To accuse Rupert Murdoch of shedding crocodile tears, with his head-in-hands apology to the family of Milly Dowler and his widely printed apology at the weekend, would be an insult to honest crocodiles everywhere. A more fitting comparison would be to Lewis Carroll's Walrus, after luring unsuspecting oysters to a picnic with his friend the Carpenter. "'I weep for you,'" the Walrus said: / 'I deeply sympathise.' / With sobs and tears he sorted out / Those of the largest size / Holding his pocket-handkerchief / Before his streaming eyes."
The contagion affecting News Corp has spread rapidly in the US. The FBI is investigating potential criminal hacking of the voicemails of victims of the 9/11 attacks. Lawmakers and grassroots groups are also calling for an investigation into whether the bribing of police was a violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. As News Corp is a US corporation, registered in the business-friendly state of Delaware,even bribery abroad could lead to felony charges in the US.
One likely consequence would be what Corporate Crime Reporter's Russell Mokhiber calls "a wishy-washy non-prosecution settlement" wherein News Corp would admit to the crime without being convicted, and pay a financial settlement. Mokhiber noted that, in a 2008 FCPA case against Siemens for widespread bribery, Siemens paid $800m but avoided a criminal conviction that would have jeopardised its standing as a US defence contractor.
As for the alleged phone hacking of 9/11 victims, if News of the World employees did engage in illegal attempts to access voicemails, and the FBI investigation can ferret out sufficient proof to seek indictments, then the most likely outcome would be extradition requests against the alleged offenders, which could drag on for years.
Meanwhile Murdoch runs his media empire in the US as an unvarnished political operation. Fox News Channel, run by career Republican operative Roger Ailes, is home to the most consistently vitriolic critics of Barack Obama. Leaked memos and emails from Fox vice-president of News, John Moody, and Washington managing editor Bill Sammon allegedly offer evidence of top-down directives to control the message throughout the news day, from linking Obama to Marxism and socialism, to denigrating a public option in the US healthcare debate, to promoting scepticism about climate change.
Fox News Channel hosts have also been linked to political violence. Glenn Beck (who got his start in television from CNN, to its eternal shame) lured a massive cable audience to his daily chalkboard-enabled rants, detailing complex liberal/progressive conspiracies with a healthy dose of historical revisionism. In July 2010, Byron Williams loaded his car in Northern California with a small arsenal, donned body armour, and set off for San Francisco, intending to massacre people at two of Beck's regular targets, the Tides Foundation and the American Civil Liberties Union. When police tried to pull him over for speeding, Williams started firing and was arrested. He told reporter John Hamilton: "I would have never started watching Fox News if it wasn't for the fact that Beck was on there. And it was the things that he did, it was the things he exposed that blew my mind."
Similarly, the conservative Fox News host Bill O'Reilly castigated one of the only medical doctors in Kansas who performed abortions, George Tiller, as "Tiller the Baby Killer," on at least 29 occasions. In 2009 Tiller was shot in the head at point-blank range, while attending church, by an anti-abortion extremist.
Alongside the enormous direct influence of his media properties, Murdoch doles out political contributions. Prior to the 2010 Republican landslide Murdoch gave $1m of News Corp cash to the Republican Governors Association, the group that helped push far-right candidates to executive office around the US, notably Scott Walker, who provoked massive labor protests in Wisconsin, and former Fox commentator John Kasich in Ohio.
Don't look for anything explosive from News Corp's internal investigation either. Board members Joel Klein and Viet Dinh, both US power attorneys, are taking active roles managing the crisis. Dinh was assistant attorney-general under George W Bush and a principal author of the Patriot Act, the law that, among other things, prompted an unprecedented expansion of government eavesdropping. According to recent Securities and Exchange Commission filings, Dinh and other directors lined up on 3 July to sell off stock options, with Dinh netting about $25,000 as the Dowler scandal broke (he did better than the stockholders he represents, selling at just over $18 a share; now it's trading at $15.96).
Klein, a former justice department attorney and chancellor of the New York City school system, joined the board recently to focus on its digital learning business. The New York Daily News reports that a business News Corp acquired just after Klein joined the board is now facing scrutiny, since it deals with schoolchildren's personal data. New York state awarded Wireless Generation a no-bid, $27m contract. Now parents are questioning whether News Corp should have such access.
Perhaps the greatest threat to Murdoch will come from grassroots organisations. The activist group Color of Change has already mounted a protest outside Murdoch's New York Central Park apartment. The group was co-founded by Van Jones, who was appointed by Obama as his green jobs tsar but forced to resign after a withering assault by Beck on Fox. An advertising boycott campaign it mounted against Beck's show is largely credited with forcing Beck off the network.
With News Corp's stock down in the wake of the scandal and potentially embarrassing revelations about 9/11 victims looming (as the 10th anniversary nears), a reinvigorated campaign to shut off advertising dollars could disrupt Murdoch's hold on his vast US media holdings. Yes, Murdoch is sorry – that he got caught.
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