Murdoch Faced With 'Civil War' After Arrests at London Tabloid

When Rupert Murdoch meets with staff members at his popular, British tabloid The Sun this week, he will be wading into the middle of “what amounts to a civil war within News Corporation,” according to a former editor at the newspaper.

Readers of The Sun were given a clear sense of the anger inside the newsroom in a column published in Monday’s edition of the paper. Under the headline, “This Witch Hunt Has Put Us Behind Ex-Soviet States on Press Freedom,” the tabloid’s associate editor, Trevor Kavanagh, denounced the recent arrests of journalists as part of a police investigation into bribery of public officials. Reporters and editors, he said, “are being treated like members of an organized crime gang.”

Mr. Kavanagh also raged against what he called heavy-handed tactics and a waste of police resources in the investigation of tabloid journalists.

They are subjects of the biggest police operation in British criminal history — bigger even than the Pan Am Lockerbie murder probe.

Major crime investigations are on hold as 171 police are drafted in to run three separate operations. In one raid, two officers revealed they had been pulled off an elite 11-man antiterror squad trying to protect the Olympics from a mass suicide attack.

Instead of being called in for questioning, 30 journalists have been needlessly dragged from their beds in dawn raids, arrested and held in police cells while their homes are ransacked.

Mr. Kavanagh expanded on his column in an interview with Sky News, a satellite news channel which is also owned in part by Mr. Murdoch’s News Corporation.

Video posted online by The Sun, a London tabloid, of the paper’s associate editor explaining anger over the recent arrests of reporters and editors.A controversial headline from 1982.

Asked to comment on Mr. Kavanagh’s column, Roy Greenslade, a Guardian media blogger who worked at The Sun when Mr. Murdoch prowled its newsroom during the Falklands war, endorsing sensational headlines, told BBC Radio 4: “it’s an overt attack on the police, but the covert message is the most interesting one. It’s clearly an attack, in the end, on Rupert Murdoch and his stewardship on the company, and it is the clearest evidence we have of the extent of what amounts to a civil war within News Corporation.”

Mr. Greenslade suggested that Sun journalists were outraged by what they see as an attempt to deflect blame onto reporters and editors by executives at their parent company, News Corporation, who are now cooperating with the police investigation.

Mr. Greenslade’s theory seemed to be borne out by remarks made by Mr. Kavanagh in a live interview with BBC Radio 5 later on Monday. Asked, “Do some people at The Sun feel as though the parent company has hung them out to dry?” the associate editor replied: “Well, there is certainly a mood of unhappiness that the company proudly, certain parts of the company” are “actually boasting that they are sending information to police that has put these people I have just described into police cells.”

Mr. Kavanagh then made it clear that he was referring to News Corp.’s new Management and Standards Committee. As The Guardian explained, the committee “was set up last year in the wake of the phone-hacking scandal to cooperate with police investigations into hacking and allegations of corrupt payments to public officials. The arrests of Sun journalists comes after the MSC reconstructed an e-mail archive of 300 million messages and turned over parts of that archive to the police.”

Reuters noted on Tuesday that the committee, which includes a former editor of the rival Daily Telegraph, operates independently and works in soundproofed offices searching for evidence of corruption inside the British newspaper division of News Corp.

Another former Murdoch employee, Andrew Neil, who edited the prestigious Sunday Times of London, told Reuters: “The Sun has turned against Rupert Murdoch. He has put in place things he cannot stop. The Sun was the most loyal to Murdoch. It was closest to his heart. Now Sun journalists believe he has launched a witch hunt to protect himself. He won’t be welcomed. They won’t believe his promises. They’re sullen. They’re resentful. They feel betrayed.”

View the original article here

Sun arrests pile pressure on Murdoch media empire

LONDON (Reuters) - Rupert Murdoch is under pressure over his Sun tabloid after the arrests of several senior staff in a corruption probe, but whistleblowers inside his media empire may pose more of a threat than the public outrage that forced the closure of its sister paper.

Murdoch closed his News of the World weekly after allegations last year it hacked the phone of a murdered schoolgirl prompted a public outcry. Advertisers cancelled contracts and Prime Minister David Cameron set up a inquiry into media practices.

News Corporation boss Murdoch closed the newspaper and flew to London to handle the crisis, which triggered such hostility in Britain's parliament bid that he was forced to give up his bid to take over lucrative pay-TV operator BSkyB.

The veteran media mogul is due to fly to London later this week as another scandal engulfs one of his British newspapers, but he is likely to handle the Sun crisis differently given the public response to the paper's alleged actions is muted.

Police have arrested nine current and former Sun staff in the past two weeks, including the deputy editor and other senior employees, as part of an investigation into the bribing of police and other public officials for information.

The arrests came after News Corp passed information to police, angering employees, some of whom are already briefing against Murdoch.

But while the News of the World (NoW) scandal led to a chorus of condemnation from the public and politicians of all stripes, there has been a low-key response to the Sun arrests.

In a sharp contrast to the mood that prevailed at the height of the NoW scandal last summer, the British minister responsible for the media on Sunday praised Murdoch for increasing British media plurality through his Sky satellite broadcasting network.

"Rupert Murdoch, through the investment he made in Sky for example, has massively increased choice in the UK and given us one of the most competitive broadcasting markets in Europe," Jeremy Hunt told the BBC.

He also praised newspapers, including the News of the World, for uncovering criminals and holding politicians to account.

"People remember how important our newspapers are. I think about the MP (member of parliament) expenses scandal .... People are realizing how important a free press is in our democracy," he added.

Last year, Cameron labeled allegations that the News of the World hacked into the phone of murdered school girl Milly Dowler as "really appalling," "truly dreadful" and called for a "vigorous investigation."

PUBLIC INTEREST DEFENCE?

"The backlash on bribing policemen is not going to be on the same scale as hacking into private phone messages," said Ivor Gaber, political journalism professor at City University London.

"The Sun is a bigger proposition than the News of the World. It makes more money. It has more clout and it's six days a week," he added.

Gaber said possible payments to police or other officials may be covered by a public interest defense that was not available in the News of the World hacking case.

"I think there's more of a debate to be had. It's less black and white," he said.

Hunt praised the Daily Telegraph for its stories about MP expenses even though it had paid a mole for the information on leaked computer disks.

In a statement late on Saturday, the chief executive of News Corp's British newspaper division News International Tom Mockridge indicated Murdoch was far from throwing in the towel.

"Some of the individuals arrested have been instrumental in breaking important stories about public bodies, for example the scandal of our under resourced troops in Iraq .... We must take care not to pre-judge the outcome of the police interviews," he said.

Two of those arrested along with the Sun employees on Saturday in connection with illegal journalist payments were a defense ministry employee and a member of the armed forces, a source said.

THREAT FROM WITHIN

Nevertheless, Murdoch critics say the pressure on News Corp should not be underestimated, especially as some disgruntled News International staff are briefing against him.

The arrest of Sun staff in the last fortnight was the result of information supplied to the police by News Corp's Management and Standards Committee (MSC), a fact-finding group the firm set up in a bid to rescue its reputation.

A source at News International's Wapping office in London said staff were in uproar at what they feel is News Corp sacrificing ordinary employees to protect top executives.

Many staff during the NoW episode said Murdoch was trying to protect his News Corp executive son and presumptive heir James, and Murdoch confidante and former News of the World editor Rebekah Brooks.

"The company has turned against the staff," said the Wapping source on condition of anonymity.

Lawmaker Tom Watson, one of Murdoch's most trenchant critics who last year questioned him and his executive son James over phone-hacking at a parliamentary committee hearing, said a number of News International staff had asked him for help, including two since the arrest of Sun employees.

"A number of staff within News International are talking to me privately .... What you're seeing now is greater willingness of staff on the frontline .... to talk about the conditions they worked under and it's not pleasant listening," he told Reuters.

He said they told him of a culture of bullying by senior staff and a high pressure office culture that led to journalists doing things they were extremely uncomfortable with.

"We are now seeing three of Rupert Murdoch's newspapers investigated for different things ranging from phone hacking to email hacking to potentially bribing public officials," he said, referring to email hacking at Murdoch's highbrow daily The Times.

"There comes a point where you have to say 'How has this institution potentially allowed these things to go on for so long?'. And that's down to the leadership of Rupert Murdoch."

(Additional reporting by Kate Holton and Mark Hosenball; Editing by Jon Boyle)

View the original article here