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Columbia Journalism Review content tagged Rupert Murdoch

1. 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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2. 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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3. October 12, 2011 06:19 PM

   The Guardian Unearths a Wall Street Journal Scandal

   The paper claims the scalp of a Journal publisher and points to deeper problems

   By Ryan Chittum

   Read this Wall Street Journal story from this morning on the resignation of its European edition's publisher. What the Journal reports is bad enough: That the publisher, Andrew Langhoff, "personally pressured two reporters into writing articles featuring" a Journal customer. But, now read The Guardian from this afternoon. The problems at the Journal, we find, are much worse than the...

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4. October 12, 2011 06:35 PM

   Wall Street Journal Europe Sourcing Was Unusual

   And the CEO of the firm involved is a former Journal executive

   By Ryan Chittum

   We now know, thanks to reporting in the both The Guardian and The Wall Street Journal itself, that Andrew Langloff, recently resigned publisher of The Wall Street Journal Europe pressured Journal reporters to write about a company called Executive Learning Partnership that bought cheap copies of the paper to boost its circulation. We also know that the WSJE subsequently ran...

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5. October 13, 2011 11:10 AM

   WSJ Backs Up The Guardian on European Scandal

   Its reporting disputes its parent company's denials

   By Ryan Chittum

   Last night, Dow Jones slammed The Guardian's report on wrongdoing at The Wall Street Journal Europe, calling it "replete with untruths and malign interpretations" and claiming that someone The Guardian called a whistleblower wasn't one because "that employee was first investigated by the company because of concerns around his business dealings." This morning, The Wall Street Journal's news side redeems...

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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. 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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12. July 6, 2012 06:50 AM

    Audit Notes: Dark Ages, Mitt and Rupert, Chesapeake’s taxes

    Stephen Moore on how "the greens" supposedly want to plunge America into darkness

    By Ryan Chittum

    The Wall Street Journal editorial page's Stephen Moore uses the power outage in DC as a warning about what life would be like if "the greens" seize power. Environmentalists, you see, aren't just opposed to pollution and catastrophic climate effects from carbon emissions. According to Moore, they're all but opposed to electricity, however clean: Electrical power is the central nervous...

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13. 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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14. 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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15. July 8, 2011 04:53 PM

    Audit Notes: Les Hinton, Translating Murdoch Jr., UK Tabloid Culture

    By Ryan Chittum

    The Guardian writes today that the "Phone hacking spotlight falls on former News International boss Les Hinton." As well it should—particularly here in the U.S. Hinton is who Rupert Murdoch installed as CEO of Dow Jones, which publishes The Wall Street Journal. He was CEO of News International when the hacking crimes were being committed and, later, not a very...

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16. November 20, 2012 06:50 AM

    Audit Notes: marginal taxes, a redesign for core readers, Murdoch

    An NYT's anecdote's confusion goes uncorrected

    By Ryan Chittum

    The New York Times flubs some reporting on how investors and well off people are bracing for higher tax rates: Kristina Collins, a chiropractor in McLean, Va., said she and her husband planned to closely monitor the business income from their joint practice to avoid crossing the income threshold for higher taxes outlined by President Obama on earnings above $200,000...

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17. March 9, 2011 07:45 PM

    Audit Notes: More Murdoch, Hiltzik on the Social Security Trust Fund

    By Ryan Chittum

    A couple of weeks ago, Allan Sloan wrote about Rupert Murdoch is using $673 million of his shareholders' money to buy Murdoch's daughter Elisabeth's production company. That self-dealing caused him to say this: It's one thing to have News Corp. employ family members. But it's a different thing to use assets of a company 88 percent owned by the public...

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18. August 26, 2011 07:37 PM

    Audit Notes: Murdoch and American Politicians, UAW, Labor’s Bulletin Board Win

    By Ryan Chittum

    Does Rupert Murdoch interfere with his news outlets? Does a bear, well, you know... The Los Angeles Times has an interesting piece of reporting on that, even if it's fifteen years old. And shows how bigtime Democratic politicians in the U.S. have played footsie with Murdoch: In 1996, the teenage son of a prominent political figure in Washington, D.C., got...

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19. April 24, 2012 08:03 PM

    Audit Notes: Murdoch Minister Edition

    By Ryan Chittum

    The Murdoch scandal heated (hotted?) up yet again today with James Murdoch's testimony to the Leveson Inquiry, and it now threatens to bring down a key member of the prime minister's cabinet—or more. Emails detail an awfully close relationship and perhaps an illegal back-and-forth, sometimes twelve messages a day, between James Murdoch and Jeremy Hunt. The problem is Hunt was...

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20. August 9, 2011 07:35 PM

    Audit Notes: Murdoch’s Board, Hedge Funds Selling

    By Ryan Chittum

    How awful is News Corporation's corporate governance (among other things)? Bloomberg News on Viet Dinh, the guy who wrote the Patriot Act: Dinh, 43, is point man between the independent board members and a panel that New York-based News Corp. (NWS) created to cooperate with authorities probing phone hacking by the defunct News of the World tabloid and to evaluate...

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