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

'Black ops and espionage’ inside Fox News
Jon Swaine
July 21, 2011 - 10:47AM


'Fair and balanced' ... Controversial Fox News host Bill O'Reilly. A former executive claims hacking may have occurred at the network. Photo: You Tube

Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News television channel had a ‘‘black ops’’ department that may have illegally hacked private telephone records, a former executive for the station has alleged.

Dan Cooper, who helped launch Fox News as managing editor in 1996, said that a so-called ‘‘brain room’’ carried out ‘‘counter intelligence’’ on the channel’s enemies from its New York headquarters, and that he was threatened after it found out he spoke to a reporter.

Another former senior executive told The Telegraph that the channel ran a Soviet-style spying network on staff, reading their emails and making them ‘‘feel they were being watched’’.

The channel, which has come under pressure amid allegations that outlets owned by Mr Murdoch may have attempted to hack the voicemail messages of 9/11 victims, firmly denies all the allegations.

Mr Cooper, who left Fox News soon after its launch, provided a quote for a 1997 article about Roger Ailes, Fox News’s president, by the journalist David Brock in New York magazine.

The quote was not going to be attributed to him, but he alleges that before the article was published, Mr Cooper’s agent received a telephone call from Mr Ailes threatening to withdraw Fox’s business from all his clients. ...<cont>

20 July 2011 Last updated at 21:57 GMT

Phone hacking: Scotland Yard boosts probe team

The police team investigating phone hacking has been boosted from 45 to 60 officers, Scotland Yard has said.

Metropolitan Police Deputy Assistant Commissioner Sue Akers said the move came after a "significant increase in the workload" over the past fortnight.

She said there had been a "surge of inquiries and requests for assistance from the public and solicitors".

Earlier, the Met was accused by MPs of a "catalogue of failures" in the News of the World phone-hacking inquiry.

Meanwhile, News of the World owner News International said it had authorised law firm Harbottle & Lewis to answer any questions from Scotland Yard and the Commons home affairs committee about its work for the company.

News International has said a May 2007 letter from the firm had made it believe that hacking was a "matter of the past" and confined to a single rogue reporter.

During Wednesday's House of Commons debate on the phone-hacking scandal, MPs called on News International to publish the full exchanges about e-mails examined by the legal firm.

The law firm had said it was being prevented from responding to "inaccurate" comments made by News International chairman James Murdoch because the company would not allow it breach its duty of client confidentiality.

In other developments in the phone-hacking saga:

* Prime Minister David Cameron told MPs that "with hindsight" he would not have hired ex-News of the World editor Andy Coulson as his communications chief, in the closest he has come to an apology.

* Mr Cameron said the public inquiry would be widened to examine broadcasters and social media and named the panel

* Downing Street and Buckingham Palace denied claims by Labour MP Chris Bryant that royal officials raised concerns about Mr Coulson's appointment

* The protester accused of throwing shaving foam at Rupert Murdoch is charged with a public order offence

* Labour MP Nick Raynsford said that, when Mr Coulson was at Downing Street, the cabinet secretary was alerted to evidence of illegal phone hacking, covert surveillance and hostile media briefing against a senior government official - the cabinet secretary later denied it.

* Downing Street confirms that the prime minister received and responded to a letter from Labour MP Tom Watson last October, in which he had raised concerns about Mr Coulson

News International's parent company News Corporation has also confirmed it has stopped paying the legal fees of former private detective Glenn Mulcaire, who was convicted of phone hacking on behalf of the News of the World in 2007....<cont>

The story they're giving is that it is Charlie's computer, he absent mindedly left it on a bench. The cleaners must have put it in the bin. As it's Charlie's computer it has got no details of any NI business on it. The police have decided not to take his word for it.

Simon Hoggart said, 'Mr Murdoch is as full of remorse, as a frog is full of toothpaste.'

Well, at least the government's reaction is somewhat mild. When we had the Watergate brouhaha, people were threatened, and it is alleged that an airliner was blown up in mid-flight to take out the family of one joker who had talked. Do your boys ever get up to such tricks?

Labour stinks, of course