Is this the beginning of the end of Rupert Murdoch's media empire?

not sure yet - cream pie? shaving foam? - but Pink lady Murdoch who has been sitting behind MurdochSr reportedly gave the "attacker" a good slap - quite right too

truly, farcical! Demonstrations like that will take away the seriousness of the questions

even tho most of the answers have been "I know nothing"

AL-PIEDA STRIKES AGAIN

Oh my... that's terrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrible <groan>

Quote:

Oh my... that's terrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrible <groan>

There's a college group here in the US called Al-pieda, who goes around hitting Conservatives in the face with pies. I didn't make it up!

Cycloptichorn

12.02 pm. The dude appears to be a member of the group UK Uncut - not a group dedicated to protecting foreskin, alas, but a decentralized bunch of activists opposed to tax evasion. They're playing Wendi's solid slap over again and again on British TV. Where were the police? The man is now named as Jonnie Marbles, a "comedian".

11.59 am. It appears Wendi Murdoch clocked the bloke. Or slapped him on the head. I wouldn't want to cross Wendi Murdoch. Was it a foam pie? No, it was a custard pie!

Hi Iz

12:40 am here & this looks like going on & on ....
I doubt I'll last the distance.

Seems neither James nor Rupert were aware of anything much at all of the important developments (which could be incriminating to them) at the time they happened.

I'm finding it rather excruciating watching, too.

Interesting question: "Are you aware of willful blindness?"

Andrew Sullivan:

Quote:

12.02 pm. The dude appears to be a member of the group UK Uncut -

A brilliant non-violent protest group. Their message we wouldn't need any cuts if the rich stopped avoiding tax.

There have been some questions about whether the Conservative Party employed Neil Wallis. We have double checked our records and are able to confirm that neither Neil Wallis nor his company has ever been contracted by the Conservative Party, nor has the Conservative Party made payments to either of them.

It has been drawn to our attention that he may have provided Andy Coulson with some informal advice on a voluntary basis before the election. We are currently finding out the exact nature of any advice.
We can confirm that apart from Andy Coulson, neither David Cameron nor any senior member of the campaign team were aware of this until this week.

Quote:

Given the make-up of the board it is for all practical purposes impossible for Murdoch to lose control of the empire, though their is speculation that he will publicly semi-retire and run it from behind the scenes.

You don't seem to know how a board is elected hawk.
Nor do you seem to understand that Murdoch owns less than 40% of NewsCorp.

Murdoch's buddies can easily be thrown off the board by the shareholders. They only need 50.0001% in the next board elections.

News Corp.'s variety of lousy governance is simple -- one man exerts control wildly out of proportion to his stake in the business. As at many companies with bad governance, the mechanism is dual-class stock. News Corp.'s class A shares account for about 70% of the company's market cap (recently $41 billion total) but have no voting power. Only class B shares, which account for the other 30% of the market cap, get to vote, and Rupert Murdoch has almost 40% of the class B shares. Economically he owns just 12% of the company, but he wields total control because he can elect all the directors. While the other class B shareholders (about 1,300 of them) could in theory gang up on him and vote against his wishes, in practice that doesn't happen. It's especially unlikely since long-time Murdoch supporter Prince Alwaleed bin Talal of Saudi Arabia owns 7% of the class B shares.
Ultimate responsibility for protecting News Corp.'s 48,000 total shareholders thus rests with a board comprising three directors named Murdoch (Rupert plus sons James and Lachlan; daughter Elisabeth is scheduled to join next year), four additional News Corp. employees (COO Chase Carey, CFO David DeVoe, executive VP Joel Klein, and senior adviser Arthur Siskind), two former News Corp. employees, and seven other directors, including a 31-year-old opera singer, Natalie Bancroft, from the family that owned Dow Jones, which News Corp. bought in 2007. News Corp. says her "youth" and "female perspective" bring value to the board. Under such guardianship, it's unsurprising the stock has disappointed investors; it has underperformed the S&P 500 over the past five and 10 years.
This board meets the independence requirements of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and Nasdaq, where the stock trades, but if it doesn't seem very independent to you, that's understandable. In any case, it doesn't matter. While legally the board can fire Rupert Murdoch, practically he can fire the board, and the board knows it. Truly the company has earned its F in governance.
The effects are insidious and more far reaching than you might imagine. "It creates a culture with no accountability," says Charles Elson, director of the University of Delaware's John L. Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance. In companies where directors are genuinely subject to the shareholders' will, CEOs get fired; BP's (BP) board fired Tony Hayward last year, for example, and Hewlett-Packard's (HPQ) board fired Mark Hurd. The message cascades down through the organization: Bad behavior gets you fired here. But at companies where the CEO can fire the board, a different message cascades down: We don't answer to the shareholders, we answer to just one person. It's the rule of man, not the rule of law

A brilliant non-violent protest group. Their message we wouldn't need any cuts if the rich stopped avoiding tax.