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Columbia Journalism Review content tagged Murdoch hacking scandal

1. August 12, 2011 11:15 AM

   Ace in the Hole (1951)

   What a sixty-year-old noir can tell us about the Murdoch hacking scandal

   By Ryan Chittum

   I’ve got Murdoch on the brain, but I couldn’t help thinking about the News of the World scandal while watching the sixty-year-old film noir Ace in the Hole, which is at base a story about the drive for The Story. Its protagonist is reminiscent of some hypercompetitive News Corporation hack pursuing stories at almost any cost, whether it be breaking...

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2. February 9, 2012 02:20 PM

   BusinessWeek Goes Inside a Critical Hacking Scandal Meeting

   Murdoch, at a fork in the road, chose the coverup

   By Ryan Chittum

   Bloomberg BusinessWeek has a fantastic story reporting on a critical meeting Rupert Murdoch held last May to plot how to contain the hacking scandal. The detail and reporting here are remarkable. Nobody at the dinner in Murdoch's London townhouse goes on the record, but Bloomberg's Greg Farrell pieces together the meeting by talking to four attendees on background. With color...

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3. July 6, 2011 08:17 PM

   News of the World and U.S. Media Culture

   By Ryan Chittum

   I was asked an interesting question earlier today by a BBC producer who wanted to know about the American angle to the hacking scandal at Rupert Murdoch's News of the World. Could this type of thing happen in the American press? she asked. My immediate response was to say that it wouldn't. The American press is a different beast. We...

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4. December 23, 2011 01:14 PM

   The Guardian’s Big Hacking-Scandal Error

   Failing to attribute its deleted-messages assertion left it open to attack

   By Ryan Chittum

   When The Guardian dropped its Milly Dowler bombshell back in July, I called the News Corporation hacking it reported "abhorrent and illegal." But I reserved the harshest words ("downright evil") for the News of the World's alleged deletion of Dowler's voicemails. That Guardian report unleashed the whirlwind. Since then, the News Corp. hacking scandal has exploded, taking down the 168-year-old...

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5. August 2, 2011 10:06 PM

   The Wall Street Journal: Murdochification Watch

   The paper runs a thinly sourced, and quickly denied, scoop on non-News Corp. bribes

   By Ryan Chittum

   Rupert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal, unsurprisingly, hasn't done a whole lot of digging on the News Corp. hacking scandal. Or perhaps it has dug, but it's been so far behind on the story that it hasn't been able to advance it. But today it has a scoop on the hacking scandal—one that implicates a non-News Corp. paper, suggests in the...

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6. July 7, 2011 05:49 PM

   A Young Rupert Murdoch in Britain, Via the BBC Archives

   Adam Curtis pulls fascinating archival footage that shows the tycoon on his way up

   By Ryan Chittum

   The BBC's Adam Curtis has a fascinating blog called The Medium and the Message where he digs into the network's unparalleled archives and posts old clips that piece together a bit of history—often on a subject in the news. Back in January, Curtis put together a brilliant piece called "Rupert Murdoch - A Portrait of Satan" with clips going back...

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7. July 8, 2011 08:52 AM

   Accountability, News Corp. Style

   Those with responsibility escape it

   By Dean Starkman

   Behold, editors and reporters at The Wall Street Journal, the Times of London, Fox News, and, for that matter, the Sunday Tasmanian, and every other News Corp. journalism property around the world: This is what happens when you do what your bosses are paying you to do. You get thrown overboard, is what happens, while those same news leaders express...

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8. July 7, 2011 03:57 PM

   Also Exposed by The Guardian: Murdoch’s Grip on U.K.’s Elites

   And it isn’t pretty

   By Ryan Chittum

   A lot of powerful people in the UK have suddenly found their spines in the last few days. That's perhaps the most remarkable impact The Guardian's Milly Dowler scoop has had. As Editor Alan Rusbridger put it, "The palpably intimidating spectre of an apparently untouchable media player has been burst." And he would know. This scandal has a larger meaning...

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9. July 8, 2011 01:35 PM

   Another Guardian Scoop: Destruction of Evidence at News Corp.

   By Ryan Chittum

   One benefit of being nearly alone on a story for years: When everybody suddenly wakes up to it, you've still got the advantage of years of reporting. You know the sources and the lay of the land, and everyone else can only try to play catch-up. So it's no surprise that Nick Davies and The Guardian are the ones moving...

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10. May 2, 2012 12:13 AM

    Audit notes

    Murdoch Mauled by MPs Edition

    By Ryan Chittum

    Rupert Murdoch wasn't the only "not fit" executive seared by the select committee's report on News Corporation scandals today. The MPs found, unsurprisingly, that Les Hinton, while he was publisher of The Wall Street Journal and CEO of Dow Jones, lied to Parliament about his previous role at News International. The report accuses Hinton of "a deliberate effort to mislead...

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11. November 10, 2011 07:44 PM

    Audit Notes: Guardian Editor on Hackgate, Judge Rakoff, Confidence Game

    By Ryan Chittum

    Read Guardian Editor Alan Rusbridger's Orwell lecture for an excellent overview and analysis of Murdoch's hacking scandal, and his paper's lonely role in uncovering it. On a day MP Tom Watson called James Murdoch a "mafia boss," Rusbridger explains why the press, the police, politicians, and regulators covered up for News Corporation: The simplest explanation is a combination of fear,...

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12. September 18, 2012 06:50 AM

    Audit Notes: News of the World’s thugs, Occupy impact, nonprofit news

    Allegations that the paper's gumshoes broke into houses looking for dirt

    By Ryan Chittum

    What could go wrong when a Murdoch newspaper employs axe-murder suspects? A lot, as we've already seen, and it may have been worse than we've yet known. The London Evening Standard reports that an ex-cop sent undercover to probe News of the World's private investigators says they burglarized the house of "a newsworthy individual" to try to dig up dirt...

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13. November 29, 2011 11:54 PM

    Audit Notes: WSJ’s Facebook Non-News, Bogus Bloomberg, Tabloid Id

    By Ryan Chittum

    Fortune's Dan Primack calls out The Wall Street Journal for hyping non-news on page one that Facebook is going to launch an IPO in the spring for somewhere near $100 billion. Yesterday the Wall Street Journal got a huge amount of attention for reporting that Facebook is preparing to go public next year in an IPO that could value the...

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14. July 28, 2011 07:25 PM

    Audit Notes: Another Davies Hacking Scoop, Greece, The Debt Ceiling

    By Ryan Chittum

    Nick Davies lands another big scoop on the Murdoch hacking scandal, reporting that police investigators believe the News of the World gave a phone to the mother of a murder victim and then hacked it or at least tried to hack it. This was no run-of-the-mill murder case, either. Davies reports that then-editor Rebekah Brooks gave the phone to Sarah...

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15. August 31, 2011 08:02 PM

    Audit Notes: Bank Consolidation, The Depression, Stuart Kuttner

    By Ryan Chittum

    Steven Pearlstein comes out against the Capital One/ING merger, which would turn it into the country's fifth biggest bank, with $300 billion in assets. The truth is that there is no great social or economic benefit to Capital One buying ING. Smaller institutions could buy ING, albeit for a lower price. Or it could be spun off to existing shareholders...

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16. December 14, 2011 06:16 PM

    Audit Notes: CDS Watch, Murdoch’s Email, Fracking and Quaking

    By Ryan Chittum

    The Wall Street Journal has a good look at how European banks have been busy writing hundreds of billions of dollars worth of credit-default swaps on PIIIGS sovereign debt: The numbers show European banks have sold a total of €178 billion ($238 billion) worth of insurance policies, in the form of financial derivatives known as credit-default swaps, on bonds issued...

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17. November 4, 2011 07:38 PM

    Audit Notes: Citi’s Slaps, College Is Cheap, Voicemail Interception Compensation Scheme

    By Ryan Chittum

    Bloomberg's Jonathan Weil has an excellent, tough column on the latest settlement between Citigroup and the SEC, which shows how "Citigroup Finds Obeying the Law Is Too Darn Hard": Five times since 2003 the Securities and Exchange Commission has accused Citigroup Inc. (C)’s main broker-dealer subsidiary of securities fraud. On each occasion the company’s SEC settlements have followed a familiar...

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18. January 30, 2012 07:56 PM

    Audit Notes: Data Pool 3, The UK Prints, Copyright

    By Ryan Chittum

    Scotland Yard arrested four top current and former Sun journalists and a cop. The Guardian's Nick Davies gives us the context and says it's a major development: And technicians have retrieved an enormous reservoir of material from News International's central computer servers, including one particularly vast collection that may yet prove to be the stick that breaks the media mogul's...

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19. April 26, 2012 08:53 PM

    Audit Notes: Davies on Murdoch, Banks Eye the Poor for Fees, TARP ROI

    By Ryan Chittum

    Nick Davies writes in The Guardian that, after a second day of questioning under oath, "Rupert Murdoch is in trouble... He is vulnerable." The man who has made millions out of paying people to ask difficult questions, finally faced questioners he could not cope with. This is not just a matter of Murdoch losing various arguments in court. The potential...

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20. July 21, 2011 10:30 PM

    Audit Notes: Ex-Execs Flip, Rupert’s Management, Daily Show

    By Ryan Chittum

    The big Murdoch hacking scandal news today is that two former News of the World executives contradicted James Murdoch's testimony before Parliament on whether they had showed him a critical email before he signed off on the huge Gordon Taylor settlement. Today, former NotW lawyer Tom Crone and former top editor Colin Myler said that Murdoch Jr. did see...

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