown while he worked as chancellor and Prime Minister.
• Former Lib Dem leader Paddy Ashdown who had been extensively briefed on phone hacking details that had not been made public for legal reasons revealed that he had advised David Cameron of "terrible damage" to the coalition if he continued to employ Andy Coulson once the truth eventually emerged.
• Labour party leader Ed Milliband announced his intention to initiate a parliamentary vote to block News Corporation from buying out the 61% of BSkyB that they do not own.
• The coalition government announced that a full judicial inquiry into the affair would be initiated.

News Corp stock lost $2 billion in value in the week and the BSkyB takeover plan began to look dead in the water causing critics of Murdoch's evil empire to rejoice, however Murdoch is a tenacious fighter and still held a strong influence over British and global politics.

Prime Minister David Cameron understandably made moves to distance himself from Murdoch and Rebekah Brooks and has repeated the line that he was "naive" to offer Coulson a second chance after his resignation as News of the World editor.

It is clear that the Prime Minister has two courses of action available to him, he could either bite the bullet and ditch Murdoch, just as Murdoch ruthlessly betrayed the Tories in the mid 1990s or he could join in with the popular condemnation for the time being and simply wait for the fuss to die down before allowing the News Corp takeover of BSkyB to go ahead. After all, he knows that the British electorate have remarkably short memories given the fact that so little was done after the public outrage at the parliamentary expenses scandal and the fact that the banking sector have been allowed to carry on enriching themselves despite the furious public reaction at their role in the 2008 global economic meltdown.

My guess is that Cameron will avoid confrontation with one of the most powerful men in the world at all costs, knowing that after his policies of cutting services for the poor, slashing legal aid, privatising the NHS and allowing the economic elite to continue to siphon billions out of the economy via elaborate tax avoidance schemes, he will need unanimous support from Murdoch's gutter press if he intends to hang onto power for more than a single term in office.

However if he has the balls that I suspect he doesn't; he could begin a campaign to rid the United Kingdom of Murdoch's corrupting influence by crashing the BSkyB takeover, forming a cross party agreement to cut News International out of the political loop and reforming the press regulator to give them the power to force demonstrably corrupt organisations to divest their ownership of British media.

 Another Angry Voice is a not-for-profit page which generates absolutely no revenue from advertising and accepts no money from corporate or political interests. The only source of revenue for Another Angry Voice is the  PayPal  donations box (which can be found in the right hand column, fairly near the top of the page). If you could afford to make a donation to help keep this site going, it would be massively appreciated.

Acknowledgement: I borrowed heavily from this  excellent blog post by Adam Curtis (featuring BBC archive footage of Rupert Murdoch) for the details of Murdoch's early influence over the British press.

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