Rupert Murdoch's News of the World Folds

After the bad taste following the Casey Anthony trial it has been fairly amusing for me to watch Rupert Murdoch sweat out the News of the World scandal. In case you haven’t heard, and that could only happen you’re a devoted fan of the Fair and Balanced FoxNews channel, one of Rupert Murdoch’s holdings in News Corp, the News of the World scandal rag has done an impressive job of creating its own political scandal that leads all the way to the Royal Family. The charges are that editors knew that staff were utilizing illegal hacked sources and were bribing police officials to get inside scoops on celebrities, dead British soldiers, a dead teenage girl and the Royal Family. Unfortunately, the inside info on the Royal Prince was a little too on the money thereby prompting an official hacking investigation. Of course, as the hacking charges grew in intensity so did the efforts to cover-up. To add to the carnage the British Prime Minster David Cameron hired one of the compromised editors, Andy Coulson, of the New of World as his communication officer compounding the mess.

All of this leads to Murdochs and what did they know of the scandal. Rupert did what he always does when the heat increases he acted boldly and folded the entire newspaper to kill the trail. Even so, the timing couldn’t be worse as Rupert Murdoch was busily acquiring another company to add to his communication empire: the takeover of the hugely profitable BSkyB satellite television operation.

I understand that the Murdoch’s will claim that they don’t have day to day control of their holdings and subsequently they will claim no knowledge of the hacking. That’s an understandable defense but the hacking charges are not new and with their somewhat lackadaisical control over their operations many will simply ask why should they be trusted and rewarded with the acquisition of BSKyB?

More importantly why isn’t FoxNews in the states covering the story? Surely, the folding of News of the World because of the ongoing hacking scandal qualifies as a newsworthy item, particularly because of the impact on the British PM. But no not a single word anywhere on FoxNews nor on their website. Why? Because Rupert Murdoch owns FoxNews and it’s not nice to air the bosses’ dirty laundry so the FoxNews editors got word not to breathe a word of the scandal. Go ahead and look on their web site, all you will see is business blurb regarding the close of New of the World operation. Jeez, I have seen higher journalistic editorial standards at a local high school newspaper. And if Murdoch’s has that type of control over the FoxNews editors it’s hard to believe he did not exert that same measure of control regarding News of the World. Here’s your smoking gun, let’s see if any of the politicians on Rupert Murdoch’s payroll grow a pair and take their chances away from Murdoch. I got to buy me a politician someday you know?

Update: Still nothing this morning on the FoxNews channel but there were more business entries about the scandal at the FoxNews Site. Latest word is there were attempts at getting 9/11 survivors personal information. If you recall a little while back there was neocon backlash agianst the 9/11 widows, the thinking being that the widows were getting too much sympathy and too much money from the terrorist attack that occurred duing George Bush’s watch.