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

It is certainly interesting Mac. It remains to be seen whether it is encouraging.

It looks like it's the "cover up" that they are being charged for.

I'm not sure what you mean, parados.

They are not being charged with phone hacking, the original crime, but instead appear to be charged with hiding information about that original crime.



People do something that is wrong and then make it worse by trying to hide it from others. The process of trying to hide it ends up being the crime they are charged with.

Ah.
Thanks for the the explanation.

edit: just checked the article again. The charges are "perverting the course of justice" (in relation to the phone hacking).

I may have this wrong (& please correct me if I do), but I don't believe it was ever suggested Rebekah Brooks was personally responsible for the actual phone hacking which occurred. I understood that it had more to do with whether she, as chief executive of News International (also former editor of the News of the World and the Sun), had knowledge of what occurred in relation to the phone hacking .... & also her responsibility for it having occurred.
It's difficult to see how she personally could have been charged with phone hacking.

You are correct. Authorizing or paying for the hacking is about the same as actually doing it but no one says she physically did the hacking.

She's been charged specifically with withholding evidence from the Met. Actually proving she authorised phone hacking is a lot harder, and all comes down to how words are interpreted.

For instance the phrase 'any means necessary,' could be qualified to mean 'any legal means necessary.' She's too canny to be caught specifically authorising phone hacking.

They are not yet being charged with phone hacking.

They may well be later, when the Leveson Enquiry concludes.

Encouraging I mean in the sense that they are willing to take a punt, with the intention of getting a conviction. I am encouraged by that (despite their track record ).

Yes, the actual hackers should be charged with that.
But I agree that authorizing, encouraging, or having knowledge of what occurred makes her just as complicit in the phone hackings.

Yes.


Still a possibility?
Interesting.
How likely a possibility is that, do you think, at this stage of the Inquiry?

The key word is "conspired". Conspiracy charges are not easy to prove and thus sentences are increased.

I think it's likely.

For a long time, the defence was that only "one rogue reporter" was implicated.
That was blown out of the water some time ago.
Now we need to try to find out just how many of the management were involved. Rupert Murdoch has argued that this was kept from senior management. Yet his son James signed off a big (hush-money?) payment to Graham Taylor in out-of-court settlement of a phone hacking claim. Murdoch minor has claimed he didn't know what he was paying Taylor for.
At this point, your head starts to hurt.
Could Rebekah have been unaware of all this? Her track record indicates that possibility is vanishingly small, but can our CPS prove it in court? Can they find their backside with both hands in the dark? The jury is out.

I'm thinking that what this actually is is the Westminster Village going to confession. The confessor, the public, the judge pisses in the same pot, quite understands the sins and the sinnings considering the strain everyone was under.

Which of us can honestly say that on being tipped off by the Minister's Special Adviser that we should vamoose the files because the cops are coming to look at them sometime next week, a surprise visit, we would have done the right thing and had the files open at the page on which the Minister's name appears a few times. I certainly wouldn't. Tom Petty didn't do the right thing with the tapes when the authorities were looking for them. He hid them. I would have. Which of you wouldn't? Remember you're on cheek-to-cheek terms with the PM. I think Saint Theresa would have hidden the files. When the cops came plodding up the marble hallway the rooms would have been cleaned. Just one empty set of drawers and a desk with a recently polished top in case any ball-point pens had made marks through the paper.

Collectively they realise that they have sinned. Not all of them. All groups have their atheist faction. But generally. They feel a twinge of guilt. So they have come, having been caught red-handed, to confess and repent and make a clean break and promise to be gooder in the future. Which nobody believes because otherwise they wouldn't be desperately searching for new regulatory mechanisms to make sure they are gooder in the future. And their atheists.

Guilt is established. Obviously penance can't be applied to all of them because the joint would shut down so bring on the scapegoat.

And it's so undignified. When the Roman Senate sentenced Nero to death for bankrupting the Empire with Poppaea Sabina's extravagance, ( he committed suicide to avoid the process of execution), the lady was allowed to retire to a seaside villa with a modicum of what she was used to. They weren't daft enough to think women can be blamed for such things.

It's the best soap opera we have ever seen. So good in fact that I suspect it might have been arranged in some way. We do know that everybody is putting on an act.

One little exchange you might appreciate--

Alastair Campbell said something and Robert Jay said "we will be able to check that." Mr Campbell sneered, "from your sources in the press?" and the Judge said, "Now, now Mr Campbell, don't overdo it."

It's easy to forget how close Murdoch came to owning BSkyB outright. We were just days away from the takeover when the Guardian published the Millie Dowler revelations. All the other illegal activity didn't affect the public in the least, it was accepted as par for the course. Millie Dowler was something different.

Nice cartoon from today.

The Guardian opined, elsewhere, "This could haunt Cameron till election day"

I thought that the "revelations" were not fully up to snuff. If they were incorrect your argument says that the error is the cause of all this.

Perhaps Millie will be canonised in the Inns of Court. What we have is a big-time "dip your learned bread in" vat of gravy.

The part about NOTW deleting phone messages is unprovable, but not the hacking of the phone itself.

I don't know izzy. The impression I got from a few discussions I saw was that the Grauniad's evidence was incorrect.

Not that it matters now. It's going to be tough getting off hiding the records from the Met. They are objects. We might presume that the CPS is satisfied they were deliberately hidden although the Directoress did look very nervous as if she felt her future prospects would diminish if the prosecution fails. I would guess she had been awake all night.